Word: buckham
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...resorts. He had his own baseball team, the Hanwha Eagles, and loved to sip soju, a fiery libation, as he and his employees watched them play. But apparently one thing was missing: international prestige. So Kim turned to Republican heavyweight Tom DeLay's former chief of staff, Ed Buckham, in early 2001 to develop what Buckham's lobbying firm described as a "work plan." The goal, according to the first sentence of that five-page proposal, was nothing short of establishing "Chairman Kim as the leading Korean business statesman in U.S.-Korean relations...
...achieve something that ambitious would require three commodities prized in Washington: visibility, access and lots of money. In this case, those ingredients came together in June 2001 in the form of a tax-exempt charity--the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council (KORUSEC), which Buckham's firm formed and Kim funded. But if KORUSEC's goal was to make important people start paying attention to Kim, it may have worked too well. KORUSEC is one of a number of nonprofit organizations that have been caught in the controversy that now surrounds DeLay, who's facing questions about his fund raising...
...Buckham, originally from Nashville, Tenn., had come a long way from his first job on Capitol Hill, as an intern in the early 1980s, clipping newspapers and fetching coffee for the staff of the Senate Republican policy committee. He got to know DeLay during a seven-year hitch as executive director of the House Republican study committee, which was something of an idea factory for the G.O.P. during its wilderness days of what then seemed like perpetual minority status in the House. Together DeLay and Buckham worked to push their party to the right on issues like taxes, welfare...
...even at an official distance, while Buckham built his own operation, he became more deeply involved than ever with DeLay. "[Buckham] was always there, ever present," recalls a former aide to then Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose office never completely trusted DeLay's. Buckham put DeLay's wife Christine on the payroll of his thriving Alexander Strategy Group from 1998 to 2002, according to DeLay's financial-disclosure forms. Buckham also hired Tony Rudy--who had been DeLay's press secretary, policy director, deputy chief of staff and general counsel--as well as Karl Gallant, who had served as executive director...
Then there is the spreading scandal around high-flying lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a former producer of low-budget movies whose most marketable asset was access to DeLay. Here, too, Buckham appears to have played a key role. "How did Jack Abramoff get into Tom DeLay's office?" asks a source close to the majority leader. "Ed Buckham." Abramoff and former DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon are being investigated by the Senate and Justice Department for allegedly defrauding Indian tribes that had hired them as lobbyists. Abramoff and Scanlon refused to comment at Senate hearings last year and have denied wrongdoing...