was a good friend of Italia's and Jack's - why did he retire from Congress again?

By Ken Dilanian
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — When Fred Thompson was investigating alleged campaign-finance abuses as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs committee in 1997, one of his targets was Harold Ickes — a top aide and fundraiser for President Clinton.

Over the past three years, though, the former Republican senator and the Democratic powerbroker were on the same side of a big legislative battle. Both were part of a team of lobbyists for Equitas Ltd., a British reinsurance company set up to handle billions of dollars in claims by asbestos victims, lobbying records show.

That unlikely pairing offers an insight into Thompson, 64, who declared his interest last week in running for president. Although the folksy-sounding Tennessean recently told USA TODAY that he would run an outsider, just as he did while campaigning as a "country lawyer" in a red pickup during his 1994 U.S. Senate race, his résumé is that of a longtime Washington operative who has crossed ideological lines to represent corporate and foreign clients.

Before he was elected to the Senate, Thompson spent nearly two decades in Washington as a lawyer-lobbyist, representing such entities as Westinghouse, the deposed leader of Haiti, the Teamsters Union pension fund and the Tennessee Savings and Loan Association, according to Senate records and published accounts.

After he left the Senate in 2003, Thompson resumed his acting career with a role as the district attorney on TV's Law & Order. Less visibly, he registered in 2004 as a lobbyist for Equitas, a company created to manage the asbestos liability for Lloyd's of London...

The company paid Thompson $760,000 from 2004 to 2006, according to Senate records.

After a review of lobbying records and Thompson's tax returns, The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal reported in 1994 that he earned $507,000 from lobbying in 1975-93. That figure, a fraction of his total legal income, reflects a narrower definition of lobbying than the one in the current law. Thompson reported $3.7 million in income from lawyering and acting from 1983 to 1993, according to The Commercial Appeal and other Tennessee newspapers that cited his tax returns.

Thompson declined to be interviewed for this article. His spokesman, Mark Corallo, said, "Many of the candidates from both parties have been lobbyists or have been lobbied at one point or another in their careers. It is an honorable endeavor that goes back to the beginnings of this republic." Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, reported that he earned $1.2 million last year from Bracewell & Giuliani, a Houston law and lobbying firm.

big significance. Federici and Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton teamed up in '97 to form Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), a non-profit organization by which each profited very well indeed, but now business has gone sour.

Gail Norton is hardly an environmentalist. Investigators will have a lot of questions that she does not want to answer.

The most searching questions should concern her decision to get into the environmental business, and how that ties to her appointment to her Cabinet post. Perhaps Gail Norton will end up cooperating with the investigation, too. She should have some insight into the thinking and designs of the Bush crowd from that time. These threads could lead to a colossal unraveling all the way to the mansion on the bayou, where the blueprints are stored.

Because, you see, what has been inflicted on this nation has been in the making for a long time.