There’s more to the Mark Penn-Colombia free trade deal flap. There’s enough hypocrisy to fill up an abandoned mine. It’s a fine cauldron of conflicts.

Sam Stein, Huffpost, highlights:

 “On Sunday evening, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, resigned after it was revealed he was working (on the side) for the passage of a Colombia Free Trade Agreement that his candidate opposed.

But within the Clinton campaign, Penn is not the highest-ranking adviser with financial ties to groups and individuals supporting the passage of the measure.”

There’s Howard Wolfson and then there is Bill Clinton.

So don’t tell me Hillary is unaware. Maybe she misheard, again; – just as she was so surprised over the amount of money ($109 million over 8 years) that she and her husband made since leaving the White House.

Sam Stein:  “Bill Clinton’s Ties To Colombia Trade Deal Stronger Than Even Penn’s”

“Former President Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars speaking on behalf of a Colombia-based group pushing the trade pact, and representatives of that organization tell The Huffington Post that the former president shared their sentiment.

In June 2005, Clinton was paid $800,000 by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches throughout Latin America. The organization is, ostensibly, a development group tasked with bringing investment to the country and educating world leaders about the Colombia’s business opportunities.

The group’s chief operating officer, Andres Franco, said in an interview that the group supports the congressional ratification of the free trade agreement and that, when Clinton was on his speaking tour, he expressed similar opinions.

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“He was supportive of the trade agreement at the time that he came, but that was several years ago. In the present context, I don’t know what his position would be. It is not only about union trade rights. It is about what benefit or damage it can do to the US economy,” said Franco. “Events with the Clinton campaign [concerning Mark Penn] are not good at all for the trade agreement… Right now it became a campaign issues and that is sad, because it needs to go through.”

They appear to be the first public indication that Clinton has, at least in the past, supported the trade deal. But evidence that the former president has been sympathetic to Colombia’s position is widely known. In 2007, Clinton met personally with and accepted an award from Colombia’s controversial president, Alvaro Uribe, during a time when the country was attempting to improve its image within the United States.

Subsequently, Clinton urged Congress to view the country in a more favorable light.
Moreover, Clinton has helped Frank Giustra, one of the biggest donors to the Clinton Global
Initiative, score meetings with high-ranking Colombian officials. Giustra* has several business interests in the country, and both he and Clinton have collaborated on an effort to fight poverty in developing world by partnering up with mining companies in Colombia and elsewhere.

What significance these ties have on the current presidential campaign is debatable. The former president was also a proponent of free trade agreements like NAFTA while in the White House. However, Sen. Clinton, as her campaign has repeatedly noted, has a long-standing opposition to the Colombia deal. And her acceptance of Penn’s resignation (although he will still serve as a campaign adviser) was indicative that she did not approve of his meeting with the Colombia ambassador to the U.S.

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“Senator Clinton’s position is clear and unequivocal: She is opposed to the deal,” said campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson.

But the former president is a different type of adviser; one with even more influence than Penn, and one who cannot be pushed out of the campaign. In a hypothetical Clinton administration, his voice would likely hold large sway in policy debates. As such, it is important to note that his ties to the Colombia trade agreement have on several occasions put him at odds with his wife’s stated positions.

And while his take on the trade deal certainly may have changed over the past few years, as recently as ten months ago, the former president was meeting with key players pushing for the trade deal’s passage.

And critics of Colombia’s human rights and labor policies took great exception with the former president’s willingness to ally himself with Uribe.

“It’s clear that President Clinton has a chummy relationship with the Colombian president,” said Lori Wallach, director of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen, “someone whose administration is under a cloud and under investigation for associations with murderous paramilitaries, and whose administration has seen hundreds of labor unionists assassinated but not prosecuted these crimes, and whose administration has been involved in the forced displacement of thousands of Afro-Colombians.

Having President Clinton be chummy with such a person, and having him be the closest adviser of Senator Clinton, is extremely disconcerting.”

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*Bloomberg News note Bill Clinton’s rapid friendship with Giustra and the potential classic conflict of interest here: Clinton Used Giustra’s Plane, Opened Doors for Deals (Correct)

Ben Smith– “There is, of course, a little wiggle room here, and the question of what’s the right formula. In any case, it will be hard to demote Bill Clinton from his role as chief strategist.”

This flap still has legs.  Mark Penn, it turns out, only lost his title of chief strategist.  Before this piece on Bill Clinton’s ties to the Colombia trade deal broke, Gov. Ed Rendell, (D-PA) called for  Clinton to dump Penn altogether.

Mark Penn shouldn’t just be out of his job as chief strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, he should be cut off completely from her operation, one of the senator’s most important supporters says.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell told USA TODAY’s Kathy Kiely yesterday that Penn “was just dead wrong” when he took on the job of promoting a trade deal that the Colombian government wants to strike with the USA even though Clinton opposes that trade pact.

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So, what about Bill Clinton’s role in the campaign?