**ARLERT** Hillary Clinton worked at the Children's Defense Fund for less than a year

[FrenchieCat]

But when you hear her talk about her 35 years, the Children's Defense Fund is played as though she worked there for years!

By MATT STEARNS
McClatchy-Tribune

WASHINGTON — To hear Hillary Clinton talk, she's spent her entire career putting her Yale Law School degree to work for the common good.

She routinely tells voters that she's "been working to bring positive change to people's lives for 35 years." She told a voter in New Hampshire: "I've spent so much of my life in the nonprofit sector."

The overall portrait is of a lifelong, selfless do-gooder. The whole story is more complicated — and less flattering.

Clinton worked at the Children's Defense Fund for less than a year, and that's the only full-time job in the nonprofit sector she's ever had. She also worked briefly as a law professor.

Clinton spent the bulk of her career — 15 of those 35 years — at one of Arkansas' most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4385517&mesg_id=4385517

[xultar]

And....you're posting this beeecuzzz?

[leveymg]

13. I also noted this same misrepresentation by Hillary of her record during the debate.

From 1977, before her husband was first elected Arkansas Governor, until 1992, when he was elected President, Hillary Clinton worked for the Rose Law Firm. This omission is very significant in light of the following:

During her tenure at Rose Law Firm Hillary Clinton represented, among other clients, the Stephens Group, which was a primary conduit for BCCI in the U.S., along with Wal-Mart, which became the biggest U.S. business partner with the Peoples Republic of China. The Stephens brothers also funneled BCCI money into business deals with prominent Republican and Democratic politicians Bert Lance (a close friend of Jimmy Carter), and the Bush family.

In October, 1992, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released an 800-page report on the BCCI collapse. That reported concluded the BCCI scandal was, "the largest case of organized crime in history, spanning over some 72 nations," adding that it represented an "international financial crime on a massive and global scale," and that the bank "systematically bribed world leaders and political figures throughout the world."

The Senate report stated that among the provable charges against BCCI were "BCCI's criminality, including fraud…involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the America; BCCI's bribery of officials in most of those locations; its support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; its management of prostitution; its commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; its illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers."

In 1977, Jackson Stephens introduced Bert Lance, Carter's OMB Director, to a Pakistani businessman, Agha Hasan Abedi. Abedi was the founder of a curious Luxembourg-registered, London-based bank called BCCI. In 1978, Abedi purchased Lance's distressed First National Bank of Georgia. Stephens later joins with Lance and a group of Mideast investors--later identified as key figures in the corrupt Bank of Credit & Commerce International--in an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Financial General Bankshares in Washington, D.C. Long-time Washington insider, Clark Clifford, will later take the fall for BCCI's illegal takeover of First National Bank of Washington.

The Stephens Group was well-connected to another interesting Asian banking group, the billionaire Indonesian Riady family of Moktar and his son James Riady, who own the Lippo Bank in Indonesia. The Riadys are Chinese-Indonesian businessmen who, of all places, moved to Arkansas in the 1970’s, despite holding billions of assets in Asia. In 1991, Stephens joined BCCI investor Mochtar Riady in buying BCCI's former Hong Kong subsidiary from its liquidators.

In 1987, Stephens Inc. invested tens of millions to rescue Harken Energy, a struggling Texas oil company with George W. Bush on its board. Over the next three years, BCCI-linked investors and advisers are brought into Harken deals. One of them, Abdullah Bakhsh, purchases $10 million in shares of Stephens-dominated Worthen Bank.

Accused al-Qaeda financer, the Bin Mahfouz family, was part of the BCCI Harken "bailout" for George W. Bush. See, http://www.thedubyareport.com/bushbin.html

"Among W.'s consulting responsibilities were "equity placements." When Harken needed an infusion of cash, Bush turned to family friend and investment banker Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, AK. The firm of Stephens Inc. was at the time one of the largest investment banks outside Wall Street. (The Stephens family was also active in Republican circles: Jackson Stephens would later contribute at least $200,000 to the Bush for President campaign, and his wife would become the Arkansas campaign chair.) Stephens rescue plan was to obtain $25 million in investment capital from Union Bank of Switzerland -- a joint venture of BCCI and the Banque de Commerce et de Placements in Geneva. UBS did not normally invest in small U.S. companies, but it made an exception in this case.

As originally structured, the deal apparently did not comply with U.S. banking regulations, according to the Asian Wall Street Journal. In the course of restructuring the deal, UBS decided to sell its shares as soon as possible, and Stephens obligingly found a new buyer: Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudi Arabian real-estate magnate. Bakhsh's representative is Talat Othman, a Palestinian born Chicago investor.

For several years Bakhsh was chairman of Saudi Finance Co., a holding company based in Luxembourg that operated French and Swiss financial enterprises. Bakhsh sold his interest in Saudi Finance Co. in 1983, although it is not clear to whom. By 1989 the firm was under partial control of the Gokal family of Pakistan -- shipping magnates who were BCCI shareholders. Bakhsh conducted business with the most prominent people in Saudi Arabia, reportedly including two oil ministers and members of the Saudi royal family. Among his notable co-investors was Ghaith Pharaon; Khalid bin Mahfouz was Bakhsh's banker. Bakhsh's stake in Harken was 17.6% in 1991, making him the third largest shareholder. The first, with 24.5%, is a Harvard University investment fund..."

