Posted on 01/12/2002 9:29:12 PM PST by oioiman
ON JULY 5, 1995, Enron Corporation donated $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Six days later, Enron executives were on a trade mission with Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor to Bosnia and Croatia. With Kantor's support, Enron signed a $100 million contract to build a 150-megawatt power plant.
Enron, then a growing giant in energy trading, practically had a reserved seat on Clinton administration trade junkets. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who egregiously linked political donations to government assistance, accompanied Enron chairman Ken Lay on a mission to India. Enron president Joseph Sutton was on the trip to Bosnia during which Brown lost his life in a plane crash (Sutton was not on Brown's plane at the time). After Brown's death, Enron's Terence Thorn, a $1,000 donor to the Clinton-Gore campaign, traveled with Commerce Secretary William Daley to South Africa. Ken Lay also traveled with Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary on her trade trips.
There were other contacts between Enron and the Clinton administration. Ken Lay was a close friend of Mack McLarty, Clinton's first chief of staff. In his 1993 disclosure statement, Robert Rubin listed Enron as one of the firms with which he had had "significant contact" while at Goldman Sachs. Enron was represented by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, the firm where Clinton advisers Robert Strauss and Vernon Jordan worked.
And Enron benefited from its government contacts during the Clinton years. After Lay's trip to India with Ron Brown, Enron received nearly $400 million in U.S. government assistance so that it could build a power plant south of Bombay. According to reports in the Houston Chronicle at the time, the Export-Import Bank kicked in $298 million, while another federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, put up $100 million.
In February 1995, David Sanger of the New York Times wrote a fascinating insider account of how the deal had been consummated. Enron had been the lead bidder to build the new power plant. Jeff Garten, then undersecretary of commerce for international trade, created what he called "our economic war room" to push the American firm's interests. The State and Energy departments were enlisted to press Enron's case. According to Sanger, the U.S. ambassador to India, Frank Wisner, "constantly cajoled Indian officials." The CIA performed some risk analysis and investigated rival British companies.
Clinton himself was involved in starting the India effort for Enron. According to Michael Weisskopf of Time, Clinton scrawled a note to McLarty telling him to help with the project. Support for the Bombay power plant was just a small part of the help Enron received from the Clinton administration. All told, Enron received over $4 billion from OPIC and the Export-Import Bank for projects in Turkey, Bolivia, China, the Philippines, and elsewhere.
Under Clinton, the Commerce Department was proud that it was finally using the might of the U.S. government to assist favored firms. But the enterprise was plagued by constant criticism that somehow it always seemed to be big political donors that got most of the help. According to the Boston Globe, all but three of the recipients of OPIC aid during Brown's tenure were substantial Democratic donors. According to a study by the Center for Public Integrity, Enron, U.S. West, GTE, McDonnell Douglas, and Fluor donated a combined $563,000 to the Democratic party during 1993 and 1994 and received $2.6 billion in foreign contracts secured with government help. The Globe found that during the first Clinton term, 27 firms had donated $2.3 million to the Democrats and received nearly $5.5 billion in federal support.
All of this is not to deny that Enron was primarily a Republican donor. Nor is it to minimize the connections between Enron and the Bush administration. Rather, the connections between the Clintonites and Enron remind us that the scandal is not the donations. The scandal is what gets done by federal officials in return for the donations. And while the Clintonites received less money from Enron than the Republicans, the evidence thus far suggests that Democrats extended more favors to Enron than Republicans. That suggests that the nascent Enron scandal may not end up helping Democrats as much as they now think.
Make no mistake, though: The press corps is in full frenzy over what the Bush administration may or may not have done to help Enron as it was going down the tubes--though there is no evidence the Bush administration did anything beyond take phone calls from desperate Enron executives. But the real story here is not about lawbreaking or extraordinary behavior. It is about what has become standard practice in Washington every day.
When corporations make political donations, the money is generally not used to lobby for free market reforms--although Enron did some of that. Rather, the money is used to encourage French-style dirigisme. It is used to lure government into bed with private commercial interests. That's not an effect conservatives should cheer.
will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."We are nowheres near this state ...
The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.Uh - oh - sounds like a "New World Order" type (with shades of being a tin-foiler) and a fatalist.
They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."We have qualified and confirmed this writer as being of Tin-foil Status.
