Homeland Security Adviser Responds To Library Solicitation FlapIt was the reporter’s fault.
That’s pretty much what Homeland Security adviser and Houston businessman Stephen Payne said.
Payne claims he never meant to suggest — as a video from the Times of London suggests — that he could arrange meetings with high-level Bush Administration officials in exchange for a large contribution to the Bush presidential library fund.
He told the Houston Chronicle:
“I was not there to raise money for the library, I have no interest in the library. I was there to get a client,” Payne said.
Payne met in a swanky London hotel with a man known as Eric Dos, a Kazakh politician Payne said he first met on a pipeline project in 2005. Payne did not know the other man was a reporter or that he was being videotaped.
Payne says the two men asked him leading questions.
“After we completed that hourlong conversation, they kept wanting to come back to making a donation to the library. I made it clear on multiple occasions that the library wasn’t taking any money yet, and that foreign contributions may or may not be accepted.”
Payne told the Dallas Morning News that the paper edited out his remarks that would absolve him of suspicion.
“Over the course of an hourlong conversation in a social setting, isolated comments can be taken out of context,” he said in the statement. Mr. Payne accused the paper of “manufacturing” the news and making him the victim of a “confidence game.”
A spokesman for the Bush library foundation said rules are in place to prevent the solicitation described by Payne.
In Austin, a spokesman for the Bush library foundation said no money will be accepted from foreign sources while Mr. Bush is still in office.
“It’s safe to say the things that are alleged in this story would never be encouraged or allowed,” foundation spokesman Dan Bartlett said.