Khalid Bin Mahfouz is also named in the 9-11 suit, as a defendent. So are Prince Turki, Prince Sultan, & the Saudi Binladen Group.
"Baker Botts, Sultan’s law firm, for example, still boasts former secretary of State James Baker as one of its senior partners. Its recent alumni include Robert Jordan, the former personal lawyer for President Bush who is now U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
An internal list of other law firms retained in the case, reviewed by NEWSWEEK , reads like a veritable “who’s who” of the U.S. legal community. Among those firms and their Saudi clients are: Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (Prince Mohammed al Faisal); Kellog, Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans (Prince Turki al Faisal); Jones, Day (the Binladin Group); Ropes & Grey (Khaled bin Mahfouz); White & Case,(the Al-Rajhi Banking Group); King & Spalding (the Arab Bank and Youssef Nada); Akin Gump (Mohammed Hussein Al-Almoudi); and Fulbright & Jaworski (Nimir Petroleum.)"

James Baker, Prince Sultan, and the Bushes are all business partners in the Carlyle Group. Also "The financial assets of the Saudi Binladen Corporation (SBC) are also managed by the Carlyle Group."

Until its exposure and closure in the 1990s, BCCI served as a major global funding vehicle for joint US-Saudi covert operations, including Iran-Contra, the Afghanistan war, the Bosnia War, and a number of related conflicts involving Jihadists and terrorism.

[leveymg]

15. Some more interesting connections between Jackson Stephens and Bush/Clinton: BCCI and CIA/NSA

See, http://www.madcowprod.com/mc082004.html

Issue Number 8

by Daniel Hopsicker



October 31--Venice, Florida.

Jackson Stephens, a name often linked with America’s super-secret National Security Agency, has been an influential presence for several decades in the tiny town which served as port of entry into U.S. flight and even military training for the terrorist cadre implicated in the Sept 11 attack.

A block away from the Venice Florida airport stands an opulent three-story red brick building that is a monument to the rivers of money flowing through the Stephens financial empire.

Looking eerily-reminiscent of the plush digs of the law firm in the Tom Cruise movie "The Firm," or a particularly-ostentatious Southern Governors’ mansion, the building seems out of place alongside the weed-strewn airport perimeter.

This was the national headquarters of Jackson Stephen's Beverly Enterprises. It is a stone’s throw from the Venice Airport.

Gleaming like a movie set and basking in Florida's Indian summer, the building still houses Stephens former law firm, local political powerhouse Boone Boone & Boone, a firm which worked so closely with client Stephens that at least one of his executives was permanently housed there.

"I don’t think you could safely say that they (Boone & Boone) runs everything in town," said one local observer. "But you could safely say they run almost everything. They exert a strong influence here, including out at the airport."

Why did Mohammed Atta and his terrorist cadre pick tiny Venice, Florida to be their terrorist beachhead?

Did puritanical Islamic fundamentalists have a previously-unknown fascination or fetish for kindly Caucasian widows with blue hair, so abundant here?

Or were they instead drawn by a covert operation of the U.S. intelligence agency to which Stephens is persistently linked, the National Security Agency?

Curiously, furious government intelligence officials yesterday accused the NSA of destroying data pertinent to the Sept 11 probe, reported the Boston Globe, stating possible leads stemming from the Sept. 11 attack weren't being followed because of the NSA.

Jackson Stephens name, so often linked to the NSA, has made a brief appearance in almost every whispered-about scandal or cover-up in America in the past two decades.

He was named in the BCCI criminal bank scandal, in the death of Vince Foster and the stolen Promis software scandal of the Justice Dept, and in the 1996 campaign finance scandal involving allegations of Red Chinese money.

Most notably, Jackson Stephens has already been named in one intelligence-related aviation scandal: the gun-running and cocaine smuggling at Mena, Arkansas during the 1980’s that was behind Iran Contra and Whitewater.

Were Stephens to be implicated in yet-another intelligence-related aviation scandal, it would be, for him, something very much like two in a row.

More about Stephens: he was the chief domestic campaign contributor to both George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton.

"At first glance it might seem curious that former President George Bush would attend an event honoring Jackson T. Stephens, the biggest Democratic power broker in Bill Clinton's home state," read one news report. "But Mr. Stephens, a self-made billionaire investment banker and philanthropist, is financing a cause that transcends politics: golf."

While Mr. Stephens is often busy with his many philanthropic activities, he did manage to have found enough time to later be fingered as the "Old Man" behind the Mena, Arkansas cocaine smuggling scandal dogging Bill Clinton throughout his time in office.

