Posted on 01/13/2002 10:44:02 AM PST by Magician
Many of the same American corporate executives who have reaped millions of dollars from arms and oil deals with the Saudi monarchy have served or currently serve at the highest levels of U.S. government, public records show.
Those lucrative financial relationships call into question the ability of America's political elite to make tough foreign policy decisions about the kingdom that produced Osama bin Laden and is perhaps the biggest incubator for anti-Western Islamic terrorists.
Nowhere is the revolving U.S.-Saudi money wheel more evident than within President Bush's own coterie of foreign policy advisers, starting with the president's father, George H.W. Bush.
At the same time that the elder Bush counsels his son on the ongoing war on terrorism, the former president remains a senior adviser to the Washington D.C.-based Carlyle Group. That influential investment bank has deep connections to the Saudi royal family as well as financial interests in U.S. defense firms hired by the kingdom to equip and train the Saudi military.
Last year, former President Bush visited Saudi Arabia's King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, but a Carlyle spokesman said the two did not discuss Carlyle business as previously reported. The elder Bush is reportedly paid between $80,000 and $100,000 for each Carlyle speech he makes. The company declined comment on the former president's pay.
The Carlyle Group has also served as a paid adviser to the Saudi monarchy on the so-called ''Economic Offset Program,'' an arrangement that effectively requires U.S. arms manufacturers selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to give back a portion of their revenues in the form of contracts to Saudi businesses, most of whom are connected to the royal family. A company spokesman said yesterday that arrangement was ended ''a few months ago,'' but said he did not know whether it was terminated before or after the Sept. 11 attacks.
A spokesman for former President Bush, reached yesterday, had no immediate comment on his work for the Carlyle Group.
These intricate personal and financial links have led to virtual silence in the administration on Saudi Arabia's failings in dealing with terrorists like bin Laden, said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group.
''It's good old fashioned `I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine.' You have former U.S. officials, former presidents, aides to the current president, a long line of people who are tight with the Saudis, people who are the pillars of American society and officialdom,'' said Lewis.
''So for that and other reasons no one wants to alienate the Saudis, and we are willing to basically ignore inconvenient truths that might otherwise cause our blood to boil. We basically look away,'' he said. ''Folks don't like to stop the gravy train.''
Some foreign policy observers said as long as American power brokers in lucrative business deals with the Saudis do not simultaneously craft U.S. foreign policy, there is no conflict of interest.
''To have Bush Sr. on the board of Carlyle is not necessarily a significant problem because Carlyle has interests all over the world,'' said Vincent Cannistraro, a former counter-intelligence chief for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Companies regularly entice powerful political figures to work for them, he said.
''It's kind of business as usual. Where it really affects things is when someone with a financial interest in a company also has a policy position in the administration,'' Cannistraro said.
Insider Trading
A significant portion of the millions of dollars U.S. companies and their politically influential executives have earned in deals with the Saudis has been through military contracts.
The Carlyle Group had a major stake in the large defense contractor B.D.M., which has multimillion-dollar contracts through its subsidiaries to train and manage the Saudi National Guard and the Saudi air force, U.S. Department of Defense records show. In 1998, Carlyle sold its controlling interest in B.D.M. to defense giant TRW International.
Meanwhile, the boards of directors of the Carlyle Group, B.D.M. and TRW are all stocked with high-level Republican policy makers.
Frank C. Carlucci, a former secretary of defense under President Reagan, was chairman of B.D.M. for most of the 1990s. Carlucci, who also served as Reagan's national security adviser and a deputy director of the CIA, now heads the Carlyle Group.
Along with former President Bush, other officials from past Republican administrations now at the Carlyle Group include: former Secretary of State James A. Baker III; ex-budget chief Richard Darman; and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt.
President Bush is himself linked to the Carlyle group: He was a director of one of its subsidiaries, an airline food services company called Caterair, until 1994. Six years later, when Bush was governor of Texas, the board of directors of the Texas teachers' pension fund -- some of whom were his appointees -- voted to invest $100 million with the Carlyle Group.
The president of B.D.M. is Philip A. Odeen, a former high-level Pentagon official in the Nixon administration. During the Clinton administration, Odeen chaired the Pentagon task force that planned the restructuring of the U.S. military for the 21st century. Currently, he is the vice-chair of the Defense Science Board, which advises the Pentagon on emerging threats.
TRW, the new owner of B.D.M., has its own noteworthy board members, including former CIA director Robert M. Gates and Michael H. Armacost, who served as undersecretary of state under President Reagan and as ambassador to Japan for former President Bush.
Big Saudi money also makes its way back to Texas and the Bush family. The family of Saudi Arabia's longtime U.S. ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, gave $1 million to the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas.
The Revolving Door
Another example of the complex web connecting U.S. and Saudi powerbrokers is Dick Cheney, who moved from the Pentagon to the international oil business and back as vice president last year.
After serving as the elder Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney was hired to run oil-services giant Halliburton Co., where he worked until he resigned last year to campaign with the younger Bush. In 2000, his last year with Halliburton, Cheney received $34 million when he cashed out from the company.
Not surprisingly, Halliburton's links to Cheney and other Washington power brokers appear to have helped the company's business prospects in the Middle East.
