The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page A012

BLACK 12A Final 12A THE PALM BEACH POST MONDAY FEBRUARY 4, 2008 Ties to Bill Clinton may have led friend to uranium fortune TV spoils for a fight during debates Candidates who make nice vex producers who count on a showdown. MAGENTA The New York Times A private plane carrying Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan, late on Sept. 6, 2005. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap it.

Unlike more established competitors, Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience it made up for in connections. Accompanying Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was Bill Clinton. Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous CHRIS CARLSONThe Associated Press Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton captivated Hollywood A-listers and power brokers Thursday in their Los Angeles debate but aggravated CNN officials who had hoped for more verbal fireworks. The New York Times IDS ANGELES A serious discussion on pressing national issues may be good for the country.

But it isn't necessarily good television. That was the prospect CNN faced Thursday night when it broadcast what may be the final Democratic debate between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama. Although the candidates seemed to captivate the A-list crowd of Hollywood stars and power brokers in Los Angeles' Kodak Theater, the producers in CNN's control room were exasperated and at times seemingly bored with their own broadcast.

"She didn't answer the question at all," said David Bohrman, the Washington bureau chief for CNN, sighing deeply as Clinton discussed immigration. "It's a like a press conference," said Jane Maxwell, a CNN producer, expressing the frustration inside the control room, which was inside a crowded truck parked behind the auditorium. The showdown was promoted as "fight night" because of the nasty shots each candidate had taken at the previous debate. "Remember last week, the heated debate in South Carolina? Tonight could make that seem like a garden party," the CNN commentator, Jack Cafferty remarked hours before the matchup. Instead, the debate centered on policy and was about as heated as a brown-bag lunch at the Brookings Institution.

That left CNN producers looking for ways to stoke the competition, using the tricks they had learned in broadcasting previous debates during this long primary season. The network had good financial reasons for wanting a lively show. This prolonged primary season, with competitive races in both parties, has been enormously expensive to cover. For CNN, a part of Time Warner, the two California debates alone represented a substantial investment well over a million dollars with two staffs, studios and anchors. More zingers from the candidates meant more sound bites and potentially a bigger audience.

On the other side, both campaigns thought the South Carolina debate, in which Obama disparaged Clinton for being on the Wal-Mart board and she said he had worked for a "slum landlord," was bad for both candidates. They were determined to avoid a repeat performance. That tension between tele- dent Bush?" prompted the audience to boo. Sensing support, Clinton just said, "Good try, Wolf" drawing laughs in the auditorium and the booth. Even if the debate did not feel like a surefire success inside the control room, it capped off a very successful week in the ratings.

The debate Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, drew more than 4 million viewers, more than any Republican debate before it on cable. And the Democratic debate Thursday had more than 8 million viewers, making it the most-watched primary debate in cable TV history. Klein said those ratings should not be surprising. The highest-rated portion of CNN's Jan. 21 Democratic debate in South Carolina came after the leading candidates sparred, when they sat down and spoke civilly about policy, he noted.

"People love to hear the candidates talk," he said. "They love to hear more from the candidates and less from us." throughout the Democratic debate, but they mainly captured the candidates nodding in agreement with each other. Speaking to the moderator, Wolf Blitzer, through an earpiece at the halfway point of the debate, Bohrman suggested taking a tougher stance with the candidates. "You have to become part of this, Wolf," Bohrman advised. "If this was Late Edition," Blitzer 's Sunday interview show, "you'd be having more of a conversation." Blitzer tried, but he was stymied not only by the candidates but also at one point by the crowd.

Near the end of the debate, while Clinton discussed her Iraq war vote, Feist suggested a follow-up question for Blitzer. "She never renounced that vote," Feist said. "This may be her last chance." Blitzer asked why she could not call her authorization vote a mistake, and Clinton did not answer directly. Blitzer's response "What I hear you saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that you were naive in trusting Presi for months. In separate written responses, both men said Giustra traveled with Clinton to Kazakhstan, India and China to see the work his foundation had done.

