SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/57660_gao09.shtml
GAO chief accuses Bush and Cheney of misleading public
Saturday, February 9, 2002
By MARK HELM
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- As his agency prepares to sue the White House over the release of disputed documents, David Walker, head of the General Accounting Office, accused administration officials yesterday of misleading the public on the issue.
Last week the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, announced it will sue to obtain information about meetings between Vice President Dick Cheney, chairman of President Bush's energy policy task force, and officials of Enron Corp. and other companies.
Walker told reporters that both Bush and Cheney have incorrectly stated that the GAO is seeking the notes and minutes of those meetings.
He insisted that his agency wants only the dates and subjects of each meeting and the names of those present at the sessions that were convened to help the administration formulate an energy policy.
"We're not asking for the staff notes," Walker said.
Asked why Bush and Cheney had stated that the GAO wants the substance of the energy task force's discussions, Walker said: "I think it's because they've been poorly briefed by their staff. I do not believe that those individuals would knowingly misstate the facts."
Walker said some administration staff members had purposely misrepresented the GAO's demands even after the agency sent the White House a letter detailing them on Jan 30.
"I do know, however, that there are a number of staffers who in fact, on multiple occasions, including after we've sent the letter out, have (misstated facts)," he said. "Maybe they think it looks better for them."
Walker said the Jan. 30 letter informing the administration that the agency was preparing to sue clearly states that the GAO is "not seeking the minutes of these meetings or related notes of the vice president's staff."
Cheney, who has acknowledged meeting with executives of Enron, the now bankrupt energy trading company, six times last year, has said he won't release the information sought by the GAO because such disclosures would damage his and the president's ability to seek candid, confidential advice.
Cheney also has acknowledged that he met with Enron's then-chairman, Kenneth Lay, in April. White House officials said Lay gave Cheney a three-page document arguing against federal caps on electricity prices.
Last week Mary Matalin, counselor to Cheney, dismissed the significance of the document, saying that nine of Lay's 11 suggestions in the memo were not included in the White House energy plan.
Anticipating a court battle, Bush said last month, "Bring it on."
Cheney's staff failed to return several phone calls requesting comment yesterday.
Walker did not reveal when the suit would be filed but said the GAO will wait at least until he returns from a trip to New Zealand on Feb. 18. The lawsuit is expected to be filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
Walker said he hoped a compromise could be reached but that no negotiations were in progress between GAO officials and the White House. "I'm not happy that we are where we are," he said.
Early last year Cheney's energy policy task force received advice for two months from representatives of the coal, oil, nuclear and electricity industries.
According to Walker, the GAO's initial investigation was prompted in April 2001 by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and John Dingell of Michigan, who wanted to know if the task force met with Bush's big campaign contributors as it developed the national energy policy.
Waxman and Dingell wrote the GAO last month urging it to go to court. They said that "the need to obtain the information we requested has only increased over time."
© 1998-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Saturday, February 09, 2002
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/57696_nkorea09.shtml
North Koreans not getting food aid, defectors claim
Saturday, February 9, 2002
By JOJI SAKURAI
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOKYO -- Three North Koreans who fled oppression and famine in their homeland claimed yesterday that international food aid is not reaching the starving and the government is resorting to elaborate schemes to fool U.N. monitors.
The defectors, who are in Tokyo to give testimony at an international conference on human rights in North Korea, said millions of dollars worth of food aid is being stockpiled in military complexes and used to feed soldiers and the ruling elite.
"Aid hasn't gotten to people in need, and it's being redirected to the North Korean military and the people in power," said Lee Young Kuk, a former bodyguard to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
"I know about this because I worked in the security network. ... It's all a farce," he told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan.
Another defector, Lee Jae Kun -- a native of the South who was trained as a North Korean spy after being abducted by Pyongyang agents -- said security officials order villagers to load carts with bags of rice to show U.N. aid monitors. When the observers leave, the rice is taken away, he said.
The defectors, who now live in South Korea, gave a detailed picture of misery in the North: rivers flowing with the bodies of those who starved to death, labor camps where live burials and flaying are common, an atmosphere of paranoia in which relatives denounce each other to the authorities.
The former bodyguard, Lee Young Kuk, said he was sent to the North's harshest political prisoner camp, Yodok, after he was tricked into visiting Pyongyang's embassy in Beijing -- thinking it was the South Korean mission -- during his first defection attempt. He successfully defected in March 1999.
One inmate accused of stealing salt was tied to a vehicle and dragged for 2 1/2 miles at high speeds and "became deskinned," he said in written testimony released yesterday.
In his comments to reporters he said: "I have watched so many deaths in North Korea I almost lost the concept of human dignity."
Despite their brutal experiences, the defectors had mixed feelings about President Bush's appraisal of Pyongyang as forming part of an "axis of evil."
"Bush is stepping ahead without looking around," said Lee Jae Kun.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/57696_nkorea09.shtml
North Koreans not getting food aid, defectors claim
Saturday, February 9, 2002
By JOJI SAKURAI
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOKYO -- Three North Koreans who fled oppression and famine in their homeland claimed yesterday that international food aid is not reaching the starving and the government is resorting to elaborate schemes to fool U.N. monitors.
The defectors, who are in Tokyo to give testimony at an international conference on human rights in North Korea, said millions of dollars worth of food aid is being stockpiled in military complexes and used to feed soldiers and the ruling elite.
"Aid hasn't gotten to people in need, and it's being redirected to the North Korean military and the people in power," said Lee Young Kuk, a former bodyguard to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
"I know about this because I worked in the security network. ... It's all a farce," he told a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan.
Another defector, Lee Jae Kun -- a native of the South who was trained as a North Korean spy after being abducted by Pyongyang agents -- said security officials order villagers to load carts with bags of rice to show U.N. aid monitors. When the observers leave, the rice is taken away, he said.
The defectors, who now live in South Korea, gave a detailed picture of misery in the North: rivers flowing with the bodies of those who starved to death, labor camps where live burials and flaying are common, an atmosphere of paranoia in which relatives denounce each other to the authorities.
The former bodyguard, Lee Young Kuk, said he was sent to the North's harshest political prisoner camp, Yodok, after he was tricked into visiting Pyongyang's embassy in Beijing -- thinking it was the South Korean mission -- during his first defection attempt. He successfully defected in March 1999.
One inmate accused of stealing salt was tied to a vehicle and dragged for 2 1/2 miles at high speeds and "became deskinned," he said in written testimony released yesterday.
In his comments to reporters he said: "I have watched so many deaths in North Korea I almost lost the concept of human dignity."
Despite their brutal experiences, the defectors had mixed feelings about President Bush's appraisal of Pyongyang as forming part of an "axis of evil."
"Bush is stepping ahead without looking around," said Lee Jae Kun.
Arianna Huffington Online Friday Feb 8, 02
Slick New
Drug-War Ads Misfire
he commander-in-chief's slick new $10 million ad campaign is one of the most offensive displays of drug-war propaganda ever. And that's saying a lot.
The TV spots, which premiered during the Super Bowl, promote the twisted reasoning that since terrorists are funded by drug profits, any young Americans who use drugs are guilty of aiding the enemy.
In one particularly odious ad, fresh-faced young people say, "I helped kids learn how to kill"; "I helped murder families in Colombia"; "I helped blow up buildings."
It's a slick dramatization of President Bush's meaningless assertion that "if you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."
Apparently, in the world according to Bush and his drug czar, John Walters, the kid smoking a joint at a party is the moral equivalent of Osama Bin Laden or Mohamed Atta.
It's the single largest ad buy the federal government has ever made. The White House spent nearly $3.5 million to get these commercials on the Super Bowl — and that's $3.5 million spent not on drug treatment, but on demonizing America's young people. Our tax dollars at work.
It's one thing to drop an egg into a frying pan to demonstrate that drugs are bad for you, and quite another to link drug users to bloodthirsty murderers. These ads make it seem like the next logical step in the war on terrorism is dropping daisy cutter bombs on America's high schools and shipping teenage drug users off to Guantanamo Bay. With 54% of high school seniors admitting they've used illicit drugs, it's going to get awfully crowded.
The ads are also exercises in highly selective finger-pointing. We know, for instance, that Al Qaeda used tens of millions of dollars in profits from the diamond industry to fund operations. So why no commercial with a woman fingering the diamonds on her tennis bracelet admitting: "I helped kids learn how to kill"?
And, given the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers — and most of the detainees in Cuba — came from Saudi Arabia, why no taxpayer-funded ad showing a soccer mom in an SUV saying: "I helped blow up buildings"?
Simple. Linking diamonds or oil to terror doesn't fit the Bush agenda. It's hardly a coincidence that just one day after the Super Bowl ads aired, the White House released a foreign aid budget that escalates U.S. military assistance to Colombian troops battling drug traffickers.
At the end of the movie "Traffic," Michael Douglas' dispirited drug czar crystallizes the madness of the drug war: "If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy. And I don't know how you wage war on your own family."
Clearly, the Bush administration has no such misgivings.
Slick New
Drug-War Ads Misfire
he commander-in-chief's slick new $10 million ad campaign is one of the most offensive displays of drug-war propaganda ever. And that's saying a lot.
The TV spots, which premiered during the Super Bowl, promote the twisted reasoning that since terrorists are funded by drug profits, any young Americans who use drugs are guilty of aiding the enemy.
In one particularly odious ad, fresh-faced young people say, "I helped kids learn how to kill"; "I helped murder families in Colombia"; "I helped blow up buildings."
It's a slick dramatization of President Bush's meaningless assertion that "if you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America."
Apparently, in the world according to Bush and his drug czar, John Walters, the kid smoking a joint at a party is the moral equivalent of Osama Bin Laden or Mohamed Atta.
It's the single largest ad buy the federal government has ever made. The White House spent nearly $3.5 million to get these commercials on the Super Bowl — and that's $3.5 million spent not on drug treatment, but on demonizing America's young people. Our tax dollars at work.
It's one thing to drop an egg into a frying pan to demonstrate that drugs are bad for you, and quite another to link drug users to bloodthirsty murderers. These ads make it seem like the next logical step in the war on terrorism is dropping daisy cutter bombs on America's high schools and shipping teenage drug users off to Guantanamo Bay. With 54% of high school seniors admitting they've used illicit drugs, it's going to get awfully crowded.
The ads are also exercises in highly selective finger-pointing. We know, for instance, that Al Qaeda used tens of millions of dollars in profits from the diamond industry to fund operations. So why no commercial with a woman fingering the diamonds on her tennis bracelet admitting: "I helped kids learn how to kill"?
And, given the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers — and most of the detainees in Cuba — came from Saudi Arabia, why no taxpayer-funded ad showing a soccer mom in an SUV saying: "I helped blow up buildings"?
Simple. Linking diamonds or oil to terror doesn't fit the Bush agenda. It's hardly a coincidence that just one day after the Super Bowl ads aired, the White House released a foreign aid budget that escalates U.S. military assistance to Colombian troops battling drug traffickers.
At the end of the movie "Traffic," Michael Douglas' dispirited drug czar crystallizes the madness of the drug war: "If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy. And I don't know how you wage war on your own family."
Clearly, the Bush administration has no such misgivings.
