Early last year, two little-known nonprofit groups paid for Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) and his 12-year-old daughter to travel to South Korea and Malaysia. Their last stop was the Berjaya Beach & Spa Resort on the Malaysian island of Langkawi, where they bunked at an oceanfront chalet staffed with a personal butler, got massages and rode water scooters on Burau Bay.
Doolittle's junket, which cost $29,400, was among the most expensive privately sponsored trips by members of Congress in recent years. The two groups that split the bills were not ordinary nonprofits. They were fronts for vigorous lobbying campaigns bankrolled by foreign entities and were operated by a Washington lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group, according to public records and people who worked with the firm.
and...Some of the lawmakers on the trips were in positions to help other Alexander Strategy clients. Doolittle, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, told The Washington Post this year that from 2002 to 2005 he sponsored $37 million in spending-bill earmarks that went to a firm controlled by a key Alexander Strategy client. The client, Brent R. Wilkes, is a target of the federal investigation stemming from the bribery case and guilty plea of former representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.). Doolittle's wife, Julie Doolittle, was hired by Alexander Strategy to help keep the books for the Korean nonprofit.
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