Interestingly enough, the Venice Airport also surfaced briefly in the questioning of Oliver North during the Iran Contra hearings, when a man with a local aviation business named Joe Duncan was alleged to have run guns to the Contras from the airport.

What is this about Stephens and the NSA? This article goes back to the Clinton Administration, at which time allegations emerged about systematic hacking into American financial institutions by foreign intelligence and criminal networks exploiting known NSA "backdoors" in money transfer tracking systems developed by a Stephens-owned company. See, http://www.aci.net/kalliste/bigbro.htm

The chief government effort to spy on U.S. domestic banking transactions was directed by the electronic spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), working in connection with the Little Rock software firm Systematics. Systematics, half-owned by billionaire Jackson Stephens (of Stephens Inc. fame), has been a major supplier of software for back office clearing and wire transfers. It was Stephens' attempt to get Systematics the job of handling the data processing for the Washington-D.C. bank First American that led to the BCCI takeover of that institution. Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster represented Systematics in that endeavor, and later Foster became an overseer of the NSA project with respect to Systematics.

Working together, the NSA and Jackson Stephens' Systematics developed security holes in much of the banking software Systematics sold. Now we face a crisis in banking and financial institution security, according to John Deutch, Director of the CIA. "One obstacle is that banks and other private institutions have been reluctant to divulge any evidence of computer intrusions for fear that it will leak and erode the confidence of their customers. Deutch said 'the situation is improving' but that more cooperation was needed from major corporations, and said the CIA remains willing to share information with such firms about the risks they might face." (The Washington Post, June 26, 1996, page A19.)

What Deutch failed to mention was that this "banking crisis" in large part was itself created by one of the U.S. intelligence agencies--the NSA in cahoots with Stephens' software firm Systematics. The Citibank heist by Russian hackers, for example, took advantage of a back door in Citibank's Systematics software.

SNIP

So, what does this have to do with Hillary? As a junior attorney, Mrs. Clinton was working under the dircetion of Webster Hubbell, a senior partner at The Rose Law Firm. Among the clients they reportedly represented was work related to Jackson Stephen's Systematics (dba, Alltel Systematics, later purchased by Fidelity, see, http://www.inntron.co.th/banksys/fidelity.html) during the BCCI takeover of First American. BCCI was, in part, virtually a proprietary holding of the CIA, as the Kerry Commission Report found:

7. THE CIA DEVELOPED IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON BCCI, AND INADVERTENTLY FAILED TO PROVIDE IT TO THOSE WHO COULD USE IT.

THE CIA AND FORMER CIA OFFICIALS HAD A FAR WIDER RANGE OF CONTACTS AND LINKS TO BCCI AND BCCI SHAREHOLDERS, OFFICERS, AND CUSTOMERS, THAN HAS BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE CIA.

By early 1985, the CIA knew more about BCCI's goals and intentions concerning the U.S. banking system than anyone else in government, and provided that information to the U.S. Treasury and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, neither of whom had the responsibility for regulating the First American Bank that BCCI had taken over. The CIA failed to provide the critical information it had gathered to the correct users of the information -- the Federal Reserve and the Justice Department.

After the CIA knew that BCCI was as an institution a fundamentally corrupt criminal enterprise, it continued to use both BCCI and First American, BCCI's secretly held U.S. subsidiary, for CIA operations.

While the reporting concerning BCCI by the CIA was in some respects impressive -- especially in its assembling of the essentials of BCCI's criminality, its secret purchase of First American by 1985, and its extensive involvement in money laundering -- there were also remarkable gaps in the CIA's reported knowledge about BCCI.

Former CIA officials, including former CIA director Richard Helms and the late William Casey; former and current foreign intelligence officials, including Kamal Adham and Abdul Raouf Khalil; and principal foreign agents of the U.S., such as Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar, float in and out of BCCI at critical times in its history, and participate simultaneously in the making of key episodes in U.S. foreign policy, ranging from the Camp David peace talks to the arming of Iran as part of the Iran/Contra affair. Yet the CIA has continued to maintain that it has no information regarding any involvement of these people, raising questions about the quality of intelligence the CIA is receiving generally, or its candor with the Subcommittee. The CIA's professions of total ignorance about their respective roles in BCCI are out of character with the Agency's early knowledge of many critical aspects of the bank's operations, structure, personnel, and history.

The errors made by the CIA in connection with its handling of BCCI were complicated by its handling of this Congressional investigation. Initial information that was provided by the CIA was untrue; later information that was provided was incomplete; and the Agency resisted providing a "full" account about its knowledge of BCCI until almost a year after the initial requests for the information. These experiences suggest caution in concluding that the information provided to date is full and complete. The relationships among former CIA personnel and BCCI front men and nominees, including Kamal Adham, Abdul Khalil, and Mohammed Irvani, requires further investigation.

