Saddam's Man in Washington (The first conviction in the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal)

SAMIR VINCENT WAS VISITING BAGHDAD when Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. He had not lived in his native Iraq for some three decades, having left in 1958 for the United States and a track-and-field career that would later land him in the Boston College Athletic Hall of Fame. Maybe Vincent's presence in Iraq was simply bad timing.

Although Americans were not exactly hostages in the tense days after the invasion, they were not free to leave Iraq. So when Vincent, a naturalized citizen, and Illinois businessman Michael Saba managed to escape by taking a taxicab eight hours to the Jordanian border and hitchhiking the remaining 50 miles to Amman, their adventure was news.

Washingtonians who read Keith Kendrick's Washington Post article about the trip, published August 15, 1990, probably gave it little thought. In hindsight, however, the story seems to offer the first clues to the events that culminated last week in Vincent's admission that he had accepted millions of dollars to work as an agent for Saddam in the United States.

In that Post interview nearly 15 years ago, Vincent downplayed any drama and insisted his journey had been "quite uneventful." Vincent said he believed that even if he were caught fleeing the country "the most the Iraqi authorities could do was to turn us back at the border." And, according to the Post, Vincent "refused to discuss details such as his age or his family" and "said he was reluctant to go into depth about his ordeal because he was 'very tired' by what had happened."

All of that might be true. It is also possible that Vincent simply wanted to keep a low profile because he was already working for the Iraqi regime.

Vincent is the first person to be charged in connection with the burgeoning U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal. According to information filed by the U.S. government in the Southern District of New York, Vincent "consulted with and repeatedly received direction from the Government of Iraq in the course of lobbying officials of the United States Government and the United Nations to repeal sanctions against Iraq." Last week he pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, making false statements on his income taxes, and related offenses.

Court documents tell us that Vincent began his activities on Saddam's behalf in "at least" 1992. (Other reports--including one detailed in Fooling America, written by former Newsweek reporter and leftist author Robert Parry--suggest that Vincent left Baghdad in early August 1990, right after the invasion of Kuwait, on a mission. Parry describes Vincent as a high-level intermediary, a messenger for Saddam. According to Parry's account, Vincent approached Col. Carl Bernard, USMC Ret., and former CIA director Richard Helms with an offer from Saddam Hussein. But the first Bush administration rejected these and all other overtures, insisting on an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.)

The charges against Vincent center on his efforts to shape U.N. Resolution 986, adopted on April 14, 1995, and the design for its implementation, finalized more than a year later. The measure created the U.N.-directed mechanism by which the Iraqis could sell oil to purchasers of their choice, with the proceeds to provide humanitarian relief for the Iraqi people. In February 1996, as negotiators sought to spell out the terms of Oil-for-Food, Vincent traveled to Baghdad. He "participated in the drafting of agreements with other Iraqi Government officials that guaranteed millions of dollars of compensation for Vincent and others upon successful completion of an agreement regarding Resolution 986." For his efforts, "the Government of Iraq delivered millions of dollars in cash to Vincent and others."

After the resolution was adopted, Vincent and his patrons sought to have the sanctions ended altogether. From 1998 to 2003, Vincent tried to prevail upon former U.S. government officials with ties to top Clinton and Bush administration officials who might press his case with their powerful friends. Among those he contacted was former U.S. representative and GOP vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, who had long opposed the sanctions. (Newsweek magazine reported this week that the FBI has interviewed Kemp. Although Kemp reportedly approached Colin Powell and Dick Cheney about back-channel communications with Vincent and later announced his intention to launch a "21st Century Marshall Plan" with the Iraqi American, there is no indication that Kemp is the target of an investigation.) Vincent reported on his progress to the Iraqi Intelligence Service and others working for Saddam.

Not all of Vincent's efforts were secretive. In 1999, Vincent arranged for three Iraqi religious leaders to visit the United States to denounce the U.N. sanctions. The delegation met with the evangelist Billy Graham and former president Jimmy Carter--meetings Vincent arranged.

