Discussed by Rush today.
Posted on 12/13/2004 1:14:49 AM PST by kattracks
POST WORLD EXCLUSIVEWASHINGTON — Billionaire Marc Rich has emerged as a central figure in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and is under investigation for brokering deals in which scores of international politicians and businessmen cashed in on sweetheart oil deals with Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned.
Rich, the fugitive Swiss-based commodities trader who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton in January 2001, is a primary target of criminal probes under way in the U.S. attorney's office in New York and by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, sources said.
"We think he was a major player in this — a central figure," a senior law-enforcement official told The Post.
Investigators are looking into a series of deals that took place in the months after his pardon from Clinton.
[snip]
Investigators now believe Rich and Pollner brokered many of the deals by finding buyers for the oil allocated to people who were bribed by Saddam.
[snip]
So intense is the interest of prosecutors in the Rich connection that Pollner was recently "grabbed" and questioned by investigators from Morgenthau's office as he was on his way to Kennedy Airport for an overseas trip, a law-enforcement official told The Post.
[snip]
Investigators still do not know how recipients of the vouchers led to Rich, but say his relationship with Saddam goes back more than a decade.
A report by the House Government Reform Committee on Rich's clemency deal established that it was well known to the CIA and other U.S. law-enforcement agencies at the time of the pardon that Rich had been dealing with Saddam since the early 1990s — after the Persian Gulf War when Iraq was the subject of an international embargo.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Absolutely...which is why they will have to play ball..
If anyone had any doubt how horrific the OFF scandal is, all one would have to do is look at how the MSM is ignoring it to be convinced.
Goody. Gee, where's Eliot Spitzer when ya need him?
In theory, yes. I'll believe it when I see it.
Such cynicism is NOT good for the soul...
Yes, "Rev Ken."
But you forget, I lived through the Clinton years.....cynicism is the by-product.
Exactly right.
It's the biggest financial scandal of my lifetime.
And considering how that financial scandal also literally killed Iraqi children and adults who did not get the food and medicine they were supposed to get, it's an even bigger scandal than just a financial matter.
And you can bet OFF isn't the only crooked UN program. I've been looking at numbers for other programs that leave my jaw scraping the floor. There's a very good reason why the UN refuses to allow outside audits...
I used to think the Birchers were nuts with their constant mantra "get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US".
At this point, I couldn't agree with them more. There is so much dirt on the UN that it makes my head hurt to contemplate it all.
I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you, at this latest revelation.
I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you, at this latest revelation.
Heck, the incoming Dem president might very well have made Bubba the new Secretary General. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse.
I left out a whole bunch of the 'toon legacy stuff from the mid-90s, but those examples give the gist of my point. I honestly believe that the genesis of the next HOT war (not the luke-warm WoT) will be seen as resulting from the Clintoon eggregious errors in foreign policy. I STILL can't believe he took State and DoD out of the business of vetting commerce deals to foreign powers, and removed the DNC committee that vetted contributions for foreign influence. I was ranting and raving about that on gopher columns long before FR was in business.
I really would like to see him tried for treason, but I realize that it would be difficult to convict him of knowingly and intentionally weakening the US. He has "plausible deniability" just in the obvious nature of his weakness in applying common sense to situations like this.
I would love it if we could get a pound of flesh out of him, and Marc Rich and the other conspirators they dealt with, but trial in the US isn't going to accomplish much of value, other than for show.
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Discussed by Rush today.
Hehehehheh ..... The Clinton Legacy continues....
Now we see Bush behind Annan. Makes me wonder what information we might be getting to build a case for treason. I wonder if Bill will be alive when it hits the fan, his AIDS is not looking too good these days.
" Barak's interest in setting Rich free?"
MONEY.
And Klintoon pardoned him because????????????????????
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