Posted on 12/17/2008 9:42:37 AM PST by george76
New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson will go before the U.S. Senate in coming weeks as Barack Obama’s nominee for secretary of Commerce.
Will Democrats in that chamber remember his performance in 1999 and 2000 as Energy secretary, when secrets disappeared from nuclear laboratories, and one Democratic senator promised to oppose Richardson for any future nomination?
In the January of 1999, the U.S. House Select Committee on Intelligence published ... the “Cox Report” -- which found that China had stolen and still was stealing nuclear weapons secrets from the U.S.
The committee reported that “the primary focus of this long-term, ongoing PRC intelligence collection effort has been on … national weapons laboratories.” The national laboratories were under the jurisdiction of Richardson’s Energy Department.
Then in early 2000, two computer hard drives containing information on U.S. nuclear weapons disappeared from Los Alamos.
With the hard drives still missing, and invited to speak before the Senate Intelligence Committee on nuclear security on June 14, 2000, Richardson instead attended a campaign function for Vice President Al Gore at the National Press Club. The committee’s chairman, Sen. Richard Shelby (R.-Ala.), left an empty seat at the witness table with Richardson’s nameplate to highlight his absence. “Perhaps if the secretary would spend more time ensuring the safety of our nation’s nuclear treasures,” Shelby said, “and less time trying to get the Vice President elected President, we would not be here today.”
Sen. Robert Byrd (D.-W.Va.), however, was the harshest... “You will never again receive the support of the Senate of the United States for any office to which you might be appointed,” said Byrd. “It’s gone. You’ve squandered your treasure, and I’m sorry.”
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
Ping.
DIMocrats are not going to be held to task for anything, just forget it.
-—hope “Sheets” Byrd can remember that—
How many remember that is was Richardson who spirited Monica away to new York and created a “job” for her at the UN to keep her away from Bill and away from Hillary????
It is not just his scandalous cabinet record but also his scandalous Gov. record. His habit of giving out high level state jobs and contracts based on donations have developed a new term here in New Mexico i.e. “Gifts from the North”.
The graft that keeps on giving.
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Click on the key word Richardson for the latest controversy surrounding Richardson's being investigated by a federal grand jury for pay-to-play donations.
Wow! That’s gonna leave teeth marks. Richardson is a criminal and should be in jail. I wonder what will happen if Denish is sworn in as governor and then Richardson can’t get confirmed? Would he automatically be governor again, or will she still be considered the governor. I like her a million times more than I do him. I will be very happy if he can’t get the governor’s job back from her and then the Senate won’t confirm him. lol..
Jim Inhofe will remember and actually have the nerve to bring it up.
Yeah, but what has happened so far...nothing. He is as crooked as they come and his whole governership was about running for president and linning the pockets of his partners in crime.
Aww, c’mon guyz, can’t we let bygones be bygones?
JUNE 2, 1997 : (US DELEGATION HEADED BY BILL RICHARDSON VISITS KINSHASA —SEE URANIUM, DIAMONDS, IRAQ)
It’s not only diamonds and base metals that interest big mining companies and the latter are not alone in being interested in Katanga. In the delegation that the United States sent to Kinshasa on June 2 [1997] under its ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, the state department’s African affairs department was represented by Marc Baas, director for Central Africa.
(Susan Rice [See OBAMA ADMIN], director for African Affairs at the National Security Council, has just been appointed under secretary of state for African affairs in succession to George Moose). Baas was accompanied by a representative of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and several Defense Department officials. The mission also visited Lubumbashi and met with officials from Gecamines and provincial authorities.
AEM’s sources claim it wasn’t the small research reactor that General Electric installed in 1977 at the university of Kinshasa, and which ceased operating in 1990, that interested the NRC and the military men, but rather the Shinkolobwe uranium deposit. Its resources are negligible from a commercial viewpoint when weighed against those in Namibia and Niger and new discoveries like France’s Cogema has just made in western Canada. They weren’t negligible from the security standpoint, however. The Americans [See the June 2, 1997 delegation- Bill Richardson, Marc Baas, etc] are concerned over a visit to Katanga by the head of the Iraqi Baath party’s international relations section, Shabi Al Maliki, around a year ago [1996]. He, too, showed an interest in Katanga’s uranium, and last February [1997] another high-ranking Iraqi official reportedly held talks in Kinshasa with the mines minister in the last government of the Mobutu era, Banza Mukalay. The uranium is thought to have also figured in Libya’s proposals in 1995 to supply oil to Zaire in exchange for ore.
————Saddam’s Shadow (Posted on the Free Republic on 12/04/2005 11:21:13 AM EST by SBD1; Source: Africa Energy & Mining, June 18, 1997, Indigo Publications, available online to subscribers of Lexis-Nexis Academic)
40 posted on 07/09/2007 1:59:09 AM PDT by Wallaby | To 21
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