Posted by Jed Lewison on Fri Apr 4, 2008 at 6:00 AM Pacific

Clinton's top aide pushing trade deal she claims to oppose

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that on Monday, Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist, met with the Colombian government to "discuss a bilateral free-trade agreement," a trade deal Clinton says she opposes. (h/t: Joe Sudbay)

The agenda of Penn's meeting with the Colombian ambassador was explicit: winning support for a new free-trade agreement.

This is a pretty remarkable act of hypocrisy: during the past month, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly and falsely attacked Barack Obama on NAFTA, claiming that his top economic adviser told the Canadian government to ignore Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric. Now her chief strategist is working with the Colombian government to enact a trade deal she claims to oppose?

It's unbelievable -- literally.

Clinton has repeatedly attacked Obama's campaign for allegedly hypocrisy

Clinton's attack revolves around a meeting the Obama adviser attended at the Canadian consulate in Chicago. A Canadian memo claimed that the adviser said Obama's arguments should be seen as "political positioning," a statement disputed by the adviser. According to FactCheck.org, there was no recording or transcript of that meeting, so it's impossible to tell who was right.

Both sides, however, agree that the adviser said Obama's primary agenda on NAFTA was to strengthen the labor and environmental provisions of the agreement -- a position completely consistent with Obama's on the campaign trail.

By ignoring this fact, Clinton's attack was at best misleading.

This week, the Colombian President "deplored" Barack Obama

Despite Hillary Clinton's professed opposition to a free-trade deal with Colombia, the Colombian government has close ties to the Clinton family. Al Giordano offers an in-depth look at the politics and policies of the situation.

Clinton campaign's defense: Penn was working for the Colombian government

The Clinton campaign's defense is rather novel: they say that Penn attended not as a campaign staffer, but as a lobbyist for a foreign government. Penn, as you may know, is CEO of Burson-Marsteller, his global public relations and lobbying firm, and the government of Colombia hired Burson one year ago to help win support for a NAFTA-style agreement for Colombia.

There's a problem with that story, however. The Colombian government doesn't back it up:

A spokesman for Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe said the ambassador met with Mr. Penn to discuss the bilateral agenda. "There have also been meetings with the advisers to the campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain," he said. "It's the embassy's job to explain Colombia's reality."

The spokesman said he didn't know if Mr. Penn was representing Sen. Clinton or Burson-Marsteller, which signed a $300,000, one-year contract with the Colombian Embassy in March 2007 to work on behalf of the trade deal and anti-drug-trafficking initiatives, according to the Justice Department filings.

A spokesman for Sen. McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, said a team of policy advisers met recently with 20 Latin American ambassadors, including Colombia's. An Obama spokesman and the Colombian Embassy spokeswoman both said the Colombian ambassador had never met with an Obama representative.

So who's telling the truth here? And if Clinton is telling the truth, are you comfortable with the fact that her chief strategist is a paid agent of a foreign government?