[leveymg]

16. And, then, there's this I found posted here back in 2004, when DU strings were long on these topics:

See, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=977792#986087

permission to reprint this article in its entirety has been given by the author at the bottom of the page.

http://www.worldnewsstand.net/MediumRare/22.htm

Why Quit, Henry? Is It Acxiom?
By Jim Rarey
Deember 18, 2002

When Dr. K (Kissinger) withdrew as co-chairman of the commission to investigate the 9/11 terrorist attacks after refusing to make his client list public, he bitterly asserted his consulting business represented no foreign companies or governments that would constitute a conflict of interest with his duties on the commission.

Although there is no particular reason we should believe anything Kissinger says, for purposes of this article, let’s take that assertion at face value. That would mean if there is a conflict, it must be with one or more of his domestic (U.S.) clients.

Kissinger’s two consulting firms (Kissinger & Associates and Kissinger-McLarty & Associates) advise a large number of U.S. companies. Yes, it is that McLarty, Mack McLarty who was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and is now vice-chairman of the first firm and partner in the second.

The client lists of the two firms are closely guarded. However, from time to time some information leaks out. Although Dr. K has his own share of skeletons in his closet, (e.g. his involvement in the overthrow of an elected government in Chile and the resulting thousands of deaths that have branded both Kissinger and Pinochet as war criminals), some of his domestic clients have their own scandals with which he may not want to be associated.

One that is, or has been, a Kissinger client is J.P. Morgan Chase, implicated in the Enron frauds as well as money laundering along with other New York investment banks. (But that’s only drug money and U.S. taxpayers’ dollars recycled through the Russian KGB/Mafia, not known to relate to terrorism.) Kissinger sits on the Morgan/Chase International Advisory Board.

Other examples could be cited, but in this writer’s opinion, the association Dr. K is most afraid might be made public is with the little known company Acxiom.

Hardly a household name (we will try to change that), Acxiom has been selected the lead company to provide software and pull together the network to furnish the information to DARPA’s “Information Awareness Office” (IAO) where John Poindexter of Iran-Contra infamy will prepare individual dossiers on every American citizen and the millions of aliens (legal and illegal) in the country.

The plan calls for the collection of information from a staggering number of sources, such as banks, credit unions, health care organizations, the IRS and Social Security agencies, the INS, the FBI, grocery chains and any number of other companies and government agencies (federal, state and local) that have records of individual transactions.

But even this association might be covered up in these days of managed news. No, what scares Kissinger the most is the control and history of Acxiom itself. The company may be more than just a client. Mack McLarty sits on its Board of Directors, which implies some kind of investment to protect.

While the name of the company means nothing to almost all Americans, perhaps a couple of the names under which it operated earlier will generate a spark of recognition. Before it morphed into Acxiom, the company was named Alltel. Still nothing? Then how about its original name, Systematics? Now memories come flooding back of the PROMIS software scandal and those associated with it.

The powerful PROMIS software was developed by Bill Hamilton’s company Inslaw. It was virtually stolen by the U.S. Treasury Department. It was then combined with software from Systematics and farmed out to the CIA for final modification (installation of a backdoor feature).

When Treasury forced Inslaw into bankruptcy (by withholding payments due Inslaw) ownership of the software wound up with a CIA cutout named the Hadron Corp. Hadron peddled the software to governments and financial institutions around the world, thus giving the CIA backdoor access to the secret information of a number of governments and banks.

But it doesn’t stop there. The person who controls Acxiom/Alltel/Systematics is Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens. Stephens, and those working with him, have been involved in myriad shady operations too numerous to cite here. We can only hit some of the highlights.

At Systematics, one of the lawyers Stephens hired to represent the company was a bright young attorney named Hillary Rodham. After she joined the Rose law firm (then Hillary Rodham Clinton), Stephens employed the firm (mainly its partners Hillary, Vince Foster and Webster Hubbell) in several of his ventures.

Stephens was a financial angel to both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He gave final impetus to Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign with a large “loan” from his Worthen bank. Stephens (along with the Harvard University endowment) rescued one of Dubya’s companies from bankruptcy with sizeable investments.

Another scandal suppressed by the “watchdogs of the press” was the cocaine smuggling aspects of the Iran/Contra affair. In return for arms smuggled to the Contras in Nicaragua, cocaine was being brought back to the U.S. and dropped off at a small airport at Mena, Arkansas. Pilot Barry Seal, a CIA asset and drug runner, was also dropping bales of cash in Mena. The drug money was laundered (among other channels) through Stephen’s Worthen bank and an Arkansas state agency set up by Governor Bill Clinton (the Arkansas Development Finance Authority). Overseer of the Iran/Contra operation was then Vice-President George H.W. Bush, as later proved with a memo from Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.

A partner with Stephens in the Worthen bank was Mochtar Riady, one of the principals in the Indonesian Lippo Group. The Lippo Group was heavily involved in the campaign financing scandals of the second Clinton presidential campaign, with links to the Chinese military.

Our final example is perhaps the most important unfinished investigation of the last 40 years. The Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) was started by a Pakistani banker ostensibly to service Arab clients in the Middle East. It quickly became a money laundering mechanism for various terrorist organizations in the area. It then branched out to London and other locations and became a repository and laundering channel for a broad spectrum of organizations, including the terrorists as well as Mossad and the CIA.