Just last month, Halliburton was awarded a $140 million contract to develop an oil field in Saudi Arabia by the kingdom's state-owned petroleum firm, Saudi Aramco, and a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, along with two Japanese firms, was hired by the Saudis to build a $40 million ethylene plant.
Cheney isn't the only member of President Bush's inner circle whose work for firms connected to the Saudis has paid big dividends.
The current national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is a former longtime member of the board of directors of another giant oil conglomerate with business in the Saudi desert, Chevron, which merged with Texaco this year. Rice even has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
Substantial profits received by U.S. leaders in private sector deals with the Saudis have helped to squelch criticism of the royal family's refusal to address the role its country has played in fueling Islamic terrorism, Lewis said.
''There's a disconnect there,'' Lewis said. ''I'm fascinated that we don't lay this at Saudi Arabia's doorstep. But the chances to cash in and the amount you can cash in for are starting to become absolutely astronomical. Who wants to look like the Boy Scout complaining about it and potentially jeopardize their own post-employment prospects?''
Former advisers to the president's father also hold key positions with U.S. firms which have teamed up with the Saudis on major oil deals.
Former Bush Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady and a former Bush assistant, Edith E. Holiday, are both on the board of directors of Amerada Hess, an American petroleum firm currently teaming up with several powerful Saudi families to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan.
Another company that has done business with wealthy Saudis is international energy firm Frontera Resources Corp. based in Houston. Until recently, Frontera was a 30 percent investor in a $900 million project to develop oilfields in Azerbajian. Also investing in the project were Azerbaijan's state-run oil company and Delta-Hess, a joint-venture created by the Saudis' Delta Oil and Amerada Hess.
Randy Theilig, a Frontera spokesman, said the company relinquished its interest in the project in July because it was no longer ''economically viable,'' and has no current business dealings with the Saudis or in Azerbajian.
Members of Frontera's board of advisers, which includes former CIA director John Deutch and former Secretary of the Treasury and U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, have been active financial supporters of the Democratic Party.
Shining a bright light on the web of financial connections between the power elite in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is critical, Middle Eastern foreign policy experts said.
''I think the fact that they have these connections makes it important for this information to be made public,'' said Henry Siegman, a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., a non-partisan group that examines money and politics, said the Bush-Carlyle connection is a concern.
''It is well known that the father is a close adviser to his son and therefore it does raise concerns,'' Noble said ''It's not necessarily that the father has been compromised, but the danger is that it leads people to question George W. Bush. The public has a right to feel their leaders are making independent judgments without the influence of private interests.''
VOTE LIBERTARIAN
Making it a crime would be the best campaign law imaginable. I go along with the idea that government meddles in far too many businesses and unions. I recommend a vote for the Constitution or Libertarian parties in our primaries to show our displeasure with the Republcrat party.
At the same time that the elder Bush counsels his son on the ongoing war on terrorism
They do NOT talk to each other, both have stated that.
Our Friends the Saudis
U.S. News & World Report has another damning article on Saudi perfidy and corruption. Noting Riyadh's reluctance to cooperate with America's investigation of the Sept. 11 atrocities--though 15 of the 19 perpetrators were Saudi--the magazine explains:
One reason, high-level intelligence sources tell U.S. News, is that at least two Saudi princes had been paying, on behalf of the kingdom, what amounts to protection money to Osama bin Laden since 1995. In November of that year, a bomb at the Saudi National Guard headquarters in Riyadh killed several American military advisers who worked closely with the force. One source, a former senior Clinton administration official, said that the two princes, whose names have not been disclosed, began making payments to bin Laden soon after the bombing. The official added that Washington did not learn of the payments until at least two years later. "There's no question they did buy protection from bin Laden," he says. "The deal was, they would turn a blind eye to what he was doing elsewhere. 'You don't conduct operations here, and we won't disrupt them elsewhere.' "
The Saudis deny the charge. The magazine adds that "the Washington-Riyadh relationship is marred by another problem":
Link to the entire article:Over the past decade, the United States has sold Riyadh $33.5 billion in military hardware. That's more than Israel and Egypt combined have received. U.S. companies have also done billions of dollars in commercial business with the kingdom. According to well-placed Saudi sources and a review of several little-known lawsuits, Saudi agents and royalty often demand enormous commissions to accompany these deals. Ordinarily, the payment of such fees to secure contracts would constitute a violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But prosecutors say bribery is one of the toughest charges to prove.
Corporations are bad.
People who work for corporations are bad.
Oil is bad.
People who know people who work for oil companies are bad.
People who serve on Boards of Directors of corporations are especially bad.
People who make money are bad.
Money is bad.
It's all commie crap and the fact that some people here fall for it is nothing short of amazing.
corruption is corruption no matter where it is found.
Politicians don't produce images in mirrors or cast shadows in the sunlight.
VOTE LIBERTARIAN
LIBERTARIANS ARE THE ULTIMATE CONSERVATIVES, THE ONLY REAL CONSERVATIVES.
Is that the debunking you mentioned? Its not unreasonable to believe an oil man would have ties to Saudi Arabia, especially one who dumped millions of dollars in aid into the country while President. You conservatives are just as bad as liberals, so concerned with being on the winning side you can't tell right from wrong, but you can tell right from left, and I'm sure thats all that matters to you.
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