The Nation
Tricky Dick II
by NATE BLAKESLEE
Having simmered on the back burner through the aftermath of September 11, Congress's effort to obtain records from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force has now reached the boiling point. The Enron collapse has only made Cheney dig in his heels even harder, such that the whole country is now wondering just what Ken Lay asked for--that is, recommended--at those meetings, and what Cheney delivered. But is it Enron's dealings with the task force Cheney is trying to hide, or Halliburton's? The huge Dallas-based oilfield services conglomerate, for which Cheney served as CEO from 1995 to July 2000, may yet become Cheney's own poison pretzel.
Cheney joined Halliburton just two and one-half years after leaving his post as Secretary of Defense under Bush I. Halliburton, principally through its construction subsidiary Brown & Root, had already begun reaping the gains from privatization initiatives pushed by Cheney during the Gulf War. As Robert Bryce reported in The Texas Observer, in 1992 the Pentagon paid Brown & Root for a study of how private companies could better be used to provide logistics support for US troops across the globe. Later that year the company won such a contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers. But the money didn't really start rolling in until Cheney joined Halliburton in 1995. At that time, Brown & Root was bringing in less than $350 million per year in Defense Department contracts. And according to the Baltimore Sun, by 1999, after four years with Cheney at the helm, that had grown to over $650 million. When Cheney left to join the Bush ticket in July 2000, Halliburton executives made sure he would stay their man with an eye-popping retirement package worth over $33 million.
Last December, the Pentagon awarded a nine year contract to Halliburton to build forward operating bases for troop deployments. It's a no-cap, cost-plus contract, with no estimate of its total worth given. But according to a report by the Institute for Southern Studies, Halliburton reported its revenue from base support services in the 1990s at roughly $2.5 billion.
We don't yet know if that gift, along with at least a quarter-million dollars donated to the Republican Party in the 2000 election cycle, earned Halliburton an audience with Cheney's energy task force, but we can take a pretty good guess at what they hope to get from their former CEO. Although there have been no accusations of Enronesqe machinations, Halliburton is having troubles of its own. Dresser Industries, a Halliburton subsidiary acquired while Cheney was CEO, is facing enormous exposure to asbestos litigation, so much so that Dresser dragged Halliburton's stock down over 70 percent in the last year. (Cheney himself got out while the getting was still good, selling his stock and options in summer 2000 for over $20 million.) Then, in mid-January, Halliburton's stock rebounded dramatically, apparently on speculation that the White House would announce some kind of relief plan for asbestos defendants. That has yet to happen, and former Senator John Ashcroft's asbestos industry bill was killed by Congress last year. But a more generic tort-reform initiative would not be surprising; Bush made restricting access to the courts a centerpiece of his tenure as Texas governor.
On the energy side, Halliburton execs may have wanted to discuss US sanctions policy with the Vice President. It's a sensitive topic for Cheney. While overseeing the Department of Defense, he helped enforce sanctions regimes against first Libya and then Iraq. Later, at Halliburton, he developed a more nuanced view of American foreign policy, and the company earned millions on contracts in both countries. Cheney argued in a 1998 speech that the United States had become sanctions-happy, and that it was very hard to find specific examples in which sanctions actually achieved a policy objective. That same year, Robert Bryce reported, Cheney lobbied Congress for an exemption from the Iran Libya Sanctions Act. In 1995, Brown & Root was fined $3.8 million, according to the Baltimore Sun, for using a foreign subsidiary to violate the Libya sanctions. The Financial Times has documented similar deals with Iraq, where Halliburton's oilfield services contracts obtained through foreign subsidiaries have made it the single biggest US contractor operating in Iraq (point No. 1 on Bush's Axis of Evil) since the sanctions began.
Brown & Root has long been a kingmaker in Texas politics. Their money put Lyndon Johnson on the path to the presidency, but only after LBJ steered enough government contracts to the firm to make the Brown brothers very rich men. Campaign contributions have to be reported now, and they aren't generally given in sacks of cash as they were in Texas in the 1940s. But the basic deal hasn't changed.
Tricky Dick II
by NATE BLAKESLEE
Having simmered on the back burner through the aftermath of September 11, Congress's effort to obtain records from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force has now reached the boiling point. The Enron collapse has only made Cheney dig in his heels even harder, such that the whole country is now wondering just what Ken Lay asked for--that is, recommended--at those meetings, and what Cheney delivered. But is it Enron's dealings with the task force Cheney is trying to hide, or Halliburton's? The huge Dallas-based oilfield services conglomerate, for which Cheney served as CEO from 1995 to July 2000, may yet become Cheney's own poison pretzel.
Cheney joined Halliburton just two and one-half years after leaving his post as Secretary of Defense under Bush I. Halliburton, principally through its construction subsidiary Brown & Root, had already begun reaping the gains from privatization initiatives pushed by Cheney during the Gulf War. As Robert Bryce reported in The Texas Observer, in 1992 the Pentagon paid Brown & Root for a study of how private companies could better be used to provide logistics support for US troops across the globe. Later that year the company won such a contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers. But the money didn't really start rolling in until Cheney joined Halliburton in 1995. At that time, Brown & Root was bringing in less than $350 million per year in Defense Department contracts. And according to the Baltimore Sun, by 1999, after four years with Cheney at the helm, that had grown to over $650 million. When Cheney left to join the Bush ticket in July 2000, Halliburton executives made sure he would stay their man with an eye-popping retirement package worth over $33 million.
Last December, the Pentagon awarded a nine year contract to Halliburton to build forward operating bases for troop deployments. It's a no-cap, cost-plus contract, with no estimate of its total worth given. But according to a report by the Institute for Southern Studies, Halliburton reported its revenue from base support services in the 1990s at roughly $2.5 billion.
We don't yet know if that gift, along with at least a quarter-million dollars donated to the Republican Party in the 2000 election cycle, earned Halliburton an audience with Cheney's energy task force, but we can take a pretty good guess at what they hope to get from their former CEO. Although there have been no accusations of Enronesqe machinations, Halliburton is having troubles of its own. Dresser Industries, a Halliburton subsidiary acquired while Cheney was CEO, is facing enormous exposure to asbestos litigation, so much so that Dresser dragged Halliburton's stock down over 70 percent in the last year. (Cheney himself got out while the getting was still good, selling his stock and options in summer 2000 for over $20 million.) Then, in mid-January, Halliburton's stock rebounded dramatically, apparently on speculation that the White House would announce some kind of relief plan for asbestos defendants. That has yet to happen, and former Senator John Ashcroft's asbestos industry bill was killed by Congress last year. But a more generic tort-reform initiative would not be surprising; Bush made restricting access to the courts a centerpiece of his tenure as Texas governor.
On the energy side, Halliburton execs may have wanted to discuss US sanctions policy with the Vice President. It's a sensitive topic for Cheney. While overseeing the Department of Defense, he helped enforce sanctions regimes against first Libya and then Iraq. Later, at Halliburton, he developed a more nuanced view of American foreign policy, and the company earned millions on contracts in both countries. Cheney argued in a 1998 speech that the United States had become sanctions-happy, and that it was very hard to find specific examples in which sanctions actually achieved a policy objective. That same year, Robert Bryce reported, Cheney lobbied Congress for an exemption from the Iran Libya Sanctions Act. In 1995, Brown & Root was fined $3.8 million, according to the Baltimore Sun, for using a foreign subsidiary to violate the Libya sanctions. The Financial Times has documented similar deals with Iraq, where Halliburton's oilfield services contracts obtained through foreign subsidiaries have made it the single biggest US contractor operating in Iraq (point No. 1 on Bush's Axis of Evil) since the sanctions began.
Brown & Root has long been a kingmaker in Texas politics. Their money put Lyndon Johnson on the path to the presidency, but only after LBJ steered enough government contracts to the firm to make the Brown brothers very rich men. Campaign contributions have to be reported now, and they aren't generally given in sacks of cash as they were in Texas in the 1940s. But the basic deal hasn't changed.
Wall Street entangled in Enron case
Congress, law enforcement question analysts' part in fiasco
Saturday, February 9, 2002
By MARCY GORDON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Powerful Wall Street players are being pulled into the congressional investigation of Enron's collapse -- analysts who recommended buying stock as the company foundered, investment firms that both financed Enron bond sales and invested in the company, and credit-rating agencies that didn't warn investors promptly.
As Congress and law enforcement agencies dissect the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, curtains are being lifted from financial institutions that operate away from public view.
One view of the accounting industry, as ink-stained wonks with green eyeshades, has been replaced by images of massive document shredding at Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditor, and by criticism of accountants for turning a blind eye to companies cooking the books.
Some lawmakers are warning that a crisis of confidence by ordinary investors in the nation's financial system is hammering the stock market, which had a terrible week as more revelations surfaced about the Enron disaster.
Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., whose House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating Enron, said the energy-trading company had promised bond-sale business to Merrill Lynch & Co. and First Union Corp. in exchange for their investments in some of Enron's questionable partnerships. Merrill Lynch, the nation's biggest brokerage firm, helped Enron raise nearly $400 million for one of the partnerships from pension funds and other big investors.
Lawmakers also are questioning the role of analysts, some of whom became celebrities and stars of financial television networks as the bull market of the past decade drew in millions of ordinary investors. The problem, as critics see it, is that financial analysts may give biased advice because they hold substantial positions in company stocks they recommend and their investment firms do lucrative financial work for the same companies.
"We can't afford the crisis of confidence the Enron cloud has cast upon the markets this week, with so many people from Main Street to Wall Street wondering how many Enrons are out there," Rep. Richard Baker, chairman of a House Financial Services subcommittee that also is delving into the debacle, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
The market recovered somewhat yesterday, with the Dow Jones industrials average gaining more than 100 points after dropping nearly 300 over the previous five sessions.
"There was so much disconnect" between analysts' touting Enron stock and the reality of the company's condition, Baker said, "that that in itself is enough to warrant a thorough investigation."
Did analysts who kept issuing "strong buy" recommendations for Enron stock know what they were doing? Baker and other lawmakers are asking. Did they have a conflict of interest because the Wall Street investment firms they work for performed services for Enron?
Aiming to stanch a decline in public confidence in analysts, the New York Stock Exchange and the brokerage industry's self-policing arm, the National Association of Securities Dealers, proposed rules Thursday governing the way investment firms manage and disclose potential conflicts of interest. They were welcomed by lawmakers and federal securities regulators who must approve them.
Countless investors nationwide, individuals with small stakes as well as big state pension funds, were burned by the meltdown of Enron stock last fall. The stock, once a darling of Wall Street, traded at around $83 a year ago but plunged to less than a dollar a share in late November as the Houston-based company spiraled toward bankruptcy on Dec. 2.
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating Enron and the role played by the auditors at Arthur Andersen.
In other Enron-related developments:
Former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay could testify at a Senate hearing Tuesday, a week after pulling out of two scheduled appearances when some in Congress suggested he had engaged in criminal activity. Lay's spokeswoman said he hadn't decided what to do about his scheduled testimony, but Sen. Byron Dorgan sounded optimistic that Lay would answer questions.
Lay has sold his stake in the brand-new NFL team the Houston Texans.
UBS Warburg completed its deal to resurrect Enron's trading business under the Swiss investment bank's control. The new business, UBS Warburg Energy, will begin trading this month.