Clinton knew that Giustra had mining interests in Kazakhstan but was unaware of "any particular efforts" and did nothing to help him, a Clinton spokesman said. Giustra said he was there as an "observer only" and there was "no discussion" of the deal with Nazarbayev or Clinton. But Moukhtar Dzhaki-shev, president of Kazatomprom, said Giustra discussed the deal directly with the Kazakh president, and that his friendship with Clinton "of course made an impression." Dzhakishev added that Kazatomprom chose to form a partnership with Giustra's company based solely on the merits of its offer. After The New York Times told Giustra that others said he had discussed the deal with Nazarbayev, Giustra responded that he "may well have mentioned my general interest in the Kazakhstan mining business to him, but I did not discuss the ongoing" efforts. Records show that Giustra donated the $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation in the months that followed in 2006, but neither he nor a Clinton spokesman would say exactly when.

In February 2007, a company called Uranium One agreed to pay $3.1 billion to acquire UrAsia. Giustra, a director and major shareholder in UrAsia, would be paid $7.05 a share for a company that two years earlier was trading at 10 cents a share. That month, Dzhakishev, the Kazatomprom chief, said he traveled to Chappaqua, to meet with Clinton at his home. Dzhakishev said Giustra arranged the three-hour meeting with the former president. Dzhakishev said he wanted to discuss Kazakhstan's intention not publicly known at the time to buy a 10 percent stake in Westinghouse, a US.

supplier of nuclear technology. Nearly a year earlier, Clinton had advised Dubai on how to handle the political furor after one of that nation's companies attempted to take over several U.S. ports. Hillary Clinton was among those on Capitol Hill who raised the national security concerns that helped kill the deal. Dzhakishev said he was worried the proposed Westinghouse investment could face similar objections.

Clinton told him that he would not lobby for him, but Dzhakishev came away pleased by the opportunity to tout his nation's proposal to a former U.S. president. Clinton and Giustra at first denied that any such meeting occurred. Giustra also denied arranging for Kazakh officials to meet with Clinton. A week ago, after the Times told them that others said a meeting in Clinton's home had taken place, both men acknowledged it.

midnight banquet with Kazakhstan's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stran glehold on CMnton tne country has all but quashed political dissent. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader's bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Clinton's public declaration undercut both US. foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan's poor human rights record by, among others, Clinton's wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Within two days, Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary deals giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan's state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom, corporate records show. The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world's largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Giustra, analysts said. Months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Clinton's charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Giustra's recent public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Giustra a place in Clinton's inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

Giustra was invited to accompany the former president to Almaty just as the financier was trying to seal a deal he had been negotiating Pre Order Fresh ml vision producers who want substantive disagreements and candidates who want to stick to their stump speeches tipped in the producers' direction the previous night at the final Republican debate. When the GOP presidential candidates turned to Iraq and McCain accused Mitt Romney of supporting a timetable for a phased withdrawal, a hush briefly fell over the control room. "They're going to mix this up," Bohrman said. As the exchange grew angrier, Sam Feist, the political director for CNN, said, "This can be the rest of the debate that's OK." Viewers were seeing a conversation, rather than a series of speeches. During the thrust-and-parry between the candidates, CNN's cameras pulled back to show both men.

"Sit on it," said Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN, who was in the control booth for both debates. "That's the story, right here, the two of them." This was the "two-shot," which has become the defining image of the recent televised debates. In earlier debates and in years past, cameras typically focused on the speaker, leaving the audience to guess how the other candidates might be reacting. (One notable exception: Cameras caught Dan Quayle's reaction to Lloyd Bentsen's "You're no Jack Kennedy" in 1988.) But over the course of this year's debates, producers at CNN and other networks have embraced the two-shot of one candidate listening, writing and occasionally sipping a glass of water while the other candidate speaks. The producers made extensive use of the two-shot $375 $620 $365 $925 $130 $170 $70 $65 General Dentist GustG.Kapetan,DMD SAME DAY SERVICE IF IN BEFORE 9 A.M.

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