BCCI established a branch in Florida and took over the largest bank in Washington, D.C. (First American) with the assistance of Stephen’s Worthen bank and the Rose law firm (Hillary, Foster and Hubbell). When the Florida branch was exposed, it was shut down, but the investigation was limited to Florida.

Later, Assistant District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in New York launched a comprehensive investigation into BCCI until it was shut down by Robert Mueller in the Department of Justice (now FBI Director) and Mary Jo White, Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York. White was held over by George W. Bush long enough to deep six the investigation of Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich. She also closed the investigation of Terry McAuliffe (who was on the verge of being indicted) in the Teamster/Democratic National Committee campaign money swap conspiracy.

Yes Henry, it is understandable why you ducked and ran when it looked like you might have to disclose your relationship with Acxiom/Alltel/Systematics and Jackson Stephens

Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.

The author is a free lance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.

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Here's part of the Wiki entry for Acxiom. Note the connection to the US Army GWIC JetBlue program, and the 2001 reference to the company as a repository for political opinion databases:

History
Founded in 1969 under the name Demographics by Charles D. Ward in Conway, Arkansas and later headed by Charles D. Morgan, Acxiom is currently headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas.<1>

The company has opened offices in Chicago, Illinois, Phoenix, Arizona, New York, New York, San Mateo, California and Nashville, Tennessee. There are also international offices in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Australia, and China.

In early 2004, Acxiom acquired Claritas, a major European data provider.<9> In early 2006, EMC Corporation acquired Acxiom’s information grid software in a $30 million deal. <10>

On May 16, 2007, Acxiom agreed to be bought by leading investment firms Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital in an all cash deal valued at $3.0 billion, including the assumption of about $756 million of debt.<11> However on Oct 1, 2007 a press release announced that the takeover agreement is to be terminated and Charles Morgan is set to retire as Acxiom’s Company Leader upon the selection of a successor.

On January 17, 2008, Acxiom name John Meyer (from Alcatel-Lucent) as new CEO and President, to take over from Charles Morgan on February 4, 2008.<12>


Controversy
In 2003, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint before the Federal Trade Commission against Acxiom and JetBlue Airways alleging the companies provided consumer information to Torch Concepts, a company hired by the United States Army "to determine how information from public and private records might be analyzed to help defend military bases from attack by terrorists and other adversaries."<13> According to the complaint, Acxiom's activities constituted unfair and deceptive trade practices, as "Acxiom has publicly represented its belief that individuals should have notice about how information about them is used and have choices about that dissemination, and has stated that it does not permit clients to make non-public information available to individuals," and Acxiom proceeded to sell information to Torch Concepts without obtaining consent, an ability to opt-out, or furnishing notice to the affected consumers.

In 2005 Acxiom was a nominee for the Big Brother Awards for Worst Corporate Invader for a tradition of data brokering.<14>


Security Breaches
In 2003, over 1.6 billion customer records were stolen from Acxiom databases, including names, addresses, and e-mail addresses. Prosecutors described the 2006 case against the hacker accused of stealing the data as the "largest ever invasion and theft of personal data" ever tried. <15> The stolen data only came to light during an investigation of a separate data theft incident. <16>


References
^ FRONTLINE's The Persuaders. Corporation for Public Broadcasting (November 9, 2004). Retrieved on 2007-08-01. “But where did all this information come from? How did political parties and advocacy groups know whom to reach with what message? The answer to that question begins here. The Acxiom Corporation of Little Rock, Arkansas, is one of the biggest companies you've never heard of.”

And, this:

http://www.ualr.edu/itreport/company_profiles.htm

Acxiom Corporation is an international company with corporate offices located in the city of Conway in central Arkansas, with other locations throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Malaysia. Acxiom provides international customers with a wide range of data products, data integration services, mailing list services, modeling and analysis, and information technology outsourcing services. Acxiom also provides data warehousing and decision support services for major companies around the world.

Acxiom has become a major force in the direct marketing community. Acxiom's primary business thrusts are in the area of Data Content; Data Integration, Management, and Delivery; and Information Systems Technology. Acxiom's leadership in Data Content is the result of numerous data acquisitions and the establishment of many industry partnerships and alliances. Acxiom's leadership in Data Integration, Management, and Delivery comes from its ability to accept any input format, to identify or parse the pieces of data and to cleanse and standardize the data values.All of this information is now made available to the business desktop environments.

Acxiom's leadership in Information Systems Technology comes from their ability to combine open database platforms with the best software applications based on individual client needs. This, along with the ability to use parallel processing to the clients' advantage, keeps them a leader in their field. Employing 3,600 employees or associates worldwide, Acxiom is constantly looking for new information technology talent. Acxiom is a results-oriented company whose new employees become productive, almost immediately. Another benefit of employment at Acxiom is the exposure to specialized and continual training. In addition, employees work in what has been defined as a "casual atmosphere," which even defines its dress code.


