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Thursday, April 01, 2004

War Profiteering?

As I blogged the other day, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) blasted Richard Clarke on the Senate floor last week.

One of his charges was that Clarke is personally profiting from the tragedy of 9/11:
Assuming the controversy around this series of events does, in fact, drive the sales of his book, Mr. Clarke will make a lot of money, a lot of money for exactly what he has done. I personally find this to be an appalling act of profiteering, of trading on insider access to highly classified information and capitalizing upon the tragedy that befell this nation on September the 11th, 2001. Mr. Clarke must renounce, I think, any plan to personally profit from this book.
I just watched Clarke on MSNBC's "Hardball" and he said that substantial profits from the book (and any possible future movie deal) would go for people affected by Iraq and Afghanistan and for 9/11 victims. He said the same thing Sunday:
Tim, long before Senator Frist said what he said, I planned to make a substantial contribution, not only to them but also to the widows and orphans of our Special Forces who have fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq. And when we see the results of the book sales, we'll know how much we have to make donations.
Atrios also pointed out that Bill Frist wrote a book on bioterrorism -- and his remarks look pretty hypocritical.

Counterspin has a great graphic highlighting this point. Frist apparently gave away profits from this book to charity, but still gained by getting a better job -- as Senate Majority leader.

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