Thank you for exposing this.
Cynthia McKinley. She's also the one who, after Guliani refused the donation from the obnoxious Saudi Prince, contacted the prince and said she would gladly take the money. I saw posted elsewhere that she received about $33,000 from Enron.
What?
No call for a 'Really Free Press' huh?
Just more gov't regulation, gov't oversight, gov't restrictions on what I can do with *my* money, more insidious gov't red tape to observe ... WONDERFUL ...
Will we see you quoting from old issues of the Spotlight and other conspiracy theory publications soon?
KOOK alert!!! KOOK Alert!!!
The next question then to me (just to eliminate the obvious) is whether or not Sutton or Enron had any dealings with Samir Ferrat.
BROWN'S ASSOCIATE DIED ON TWA 800 http://www.usvetdsp.com/usvet/story23.htm According to a CNN international report, Mohamed Samir Ferrat, an Algerian business associate of Secretary Brown, who was scheduled to accompany Brown on the Bosnian trip but withdrew at the last moment for reasons still unclear, died July 17, on the ill fated TWA Flight 800. Ferrat was initially treated by the FBI as a suspected terrorist in the TWA Flight 800 explosion because he was the sole passenger on the flight roster listed only by last name. The FBI, within hours of beginning their investigation of Ferrat, oddly withdrew, telling the New York Times that "Ferrat was not at all the kind of person to take a bomb on a plane. Nor was he a likely target of a bomb plot. U.S. government investigators have yet to determine whether missile, bomb or mechanical failure brought TWA 800 down, killing all 230 passengers and crew. "Ferrat, it turned out," the New York Times said, "was a wealthy and highly respected businessman, money manager and investor with offices and residences in the Ivory Coast, France and Switzerland . . . FBI agents learned all this without questioning Ferrat's family, friends or business associates, many of whom were gathered in their grief at the family hotel in Virginia." One source, who asked not to be identified, suggested the FBI cleared Ferrat quickly because they either learned of his connection to Secretary Brown or Ferrat may have been on the payroll of U.S. intelligence, possibly the CIA. Ferrat was also involved with Chadwick International Inc., a northern Virginia company that exports modular homes. Chadwick, Inc., founded in 1991, got its start, according to its chairman Ronald M. Nocera, by Ferrat arranging meetings with real estate contacts in Algeria. Nocera said Chadwick, Inc. currently holds or is negotiating deals worth $560 million with developers from Argentina to Vietnam.
Do any of you remember back around 1992 to 1994 when Newt Gingrich and many of the Republicans were talking about wanting to "do away with the Commerce Department". I know I have some of those quotes somewhere, but so far haven't found them.
In 1995, on page 122 in Newt Gingrich's book, "To Renew America", he says this: "David Dreier ... led the task force ...to eliminate and alter several committees that he concluded were no longer necessary, while others needed to be reorganized or renamed. [One of these (no longer necessary) was] The Energy and Commerce Committee, which John Dingell had turned into an empire ....".
We might do a little more digging into the one SNL dubbed, "Long John Dingell", and see what we find. :D
Ron Brown (Commerce Secretary)
Brown, the millionaire former chaiman of the DemocRAT National Committee, is no longer being considered to run Clinton's '96 campaign due to the emergence of a series of odd financial dealings, as well as Brown's business relationship with Texan Nolanda Hill, owner of Washington and Boston TV stations. Brown and Hill were partners in a company called First International Communications Corp.
According to The Washington Post: "Though [Brown] put no money into the business and it never had a successful venture, Hill paid Brown more than $400,000 for his part of the partnership after he became Commerce Secretary."
That's right --- after.
Corridor Broadcasting Corp., another company Hill owned, defaulted on debts to the FDIC and Resolution Trust Corporation of more than $40 million.
Although Brown claimed he was unaware of any business connection between First International and Corridor, The Washington Post got hold of documents which "show that a promissory note from Corridor was First International's *major asset* and interest on the note was its *only source of income in 1993*."
I suspect , from what you have replied , that you are a fringer, and that absolutely NOTHING anyone, in the two major parties does, even if it was 100 % legal and above board, would please you in the least. You people like you, a glass filled with any amount of liquild, is still EMPTY.
Have a care, as to whom you describe as being naieve, dear.