A committee of Enron's creditors asked a bankruptcy judge to approve their request for information about more than 50 of Enron's partnerships.
Congress, law enforcement question analysts' part in fiasco
Saturday, February 9, 2002
By MARCY GORDON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Powerful Wall Street players are being pulled into the congressional investigation of Enron's collapse -- analysts who recommended buying stock as the company foundered, investment firms that both financed Enron bond sales and invested in the company, and credit-rating agencies that didn't warn investors promptly.
As Congress and law enforcement agencies dissect the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, curtains are being lifted from financial institutions that operate away from public view.
One view of the accounting industry, as ink-stained wonks with green eyeshades, has been replaced by images of massive document shredding at Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditor, and by criticism of accountants for turning a blind eye to companies cooking the books.
Some lawmakers are warning that a crisis of confidence by ordinary investors in the nation's financial system is hammering the stock market, which had a terrible week as more revelations surfaced about the Enron disaster.
Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., whose House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating Enron, said the energy-trading company had promised bond-sale business to Merrill Lynch & Co. and First Union Corp. in exchange for their investments in some of Enron's questionable partnerships. Merrill Lynch, the nation's biggest brokerage firm, helped Enron raise nearly $400 million for one of the partnerships from pension funds and other big investors.
Lawmakers also are questioning the role of analysts, some of whom became celebrities and stars of financial television networks as the bull market of the past decade drew in millions of ordinary investors. The problem, as critics see it, is that financial analysts may give biased advice because they hold substantial positions in company stocks they recommend and their investment firms do lucrative financial work for the same companies.
"We can't afford the crisis of confidence the Enron cloud has cast upon the markets this week, with so many people from Main Street to Wall Street wondering how many Enrons are out there," Rep. Richard Baker, chairman of a House Financial Services subcommittee that also is delving into the debacle, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
The market recovered somewhat yesterday, with the Dow Jones industrials average gaining more than 100 points after dropping nearly 300 over the previous five sessions.
"There was so much disconnect" between analysts' touting Enron stock and the reality of the company's condition, Baker said, "that that in itself is enough to warrant a thorough investigation."
Did analysts who kept issuing "strong buy" recommendations for Enron stock know what they were doing? Baker and other lawmakers are asking. Did they have a conflict of interest because the Wall Street investment firms they work for performed services for Enron?
Aiming to stanch a decline in public confidence in analysts, the New York Stock Exchange and the brokerage industry's self-policing arm, the National Association of Securities Dealers, proposed rules Thursday governing the way investment firms manage and disclose potential conflicts of interest. They were welcomed by lawmakers and federal securities regulators who must approve them.
Countless investors nationwide, individuals with small stakes as well as big state pension funds, were burned by the meltdown of Enron stock last fall. The stock, once a darling of Wall Street, traded at around $83 a year ago but plunged to less than a dollar a share in late November as the Houston-based company spiraled toward bankruptcy on Dec. 2.
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating Enron and the role played by the auditors at Arthur Andersen.
In other Enron-related developments:
Former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay could testify at a Senate hearing Tuesday, a week after pulling out of two scheduled appearances when some in Congress suggested he had engaged in criminal activity. Lay's spokeswoman said he hadn't decided what to do about his scheduled testimony, but Sen. Byron Dorgan sounded optimistic that Lay would answer questions.
Lay has sold his stake in the brand-new NFL team the Houston Texans.
UBS Warburg completed its deal to resurrect Enron's trading business under the Swiss investment bank's control. The new business, UBS Warburg Energy, will begin trading this month.
A committee of Enron's creditors asked a bankruptcy judge to approve their request for information about more than 50 of Enron's partnerships.
ZNET
Enrons Operations In Argentina
by Andy Pollack
February 07, 2002
Do a quick search of the Web on the terms Enron and Argentina and you mostly get either references comparing the two, or a recent satire in which Kenneth Lay claims immunity by claiming Enron IS Argentina. You might even stumble on the Mother Jones article detailing Dubya's lobbying of the Argentinian government on behalf of Enron when he was governor of Texas.
Yesterday in New York anti-WEF protesters made the link between the plight of Enron's workers and those in Argentina. But I don't know if even these protestors realize how closely these two issues are linked.
It turns out (not surprisingly given the extent of Enron's global interests) that Enron is very deeply involved in Argentina. Its holdings there are in Transportadora de Gas del Sur (TGS), whose website describes the company as “the leading gas transportation company in Argentina, operating the most extensive gas pipeline system in the country and in Latin America.” Enron's own website says “The company serves 4.3 million customers, 3.1 million of which reside in the greater Buenos Aires area.”
To understand the significance of these figures its worth noting that in 1998, 48% of energy use in Argentina came from natural gas (as quoted in a report posted by the Brazilian Embassy in DC, which tracks such things because of the international pipelines being laid across countries in the region.)
And here's one from MSN's Moneycentral site: "Don't cry for Transportadora de Gas del Sur (TGS), Argentina. The company delivers more than 60% of natural gas used in Argentina through the nation's largest pipeline system (4,300 miles). Formerly state-run, TGS holds exclusive license (until 2027) to transport gas from southern and western Argentine sources to distributors nearby and in the Buenos Aires metro area. TGS's gas services include treatment, processing, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) marketing; the company plans to export energy to neighboring countries. It is also building a fiber-optic network in Argentina. The firm is 70%-owned by Compañía de Inversiones de Energía, which is jointly controlled by Perez Companc and US energy giant Enron."
That’s right, Enron. TGS’s own website spells this out in more detail, where it says its controlling shareholder is Compañía de Inversiones de Energía S.A. (CIESA), "which together with Pecom Energía group and Enron Corp, hold approximately 70% of the Company’s common stock. The remaining 30% ownership in the Company is currently held by local and foreign investors.”
And who is CIESA? Again, from TGS: “CIESA is owned 50% by Pecom Energía (whose controlling shareholder is the above-mentioned Perez Companc) and 50% by subsidiaries of Enron. CIESA has the ability to direct the management of the Company, to control the election of the majority of the Board of Directors, to determine the dividend policy and other policies of the Company and to determine the outcome of any matter put to a vote of the shareholders of the Company."
TGS arose through a privatization process of the kind which Enron has pushed around the globe. (For a good summary of Enron's international crimes see "Enron: The Global Gospel of Gas", at www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/motherlode/enron.html). " We started our operations in late 1992, as a result of the privatization of Gas del Estado S.E. (“GdE”), the former state-owned company."
And TGS has a significant investment in telecommunications through its Telcosur subsidiary, through which it is "positioning ourselves as an independent carrier of carriers and also offering services to large companies within our area of influence."
"Telcosur," says TGS, "was born at the end of 1998 in order to take advantage of TGS’s existing telecommunications assets and infrastructure, as well as the upcoming deregulation of the telecommunications market, and the experience of power companies from other countries that were successful in the telecommunications business." The "experienced" power companies, of course, means Enron. And their success in that business was, as the Wall Street Journal recently documented, a bust – and not just because of fraud, but because of the glut in fiber-optic capacity (that is, a mismatch in supply and demand which tends under capitalism to lead to precisely the kind of fraud Enron specialized in. In another article I detail how Enron's trading model could, under a more rational system, actually be used for computerized planning, but that's another story.)
But despite Enron's failures in the telecom field elsewhere, Telcosur is following it's "experience" in avoiding direct sales in favor of trading access to commodities, services, and financial instruments: "An important difference in connection with other telecommunication operators is its independence, since it serves the wholesaling market and therefore does not compete with its customers in retail operations: switching, frame-relay, telephone services, among others." It provides "value added services; in other words, [it is] a carrier of telephone carriers and of large corporate users."
Telcosur is also "installing a high-capacity fiber optic network that will link Buenos Aires, Bahía Blanca and Neuquén, the most active routes in its service area."
Enron is currently in the process of divesting various subsidiaries around the globe to raise cash, and at least one potential buyer for its Argentina subsidiary has been mentioned. That buyer is Sempra Energy International, which owns a 43-percent interest in two Argentine natural gas utility holding companies, Sodigas Pampeana, S.A., and Sodigas Sur, S.A., and which "serve 1.3 million customers in central and southern Argentina, delivering approximately one-third of all the natural gas distributed in the country." Sempra, a big operator in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, also owns Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric, and has just bought Enron’s London energy trading operations. It's not clear if the deal will go through.
In the meantime workers in Argentina are demanding the renationalization of firms in a variety of sectors. Today (February 5th) Argentinians are marching on the offices of Repsol to demand jobs. Repsol, according to the Partido Obrero, "is the 7th largest [oil company] in the world, which has reaped fabulous profits from privatization, and which is responsible for widespread layoffs, pay cuts and refinery closings."
If the mobilizations in Argentina continue to deepen we can expect that calls for renationalization – this time under workers control – of the entire energy sector will deepen. And if Enron's Argentinian subsidiaries are targeted that might even encourage some in the US to think about similar solutions here.
Enrons Operations In Argentina
by Andy Pollack
February 07, 2002
Do a quick search of the Web on the terms Enron and Argentina and you mostly get either references comparing the two, or a recent satire in which Kenneth Lay claims immunity by claiming Enron IS Argentina. You might even stumble on the Mother Jones article detailing Dubya's lobbying of the Argentinian government on behalf of Enron when he was governor of Texas.
Yesterday in New York anti-WEF protesters made the link between the plight of Enron's workers and those in Argentina. But I don't know if even these protestors realize how closely these two issues are linked.
It turns out (not surprisingly given the extent of Enron's global interests) that Enron is very deeply involved in Argentina. Its holdings there are in Transportadora de Gas del Sur (TGS), whose website describes the company as “the leading gas transportation company in Argentina, operating the most extensive gas pipeline system in the country and in Latin America.” Enron's own website says “The company serves 4.3 million customers, 3.1 million of which reside in the greater Buenos Aires area.”
To understand the significance of these figures its worth noting that in 1998, 48% of energy use in Argentina came from natural gas (as quoted in a report posted by the Brazilian Embassy in DC, which tracks such things because of the international pipelines being laid across countries in the region.)
And here's one from MSN's Moneycentral site: "Don't cry for Transportadora de Gas del Sur (TGS), Argentina. The company delivers more than 60% of natural gas used in Argentina through the nation's largest pipeline system (4,300 miles). Formerly state-run, TGS holds exclusive license (until 2027) to transport gas from southern and western Argentine sources to distributors nearby and in the Buenos Aires metro area. TGS's gas services include treatment, processing, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) marketing; the company plans to export energy to neighboring countries. It is also building a fiber-optic network in Argentina. The firm is 70%-owned by Compañía de Inversiones de Energía, which is jointly controlled by Perez Companc and US energy giant Enron."
That’s right, Enron. TGS’s own website spells this out in more detail, where it says its controlling shareholder is Compañía de Inversiones de Energía S.A. (CIESA), "which together with Pecom Energía group and Enron Corp, hold approximately 70% of the Company’s common stock. The remaining 30% ownership in the Company is currently held by local and foreign investors.”
And who is CIESA? Again, from TGS: “CIESA is owned 50% by Pecom Energía (whose controlling shareholder is the above-mentioned Perez Companc) and 50% by subsidiaries of Enron. CIESA has the ability to direct the management of the Company, to control the election of the majority of the Board of Directors, to determine the dividend policy and other policies of the Company and to determine the outcome of any matter put to a vote of the shareholders of the Company."
