Word: knights
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Maybe not, but perhaps that's because he's always had Peter Knight. One of Gore's longtime advisers and his principal fund raiser, Knight tends to the darker side of Gore's world. It was Knight, the Clinton-Gore campaign manager in 1996, who prepared many of the "call sheets" that Gore worked from when dialing for dollars. Now, after Attorney General Janet Reno has begun a preliminary review of those calls under the independent-counsel law, government sources tell TIME that Justice is also probing Knight's multilayered connections to a Massachusetts manufacturer that won $33 million...
...Knight, working as the firm's lobbyist, smoothed the way for the donations, the contracts and an unusual personal visits to the firm's headquarters by Gore himself. The little-known Knight probe, under way for some time, could draw the Vice President deeper into a scandal that has its roots in Bill Clinton's last election but may have its greatest impact on Al Gore's next. In a TIME/CNN poll last week, Gore's approval rate dipped to 51%, the lowest level since March. If the next presidential election were held today, pitting Gore against Texas Governor George...
Successful politicians have long relied on discreet aides to perform some of the onerous money-related chores of modern political life. But Knight is the epitome of a new generation of moneymen in both parties whose work doesn't end with the election; it really just begins. Fund raisers who once shelved their donor lists between elections now turn donors into clients on whose behalf they lobby the very same politicians for whom they were raising cash just weeks before. It's a seamless loop of influence peddling--donors get access, candidates get money; and lobbyists get rich...
...because much of the horse trading is done far from the Senate floor or the Oval Office, politicians get deniability. But the Gore-Knight link is hardly arm's length. Knight, 46, went to work for Gore 20 years ago as a top aide in the House and later the Senate; today he is the man who many say is Gore's political alter ego, the smooth operator within Gore's tight-knit inner circle. His name turns up everywhere; he was even on Gore's 1989 trip to Taiwan that was led by overzealous fund raiser John Huang...
...rise of Peter Knight is an arc defined by Gore. Shortly after directing Gore's failed 1988 presidential bid, Knight decided to try his luck at the influence game. Thanks to an old friend and fellow Cornell alumnus, Ken Levine, he landed in 1991 at the Washington firm Wunder, Diefenderfer, Cannon & Thelen. Several partners in the firm, recognizing that Knight's tie to Gore had potential, kicked in about $7,000 each of their own money, in addition to what the firm was offering, to help bring Knight in. Until mid-1992, though, Knight was "negative" at the firm...