Homeland Security Advisor Provides Emails To Back Up Claims That He Was Conned

The Homeland Security adviser accused of selling access to the White House provided TPMmuckraker with a string of emails that he says prove he did nothing wrong.

Stephen Payne says he never meant to suggest that meetings with high-level Bush administration officials were contingent on big contributions to the future Bush library fund.

He says the Times of London tried to “entrap me into alleging that an illegal relationship could be established.”

He says these five pages of emails show how the Kazakh politician he met with was trying to pressure him into an illegal arrangement.

Payne starts out with the July 1 email he received from a man known as Eric Dos, a Kazakh politician whom Payne said he first met on a pipeline project in 2005.

Dos wrote in the email that he wanted to arrange high-level Washington meetings for the former president of Kyrgystan, Asker Akayev, who now lives in Moscow.

[Note: The emails quoted here were lifted directly from the document provided by Payne and contain a lot of spelling errors.]

…I told him [Akayev] that these services were not free. He was very keen to rebuild his good standing with the White House. Would you be willing to consider taking up his case while GWB is still in the White House. It would be helpful if you could indicate how much this would cost for him? Would it be possible to arrange a meeting with Dr Rice or even GWB when Prof Akayev travels toWashington DC. Could you please indicate if thsi is possile at all and what would the reciprocal amount of donation to the Republican Party or any other institutions affiliated with the Bushs or the Republican party?

Payne did not provide TPMmuckraker with the email he sent in response. Instead, he wrote: “NOTE: I deleted my response e-mail back saying I’d meet w/him.”

Payne met with the the Kazakh politician at a hotel in London a few days later, which was caught on video by a reporter for the Times of London.

After the meeting, Payne said he followed up with an email on July 8 under the subject line: “Nice to see you!!”

“…Let’s not do the Bush library contribution yet — we need to lay some groundwork evern before we do that…let’s set the total budget for 2008 (including the 250 library contribution) at 700..”

The next day, Dos pressed the idea of giving money to the library.

Money can be tomorrow. They can give the Bush donation in cash as I told them that the Bush library still to be created. Do you want me to bring cash to London to simplify things? Regs, Eric

Payne apparently tried to clarify that the he was planning a contribution to be made publically.

The 450 out of 700 we discussed is for my firm to help Pres. Akayev re-estabilish his standing in Washington and let the truth come out as to which President of Kyrgistan is really a friend to the USA — that 450 is for public relations and for our consulting efforts — if I choose to make some political donations it will be my personal decision … for me to accept the 250 and pass it directly to the library is legal but it would be done publically in Akayev’s name..

You can see the statement Payne gave us here and the full string of emails here. TPMmuckraker has no way of authenticating them and we have no way to know how many other emails the two men may have exchanged.

Payne declined our request for a telephone interview and has not responded to our written questions.