Tyrants' Lobbyist, Flamboyant to the End

His clients handsomely paid him for his social and diplomatic clout. He often took them to his favorite lunch spot, the Jockey Club, the famed but now defunct restaurant in the Westin Fairfax Hotel. He would get tipped off when first lady Nancy Reagan or some ranking administration figure had made a reservation. Such unofficial meetings often were effective ways to win an audience with U.S. powerbrokers otherwise inclined to close their doors to representatives of reviled regimes.

Von Kloberg expressed no ethical concerns about his work, saying people such as Hussein were U.S. allies at the time. He said he was "utterly fascinated" by the Iraqi leader and returned to the District to "propagandize why they were gassing the Kurds." The reason given, he said, was to prevent Arab fundamentalism from spreading in the Persian Gulf.

"That's pretty awful, isn't it?" he said in an interview. "That's what you had to do for the overall point."

Political pariahs, he said, were like defendants at trial who have a right to legal counsel. By encouraging investment relations between the United States and his clients' countries, he hoped to foster a democratizing influence abroad.

He cited the case of Ceausescu, for whom he won U.S. trade concessions. In return, he said, the dictator permitted the printing of Bibles for the first time in decades and, for a stiff price, allowed Soviet Jews to travel through Romania on their way to Israel.

Edward Joseph Kloberg III was born Jan. 9, 1942, in New York, where his father was an engineer who built housing projects. He added "van" to his surname in the 1960s and decades later changed it to "von" when Arnaud de Borchgrave, the dapper newsman, told him it sounded more distinguished.

Von Kloberg described a pampered upbringing, in which older, female relatives lavished attention on him. His grandmother provided him with an entertaining allowance, which he used while at Princeton University to throw "great parties." However, he flunked out and graduated down the road at Rider College in Lawrenceville, N.J., in 1965.

At American University, he received a master's degree in history -- writing his key papers on the Borgia popes and Mohammed Ali Pasha, the founder of modern Egypt. But his true passion was throwing soirees that won him such admirers as Garnett Stackelberg, the society columnist. He later struck up friendships with Holly Coors, the Republican fundraiser, and Barbara "Bobo" Sears Rockefeller, the ex-wife of a Standard Oil heir.

Hired by American University, he became a key fundraiser and advanced to be the dean of admissions and financial aid.

In 1982, von Kloberg began his public relations and lobbying business, later renamed the Washington World Group. He hired former diplomats and foreign affairs specialists as well as Bennetta B. Washington, wife of former D.C. mayor Walter E. Washington.

He had trouble paying the staff and in 1984 pleaded guilty to faking letters of support from ambassadors in an effort to attain a $60,000 bank loan. He was sentenced to five years of probation and 100 hours of community service. "No money ever changed hands, and I took complete blame," he said in an interview.