Alltel Corporation
Alltel Corporation is a company of both a national and international proportions. With a customer base of over 5.6 million customers, Alltel serves 22 states with its wireline and wireless communications services and serves 48 countries with its information services. Alltel serves financial, mortgage, and telecommunications clients the world over. Alltel is a Forbes, Fortune, and S & P 500 company. Alltel Corporation began business as a wireline telecommunications company, serving the needs of local telephone customers. In the 1980's, Alltel moved into the burgeoning field of wireless communications with the establishment of Alltel Wireless Services. Today, the communications arm of Alltel has begun providing customers with local and long distance, Internet access, and network management services. In 1990, Alltel expanded its horizons with the acquisition of a company formally know as Systematics. With its acquisition, Alltel moved into the Information Services market. Alltel felt as the line between voice and data communications began to blur, it would be to their customers' advantage for the company to add Information Services to their ever-growing list of products and services. The Information Services division offers technology solutions, such as Complete Information Technology Outsourcing, NetwoAlltel Corporation began business as a Alltel is constantly on the search for potential information technology- knowledgeable applicants.

[leveymg]

17. Hillary an enthusiast of TIPPS and TIA - and Acxiom's role as prime contractor

Acxiom is listed right at the top of client list for The Rose Law Firm: http://www.roselawfirm.com/about/client_profiles.asp

Hillary and Bill have actively lobbied for Acxiom to be awarded government contracts for some of the most intrusive domestic surveillance contracts.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/02/23/362182/index.htm

The man behind the paradigm is Morgan, who joined the company in 1972 and built the industry's first large-scale, multisourced database in 1978. Although he just turned 61, the IBM-trained engineer still drives a Harley to work, pilots the company plane, and until last year drove in NASCAR races. "Charles is the guy you want to have flying the airplane if something goes wrong," says Acxiom's general counsel, Jerry Jones. "He can take in lots of information and make decisions. He tweaks algorithms in his spare time and loves to drill down into the data."

A decade ago Morgan got rid of most titles at Acxiom and sardined top executives, himself included, into ten-by ten-foot offices. The moves have paid off: For five of the past seven years, Acxiom was among FORTUNE's 100 best places to work in America. Morgan is two years ahead of the marketplace in using grid-based processing--replacing expensive servers with cheap, interconnected PCs to dramatically drive down costs and improve processing speeds. He's also critical of the government's anti-terror infrastructure. While the two-year-old Patriot Act sanctions the sharing of data between the government and private parties, Congress only recently approved the FBI's expanded power to demand records from securities and car dealers, travel agencies, and currency exchanges. But operators of ships, trains, and planes still don't have the ability or authority to verify a simple driver's license. "Homeland Security has done a poor job of doing just about anything," Morgan says.

When America was attacked on 9/11, Acxiom was in a unique position to help. Shortly after the FBI released the names of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 14, Acxiom located 11 of them in its databases. "Call the FBI," suggested company director Mack McLarty, former chief of staff in Bill Clinton's White House. By day's end, subpoena in hand, a team of FBI agents had moved into Acxiom's headquarters. "Isn't there something you guys can be doing to help?" former President Clinton, a friend of Acxiom counsel Jones's, asked in a call to the company a few days later. "We are," said Jones.

Clinton visited the company's Little Rock offices on Oct. 5, 2001, and phoned Attorney General John Ashcroft to encourage him to use Acxiom for passenger ID verification. Clark, too, was impressed when he was given a demonstration. "This is very powerful data--absolutely what the government needs to be aware of," Clark said at the time. Clark, who had declined to join Acxiom's board a year earlier, started working as a consultant and lobbyist. He joined the board in December 2001 and, according to Acxiom, was paid $460,000 in fees by the company. (Clark refused to talk to FORTUNE about his activities on behalf of Acxiom.)

Morgan was dumbfounded, he recalls, when the FBI arrived at Acxiom. "Their technology was unbelievably bad," he recalls, "and the international terror experts were computer illiterate." For one thing, the agents were toting laptops with Intel 286 processors--slow, low-memory computers that went out with the 1980s. "I thought, 'This has to be a joke,' " he says.

The FBI-Acxiom collaboration lasted for months. Morgan won't provide details, but he says current and former addresses helped identify housemates of the hijackers, as well as suspects with whom they may have been in contact. "We were always paranoid about people looking at the data in that way--as an investigative tool," says Morgan, who wrote much of the software code for the FBI. "It was a slow-going, laborious discovery process, with some amazing moments."

Acxiom's work led to "deportations and indictments," says an executive, as well as thank-you calls from Ashcroft and FBI boss Robert Mueller. In one case, Morgan says, Acxiom was enlisted after the capture in Texas of two Muslim immigrants with expired visas who had boarded planes on 9/11 with box cutters. The two were never linked to the hijackings, but Acxiom's data helped convict them of involvement in the sale of fraudulent credit cards, which led to their deportation.

