Sex, Lies and Audiotape: the SAC Story

by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton

Two founding partners in the State Affairs Company were involved previously with sleaze and coverup as aides to now-Senator Chuck Robb (D-VA).

David McCloud served as Robb's Chief of Staff during Robb's stint as Governor of Virginia, and went on to occupy the same post after Robb's election to the Senate.

Robert L. "Bobby" Watson, an experienced political campaign manager and former executive director for the Democratic Party of Virginia, served as Robb's State Director and Political Advisor.

In the late 1980s, Robb was considered a possible future presidential candidate until stories began surfacing about his weekends at Virginia Beach, where people said that he routinely caroused at wild parties attended by drug dealers, cocaine users, prostitutes and businessmen with organized crime connections.

Watson investigated the stories himself and brought back leads indicating that Robb had attended more than 100 parties and engaged in sex with at least a dozen women, including underage girls, hookers and married women. One woman, Tai Collins, was a former Miss Virginia and was threatening to blow the story sky-high. Worse, the Republicans had gotten wind of the story and hired Billy Franklin, a private investigator to dig up dirt on Robb.

McCloud fought off the stories at first with threats and countercharges against Republicans. On one occasion, which was tape-recorded, he threatened to have the IRS harass Franklin if he continued his inquiries. Collins would later say that she had received several death threats designed to keep her from going public with stories about Robb.

In a final effort at damage control, McCloud and Watson attempted to argue that the stories were being engineered by Doug Wilder, Robb's main rival in the Virginia Democratic Party. In a move both cynical and stupid, they attempted to prove their point by releasing a transcript to reporters of a conversation on Wilder's cellular phone in which Wilder joked about Robb's political troubles.

The fact that Robb's team possessed an illegally-obtained tape recording of Wilder's phone conversation quickly became the center of the scandal. The widening investigation showed that the Robb for Senate Committee had also secretly purchased Franklin's private phone records for $2,375, disguising the transaction by billing it as a "legal fee" for "research services."

McCloud and Watson eventually both copped guilty pleas to lesser charges and were punished with fines and community service. Robb narrowly escaped a grand jury indictment thanks to political string-pulling by the Bush administration and a well-connected attorney at Covington & Burling, the same law firm that would later help McCloud and Philip Morris to oversee Contributions Watch.

In a sane world, McCloud and Watson would have been forced to slink out of town and get real jobs following their disgrace in the Robb scandal. Instead, it seemed to mark a stepping-stone in their careers.

Watson went to work for the National Education Association's 1992 "Clinton/Gore Rapid Response Team," followed by a stint as chief of staff and CEO for the Democratic National Committee, where he served as staff liaison to the White House and oversaw an annual budget of $42 million and a staff of 150. After leaving the DNC to found the State Affairs Company, he retained close ties to Democratic power. In 1996 he was named one of the Rising Stars of American Politics by Campaigns and Elections magazine. "Life is good," he told a reporter who interviewed him in his VIP seat on the podium of the Democratic Convention in Chicago.

McCloud went on to work for the state and local public affairs unit of Burson-Marsteller PR in Washington, working for clients including DuPont, Philip Morris, Signet Bank and the International Council of Shopping Centers.

The other partners at the State Affairs Company are equally well-connected, although their backgrounds are less colorful. Charles Francis previously worked for Gray & Company, a Reagan-era right-wing PR firm that specialized in hiring friends and family of politicians as a means of buying access to people in power. During his time at Gray & Co., Francis co-authored The Almanac of the Unelected, a pricey--$250--volume offering insider profiles of more than 600 Capitol Hill aides. Francis went on to work for Hill & Knowlton before jumping ship to join Burson-Marsteller in 1992.

John Davis, another SAC partner, is a veteran of more than 25 state and local political campaigns for candidates including then-Congressman Connie Mack of Florida (now a Senator), as well as Senators Howard Baker and Bob Dole. Davis subsequently became a senior vice president at Burson-Marsteller, where he served as a member of B-M's greenwashing Environmental Practice Group.

William Timmons, Jr. adds more Republican ballast to the SAC ship. A former lobbyist for the American Trucking Association, he served later as Policy Director for the National Policy Forum under the direction of Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour. Timmons was also part of the team that staged this year's Republic Convention, along with former Reagan aides Michael Deaver and Kenneth Duberstein, the Dole campaign's Paul Manafort; and convention manager Bill Greener.

SAC's clients include Philip Morris, the National Smokers Alliance, BlueCross/BlueShield Association, Empire BlueCross/BlueShield of New York, the Democratic National Committee, the Foundation for the Prevention and Early Resolution of Conflict, the National Education Association, the International Association of Firefighters, and Texans for Lawsuit Reform.