TGS arose through a privatization process of the kind which Enron has pushed around the globe. (For a good summary of Enron's international crimes see "Enron: The Global Gospel of Gas", at www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/motherlode/enron.html). " We started our operations in late 1992, as a result of the privatization of Gas del Estado S.E. (“GdE”), the former state-owned company."
And TGS has a significant investment in telecommunications through its Telcosur subsidiary, through which it is "positioning ourselves as an independent carrier of carriers and also offering services to large companies within our area of influence."
"Telcosur," says TGS, "was born at the end of 1998 in order to take advantage of TGS’s existing telecommunications assets and infrastructure, as well as the upcoming deregulation of the telecommunications market, and the experience of power companies from other countries that were successful in the telecommunications business." The "experienced" power companies, of course, means Enron. And their success in that business was, as the Wall Street Journal recently documented, a bust – and not just because of fraud, but because of the glut in fiber-optic capacity (that is, a mismatch in supply and demand which tends under capitalism to lead to precisely the kind of fraud Enron specialized in. In another article I detail how Enron's trading model could, under a more rational system, actually be used for computerized planning, but that's another story.)
But despite Enron's failures in the telecom field elsewhere, Telcosur is following it's "experience" in avoiding direct sales in favor of trading access to commodities, services, and financial instruments: "An important difference in connection with other telecommunication operators is its independence, since it serves the wholesaling market and therefore does not compete with its customers in retail operations: switching, frame-relay, telephone services, among others." It provides "value added services; in other words, [it is] a carrier of telephone carriers and of large corporate users."
Telcosur is also "installing a high-capacity fiber optic network that will link Buenos Aires, Bahía Blanca and Neuquén, the most active routes in its service area."
Enron is currently in the process of divesting various subsidiaries around the globe to raise cash, and at least one potential buyer for its Argentina subsidiary has been mentioned. That buyer is Sempra Energy International, which owns a 43-percent interest in two Argentine natural gas utility holding companies, Sodigas Pampeana, S.A., and Sodigas Sur, S.A., and which "serve 1.3 million customers in central and southern Argentina, delivering approximately one-third of all the natural gas distributed in the country." Sempra, a big operator in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, also owns Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric, and has just bought Enron’s London energy trading operations. It's not clear if the deal will go through.
In the meantime workers in Argentina are demanding the renationalization of firms in a variety of sectors. Today (February 5th) Argentinians are marching on the offices of Repsol to demand jobs. Repsol, according to the Partido Obrero, "is the 7th largest [oil company] in the world, which has reaped fabulous profits from privatization, and which is responsible for widespread layoffs, pay cuts and refinery closings."
If the mobilizations in Argentina continue to deepen we can expect that calls for renationalization – this time under workers control – of the entire energy sector will deepen. And if Enron's Argentinian subsidiaries are targeted that might even encourage some in the US to think about similar solutions here.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Reader's Soapbox: Now a word from the disapproving 15 percent
Saturday, February 9, 2002
DAVID P. BARASH
GUEST COLUMNIST
Put me down as one of the DFP, the Disapproving Fifteen Percent. I belong to the too-silent minority who disapprove of George W. Bush's performance as president. We hear a lot these days about Bush's "astronomic," "sky-high" and "unprecedented" approval ratings. It leaves people such as myself feeling a bit like the little boy observing a certain emperor on parade, watching while 85 percent of the population admire his majesty's new clothes. But for us, the emperor is naked.
For those of us in the DFP, the president who was intellectually inadequate and politically illegitimate on Sept. 10 was no less inadequate and illegitimate on Sept. 12.
His policies, somewhere between regrettable and despicable before the terrorist attacks, haven't improved one iota, mostly because they haven't changed.
I understand that many Americans, traumatized by the events of Sept. 11, have wanted (and needed) to see Bush as suddenly heroic and competent. Yet instead of casting him in a new and favorable light, the president's refusal to recognize the new realities that have been italicized by Sept. 11 has gone a long way toward italicizing his failures in office.
For example: Bush's insistence on a Big Oil-friendly energy policy, downright pig-headed and foolish before the terrorist attacks, is even more outmoded and inappropriate in their aftermath. Yet the administration remains actually hostile to energy conservation.
Bush's insistence on going it alone in the international sphere, aggravating and dangerous before the terrorist attacks, shows no sign of having been rethought.
Instead, Bush remains determined to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, has denounced the Kyoto Accords and gives no indication of having learned to ameliorate his unilateralism.
Following Sept. 11 and its recessionary effect on an already limping economy, the administration would also have been well-advised to revise its regressive tax policy, which, in addition to its manifest unfairness, also greatly worsened the budgetary deficit. But the administration has done nothing of the sort.
I grant that U.S. military actions in Afghanistan have been successful thus far and skillfully accomplished. But first it should be noted that they represent a triumph of the U.S. uniformed military services and are only dimly a function of presidential leadership. Furthermore, these have all been tactical successes, based on such battlefield techniques as pilotless drones, accurate bombing, reliance on indigenous opposition forces, etc.
There has been essentially no sign of genuine strategy in our supposed "war" on terrorism, whether political, economic, social or even military.
Just a critical, disapproving voice in the wilderness? Perhaps, at present. But something tells me that even as the applause from the State of the Union address begins to fade, the DFP will begin to grow, as the emperor's nakedness becomes increasingly obvious.
© 1998-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Reader's Soapbox: Now a word from the disapproving 15 percent
Saturday, February 9, 2002
DAVID P. BARASH
GUEST COLUMNIST
Put me down as one of the DFP, the Disapproving Fifteen Percent. I belong to the too-silent minority who disapprove of George W. Bush's performance as president. We hear a lot these days about Bush's "astronomic," "sky-high" and "unprecedented" approval ratings. It leaves people such as myself feeling a bit like the little boy observing a certain emperor on parade, watching while 85 percent of the population admire his majesty's new clothes. But for us, the emperor is naked.
For those of us in the DFP, the president who was intellectually inadequate and politically illegitimate on Sept. 10 was no less inadequate and illegitimate on Sept. 12.
His policies, somewhere between regrettable and despicable before the terrorist attacks, haven't improved one iota, mostly because they haven't changed.
I understand that many Americans, traumatized by the events of Sept. 11, have wanted (and needed) to see Bush as suddenly heroic and competent. Yet instead of casting him in a new and favorable light, the president's refusal to recognize the new realities that have been italicized by Sept. 11 has gone a long way toward italicizing his failures in office.
For example: Bush's insistence on a Big Oil-friendly energy policy, downright pig-headed and foolish before the terrorist attacks, is even more outmoded and inappropriate in their aftermath. Yet the administration remains actually hostile to energy conservation.
Bush's insistence on going it alone in the international sphere, aggravating and dangerous before the terrorist attacks, shows no sign of having been rethought.
Instead, Bush remains determined to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, has denounced the Kyoto Accords and gives no indication of having learned to ameliorate his unilateralism.
Following Sept. 11 and its recessionary effect on an already limping economy, the administration would also have been well-advised to revise its regressive tax policy, which, in addition to its manifest unfairness, also greatly worsened the budgetary deficit. But the administration has done nothing of the sort.
I grant that U.S. military actions in Afghanistan have been successful thus far and skillfully accomplished. But first it should be noted that they represent a triumph of the U.S. uniformed military services and are only dimly a function of presidential leadership. Furthermore, these have all been tactical successes, based on such battlefield techniques as pilotless drones, accurate bombing, reliance on indigenous opposition forces, etc.
There has been essentially no sign of genuine strategy in our supposed "war" on terrorism, whether political, economic, social or even military.
Just a critical, disapproving voice in the wilderness? Perhaps, at present. But something tells me that even as the applause from the State of the Union address begins to fade, the DFP will begin to grow, as the emperor's nakedness becomes increasingly obvious.
© 1998-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. Feb 9, 02
PYONGYANG WATCH
Why Bush is scarier than Kim Jong-il By Aidan Foster-Carter
Axis of evil. Three little words; just 10 letters. But they certainly pack a punch. At the very least, George Bush's State of the Union speech on January 29 has heaved a mighty rock into what were already hardly calm waters. Ever since, agitated ripples have spread back and forth. Perhaps, in time, they'll die down. Then again, maybe they won't. Words are just words - but they hint at actions to come. Or are meant to.
Axis of evil. Why did he say this, now? What can it mean? Is it true? And is it helpful? Obviously, my main concern is with North Korea. But like many, I'm puzzled that Iran was named - after its reformers' efforts since September 11 to reach out to the US. Such naming and shaming can hardly help the moderates in Tehran in their ongoing power struggle with the reactionary and viscerally anti-American mullahs. By the same token, naming North Korea is a setback for the sensible party in Pyongyang (whose heads are rarely above the parapet anyhow) - and one up for hawks in the Korean People's Army, who can simply say "Told you so."
Axis. What axis? Axis means alliance. But Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are no such thing. Iraq and Iran are enemies who fought a devastating war. North Korea sided with Iran, to which it sells missiles - and as a result fell out badly with Saddam Hussein. (Let's not forget also that the US and most of the West made the opposite choice; they - we - then backed and armed Saddam.) In a further anti-Iraqi gesture, last year Pyongyang opened ties with Kuwait. Do they not notice these things in Washington, or do they just not care? Not all rogue states are alike, and they're not all on the same side. That's elementary, and important.
Evil. As regular readers of this column know, I have no quarrel with that word as a description of Kim Jong-il's regime. The sky is blue, North Korea is evil; so what else is new? But even in my position as a humble hack, I have choices to make: what to write about, what to say, when to say it, how to put it, and so on. So if I bang on about the DPRK's iniquities, it's usually been to counter the three monkeys effect - see, hear, speak no evil - which has been a regrettable by-product of Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine" policy.
But I'm not president of the world's sole superpower. George W Bush's choices - or those who think for him - on what and when and how to speak out matter infinitely more. With al-Qaeda still enemy number one and far from finished, and after months of carefully building a coalition against it, why rock the boat and lose that focus by suddenly growling at three quite different states? In real life, unlike Bruce Lee movies, you don't tackle all comers simultaneously. And even Bruce doesn't yell out to an offstage trio to watch out, 'cuz he'll be comin' after them too. Sensible strategists pick off their foes carefully, one at a time.
Speaking of timing, another baffling thing is that Bush loosed off this volley just three weeks before he's due to visit China, Japan and South Korea. That's one ruined trip. China is fed up with North Korea too - aren't we all? - but rightly fears this diatribe will merely reinforce Pyongyang's paranoia and paint it even more into a corner. In Seoul, the worry is the same. Kim Dae-jung blames Bush (though not publicly) for torpedoing "Sunshine". Even Southern conservatives, who a year from now may well be the government, though they demand more reciprocity from the North, fear the US ratcheting up tension on the peninsula. All this will stoke anti-Americanism in the ROK, and may push it closer to China. Is that in US interests?
And if Bush hopes at least Japan is onside, he's in for a shock. As our last column recounted, Tokyo is acting tougher: sinking a DPRK spyboat and stanching yen flows to Pyongyang. Yet Prime Minister Junichio Koizumi's latest big speech to the Diet pledged to work hard to re-open dialogue. The US too, in theory, is still open to talks with North Korea - but branding them an evil axis will hardly bring them scurrying to the table.
