He was also McCain’s defense and foreign policy advisor during the bid for the White House in 2000. About his relationship with McCain the web site RIGHT WEB reports: He introduced the senator to the foreign ministers of Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia as they tried to win admission to NATO, and a representative of Taiwan as it lobbied for free trade, records show. Mr. Scheunemann also accompanied Mr. McCain to Latvia in 2001 and Georgia in 2006.

 

He has led 3 lobbying firms, SCHEUNEMANN & ASSOCIATES, ORION STRATEGIES and the MERCURY GROUP. He has lobbied for among others: Arms manufacturers and gun associations, Oil Firms, And represented foreign governments Including Georgia. The Wall Street Journal reported that “Mr. Scheunemann's firm (Orion Strategies) has earned more than $2 million since 2004 lobbying U.S. officials, including Sen. McCain and his staff, on behalf of various clients including Georgia, records show. His lobbying for Saakashvili has led to the inference by Journalist Robert Scheer on TruthDig, Conservative Columnist Pat Buchanan on Creators Syndicate, and indirectly Vladimir Putin of Russia, to suggest that he had something to do with Georgia’s attack on the breakaway region of South Ossetia in early August. Randy Scheunemann has been described as John McCain’s Henry Kissinger or Zbignew Brzeniski.

Bio
Chip Berlet is a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, and a veteran freelance writer and photographer who specializes in investigating right-wing social movements, apocalyptic scapegoating and conspiracism, and authoritarianism. A PRA staffer since 1982, he has written, edited and co-authored numerous articles on right-wing activity and government repression for publications as varied as the The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation, The Humanist, and The St. Louis Journalism Review. Mr. Berlet edited Eyes Right! Challenging the Right-wing Backlash, co-published by PRA and South End Press (1995), a popular primer on the right. He is also co-author with Matthew N. Lyons of Right-wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, published by Guilford Press (2000).

Transcript
McCain's adviser and analyst
Producer: Carlo Basilone

VOICEOVER: Directly to my right is Randy Scheunemann, and Randy is a top advisor to the McCain campaign, founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq to promote freedom for the Iraqi people, and obviously got what the organization was looking for.

SCOTT RITTER, FORMER UN WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Randy Scheunemann is the classic behind-the-scenes player in the neoconservative cabal. He was the national security advisor to Trent Lott when he was a Senate majority leader. He's a man who empowered Ahmad Chalabi in the Iraqi National Congress to bypass the constitutionally mandated processes of governance to get direct access to the president, the vice president, to manipulate intelligence that led us down the path to war. He's doing the same thing with Iran today. It's a very important name, and it's important that we link this man with John McCain, because we need to know what kind of president would John McCain be. I think it's clear by the kind of people he surrounds himself with.

CARLO BASILONE (VOICEOVER): Randy Scheunemann, John McCain's senior foreign policy advisor, lobbyist, and a former director of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, a group which advocates global strategic and ideological predominance of the United States, even through military force. He has been a Republican political insider in Washington since 1986. He served on the staffs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and is national security advisor to Senate Republican and majority leaders Bob Dole and Trent Lott from 1993 to 1999. He was also McCain's defense and foreign policy advisor during the bid for the White House in 2000.

CHIP BERLET, SENIOR ANALYST, POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES: Basically, he is a neoconservative, which in the context American politics means he belongs to a very small group of intellectuals who think that America should basically take over the running of the world and spread democracy through ideas first, and military power if that doesn't work, quote-unquote "democracy." Their view of democracy is fairly congruent with a fairly laissez-faire view of economic capitalism tied to pro-corporate rights, so that people don't have a right to cross borders, but large investment capital does.

BASILONE: About Scheunemann's relationship with McCain, the website Right Web reports, "He introduced the senator to the foreign ministers of Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia as they tried to win admission to NATO, and a representative of Taiwan as it lobbied for free trade, records show. Mr. Scheunemann also accompanied Mr. McCain to Latvia in 2001, and Georgia in 2006." He has led three lobbying firms: Scheunemann and Associates, Orion Strategies, and the Mercury Group. He has lobbied for, among others, arms manufacturers and gun associations, oil firms, and represented foreign governments, including Georgia. The Wall Street Journal reported that "Mr. Scheunemann's firm (Orion Strategies) has earned more than $2 million since 2004 lobbying US officials, including Sen. McCain and his staff, on behalf of various clients including Georgia." His lobbying for Saakashvili has led to the inference by journalist Robert Scheer on Truthdig.com, conservative columnist Pat Buchanan on Creative Syndicate, and indirectly Vladimir Putin of Russia, to suggest that he had something to do with Georgia's attack on the breakaway region of South Ossetia in early August. Scheunemann has been described as John McCain's Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski.

BERLET: It's certainly a colorful way to suggest that Scheunemann would play a very major role in shaping McCain's foreign policy, which is entirely true. We have in the past had Henry Kissinger and all kinds of other high-profile people, like Zbigniew Brzezinski [inaudible]. It's hard to predict if Scheunemann would play that role, but he wouldn't play that role in as pragmatic a way as Kissinger or Brzezinski played. I mean, we're talking about a very aggressive, pro-militarist, pro-interventionist neoconservative ideologue here who made Kissinger and Brzezinski seem almost like Buddhists in comparison.

BASILONE: What can we expect from McCain and Scheunemann?

BERLET: Well, a continuation of an aggressive kind of foreign policy for the United States which claims the right to intervene diplomatically, and then militarily, in any struggle around the world by constructing that struggle as having an important national security issue involved, so that no matter where there is some kind of trouble, through this McCain foreign policy, controlled by Scheunemann one presumes, we're going to claim the right to intervene instantly, first with sanctions and then with tanks and jets and bombs, to suggest that people need to sort of get in line with our needs. And this is a very, obviously, arrogant foreign policy, and what it's going to do is to continue to separate the United States from the world diplomatic community, which has already grown quite unhappy with the kind of bullying that the United States feels comfortable with. And it'll only get worse in that sense, in terms of an aggressive militarism rooted in this neocon idea of exporting "global democracy," quote-unquote.

BASILONE: McCain gave a hint of what he and Scheunemann could have in store during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, US PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (R): Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian Empire.

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