WP article on Clark's post-military consulting - via MSNBC site

[ajacobson]

I'm posting this even though this may be chum in the water to some--because of two things brought out in the article:

1) Clark is immensely interested in technology and how technology can enhance national security. {43* on the other hand probably just learned which way to point the remote control to change the tv channel}
2) Clark is very concerned that the technology used to enhance national security not compromise privacy rights

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4090703/

[Jerseycoa]

1. Not bad at all

This is pretty accurate, for a change. The only thing that popped out I thought it could be better would have been for the piece to have explored more thoroughly the way he got into lobbying post-9/11. He had gone immediately to the Bushies to offer his military and national security expertise and was laughed out the door. So he started lobbying on his own, unpaid, trying to get the government focused on security combined with privacy rights. He did that for four months gratis before Acxiom offered him the job and he took it. Acxiom had never had a government contract before, but after 9/11, they found 11 of the 19 terrorists in their database and was trying to find a way to get it to the government when somebody called Wes. (Acxiom started as a Democratic Party listing in Little Rock, I understand, in Clinton early days and grew into a database company.) The important thing is if Dick Cheney had listened to Clark, CAPPS II, which was developed without Clark, would never have become what it is, and even CAPPS II is better than what Cheney initially wanted, The American (something, I can't remember the last word) in terms of privacy protections.

Clark has been very open about it all and has an online reading room where anybody can research his past, including his business life. Journalists are offered open access to hard records. I am sure it's what this article is based on, because every other one I've seen
has been a hatchet job.

I don't have a problem with lobbying as long as it's not dirty dealing, which this was not. Something people don't seem to understand is that it's the lobbyists who are the experts in a field and actually write most of the legislation. It's unavoidable, though, because legislators can't possibly cover all the points on these complicated issues and legislation and, in Clark's case, defense and security spending would be even more ineffective and error-prone without input by somebody who knows what the hell it's about. But it's all got to be done out in the open, which is precisely what Clark advocates.

However, this kind of stuff had to do with national security response and preparation for any future threat, what he was into, and what his lobbying activity largely entailed was environmental and energy technology applied to military and civilian use. The motorbike that uses a computer chip instead of gasoline, for example, lessening American reliance on oil, on the one hand, also has military use in terms of the lighter machinery he thinks the country needs post-battle over than heavy machinery.

[OKNancy]

2. I kept wondering when someone would post this

I figured the Clark-haters would jump all over it. Then I decided that it burst all their bubbles about the big-bad Clark lobbying
(electric bicycles and a vaccine)

It also talks about how the Stephens people really wanted him out because he was criticizing Bush.

Here is a link to the original.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58300-2004Jan28.html

From the article:
Clark also served as a consultant to the wireless technology firm Time Domain, in which he holds a small stake that currently has no value. Ralph Petroff, the firm's chief executive, said Clark was valuable as an adviser not only on possible military products but also on products for the commercial market.

"He was one of the first buyers of the Apple Newton," one of the first personal digital assistants, Petroff said. "The guy is really into new technology. . . . He was able to predict better than many industry analysts the deployment of wireless networks in the commercial world."