As Churchill said, jaw-jaw is better than war-war. If Bush is bothered by (inter alia) missile sales to the Middle East - which are quite legal, as the DPRK is not a signatory to the Missile Technology Control Regime - then why didn't he continue his predecessor's negotiations to curb these? On February 3, talking at the World Economic Forum, Bill Clinton confirmed how close he'd come to a missile deal in his last weeks in office. He would have gone to Pyongyang to sign it, but stayed home to work on the umpteenth Israel-Palestine peace initiative - which fell apart. "I figure I left the next administration with a big foreign policy win" on North Korea, he concluded. He forbore to add: "And then Bush blew it."
Republicans criticize Clinton's outline missile deal as inadequate - failing to defang North Korea, and at a steep price in moral hazard - just as its precedent, the 1994 Agreed Framework, defused but did not fully eliminate the DPRK nuclear threat. But in an imperfect world there are no ideal solutions, only better and worse. Before Bill Clinton opted for engagement, he tried confrontation - which in June 1994 came close to war, until Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang and saved the day. General Gary Luck, US commander in Korea, later told a Senate committee that a new Korean war would kill a million people, including 80-100,000 Americans, and cause economic losses of a trillion dollars - including over US$100 billion to the US. Is that really a better idea? If he thinks so, then frankly Bush scares me more than Kim Jong-il. The rhetoric may play well in Texas, but in Korea it raises real risk. Let's pray it's just loose talk, and Dubya wises up.
((c)2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
PYONGYANG WATCH
Why Bush is scarier than Kim Jong-il By Aidan Foster-Carter
Axis of evil. Three little words; just 10 letters. But they certainly pack a punch. At the very least, George Bush's State of the Union speech on January 29 has heaved a mighty rock into what were already hardly calm waters. Ever since, agitated ripples have spread back and forth. Perhaps, in time, they'll die down. Then again, maybe they won't. Words are just words - but they hint at actions to come. Or are meant to.
Axis of evil. Why did he say this, now? What can it mean? Is it true? And is it helpful? Obviously, my main concern is with North Korea. But like many, I'm puzzled that Iran was named - after its reformers' efforts since September 11 to reach out to the US. Such naming and shaming can hardly help the moderates in Tehran in their ongoing power struggle with the reactionary and viscerally anti-American mullahs. By the same token, naming North Korea is a setback for the sensible party in Pyongyang (whose heads are rarely above the parapet anyhow) - and one up for hawks in the Korean People's Army, who can simply say "Told you so."
Axis. What axis? Axis means alliance. But Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are no such thing. Iraq and Iran are enemies who fought a devastating war. North Korea sided with Iran, to which it sells missiles - and as a result fell out badly with Saddam Hussein. (Let's not forget also that the US and most of the West made the opposite choice; they - we - then backed and armed Saddam.) In a further anti-Iraqi gesture, last year Pyongyang opened ties with Kuwait. Do they not notice these things in Washington, or do they just not care? Not all rogue states are alike, and they're not all on the same side. That's elementary, and important.
Evil. As regular readers of this column know, I have no quarrel with that word as a description of Kim Jong-il's regime. The sky is blue, North Korea is evil; so what else is new? But even in my position as a humble hack, I have choices to make: what to write about, what to say, when to say it, how to put it, and so on. So if I bang on about the DPRK's iniquities, it's usually been to counter the three monkeys effect - see, hear, speak no evil - which has been a regrettable by-product of Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine" policy.
But I'm not president of the world's sole superpower. George W Bush's choices - or those who think for him - on what and when and how to speak out matter infinitely more. With al-Qaeda still enemy number one and far from finished, and after months of carefully building a coalition against it, why rock the boat and lose that focus by suddenly growling at three quite different states? In real life, unlike Bruce Lee movies, you don't tackle all comers simultaneously. And even Bruce doesn't yell out to an offstage trio to watch out, 'cuz he'll be comin' after them too. Sensible strategists pick off their foes carefully, one at a time.
Speaking of timing, another baffling thing is that Bush loosed off this volley just three weeks before he's due to visit China, Japan and South Korea. That's one ruined trip. China is fed up with North Korea too - aren't we all? - but rightly fears this diatribe will merely reinforce Pyongyang's paranoia and paint it even more into a corner. In Seoul, the worry is the same. Kim Dae-jung blames Bush (though not publicly) for torpedoing "Sunshine". Even Southern conservatives, who a year from now may well be the government, though they demand more reciprocity from the North, fear the US ratcheting up tension on the peninsula. All this will stoke anti-Americanism in the ROK, and may push it closer to China. Is that in US interests?
And if Bush hopes at least Japan is onside, he's in for a shock. As our last column recounted, Tokyo is acting tougher: sinking a DPRK spyboat and stanching yen flows to Pyongyang. Yet Prime Minister Junichio Koizumi's latest big speech to the Diet pledged to work hard to re-open dialogue. The US too, in theory, is still open to talks with North Korea - but branding them an evil axis will hardly bring them scurrying to the table.
As Churchill said, jaw-jaw is better than war-war. If Bush is bothered by (inter alia) missile sales to the Middle East - which are quite legal, as the DPRK is not a signatory to the Missile Technology Control Regime - then why didn't he continue his predecessor's negotiations to curb these? On February 3, talking at the World Economic Forum, Bill Clinton confirmed how close he'd come to a missile deal in his last weeks in office. He would have gone to Pyongyang to sign it, but stayed home to work on the umpteenth Israel-Palestine peace initiative - which fell apart. "I figure I left the next administration with a big foreign policy win" on North Korea, he concluded. He forbore to add: "And then Bush blew it."
Republicans criticize Clinton's outline missile deal as inadequate - failing to defang North Korea, and at a steep price in moral hazard - just as its precedent, the 1994 Agreed Framework, defused but did not fully eliminate the DPRK nuclear threat. But in an imperfect world there are no ideal solutions, only better and worse. Before Bill Clinton opted for engagement, he tried confrontation - which in June 1994 came close to war, until Jimmy Carter went to Pyongyang and saved the day. General Gary Luck, US commander in Korea, later told a Senate committee that a new Korean war would kill a million people, including 80-100,000 Americans, and cause economic losses of a trillion dollars - including over US$100 billion to the US. Is that really a better idea? If he thinks so, then frankly Bush scares me more than Kim Jong-il. The rhetoric may play well in Texas, but in Korea it raises real risk. Let's pray it's just loose talk, and Dubya wises up.
((c)2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
February 9, 2002
Time for a Special Counsel
By ERNEST F. HOLLINGS
ASHINGTON -- This week, when Kenneth Lay, former Enron chairman and George W. Bush's largest campaign contributor, failed to show up to testify before Congress, I became convinced that it is time to appoint a special counsel to investigate Enron. We need to name a special counsel, rather than relying on the Justice Department, because conflicts of interest abound in this case, particularly at the Justice Department. Federal law allows the attorney general to appoint such a counsel when the Justice Department's involvement would present a conflict of interest.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Enron case because he had taken $57,000 from Enron in his failed bid for the Senate in 2000. His chief of staff also recused himself, since he was Mr. Ashcroft's 2000 campaign manager. That leaves Larry Thompson, deputy attorney general, to oversee the case — or to appoint a special counsel.
While Mr. Thompson is a capable attorney, his former law firm has represented both Enron and Arthur Andersen, giving a taint of a conflict of interest. Moreover, Mr. Thompson may already be the busiest man in Washington because he is overseeing the Justice Department's counterterrorism activities.
A special counsel can also be appointed if there are "extraordinary circumstances" that would cause the appointment to be in the public's interest. What could be more extraordinary than the largest bankruptcy in American history? When was the last time a corporate collapse had Wall Street so jittery, with investors questioning the accounting practices of every company and so many ripples spreading out through the economy?
I also find it to be "extraordinary circumstances" when a top executive commits suicide, voluminous documents are shredded and witness after witness takes the Fifth Amendment. And in my 35 years in the Senate, I have never witnessed a corporation so extraordinarily committed to buying government. In the last decade, Enron gave campaign contributions to 186 House members and 71 senators, including $3,500 to me.
In the 2000 election, Mr. Lay and his employees, as well as Enron and its political action committee, contributed some $700,000 to Mr. Bush and the Republican party. There was money for the party convention, the recount of votes in Florida, the Bush inaugural. And Enron airplanes for the campaign.
The Bush administration says it did nothing for Mr. Lay this fall when he sought its help. I believe this. But what about help given before? The administration has provided jobs for a stable of Enron alumni and friends. Thomas White, a former vice chairman of an Enron subsidiary, became the secretary of the Army and quickly moved to turn the military's energy needs over to private hands, like those of his former employer.
Patrick Wood III abruptly replaced Curtis Hebert as head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Mr. Hebert hadn't agreed with Mr. Lay on electricity deregulation. The trade representative, Robert Zoellick, had served on an Enron advisory board. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham took $13,500 from Enron as a senator. I could recite many more connections.
Mr. Thompson, who is now in charge, ought to pick someone with the credibility of an Archibald Cox, who developed a sterling reputation with the public for his objectivity during the Watergate investigation. If someone of this ilk finds no wrongdoing, people would have confidence that the investigation was done right.
In addition, the Senate should have one committee investigating Enron, not six. Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, and I have asked the Senate leadership to establish a bipartisan select committee to address the policy implications of Enron's collapse. The policy concerns are vast: consumer fraud, electricity deregulation, employee pension funds, Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, auditing and accounting standards, tax compliance and shareholder rights.
Through a special counsel and a select committee, the government will ensure a thorough investigation without a taint of conflict. Only then will the American public know the Enron problem and its associated consequences are not swept under the rug.
Ernest F. Hollings, a senator from South Carolina, is chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Time for a Special Counsel
By ERNEST F. HOLLINGS
ASHINGTON -- This week, when Kenneth Lay, former Enron chairman and George W. Bush's largest campaign contributor, failed to show up to testify before Congress, I became convinced that it is time to appoint a special counsel to investigate Enron. We need to name a special counsel, rather than relying on the Justice Department, because conflicts of interest abound in this case, particularly at the Justice Department. Federal law allows the attorney general to appoint such a counsel when the Justice Department's involvement would present a conflict of interest.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Enron case because he had taken $57,000 from Enron in his failed bid for the Senate in 2000. His chief of staff also recused himself, since he was Mr. Ashcroft's 2000 campaign manager. That leaves Larry Thompson, deputy attorney general, to oversee the case — or to appoint a special counsel.
While Mr. Thompson is a capable attorney, his former law firm has represented both Enron and Arthur Andersen, giving a taint of a conflict of interest. Moreover, Mr. Thompson may already be the busiest man in Washington because he is overseeing the Justice Department's counterterrorism activities.
A special counsel can also be appointed if there are "extraordinary circumstances" that would cause the appointment to be in the public's interest. What could be more extraordinary than the largest bankruptcy in American history? When was the last time a corporate collapse had Wall Street so jittery, with investors questioning the accounting practices of every company and so many ripples spreading out through the economy?
