Let’s say you were somehow involved with a bloodthirsty tyrant who had brought down upon his country a reign of corruption and terror. Suddenly the tyrant is in the world’s headlines. Would you (a) try to keep quiet about the whole thing, or (b) issue a press release?
If you answered (a), you’re a normal person. If you answered (b), you’re a Washington lobbyist. In fact, if you answered (b), you’re just like Edward J. von Kloberg III, chairman of the impressively named Washington World Group, Ltd. Von Kloberg is “lobbyist to the damned,” with a client list that has included Samuel K. Doe of Liberia, Saddam Hussein, and Romania’s Ceausescu. Last week, quite unbidden, von Kloberg faxed around town a statement taking up the cause of ex-President Mobutu of ex-Zaire. The statement bore the rather grand headline “The Mobutu I Knew.” (Translation: “The Mobutu Who Hired Me as His Washington Flack During the 1980s.”)
Von Kloberg protests the “wave of criticism of the ousted president — who is widely described as a ‘parasite,’ a ‘kleptocrat, and a ‘brutal dictator.'”
Mobutu, a parasite? Wherever could people have gotten that idea? Von Kloberg dismisses such epithets as mere “political correctness” and goes on to extol the kleptocrat’s “anti-Marxism” and friendly relations with the United States. Then he explains all the good work he did as flack for Mobutu’s regime.
Even in Washington, where shameless self-justification is a highly valued skill, von Kloberg’s memo stands as a masterpiece of the art. Mobutu was indeed a parasite — and also a thug, a butcher, and a running dog generally. And von Kloberg, who happily took the parasite’s money and even now defends him, offers a perfect example of why “Washington lobbyist” has become an epithet all its own.