I suspect , from what you have replied , that you are a fringer, and that absolutely NOTHING anyone, in the two major parties does, even if it was 100 % legal and above board, would please you in the least. You people like you, a glass filled with any amount of liquid, is still EMPTY.
Have a care, as to whom you describe as being naieve, dear. Your own words betray you. : - )
I can't answer that question yet, A-G, but I did find that industrial spying by the CIA helped secure the Bombay power plant deal for Enron! Check out this article.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
For America's spies an important tool has been the global eavesdropping system known by the code name Echelon, which has come to invoke the tag of the Big Brother of the cyberspace age. Echelon is part of a British- and American-run world-wide spy system that can "suck up" phone calls, faxes and e-mails sent by satellite. America's intelligence agencies have been able to intercept these vital private communications, often between foreign governments and European businesses, to help the US win major contracts. The implications of eavesdropping business communications are dramatic, according to Dr Brian Gladwell, a British former top Nato computer expert. "The analogy I use is where we were 250 years ago with pirates on the high seas. Governments never admitted they sponsored piracy, yet they all did behind the scenes. If we now look at cyberspace we have state- sponsored information piracy. We can't have a global e-commerce until governments like the US stop state-sponsored theft of commercial information," he says. Britain's role in Echelon, via its ultra-secret eavesdropping agency GCHQ, has put Tony Blair's government in the dock facing its European partners. European politicians meet on Wednesday in Strasbourg and Berlin to call for inquiries into electronic espionage by the US to beat competitors. These debates follow two years of controversy about Echelon as its astonishing power has gradually been revealed. But the real origin of the current row lies in the early Nineties, when US politicians and intelligence chiefs decided that the formidable but under -employed Cold War US intelligence apparatus should be redirected against its allies' economies. At stake was not just routine international trade, but new opportunities created by the demise of communism and fast-growing markets in countries that US trade officials dubbed "BEMs" - Big Emerging Markets, such as China, Brazil and Indonesia. Perhaps the most startling result of the new Clinton policy came in January 1994, when the then French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur flew to Riyadh to conclude a $ 6bn (pounds 4bn) deal for arms, airliners and maintenance, including sales of the European Airbus. He flew home empty- handed. The Baltimore Sun later reported that "from a commercial communications satellite, NSA lifted all the faxes and phone-calls between the European consortium Airbus, the Saudi national airline and the Saudi government. The agency found that Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official. It passed the information to US officials pressing the bid of Boeing Co." Clinton's government intervened with the Saudis and the contract went to Boeing. A second contract where US intelligence played a decisive role concerned Brazil. In 1994, NSA intercepted phone-calls between France's Thomson- CSF and Brazil concerning SIVAM, a $ 1.4bn surveillance system for the Amazon rain forest. The company was alleged to have bribed members of the Brazilian government selection panel. The contract was awarded to the US Raytheon Corporation - which announced afterwards that "the Department of Commerce worked very hard in support of US industry on this project". This is just one of hundreds of "success" stories openly boasted by the US Government's "Advocacy Center" up to the present day. They do not say where the CIA or NSA was decisive in winning the contract, but often brag of beating UK, European or Japanese competitors.