Vincent faces up to 28 years in prison--not a promising outlook for someone in his mid-sixties, so he is cooperating with the authorities.

What will we learn by pulling on the Samir Vincent thread? That's hard to know. Saddam Hussein's government, and particularly his intelligence services, compartmentalized information so that very few individuals had a full understanding of its operations.

Still, the 16-page document charging Vincent contains enough information to make many people nervous. To cite two examples: On page 4 we learn that Vincent "and other individuals, including United Nations officials, met in Manhattan in an effort to secure terms favorable to the Government of Iraq in connection with the adoption and implementation of Resolution 986" [emphasis added]. And on page 7 that Vincent "distributed to another individual a cash payment from the Government of Iraq in partial satisfaction of the agreements" to work for Saddam's regime [emphasis added].

Who are these individuals? Prosecutors know. And it won't be long before we do, too.

Well, google produced no huge surprises. The four Congressmen who were most adamant about lifting the embargo were David Bonior, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, and Jim McDermott.

the group Peace Action was working pretty hard to end the sanctions. This group is the merger of SANE and FREEZE, two anti-nuclear groups SANE had been infiltrated by the Soviet agents in the eighties. Infiltration there wouldn't surprise me, but let's not jump to conclusions.

A Quaker group passed a resolution against the sanctions, and the Unitarians tried as well. It's certainly not difficult to get the religious left on your side if you're a foreign dictator.

Ramsey Clark's group was big on trying to get the sanctions removed. And let's not forget Scott Ritter.

In general, the left-wing press was being used by Hussein. A search reveals accounts of left-wing journalists who were being invited into Iraq to see the devastation supposedly caused by sanctions. These journalists somehow missed all the executions and terror. I will post a link if I find it.

Education for Peace in Iraq (EPIC) also supported the lifting of sanctions. I believe that Mr. Joseph C. Wilson was involved with EPIC.

Yes, he was.

What Wilson Didn’t Say About Africa: Joseph Wilson's Silent Partners

¹⁰Ward; Wilson, The Politics of Truth, 275-276; "Des Hommes d’Affaires Bien Introduits", La Lettre de l’Océan Indien, Number 876, October 23, 1999, online at Africa Intelligence, http://www.africaintelligence.fr/LOI/archives/default_archives.asp?num=876&year=; "Forums: War with Iraq: A Cost-Benefit Analysis", Middle East Policy Council, October 9, 2002, online at http://www.mepc.org/public_asp/forums_chcs/30.asp; Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV, "The Iraq Forum: Informing Iraq Advocates Since 1998: The 2003 Iraq Forum: June 14, 2003, Washington, DC: Evening Public Lecture: A State of the Movement Address: Evening Keynote Lecture", audio online at EPIC: Education for Peace in Iraq Center, http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=68&showlogin=1.

Funny you should mention EPIC. One name that keeps coming back again and again is Ramzi Kysia. He was on the board of EPIC. Somehow, he managed to be able to get in and out of Iraq at will during Hussein's reign. (See the link I posted above.)

Kysia also has spoken at left-wing churches and published quite a bit in the left-wing press:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Ramzi+Kysia%22&btnG=Search

If you look at his career, he never criticized Hussein when Hussein was in power. On all his trips to Iraq, he never reported on the killings committed by Hussein. He blamed all the problems on the sanctions.

After Hussein was overthrown, he has said that Iraq had been under a "brutal dictatorship." But he never seemed to emphasize that point before Hussein was overthrown.

So was he an agent of Hussein, or just blinded by anti-American ideology? I don't know. What's interesting is how the left-wing press published this guy without asking some very basic questions.

We know Vincent was a crook, we know Wilson is a liar; and both were in Baghdad with the arms dealer Wilson mentioned on the eve of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Wilson says he dined with Saddam's arms buyer the eve of the invasion... But do either of you know if the guy who was in Baghdad with Vincent at that time - Illinois businessman Michael Saba- has any ties to Obama?

