High-Ranking McCain Campaign Officials Were Paid Lobbyists For Hess

McCain Reviewing Suspicious Bundler's Donations

Top McCain Officials Were Paid Oil Lobbyists

By Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld - August 7, 2008, 1:43PM

Okay, here's some more on the ties between the McCain campaign and the Hess Corporation, the company whose senior executives all dumped $28,500 apiece into the RNC-McCain fundraising committee at around the same time as McCain reversed his previous opposition to offshore drilling.
It turns out that two high-ranking McCain campaign officials, one of whom is also one of McCain's more prolific bundlers, were both were paid lobbyists for Hess for roughly three years, according to disclosure forms.
The two lobbyists are Wayne Berman, McCain's national finance co-chairman, and John Green, who's been the McCain campaign's chief Congressional liaison since March. Both men worked for a firm called Ogilvy Government Relations. The firm has been paid $800,000 by Hess from 2005 up to the present, including $720,000 during the period that both of the two lobbied for the company, the forms say.
Berman, a prolific fundraiser and bundler for McCain, appears to still be lobbying for Hess. The most recently filed form shows that he was lobbying for the company as late as mid-July. Green took a leave of absence from Ogilvy to join the campaign, but was still on the Hess account up through the first quarter of 2008, the forms show.