Romney picks Beltway parasite and Bush retread Michael Chertoff for multiple advisory roles . More than a third of Romney's latest advisors have some connection to Harvard though Romney criticized Obama for having too many Harvard people around.
10/6/11, "Romney unveils advisers on natl. security and foreign policy," by NBC's Garrett Haake, Msnbc.com
"In advance of speech on defense and foreign policy that he will deliver on Friday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today released a list of the advisers who have shaped -- and will continue to guide -- his thinking on these issues.
On Romney’s list were bold-faced names who served in the Bush administration like former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and former CIA Director Michael Hayden, as well as Cofer Black, who once served as the vice chairman
- of the controversial private-security firm Blackwater.
“I am deeply honored to have the counsel of this extraordinary group of diplomats, experts, and statesmen,” Romney said in a statement announcing these advisers. Their remarkable experience, wisdom, and depth of knowledge will be critical to ensuring that the 21st century is another American Century.”
Chertoff, who is also advising Romney on judicial issues, was tapped by President George W. Bush to be the nation's second Homeland Security secretary....
Hayden, who along with Chertoff will co-chair Romney's working group on counter-terrorism and intelligence, also has a distinguished (but also controversial) background in national security. As director of the National Security Agency -- and then later the CIA -- he was embroiled in the debate over warranttless wiretapping following 9/11, which he later argued before Congress was a legal and necessary step to protect the United States against further terrorist strikes.
Black, another former member of the CIA, is listed as one of Romney's special advisers. He left government service in 2004 after a long CIA career and two years as the State Department coordinator for counter-terrorism issues, and then became a vice chairman for the private security firm Blackwater -- a position is not mentioned in the short biography provided by the Romney campaign.
Romney’s team also includes some prominent voices in the neo-conservative movement, such as Brookings fellow and syndicated columnist Robert Kagan, and it lists former
- Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor....
A final observation: While on the campaign trail, Romney occasionally criticizes President Obama's thinking on foreign policy as being guided by too much time in the "Harvard Faculty lounge,” more than a third of the advisers listed today have Harvard connections -- either earning degrees at the school or serving as faculty there."
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11/14/10, "Bush’s Homeland Security Secretary flacking for nudie-scanners, too," Timothy P. Carney, Washington Examiner
"The companies that make the airport nudie-scanners have high-priced lobbying teams that include former congressmen, top Capitol Hill staff, and former TSA brass, as I reported in my column yesterday.
But because I focussed on registered lobbyists, I left out the highest-profile revolving-door character in the pay of the nudie-scanner industry: George W. Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. After the undie-bomber attempt on Christmas 2009, Chertoff went on a media tour promoting the use of these scanners, without disclosing that he was getting paid by Rapiscan, one of the two companies currently contracted by TSA to take a nude picture of you at the airport.
Here’s Chertoff in the NY Times just days after Christmas last year:
Screening technologies with names like millimeter-wave and backscatter X-ray can show the contours of the body and reveal foreign objects. Such machines, properly used, are a leap ahead of the metal detectors used in most airports, and supporters say they are necessary to keep up with the plans of potential terrorists. “If they’d been deployed, this would pick up this kind of device,” Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary, said in an interview…
Chertoff was quickly reamed for not disclosing how he had monetized his public service.
The whole situation is depressing for two reasons:
1) It’s tawdry how much our “public servants” use their government jobs as meal tickets.
2) It’s sad how much companies set up their businesses to depend on government, and thus lobbyists."
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