Also in 1995, General Electric Power Systems won a $120m tender to build a plant in Tunisia. "They beat intense competition from French, German, Italian and British firms for the project," the Center boasts. |
Documents and information obtained by the IoS show that the critical question of whether US intelligence should systematically help business was resolved after the election of Clinton in 1993. He appointed key Democratic National Party fund-raisers, including the late Secretary of State for Commerce, Ron Brown, to senior posts and launched a policy "to aggressively support US bidders in global competitions where advocacy is in the national interest". Soon, every US government department, from the Bureau of Mines to the CIA and the giant, super-secret National Security Agency, was playing a role in landing contracts for the booming US economy. The new policy, dubbed "levelling the playing field" by the Clinton administration, included arrangements for collecting, receiving and handling secret intelligence to use to benefit US commerce. Three Sigint (signals intelligence) reports obtained by the IoS are economic in nature. One details messages between Banque Nationale de Paris offices in France and Delhi, concerned with loans to build an atomic power station near Madras. A second gives details of OPEC negotiations, including French diplomatic messages. A 1997 report details phone calls and faxes between Pakistani officials in Islamabad and Beijing, and laments that the Chinese-based official was told to send future messages by the diplomatic pouch. The report warns that if this order was obeyed, it would "severely limit our ability to monitor". All the reports are classified "TOP SECRET UMBRA", indicating that highly-sensitive monitoring techniques were used to get the information. The heart of the new, co-ordinated Clinton trade campaign is the "Advocacy Center" inside the Department of Commerce. The Center is run by the "Trade Promotion Co-ordinating Committee", part of the US Department of Commerce. Declassified minutes of the Trade Promotion Co-ordinating Committee from 1994 show that the CIA's role in drumming up business for the US was not limited to looking for bribery, or even lobbying by foreign governments. For a series of meetings dealing with Indonesia, 16 officials were circulated with information. Five of the officials were from the CIA. Three of the five worked inside the Commerce Department itself, in a department called the "Office of Executive Support". The fifth, Robert Beamer, was from CIA headquarters. The "Office of Executive Support" is, in reality, a high-security office located inside the Commerce Department. It is staffed by CIA officials with top-secret security clearances and equipped with direct links from US intelligence agencies. Until recently, it was known, more revealingly, as the "Office of Intelligence Liaison". According to Loch K Johnson, a staff member of the US intelligence reform commission set up in 1993, officials at the departments of Commerce, Treasury and State pass information to US companies without revealing the intelligence source. "At Commerce, there's no code or book to consult to say when and what information can be passed to a US company," he says.
In 1994, a report to the Congressional (house) intelligence committee said that the "core of the intelligence community in this area (industrial espionage) has focused on alerting US policymakers about government-to-government lobbying efforts to disadvantage US firms seeking international trade. "A review of intelligence reporting since 1986 has identified about 250 cases of aggressive lobbying by foreign governments on behalf of their domestic industries that are competing against US firms for business overseas", the report stated, adding that since the start of the Clinton administration, 72 cases involving $30bn had been under intelligence scrutiny. In a March article for the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Why we spy on our allies", former CIA director James Woolsey claimed there was only one reason why the CIA tracked European companies. "Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing." he wrote. "We have spied on you because you bribe. Your companies' products are often more costly, less technically advanced, or both, than your American competitors." Yet some of the earliest deals clinched by US "advocacy" with CIA support are among the most corrupt deals of all time. In 1994, President Clinton signed off on $40bn of business agreements between Indonesia and US firms on one day. Among the deals was a $2.6bn power plant at Paiton, Java. At the time the contract was signed, the US knew one of President Suharto's daughters had been cut in on the deal, and was given a stake in the project worth more than $ 150m. Two months ago, the directors of the CIA and NSA appeared before the US Congress intelligence committee. CIA director George Tenet told the Committee: "With respect to allegations of industrial espionage, the notion that we collect intelligence to promote American business interests is simply wrong. We do not target foreign companies to support American business interests. "If we did this, where would we draw the line? Which companies would we help? Corporate giants? The little guy? All of them? I think we quickly would get into a mess" Bob Windrem of NBC News contributed to this report. A DEAL TOO FAR? Britain stands accused by its European partners of aiding US spying, yet has a limited knowledge of what use the Americans make of it. Echelon is designed to pick up information, but each participating country can choose what it targets. The price of silence is that Britain retains access to the system - in which the US invests a great deal more money - to find information beneficial to the country's interests and, it is suggested, industrial espionage that may be useful to British trade. Listening post: the electronic 'eavesdropping' facility at Menwith; Hill, North Yorkshire - linked to the headquarters of the US National; Security Agency in Maryland ; Uncovered: US intelligence reports obtained by the IoS |
For a series of meetings dealing with Indonesia, 16 officials were circulated with information. Five of the officials were from the CIA. Three of the five worked inside the Commerce Department itself, in a department called the "Office of Executive Support". The fifth, Robert Beamer, was from CIA headquarters.
"If we did this, where would we draw the line? Which companies would we help? Corporate giants? The little guy? All of them? I think we quickly would get into a mess"
Guess he straightened THAT out!! The nerve of some people, questioning the patriotism of the intelligence agencies management!
Here's the Key Qualifier ----- "the notion that we collect intelligence to promote American business interests is simply wrong." It's just a by-product. The Main Goal is to keep track of folks who want to crash planes into stuff, release nasty bugs, things like that.
Just goes and Ruins a perfectly Good Lie, doesn't it?
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