I also find it to be "extraordinary circumstances" when a top executive commits suicide, voluminous documents are shredded and witness after witness takes the Fifth Amendment. And in my 35 years in the Senate, I have never witnessed a corporation so extraordinarily committed to buying government. In the last decade, Enron gave campaign contributions to 186 House members and 71 senators, including $3,500 to me.
In the 2000 election, Mr. Lay and his employees, as well as Enron and its political action committee, contributed some $700,000 to Mr. Bush and the Republican party. There was money for the party convention, the recount of votes in Florida, the Bush inaugural. And Enron airplanes for the campaign.
The Bush administration says it did nothing for Mr. Lay this fall when he sought its help. I believe this. But what about help given before? The administration has provided jobs for a stable of Enron alumni and friends. Thomas White, a former vice chairman of an Enron subsidiary, became the secretary of the Army and quickly moved to turn the military's energy needs over to private hands, like those of his former employer.
Patrick Wood III abruptly replaced Curtis Hebert as head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Mr. Hebert hadn't agreed with Mr. Lay on electricity deregulation. The trade representative, Robert Zoellick, had served on an Enron advisory board. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham took $13,500 from Enron as a senator. I could recite many more connections.
Mr. Thompson, who is now in charge, ought to pick someone with the credibility of an Archibald Cox, who developed a sterling reputation with the public for his objectivity during the Watergate investigation. If someone of this ilk finds no wrongdoing, people would have confidence that the investigation was done right.
In addition, the Senate should have one committee investigating Enron, not six. Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, and I have asked the Senate leadership to establish a bipartisan select committee to address the policy implications of Enron's collapse. The policy concerns are vast: consumer fraud, electricity deregulation, employee pension funds, Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, auditing and accounting standards, tax compliance and shareholder rights.
Through a special counsel and a select committee, the government will ensure a thorough investigation without a taint of conflict. Only then will the American public know the Enron problem and its associated consequences are not swept under the rug.
Ernest F. Hollings, a senator from South Carolina, is chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
UN defies Bush's characterization of Iran
UNITED NATIONS - Iran, a country maligned by the United States, remains a key player in sustaining peace and stability in Kabul, the UN's highest-ranking official in Afghanistan said on Wednesday. "Iran is a very important neighbor - and they are not going to go away," said Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN's special envoy for Afghanistan.
His assessment is in stark contrast with that of the United States, which has accused the Iranians of arming Afghan warlords and threatening the stability of the newly installed interim administration headed by the strongly pro-US Hamid Karzai.
Brahimi said the United Nations is in "very close touch" with the Iranian government and "and we would like to help the relationship between Iran and Afghanistan be as constructive as possible. We would like to keep the relationship positive - and not create any problems," he added.
Addressing the Security Council on Wednesday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was equally emphatic about maintaining the peace with Iran. Singling out both Iran and Pakistan for special praise, Annan said: "One key element in Afghanistan's recovery will be the support of its neighbors. Iran, which like Pakistan has hosted many refugees for many years and has long had trade and other contacts with Afghanistan, also recognizes the national interest in a stable Afghanistan."
Apparently seeking to allay US fears, Annan said Iranian authorities had told him they would not tolerate the presence of Taliban or al-Qaeda personnel on their territory. Late last month, Washington alleged that key Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders might have crossed over to Iran in the aftermath of the recent military strikes on Afghanistan. The Iranians have denied providing safe haven.
Annan, who returned to New York last week after visits to Iran and Pakistan, told delegates the two countries have pledged to work with each other and with Afghanistan's other neighbors as the UN moves ahead in the war-devastated country. "Such a regional approach holds great promise, and I intend it to be a major pillar of UN strategy in confronting this challenge," he added.
US President George W Bush, in his State of the Union address last week, identified three countries - Iran, Iraq, and North Korea - as potential targets in the ongoing US war against terrorism. Bush described the three countries - already on a State Department list of "terrorist states" - as the "axis of evil" and accused them of developing weapons of mass destruction.
Denying the charges, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi lodged a strong protest with the UN against the "unfounded allegations". Brahimi told the Security Council Afghanistan has begun to make progress toward peace and stability "but the road is still very long and fraught with danger". The Afghan people are exhausted by the conflicts that have destroyed their livelihoods and threatened the very existence of their country, he said, adding: "They want peace and they know that they will still need the support of their friends and neighbors, as well as the support of the international community as a whole."
Brahimi implicitly supported a proposal to expand the 4,500-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul. Referring to numerous clashes between feuding warlords, mostly outside Kabul, Brahimi said these confrontations demonstrate that peace in Afghanistan is still fragile. At the same time, the visible presence of ISAF troops in Kabul has led to an improvement in the security situation in the Afghan capital. "This has led to increasingly vocal demands, by ordinary Afghans, members of the interim administration and even warlords, for the expansion of the ISAF to the rest of the country," he said. "We tend to agree and hope that this will receive favorable and urgent consideration by the Security Council."
Brahimi's outgoing deputy, Francesc Vendrell, hinted that the force eventually could grow to around 30,000 personnel. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in New York last week, senior State Department official Richard Haass said the ISAF might have to be expanded to about 25,000 troops deployed across Afghanistan. Asked whether an expansion was feasible, Brahimi replied, "Of course, the two key questions are getting the number of soldiers and finding the money. That's always a little problem."
Created by the Security Council in late December, the ISAF consists of troops from some 16 countries, including Austria, Bangladesh, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey. Britain is providing the largest contingent of troops, some 1,800. The mandate of the force is for six months beginning mid-January.
During a visit to Washington last week, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Karzai had made a persuasive case for an expansion of the ISAF. "The issue is the practicality of it," he added.
On Monday, Joseph Biden, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed that the United States commit troops to ISAF. "Security is the basic issue in Afghanistan. Whatever it takes, we should do it. History will judge us harshly if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we failed to stay the course," he said.
But Bush told visiting Afghan leader Karzai last month that Washington would not provide troops. Instead, it will help train the Afghan army and police force.
(Inter Press Service)
UNITED NATIONS - Iran, a country maligned by the United States, remains a key player in sustaining peace and stability in Kabul, the UN's highest-ranking official in Afghanistan said on Wednesday. "Iran is a very important neighbor - and they are not going to go away," said Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN's special envoy for Afghanistan.
His assessment is in stark contrast with that of the United States, which has accused the Iranians of arming Afghan warlords and threatening the stability of the newly installed interim administration headed by the strongly pro-US Hamid Karzai.
Brahimi said the United Nations is in "very close touch" with the Iranian government and "and we would like to help the relationship between Iran and Afghanistan be as constructive as possible. We would like to keep the relationship positive - and not create any problems," he added.
Addressing the Security Council on Wednesday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was equally emphatic about maintaining the peace with Iran. Singling out both Iran and Pakistan for special praise, Annan said: "One key element in Afghanistan's recovery will be the support of its neighbors. Iran, which like Pakistan has hosted many refugees for many years and has long had trade and other contacts with Afghanistan, also recognizes the national interest in a stable Afghanistan."
Apparently seeking to allay US fears, Annan said Iranian authorities had told him they would not tolerate the presence of Taliban or al-Qaeda personnel on their territory. Late last month, Washington alleged that key Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders might have crossed over to Iran in the aftermath of the recent military strikes on Afghanistan. The Iranians have denied providing safe haven.
Annan, who returned to New York last week after visits to Iran and Pakistan, told delegates the two countries have pledged to work with each other and with Afghanistan's other neighbors as the UN moves ahead in the war-devastated country. "Such a regional approach holds great promise, and I intend it to be a major pillar of UN strategy in confronting this challenge," he added.
US President George W Bush, in his State of the Union address last week, identified three countries - Iran, Iraq, and North Korea - as potential targets in the ongoing US war against terrorism. Bush described the three countries - already on a State Department list of "terrorist states" - as the "axis of evil" and accused them of developing weapons of mass destruction.
Denying the charges, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi lodged a strong protest with the UN against the "unfounded allegations". Brahimi told the Security Council Afghanistan has begun to make progress toward peace and stability "but the road is still very long and fraught with danger". The Afghan people are exhausted by the conflicts that have destroyed their livelihoods and threatened the very existence of their country, he said, adding: "They want peace and they know that they will still need the support of their friends and neighbors, as well as the support of the international community as a whole."
Brahimi implicitly supported a proposal to expand the 4,500-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul. Referring to numerous clashes between feuding warlords, mostly outside Kabul, Brahimi said these confrontations demonstrate that peace in Afghanistan is still fragile. At the same time, the visible presence of ISAF troops in Kabul has led to an improvement in the security situation in the Afghan capital. "This has led to increasingly vocal demands, by ordinary Afghans, members of the interim administration and even warlords, for the expansion of the ISAF to the rest of the country," he said. "We tend to agree and hope that this will receive favorable and urgent consideration by the Security Council."
Brahimi's outgoing deputy, Francesc Vendrell, hinted that the force eventually could grow to around 30,000 personnel. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in New York last week, senior State Department official Richard Haass said the ISAF might have to be expanded to about 25,000 troops deployed across Afghanistan. Asked whether an expansion was feasible, Brahimi replied, "Of course, the two key questions are getting the number of soldiers and finding the money. That's always a little problem."
Created by the Security Council in late December, the ISAF consists of troops from some 16 countries, including Austria, Bangladesh, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey. Britain is providing the largest contingent of troops, some 1,800. The mandate of the force is for six months beginning mid-January.
During a visit to Washington last week, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Karzai had made a persuasive case for an expansion of the ISAF. "The issue is the practicality of it," he added.
On Monday, Joseph Biden, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed that the United States commit troops to ISAF. "Security is the basic issue in Afghanistan. Whatever it takes, we should do it. History will judge us harshly if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we failed to stay the course," he said.
But Bush told visiting Afghan leader Karzai last month that Washington would not provide troops. Instead, it will help train the Afghan army and police force.
(Inter Press Service)
Breaking the silence
Chris Patten sets aside the diplomatic niceties to argue against Washington's simplistic approach to the causes of terrorism
Jonathan Freedland
Saturday February 9, 2002
The Guardian
The grandeur of the office - the thickness of the carpet, the size of the picture window - is nothing new to him. As a former cabinet minister and the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten has seen more than his fair share of grand offices. But now, in Brussels, there is a larger world outside his window. As the European Union's commissioner for external affairs, it's his job to corral 15 different member states towards a common position on the world beyond the EU.
No one expects him to act as a kind of uber-foreign minister, selling a single EU foreign policy: there isn't one. Nevertheless the Brussels buzz says he's doing well, praised for both his thoughtful style and sure-footed command of terrain which can be treacherously complex.
On the day the Guardian came to call, he had just seen a delegation of Israeli and Palestinian moderates from the "peace coalition". To a man, they had only good things to say about Commissioner Patten. But, every once in a while, the situation demands a break from diplomatic niceties. The current direction of US foreign policy is one of those situations.
"President Bush has just announced a $48bn (£34bn) increase in defence spending," he begins. "Now if you mark the significance of Europe's relations with America by how much we're prepared to spend on defence, forget it! We can't even pay the entrance fee!" If the US measures seriousness by that standard, Mr Patten concedes, then Europe doesn't count: there is not a political party in Europe that would campaign for a 14% increase in defence spending, which is what it would take for the EU to match Mr Bush.
