Consider... In a letter, dated February 21, to Senator Frist, Sen. Clinton wrote:
This sale will create an unacceptable risk to the security of our ports. We therefore request that emergency legislation we are introducing to ban foreign governments from controlling operations at our ports be slated for immediate consideration when the Senate convenes on February 27.... This issue transcends philosophical posturing and partisan bickering - it is about our nation's security.
But President Clinton apparently believed, at one point, that the sale didn't "create an unacceptable risk." Because if he did believe it was a risk, why would he [and former EPA head and current principal at the [Madeleine] Albright Group] then turn around and push the U.A.E. to hire a former staffer as a lobbyist to drive the deal through? According to columnist Robert Novak,
While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was ripping President Bush's handling of American ports management, Bill Clinton was pushing for one of his favorite White House aides to be hired to defend the deal. The former president proposed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) his onetime press secretary, Joe Lockhart, as Washington spokesman for the UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World. The Lockhart deal was never consummated. But the spectacle of the two Clintons going in opposite directions on the UAE port-management question exposed a Democratic fault line. Widespread public reaction against outsourcing control of the ports was seen by Sen. Clinton and other prominent Democrats as a chance to outflank the Republicans on homeland security in this year's elections. Behind the scenes, however, Democrats aligned with the Clinton family were lobbying for the UAE.... According to well-placed UAE sources, the former president made the suggestion at the very highest level of the oil-rich state. The relationship between him and the UAE is far from casual. The sheikdom has contributed to the Clinton Presidential Library, and brought Clinton to Dubai in 2002 and 2005 for highly paid speeches (reportedly at $300,000 apiece). He was there in 2003 to announce a scholarship program for American students traveling to Dubai.