John McCain is taking more heat this week for larding the upper rungs of his campaign with high-paid lobbyists. Say hello to the latest favored target: former Texas senator Phil Gramm, who is both a top McCain insider and a big muckety-muck at Swiss banking behemoth UBS. Attention is largely focusing on Gramm's helping McCain formulate policies for dealing with the subprime mortgage mess while simultaneously maintaining allegiance to his European paymasters who are neck-deep in said mess. A sturdy cudgel for Democrats hacking away at McCain's credibility as a Washington reformer, for sure, but really just one of several presented by Gramm's banking side-job.

Gramm's overlords, for instance, have taken heat for its continued financial dealings in Sudan, and have recently advised some of its employees not to come to the U.S. for fear of indictment for tax evasion. And, hey, let's not forget that time Gramm helped UBS after it perpetrated a massive sanction-busting fraud against the U.S. government that literally put billions of dollars in the pockets of some of America's biggest enemies.

This last one occurred in 2003 and 2004, after U.S. regulators discovered that UBS was secretly looting an overseas vault of U.S. currency and sending loads of cash—somewhere between $4 and $5 billion—to U.S. foes, including Iran, Libya, Cuba and the now-defunct regime of Saddam Hussein. (U.S. soldiers found so much cash in Iraq that they needed a cargo plane to haul it all away). As a newly-minted lobbyist for UBS, Gramm's job was to use his Washington contacts and experience to make the inevitable D.C. shitstorm of regulatory fines and congressional outrage as bearable as possible for UBS executives. And he did a pretty good job: UBS got tagged with a smattering of Congressional hearings, a few arrows from Lou Dobbs, and a fine that was miniscule in comparison to the amount they illegally funneled to American foes.

Though Gramm remains an employee with UBS, the McCain camp points out that he de-registered as a lobbyist last month and is therefore in compliance with McCain's conflict-of-interest policy for staff. Still, they seem to recognize that the best way of making the Gramm issue a wash is by playing up Obama's UBS connections.