Meanwhile, Clark began opening doors in Washington, looking to convert the good will toward Acxiom into business opportunities. He arranged and attended meetings at the CIA, Treasury, the State Department, and the Pentagon. By all accounts, officials from Paul O'Neill to John Poindexter were impressed, as was Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who met with Clark in October 2002 and agreed to initiate a test using Acxiom data to help reduce fraud. Beyond tracking terrorists, connecting the government's disparate and archaic databases can help drive down identity theft, the nation's fastest-growing crime. In one test, Acxiom found more than 100 people using the same Social Security number.

Morgan recalls joining Clark for a meeting at the Pentagon, where they made their way to the front of a long security line. As soon as guards spotted the retired general, they whisked the two inside under armed escort. "A lot of the headway we have made lies in the access that General Clark has provided," states a memo from Morgan in 2002. "Here's the approach he takes to helping position Acxiom: 'IT has a role to play because we'll never be safe enough if we try to build walls and conduct searches and screenings. We have to really know who our neighbors are and what their interests are.' "

The highest-ranking official Clark and Morgan visited was Vice President Dick Cheney. Clark led the July 2002 presentation, which laid out the firm's capabilities in a 40-page white paper that cited the example of American Airlines hijacker Waleed Alsheri--Acxiom consumer No. 254-04907-10006. Cheney was "very positive," recalls former Arkansas Senator Tim Hutchinson, who arranged the meeting. "He said he would 'ring the bell'--as he put it--and try and let people know about it."

One of Acxiom's biggest cheerleaders was Hillary Clinton. According to Morgan, Clinton expressed support for a system that would gather detailed data on every passenger during the ticketing process. After a visit with Clinton in November 2001, Morgan reported to his staff: "It was very gratifying when the president of one of Lockheed Martin's companies approached Jerry and me after one meeting and said she had heard from Senator Clinton that Acxiom was a company she really needed to get to know." Clark also played a significant role with Lockheed, and in February 2003, when the TSA named the company as its prime contractor on CAPPS II, Acxiom got a key subcontract.

Just when things were looking up for Acxiom's government business--which accounts for less than 1% of the company's annual revenue--the wheels came off. Hutchinson says the company got "bogged down" in federal bureaucracy. Others at Acxiom wonder if politics might have been at play. Certainly Clark's harsh attacks on the Bush administration throughout 2003 didn't help. Nor have Clark's post-Acxiom diatribes against the two-year-old Patriot Act, which sanctions the sharing of data between government and the private sector.

And the timing of the computer hacks couldn't have been worse, occurring just as Acxiom's key government projects were coming under fire. In September the Senate wiped out funding for the Terrorism Information Awareness project (TIA), a global surveillance database launched in January 2002 by DARPA, the Pentagon's advanced research agency. Clark had gotten Acxiom in the door. But before it could land a contract, the project was shut down--and its director, John Poindexter, forced out--when a TIA subcontractor posted information on its website about a proposed futures market in terrorism and assassination.

Jones, Acxiom's lawyer, says killing TIA was an overreaction. For one thing, it was purely a research project using artificial data, not a mandate to build and implement a product. "You can't create a system on the fly to make it useful," Jones says. "You must at least build the infrastructure and have things running in the background." A public debate in advance would have been better, he adds: "Starting the debate afterward, the outcome is certain."

Acxiom was also caught in the blowback over CAPPS II. Last February, Torch Concepts, a Pentagon subcontractor, included the real Social Security number of a passenger in a PowerPoint presentation to a trade group. The information came from Acxiom, which had been asked by one of its customers, JetBlue, to provide detailed information on two million passengers to Torch for an Army study. A privacy activist eventually found out about the breach and posted the Social Security number on the Internet. In September, Congress blocked funding for implementing CAPPS II until the GAO issues a report on privacy concerns, which is expected this month.

Today the situation is as complicated as the hunt for terrorists. The Federal Trade Commission is examining Acxiom's role, JetBlue is fending off class-action lawsuits, and one of Clark's former campaign rivals, Senator Joseph Lieberman, has requested that the Secretary of Defense investigate whether the Army violated the Privacy Act by not informing JetBlue's passengers. "There wouldn't be politics in that, now would there?" asks Morgan about the Lieberman effort. Adds Jennifer Barrett, Acxiom's chief privacy officer: "We're not having a thoughtful and deliberative debate. Shut down the funding and you don't fix the problem."

That Acxiom was caught snoozing by hackers is ironic. Despite its Big Brother capabilities, the company gets praised--even by critics--for being a pioneer on privacy issues. Every employee undergoes regular and rigorous training about privacy. Morgan often butts heads with his trade group, the Direct Marketing Association, on everything from e-mail spam to the federal do-not-call list. He understands that agitated consumers are bad for business. "The first time I brought up privacy policy at the DMA was 1992, when I joined the board," he recalls. "Everyone looked at me like I was an idiot. It wasn't on the agenda." Acxiom was among the first in any industry to appoint a chief privacy officer with power to nix unethical projects like selling data linked to Social Security numbers to marketers. Yet it was only in the wake of the hacker intrusions that Acxiom created the post of chief security officer, with full-time responsibility for preventing cybercrime and mandating encryption.