But, he says, "Europe provides 55% of development assistance in the world and two thirds of grant aid. So when it comes to what the Americans call the 'soft end of security' - which I happen to think is the hard end of security - we have a huge amount to contribute." Especially after September 11, when, Mr Patten says, we have seen "the dark side of globalisation". Now we know where the huge injustices of the global economy can lead. We know, too, how important it is to handle failed states properly - and to prevent them failing in the first place. We have realised that we have to tackle "the root causes of terrorism and violence".
Faced with that agenda, he said "frankly, smart bombs have their place, but smart development assistance" mattered more. And it's that simple idea that Washington doesn't get? "That's a polite way of putting it," snorts Mr Patten, slumping his shoulders to take another sip of Belgian coffee.
But is Washington even hearing that more complex position, staked out by both Tony Blair and former president Bill Clinton: that the west has to be tough on terrorism and tough on the causes of terrorism? "I don't know but I think it's very dangerous when you start taking up absolutist positions and simplistic positions."
That's just one of a series of gaps now opening up between Europe and George W Bush's United States, according to senior European policymakers. Specific clashes include proposals for an international criminal court, a ban on anti-personnel land mines, action against biological weapons, a comprehensive test ban treaty and, most famously, the Kyoto treaty on climate change - all of which are supported in Europe and opposed by the US. A sharp difference is emerging too over the Middle East, with the EU continuing to fund Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority even as the US denounces it.
But Mr Patten - who describes himself as a lifelong "Americaphile" with "not an ounce of Americaphobia in my body" - fears a deeper, philosophical gulf could soon appear, with two wholly different views of the world taking shape on either side of the Atlantic.
While Europeans believe in tackling the root causes of terror, Washington seems keen only to eradicate the symptoms. While Europeans believe in "engaging" potentially hostile nations, trying to bring them into the fold, Washington brands them an "axis of evil". While Europeans believe in acting together, multilaterally, the US seems ever more bent on acting alone.
The commissioner quotes John Bolton, the hawkish US under-secretary of state for arms control, who has condemned multilateralism as a threat to American sovereignty - and who recently withdrew from talks on a convention limiting small arms because it would have undermined Americans' constitutional right to carry guns. "Now this is a different perception of the world," says Mr Patten, "and it's different from what America's been renowned for. No one could regard America as anything but the leading multilateralist of the 40s and 50s, creating institutions of governance which have made the world more prosperous and more stable."
Now, he fears, the US is turning away from that tradition although the battle might not be completely lost. "I think there's more rhetoric than substance to the policy so far," he says. There could still be a change of heart, one that would see the administration reflect the more multilateralist leanings of secretary of state Colin Powell. "I still hope that America will demonstrate that it has not gone on to unilateralist overdrive." The task now is for Europe to raise its voice - "I don't think that keeping quiet makes us good allies" - and for America to listen.
"Winston Churchill once said it was important to remember that when you had allies, they did tend to develop opinions of their own - and it's quite important to listen to those opinions." Chris Patten has broken the EU silence. Will Tony Blair follow? And if he does, will anybody in Washington hear him?
Chris Patten sets aside the diplomatic niceties to argue against Washington's simplistic approach to the causes of terrorism
Jonathan Freedland
Saturday February 9, 2002
The Guardian
The grandeur of the office - the thickness of the carpet, the size of the picture window - is nothing new to him. As a former cabinet minister and the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten has seen more than his fair share of grand offices. But now, in Brussels, there is a larger world outside his window. As the European Union's commissioner for external affairs, it's his job to corral 15 different member states towards a common position on the world beyond the EU.
No one expects him to act as a kind of uber-foreign minister, selling a single EU foreign policy: there isn't one. Nevertheless the Brussels buzz says he's doing well, praised for both his thoughtful style and sure-footed command of terrain which can be treacherously complex.
On the day the Guardian came to call, he had just seen a delegation of Israeli and Palestinian moderates from the "peace coalition". To a man, they had only good things to say about Commissioner Patten. But, every once in a while, the situation demands a break from diplomatic niceties. The current direction of US foreign policy is one of those situations.
"President Bush has just announced a $48bn (£34bn) increase in defence spending," he begins. "Now if you mark the significance of Europe's relations with America by how much we're prepared to spend on defence, forget it! We can't even pay the entrance fee!" If the US measures seriousness by that standard, Mr Patten concedes, then Europe doesn't count: there is not a political party in Europe that would campaign for a 14% increase in defence spending, which is what it would take for the EU to match Mr Bush.
But, he says, "Europe provides 55% of development assistance in the world and two thirds of grant aid. So when it comes to what the Americans call the 'soft end of security' - which I happen to think is the hard end of security - we have a huge amount to contribute." Especially after September 11, when, Mr Patten says, we have seen "the dark side of globalisation". Now we know where the huge injustices of the global economy can lead. We know, too, how important it is to handle failed states properly - and to prevent them failing in the first place. We have realised that we have to tackle "the root causes of terrorism and violence".
Faced with that agenda, he said "frankly, smart bombs have their place, but smart development assistance" mattered more. And it's that simple idea that Washington doesn't get? "That's a polite way of putting it," snorts Mr Patten, slumping his shoulders to take another sip of Belgian coffee.
But is Washington even hearing that more complex position, staked out by both Tony Blair and former president Bill Clinton: that the west has to be tough on terrorism and tough on the causes of terrorism? "I don't know but I think it's very dangerous when you start taking up absolutist positions and simplistic positions."
That's just one of a series of gaps now opening up between Europe and George W Bush's United States, according to senior European policymakers. Specific clashes include proposals for an international criminal court, a ban on anti-personnel land mines, action against biological weapons, a comprehensive test ban treaty and, most famously, the Kyoto treaty on climate change - all of which are supported in Europe and opposed by the US. A sharp difference is emerging too over the Middle East, with the EU continuing to fund Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority even as the US denounces it.
But Mr Patten - who describes himself as a lifelong "Americaphile" with "not an ounce of Americaphobia in my body" - fears a deeper, philosophical gulf could soon appear, with two wholly different views of the world taking shape on either side of the Atlantic.
While Europeans believe in tackling the root causes of terror, Washington seems keen only to eradicate the symptoms. While Europeans believe in "engaging" potentially hostile nations, trying to bring them into the fold, Washington brands them an "axis of evil". While Europeans believe in acting together, multilaterally, the US seems ever more bent on acting alone.
The commissioner quotes John Bolton, the hawkish US under-secretary of state for arms control, who has condemned multilateralism as a threat to American sovereignty - and who recently withdrew from talks on a convention limiting small arms because it would have undermined Americans' constitutional right to carry guns. "Now this is a different perception of the world," says Mr Patten, "and it's different from what America's been renowned for. No one could regard America as anything but the leading multilateralist of the 40s and 50s, creating institutions of governance which have made the world more prosperous and more stable."
Now, he fears, the US is turning away from that tradition although the battle might not be completely lost. "I think there's more rhetoric than substance to the policy so far," he says. There could still be a change of heart, one that would see the administration reflect the more multilateralist leanings of secretary of state Colin Powell. "I still hope that America will demonstrate that it has not gone on to unilateralist overdrive." The task now is for Europe to raise its voice - "I don't think that keeping quiet makes us good allies" - and for America to listen.
"Winston Churchill once said it was important to remember that when you had allies, they did tend to develop opinions of their own - and it's quite important to listen to those opinions." Chris Patten has broken the EU silence. Will Tony Blair follow? And if he does, will anybody in Washington hear him?
Patten lays into Bush's America
Fury at president's 'axis of evil' speech
Jonathan Freedland in Brussels
Saturday February 9, 2002
The Guardian
Chris Patten, the EU commissioner in charge of Europe's international relations, has launched a scathing attack on American foreign policy - accusing the Bush administration of a dangerously "absolutist and simplistic" stance towards the rest of the world.
As EU officials warned of a rift opening up between Europe and the US wider than at any time for half a century, Mr Patten tells the Guardian it is time European governments spoke up and stopped Washington before it goes into "unilateralist overdrive".
"Gulliver can't go it alone, and I don't think it's helpful if we regard ourselves as so Lilliputian that we can't speak up and say it," he says in today's interview.
Mr Patten's broadside came as the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, warned the US yesterday not to give in to "the strong temptation of unilateralism".
Like France, Mr Patten singled out Mr Bush's branding of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as "an axis of evil".
"I find it hard to believe that's a thought-through policy," he says, adding that the phrase was deeply "unhelpful".
EU officials concede that the US and Europe could now be on a collision course over Iran, with the EU determined to forge a trade and cooperation agreement with Tehran just as Washington has deemed it an "evil" sponsor of terror.
Mr Patten insists that the European policy of "constructive engagement" with Iranian moderates and North Korea is much more likely to bring results than a US policy which so far consists of "more rhetoric than substance".
The commissioner's remarks represent the most public statement yet of what has become a growing sense of alarm in Europe's capitals at the increasingly belligerent tone adopted by Washington.
One senior EU official said: "It is humiliating and demeaning if we feel we have to go and get our homework marked by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. We've got to stop thinking that the only policy we can have is one that doesn't get vetoed by the United States."
Publicly, the British government continues to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mr Bush. But senior Labour figures admit they are deeply troubled by the newly aggressive thrust of US thinking - especially the hints that America could widen the war against terrorism to a clutch of new countries. They are likely to seize on Mr Patten's remarks as they press their case with Tony Blair.
In the interview the former Conservative party chairman delivers a devastatingly comprehensive critique of US strategy. He upbraids Washington for showing much more interest in stamping out terrorism than in tackling terror's root causes.
"When you're addressing that agenda, frankly, smart bombs have their place but smart development assistance seems to me even more significant," he said.
That view is widely held in Europe, typified by Mr Blair's much-quoted "heal the world" speech last year in Brighton. But it barely gets a hearing in today's Washington, Mr Patten concedes, especially since the dramatic success of the US-led military operation in Afghanistan. That has fed a new US mood of "intense triumphalism", according to EU officials, with secretary of state Colin Powell regarded as "a lone voice of reason".
Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speech appears to have been the last straw for EU policymakers. In today's interview, Mr Patten offers withering condemnation of the phrase.
Besides balking at the word "evil", he disputes whether the three countries named are an axis at all, insisting there is no evidence that they are working together on weapons of mass destruction. But Mr Patten also expresses great irritation with Washington for undermining long-established EU efforts to reach out to Tehran and Pyongyang.
"There is more to be said for trying to engage and to draw these societies into the international community than to cut them off," he says.
But Mr Patten's greatest ire is reserved for America's go-it-alone approach to international relations. "However mighty you are, even if you're the greatest superpower in the world, you cannot do it all on your own."
He calls on Europe's 15 member states to put aside their traditional wariness of angering the US and to speak up, forging an international stance of their own on issues ranging from the Middle East to global warming.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Fury at president's 'axis of evil' speech
Jonathan Freedland in Brussels
Saturday February 9, 2002
The Guardian
Chris Patten, the EU commissioner in charge of Europe's international relations, has launched a scathing attack on American foreign policy - accusing the Bush administration of a dangerously "absolutist and simplistic" stance towards the rest of the world.