1990 : (ON THE EVE OF THE IRAQI INVASION OF KUWAIT [?] OR US ATTACK? A DUBAI UAE MIDDLEMAN OFFERS DR QADEER KHAN'S HELP IN BUILDING AN ATOM BOMB TO IRAQ)It was a Dubai middleman claiming to represent Dr. [Qadeer] Khan who in 1990, on the eve of the Persian Gulf war, offered Dr. Khan's aid to Iraq in building an atom bomb. And it was a Dubai middleman whom Dr. Khan blamed for supplying centrifuge parts to Iran, said a European confidante of Dr. Khan's who spoke on the condition of anonymity.- http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:jsogp_Bjve0J:www.leftwatch.com/discussion/fullthread%24msgnum%3D7594+libya+%22aluminum+tubing%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

AUGUST 1, 1990 : (BAGHDAD, IRAQ? : US DIPLOMAT, DEPUTY CHIEF OF MISSION JOE WILSON AND HIS SECOND WIFE JACQUELINE GIORGI DINE WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN'S CHIEF BUYER OF FRENCH ARMS ON THE EVE OF THE IRAQI INVASION OF KUWAIT [?])The night of August 1, [1990] Wilson had dinner with someone he describes as "Saddam's principal arms buyer in Paris. It was so hot the air was literally shimmering right in front of the windshield. I get to this guy's house, and it had been chilled to 45, 50 degrees ... roaring fire in the fireplace and over in a corner a white baby grand piano and a guy playing classical music on it. The guy looks like a Pancho Villa figure, Mexican bandito.... We sat down to dinner, just him, myself, my wife, and five bodyguards-armed." -- Story link

AUGUST 2, 1990 : (SAMIR VINCENT & ILLINOIS BUSINESSMAN MICHAEL SABA ARE IN BAGHDAD DURING IRAQ'S INVASION OF KUWAIT) SAMIR VINCENT WAS VISITING BAGHDAD when Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. He had not lived in his native Iraq for some three decades, having left in 1958 for the United States and a track-and-field career that would later land him in the Boston College Athletic Hall of Fame. Maybe Vincent's presence in Iraq was simply bad timing. Although Americans were not exactly hostages in the tense days after the invasion, they were not free to leave Iraq. So when Vincent, a naturalized citizen, and Illinois businessman Michael Saba managed to escape by taking a taxicab eight hours to the Jordanian border and hitchhiking the remaining 50 miles to Amman, their adventure was news. Washingtonians who read Keith Kendrick's Washington Post article about the trip, published August 15, 1990, probably gave it little thought. In hindsight, however, the story seems to offer the first clues to the events that culminated last week [Jan 2005] in Vincent's admission that he had accepted millions of dollars to work as an agent for Saddam in the United States. In that Post interview nearly 15 years ago, Vincent downplayed any drama and insisted his journey had been "quite uneventful." Vincent said he believed that even if he were caught fleeing the country "the most the Iraqi authorities could do was to turn us back at the border." And, according to the Post, Vincent "refused to discuss details such as his age or his family" and "said he was reluctant to go into depth about his ordeal because he was 'very tired' by what had happened." All of that might be true. It is also possible that Vincent simply wanted to keep a low profile because he was already working for the Iraqi regime. -------- "Saddam's Man in Washington (The first conviction in the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal)," Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, January 31, 2005
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Court documents tell us that Vincent began his activities on Saddam's behalf in "at least" 1992. (Other reports--including one detailed in Fooling America, written by former Newsweek reporter and leftist author Robert Parry--suggest that Vincent left Baghdad in early August 1990, right after the invasion of Kuwait, on a mission. Parry describes Vincent as a high-level intermediary, a messenger for Saddam. According to Parry's account, Vincent approached Col. Carl Bernard, USMC Ret., and former CIA director Richard Helms with an offer from Saddam Hussein. But the first Bush administration rejected these and all other overtures, insisting on an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.) -------- "Saddam's Man in Washington (The first conviction in the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal)," Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, January 31, 2005

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