The lack of encryption was a colossal oversight. "So often the thing you don't think about comes and bites you," says Morgan. "Most of our customers didn't want to go through the trouble of encryption." Yet that seems reckless at a time when the credit card industry is under siege by hackers and identity thieves. "The losses are in the billions," Morgan says. Acxiom maintains that its two breaches were the only ones in its history. How can the company be sure? Baas was nailed almost by accident, after investigators examined the computer of another hacker they were probing. And he had taken up residence inside their server for two years.

If Acxiom expects to hold itself up as the gold standard for technology linking and processing, Morgan has to seal his own leaky roof. Investigators say Baas offered Acxiom's data to other hackers if they would help him organize the information into his own database. Luckily he found no takers. "Large corporations need to realize that they are the trustees of the personal information of millions of Americans," says Robert Behlen, a federal prosecutor in the Baas case. "Had the defendant chosen to post the stolen information on the Internet or used it to open credit card accounts, the amount of damage would have been significantly higher."

Last June, in an appearance before the FTC, Morgan said that Acxiom conducted "risk assessments and regular audits on all internal and external information systems to ensure the integrity of client data and Acxiom data." And Morgan's clients have for years performed their own security audits of Acxiom's network, testing it for penetration weaknesses. But the file transfer protocol (FTP) server penetrated in both computer hacks had miserable protection.

Think of an FTP server as an electronic mailbox sitting outside the firewall--a landing spot used by customers and vendors to send and receive files. Baas used a password issued to his employer, an Acxiom vendor, to access the server. From there he managed to crack hundreds of passwords, including one that acted like a master key to the internal systems, letting him scoop up unencrypted data on millions of consumers. "Once you're in the family, so to speak, we're probably more trusting and not as careful as we probably should be," explains Morgan. "We must change that."

In October, Acxiom told securities analysts that new projects and contracts were largely on hold as the firm scrambled to improve its security. It put a SWAT team in place, hired two independent auditing firms, and bought third-party tools to detect intrusions. The company also changed its access and password procedures, and is rapidly moving toward full and automated encryption. Jones held a conference call with 100 general counsels of the affected companies, while other firms flew to Arkansas to see for themselves what had happened. But publicly Acxiom has tried to play down the breaches. "I think this was a much bigger deal than the company let on to investors," says analyst Brad Eichler, who follows Acxiom for Stephens, the Little Rock investment bank that took Acxiom public. "They spent a lot of time that quarter patching things up with customers who were really ticked off."

Acxiom executives say the breaches haven't resulted in any customer defections. Nor have they affected the company's stock price, which recently hit a 52-week high of $19.32.

The larger question is whether the hacking incidents and the concerns about privacy will derail efforts to create a linked infrastructure of databases to help in the war on terrorism. In the debate between privacy and national security, Congress should not lose sight of its own joint congressional inquiry into 9/11, which concluded that law enforcement was unable to connect the dots before the attacks because technology "has not been fully and most effectively applied" in terror prevention. The hijackers followed patterns that could have been detected: purchasing tickets with cash, sharing residences and post office boxes, even using the same frequent-flier number. One terrorist had an expired visa. Another went to a travel agent to buy his ticket, only to discover that his debit card had insufficient funds. He paid in cash and offered a fake Virginia driver's license for ID. Asked for a telephone number, he gave one that was disconnected and had never been his. Acxiom's database could have provided real-time data to connect those dots.

FEEDBACK [e-mail]

[jlake]

1. *** NEWS ALERT*** Looks like Someone got a new job at Fox.

[Nimrod2005]

2. Lies, AGAIN!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Didn't they give Obama higher marks anyway?

[Skwmom]

4. Amazing, that the so called anti-Hillary media hasn't brought this up.

[Rageneau]

10. What do you call this? -- from the McClatchy--Tribune newswire

[MethuenProgressive]

5. Cherry or Fruit Punch, Frenchie?

[alteredstate]

7. So how long did she actually work for the Children's Defense Fund?

Please enlighten us.

[MethuenProgressive]

9. OK, Cherry for you.

[goldcanyonaz]

11. haha!

:rofl:

[cali]

6. oh for the love of rationality

what a petty little thread with a silly blaring title.

[onehandle]

8. ***LOOK AT ME***

Don't look at me.

[godai]

12. Well, it does make it look more like a CV checkoff rather than dedication

Less than a year is hardly a lifetime spent fighting for an issue. I'd like to see a year by year accounting of those 35 years, including involvements in the Clinton White House beyond the healthcare failure.

We hear so much about the 35 years experience, so details such as this are informative.

[TexasObserver]

14. It's one of her more disgusting lies.

She's always been a corporate lackey. She bailed on the non profit in year one, and sold out for the big firm and all it entails. She dove in head first, and bathed in the power of Walmart.

[DebraK]

19. Exactly. I've never seen a politician lie with such ease - David Geffin about the Clintons

[Uben]

18. and Obama has done what for kids?

I'm waiting!