Question about Wes Clark

[burythehatchet]

Today on Randi Rhodes there was some discussion about Clark's involvement/ownership in a data mining company.

Let me just say that I have been a huge fan of Clark. I have been hoping for his candidacy in 08. But I am VERY concerned if he is actually in the data mining business. This is the next frontier of fascism in my opinion - corporate control of every bit of information that relates to you.

I'm not looking for a radioactive conversation but I really ned to know what this is all about. If it turns out to be true, he is unacceptable to me and I will be very disappointed.

[FrenchieCat]

1. Clark did some work for Acxiom.......

Acxiom is a data mining company dealing with and limited to, publically available information; it is one of many, and not the largest. Clark with his wife, upon leaving the military, with his wife, decided to stay away from weapons companies. A job in Little Rock opened up, and he took it.

Here's some background
http://blogs.salon.com/0002556/2003/09/28.html

Shortly after 911, Clark received a call from two of his cousins who work at Acxiom--plenty of people in LR work for them. The cousins were upset because 11 of the 19 hijackers' names and complete information including addresses, appeared in Acxiom's data base. "Could cousin Wesley do something since the information was not making it up the ladder."

Clark called Paul O'Neill and made an appointment. For three months Clark worked without any pay to advise the government what went wrong. How could Acxiom have the information about people who were on a "terrorist" watch list and intelligence agencies have missed it? Because of difficulties regarding his non-official status coupled with a subject that was eating up his time without pay, Clark did register as a lobbyist.

Acxiom had no information that is outside of the public domain, and the bush-administration's reaction to 911 and the negating of our right to privacy, is horrible.

Edited to add that he was eventually paid.

[burythehatchet]

2. thanks for the lead, I'll be looking at this carefully.

[abburdlen]

3. Acxiom Corporation

He was on their board of directors (but not currently) and was a registered lobbyist for them at one point. The documents are available at the Center for Public Integrity

I agree there is potential abuse from the data collection industry but I don't believe it is inherently evil. There are so many positive examples of Clark's character that I tend to think he's more likely to shine light from within shady organizations than be tainted by their ickiness. (He's working at Fox but still a good man!)

[Tom Rinaldo]

6. Robert O’Harrow, the Author of "No Place to Hide" thinks well of Clark

Robert O'Harrow Jr. is a reporter for the Washington Post who wrote the Book "No Place To Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society"

Here is a partial reveiw of that book from Publisher's Weekly which I obtained at Amazon.com:

"The amount of personal data collected on ordinary citizens has grown steadily over the decades, and after 9/11, corporations that had been amassing this information largely for marketing purposes saw an opportunity to strengthen their ties with the government. But what do we really know about these data collectors, and are they trustworthy? O'Harrow, a Pulitzer finalist who covers privacy and technology issues for the Washington Post, tracks the explosive growth of this surveillance industry, with keen attention to the problems that "inevitable mistakes" along the way have created in mainstream society, from victims of identity theft who have been placed in financial jeopardy to travelers detained at the airport because of the similarity of their names to those of criminal suspects. O'Harrow gives the government's push for increased surveillance heavy play, but he effectively presents the story's many sides, as when he juxtaposes the perspectives of a Justice Department attorney, a civil liberties activist and Senator Patrick Leahy in the first chapter."

As for O'Harrow and Clark, they appeared together at a Center for American Progress Conference sometime in 2005. O'Harrow said this about Clark and Acxiom at that event:

"...There is a guy that I think many of us in the room respect and admire deeply, General Clark, and he serves as a great example of someone who was deeply involved in representing a company called Axiom. And Axiom was one of those companies that responded with – I know that from my reporting – very patriotic motives. They had a lot of that as a marketer and they shared it and they shared it to good effect; it helped. They also saw ways that they could change their business model and become part of the security industrial complex. And one of the people that was helping open doors for Axiom in Washington was General Clark. The reason I raise that is because I kept finding that General Clark got to places before I did and people spoke admiringly of his ability to say what he knew, to say what he didn’t know, to play it straight, and to in every case do it in the smart way, which is why people respect him."

[burythehatchet]

7. thank you. I feel relieved. This author was on Daily Show

last night. He seems very credible and if he knows this industry and likes Clark, that's good enough for me.

[Adelante]

8. May 4 2005

The conference was "Homeland Security and the Data Revolution" and Wes was the featured speaker.

[renate]

9. that's wonderful!

I saw O'Harrow last night--he's very worried about the potential for abuse, so if he admires Clark and says his motives were patriotic, that is excellent to hear.

I've supported Clark since 2003 and, of course, would have been perfectly satisfied in my own heart that his motives were pure, but it's great to hear this from somebody who's overall suspicious of data collection; a quote like this could deflect concerns about Acxiom in the 2008 election.

[jrd200x]

4. I worked closely with Axciom - I know these guys

Wes Clark is (was?) on there board after he retired from the Army.

I'm not sure I would catagorize them as a "data mining" company. The are primarily a data storage company and they do marketing analysis - largley for the automotive industry. They store data for RL Polk and JD Power among others. They are an Arkansas company - same state as Wes Clark's home.

They invited him to join the board because they are interested in winning business with the government. His involvement with the company is not day-to-day.

[Adelante]

5. He is no longer on the board there since 2003

His lobbying gig lasted about four months, as I recall.

[ajacobson]

10. Thanks, good point

and welcome to DU!