Oil Adds Sheen to Kazakh Regime

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Oil Adds Sheen to Kazakh Regime

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By Ken Silverstein Times Staff Writer

ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Some of Washington's top political consultants traveled to this city in the summer of 1998 to huddle with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Their daunting mission: Convince the world that his oil-rich, authoritarian regime was actually a budding democracy.

This political SWAT team launched the opening salvo in a high-powered, high-priced lobbying campaign that seized on America's need for oil to win U.S. support for a government with a penchant for shuttering newspapers and manipulating elections.

It was a remarkable effort both for whom it involved and what it accomplished.

Backed heavily by the U.S. oil industry, the six-year, multimillion-dollar push recruited a small army of onetime officials whose experience and contacts translated into considerable influence

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