As it happens, publicity for the awards ceremony had been handled by Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, a PR firm then headed by Mark Penn, a longtime political adviser and pollster for the Clintons.
The link is here.
Penn, who was also serving as Hillary's campaign manager for the 2008 run, was advising the Colombians on how to get the free-trade deal through Congress. Uribe paid Penn's firm $300,000.
Penn's ties to the Colombians proved too embarrassing and he resigned as Hillary's campaign manager. For good measure, the Colombians let Burson go, too. Also on the Colombian payroll was Hillary's campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson's lobbying firm, Glover Park.
The firm was paid $40,000 a month. While Wolfson didn't work directly on the Colombia account, he did have an equity stake in the firm. The trade deal and Penn's consulting arrangement soon became issues in the Democratic primary.
Courting the labor vote, Barack Obama had come out strongly against a free-trade deal with Colombia. So did Hillary. In the sort of overheated rhetoric we often hear on the campaign trail, she was uncompromising. "As I have said for months, I oppose the deal. I have spoken out against the deal, I will vote against the deal, and I will do everything I can to urge the Congress to reject the Colombia Free Trade Agreement."
The link is here.
Uribe, sensing the trade pact was imperiled by American politics, lashed out at Obama - but not at Hillary. "I deplore the fact that Senator Obama, aspiring to be president of the United States, should be unaware of Colombia's efforts," he said. "I think it is for political calculations that he is making a statement that does not correspond to Colombia's reality."
Given that both Hillary and Obama were publicly opposed to the trade deal, either way it looked ominous for Uribe. As one economic consultancy put it, "we are concerned that a Democrat win of the presidency may stymie the FTA for even longer."
Obama, of course, went on to win the nomination and the presidency. And Hillary, as his newly minted secretary of state, was quick to change courses on the trade pact.
In early 2009, while the Obama administration was reportedly still figuring out its trade policy, Hillary let Uribe know she was "very proud to be working with Colombia" on the trade deal.
As Colombian foreign minister Jaime Bermudez Merizalde told the BBC after he met with Hillary in February 2009, "What we talked about was that we have to work together to see how this issue can be handled in Congress."
Hillary had come out swinging in favor of the trade pact when she met with Uribe shortly after Bill in June 2010. By early 2011 she was helping lead the effort to pass the deal. "There are still negotiations that are taking place," she told reporters after meeting with Colombian vice president Angelino Garzon. “We don't want to send an agreement just for the sake of sending an agreement. We want to send an agreement and get it passed."
Secretary Clinton's remarks represent the clearest signal the administration has sent with respect to its intentions to move the Colombia agreement forward in a specific time frame," said National Foreign Trade Council president Bill Reinsch.
It did not go unnoticed that this represented a complete policy reversal on Hillary's part. She justified the shift on the grounds that the human rights and labor situation in Colombia had improved. Hillary claimed in a press conference that "[w]e have seen improvements in the human rights situations in a number of countries," and cited Colombia, among others. But Hillary's words concerning labor union conditions contradicted her own department's most recent human rights report.
The number of trade unionists killed had actually gone up in 2010. Hillary also claimed that the trade agreement was now a good deal for everyone. "The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement would allow our businesses to sell goods in Colombia duty-free-the same way Colombian goods have entered the United States for many years-and it comes with important new guarantees on labor and human rights."
The link is here.
That view was not shared by the AFL-CIO, which declared in 2011, “Colombia remains the most dangerous place in the world for union members." Human Rights Watch reported that there had been “virtually no progress" since 2006 in obtaining convictions for union violence, and the press cited thirty-eight recent murders of trade unionists in the few months after Colombian elections in 2010.
The trade pact with Colombia was approved by Congress and President Obama signed off on it. The pact benefited US businesses trying to sell products in Colombia and also boosted Colombian exports to the United States.
The Colombian government and business community has hailed it as an important victory for the Colombian people.
In February 2012 Bill and Giustra were back in Colombia together for meetings and some golf. Bill was playing in a golf tournament (the Pacific Rubiales Open, no less), which was a fundraiser for the Clinton Foundation. Bill met with President Juan Manuel Santos.