As EU officials warned of a rift opening up between Europe and the US wider than at any time for half a century, Mr Patten tells the Guardian it is time European governments spoke up and stopped Washington before it goes into "unilateralist overdrive".
"Gulliver can't go it alone, and I don't think it's helpful if we regard ourselves as so Lilliputian that we can't speak up and say it," he says in today's interview.
Mr Patten's broadside came as the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, warned the US yesterday not to give in to "the strong temptation of unilateralism".
Like France, Mr Patten singled out Mr Bush's branding of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as "an axis of evil".
"I find it hard to believe that's a thought-through policy," he says, adding that the phrase was deeply "unhelpful".
EU officials concede that the US and Europe could now be on a collision course over Iran, with the EU determined to forge a trade and cooperation agreement with Tehran just as Washington has deemed it an "evil" sponsor of terror.
Mr Patten insists that the European policy of "constructive engagement" with Iranian moderates and North Korea is much more likely to bring results than a US policy which so far consists of "more rhetoric than substance".
The commissioner's remarks represent the most public statement yet of what has become a growing sense of alarm in Europe's capitals at the increasingly belligerent tone adopted by Washington.
One senior EU official said: "It is humiliating and demeaning if we feel we have to go and get our homework marked by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. We've got to stop thinking that the only policy we can have is one that doesn't get vetoed by the United States."
Publicly, the British government continues to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mr Bush. But senior Labour figures admit they are deeply troubled by the newly aggressive thrust of US thinking - especially the hints that America could widen the war against terrorism to a clutch of new countries. They are likely to seize on Mr Patten's remarks as they press their case with Tony Blair.
In the interview the former Conservative party chairman delivers a devastatingly comprehensive critique of US strategy. He upbraids Washington for showing much more interest in stamping out terrorism than in tackling terror's root causes.
"When you're addressing that agenda, frankly, smart bombs have their place but smart development assistance seems to me even more significant," he said.
That view is widely held in Europe, typified by Mr Blair's much-quoted "heal the world" speech last year in Brighton. But it barely gets a hearing in today's Washington, Mr Patten concedes, especially since the dramatic success of the US-led military operation in Afghanistan. That has fed a new US mood of "intense triumphalism", according to EU officials, with secretary of state Colin Powell regarded as "a lone voice of reason".
Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speech appears to have been the last straw for EU policymakers. In today's interview, Mr Patten offers withering condemnation of the phrase.
Besides balking at the word "evil", he disputes whether the three countries named are an axis at all, insisting there is no evidence that they are working together on weapons of mass destruction. But Mr Patten also expresses great irritation with Washington for undermining long-established EU efforts to reach out to Tehran and Pyongyang.
"There is more to be said for trying to engage and to draw these societies into the international community than to cut them off," he says.
But Mr Patten's greatest ire is reserved for America's go-it-alone approach to international relations. "However mighty you are, even if you're the greatest superpower in the world, you cannot do it all on your own."
He calls on Europe's 15 member states to put aside their traditional wariness of angering the US and to speak up, forging an international stance of their own on issues ranging from the Middle East to global warming.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Friday, February 08, 2002
Bush, oil and the Taliban
Two French authors allege that before Sept. 11, the White House put oil interests ahead of national security.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Nina Burleigh
Feb. 8, 2002 | PARIS -- In a new book, "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth," two French intelligence analysts allege the Clinton and Bush administrations put diplomacy before law enforcement in dealing with the al-Qaida threat before Sept. 11, in order to maintain smooth relations with Saudi Arabia and to avoid disrupting the oil market. The book, which has become a bestseller in France but has received little press attention here, also alleges that the Bush administration was bargaining with the Taliban, over a Central Asian oil pipeline and Osama bin Laden, just five weeks before the September attacks. The authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, see a link between the negotiations and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy task force, with its conclusions that Central Asian oil was going to become critical to the U.S. economy. Brisard and Dasquie also claim former FBI deputy director John O'Neill (who died in the attack on the World Trade Center, where he was the chief of security) resigned in July to protest the policy of giving U.S. oil interests a higher priority than bringing al-Qaida leaders to justice. Brisard claims O'Neill told him that "the main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia."
The authors also allege that the Sept. 11 attacks were a calculated response to Western pressure on the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and permit the return of the long-exiled Afghan leader, King Shah. They say the terror attacks were aimed at sparking a widespread war in Central Asia and thereby reinforcing the Islamic extremists' grip on power.
Brisard, a private intelligence analyst who once worked for the French conglomerate Vivendi, compiled a report in 1997 on the financing behind the al-Qaida network. Dasquie is a journalist and editor of Intelligence Online. The authors are negotiating with American publishers now to get the book translated and published in England. They recently discussed their book with Salon.
How did you meet John O'Neill, and how often and where? Did you ever tape your discussions with him?
Brisard: I met him twice. The first time was in Paris in June 2001 and then in July in New York. I met him because I wrote some years ago a report about the bin Laden family and its financial connections with Osama bin Laden. Our meeting was in the process of the French sharing information with the FBI. He wanted to meet me again a month after our first meeting to discuss the points of my report, and so we met at the end of July 2001. I never taped him and that's why I only quote him directly three or four times. That's all I have and the rest is paraphrase. The discussion of O'Neill is only 10 pages in the book. It is the first 10 pages of the book. What he said is a synthesis of what we say in the book, and that's why we decided to put it on the first pages. That is, the role of Saudi Arabia, the role of oil and the way the investigation worked in the United States before Sept. 11.
Did O'Neill indicate that the FBI expected more attacks on the United States?
Brisard: No. Not even implicitly. We didn't talk about the threat itself. We focused on the sources and roots of the problems and the way to deter further action.
How much did Mr. O'Neill know about al-Qaida that the public didn't know until after Sept. 11, such as the extent of the training, the network and the hatred?
Brisard: John O'Neill clearly knew extensively about the threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. He told me the FBI had identified for years the financial supports of bin Laden. For instance, in the Yemen investigation [of the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole], he said everything pointed at Osama bin Laden but there was an unwillingness among U.S. diplomats to act and to put any kind of pressure against the governments. His investigation was made difficult because of this unwillingness, and in his mind it was especially because of the economic interests of the United States. I quote him saying that everything about bin Laden and al-Qaida can be explainable through Saudi Arabia. And when I asked why the U.S. was unwilling to go after the states that host bin Laden, he said because of oil.
In what sense was Saudia Arabia supporting bin Laden? He had been exiled.
Brisard: Yes, the official stance is he was banned in 1994 and his assets were frozen. This is the official position of the Saudi government. But we prove in our book that until 1998 he was able to use economic and financial structures in Saudi Arabia. He could have linked working bank accounts in Sudan with companies registered in Saudi. He had various contacts with Saudi officials. And remember, the Saudis were supporting the Taliban regime, which was hosting him. In Saudi Arabia, the left hand ignores the right hand. And the FBI was fully aware of the situation.
Other than the U.S. ambassador in Yemen sending O'Neill home because of his alleged insensitivity to the culture, exactly how did the State Department hinder the FBI investigation?
Brisard: O'Neill said the State Department has had an overwhelming role on these investigations. He was explicitly blocked in Yemen from further investigation. We now know from different files that the FBI was starting investigations on different aspects of Saudi Arabian support [of bin Laden], and those investigations were all stopped, even under Clinton. What John O'Neill said is that for him, there was a clear [conflict] between the FBI's goal, which was to go fast and to implicate members of the networks and eventually to implicate states that gave them support, and the State Department's goal, which was to move in a more diplomatic way to negotiate with those states and to some extent accommodate them. And what he said was that the diplomatic way was chosen over the security or law enforcement policy, and of course he was very angry about what happened to him in Yemen.
In your book, you allege that the Bush administration was negotiating with the Taliban last year over a proposed Central Asian oil pipeline through Afghanistan. Which Bush official conducted those talks?
Brisard: [Assistant Secretary of State] Christina Rocca, in August 2001 in Pakistan, explicitly discussed the oil interest, not the pipeline.
Did you ever speak with Rocca?
Dasquie: I tried to, but when you are a foreign journalist you must ask the U.S. embassy in France before an interview. My correspondent in Washington also made requests. Since March or April 2001 we had tracked this story, because just after the United Nations' decision against the Taliban, it was crazy to see Taliban leaders coming into Washington and having meetings. Christina Rocca arrived at the State Department in June, and we knew her background at the CIA; she had managed all the relations between the agency and Islamic groups in Central Asia. Since around June I have been focused on Rocca. We made requests. The embassy said it was impossible. With no explanation.
Do you allege that she mentioned oil explicitly?
Dasquie: Madeleine Albright was the first to refuse to negotiate with the Taliban in 1997. Before that, from 1994 to '97, Clinton did negotiate with the Taliban. We describe the meeting of Rocca and some Taliban leaders in Islamabad in August 2001. There are documents to support it. And at the same time in Washington there are lots of meetings of the energy policy task force and lots of oil company representatives around Dick Cheney. The task force's conclusion is that Central Asia oil is a very important goal. And at the same time people are negotiating with the Taliban for the first time since 1994.
Brisard: We believe that when [Rocca] went to Pakistan in 2001 she was there to speak about oil, and unfortunately the Osama bin Laden case was just a technical part of the negotiations. I'm not sure about the pipeline specifically, but we make it clear she was there to speak about oil. There are witnesses, including the Pakistani foreign minister.
Are you saying that the Central Asian oil and pipelines were not an issue under Clinton, or just more of an issue for the Bush administration? And what are you basing that on?
Brisard: Oil was also an issue for the Clinton administration, but the difference between Clinton and Bush is, under Bush the economic argument became predominant and the U.S. thought they could pursue the Taliban to accept a deal on economics.
Dasquie: The area was of enormous strategic concern to many nations. The U.N. "six plus two" group [made up of the six countries that border Afghanistan, plus the United States and Russia] had tried to persuade the Taliban to take back the Afghan king in exchange for recognition. The biggest mistake of the U.N. and the U.S. was to consider the Taliban as independent and able to negotiate. Nobody saw the reality of the relationship between Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. So when the U.N.'s six-plus-two group and the U.S. said accept the king and give us Osama, it was incredible; it was like asking them to kill themselves. It was the very wrong way to negotiate. People say the only reason 9-11 happened is that Osama is a bad boy and the Muslims hate the U.S., but that is not enough. It is a pity to see that all our policies are built on that. It is very, very much more complex. They knew that if they did nothing they would lose. Everyone wanted to give power to the former king. When you think you are going to lose, the easy reaction is to be the first to attack. So 9-11 was not just a mad act, it was a political act meant to create a good ground for a big war in all Central Asia. Mullah Omar and bin Laden wanted to rally Muslims in Central Asia. In the last 10 years, the focal point of Islamists has taken off from the Middle East and gone into Central Asia.
The first President Bush has lots of connections with the Saudis and has made visits there as a private businessman with the merchant banking firm the Carlyle Group. Did you find any trace of the Carlyle Group on the financial trail?
Brisard: No. Carlyle has connections to the bin Laden family. Also, [Saudi banker and alleged terrorist financer] Khaleed bin Mahfooz financed the Bush oil companies in Texas in the late '70s and we discovered that he is also the primary financial support of Osama bin Laden. For years he was the personal banker of King Fahd, but now Mahfooz is under house arrest in Saudi Arabia for allegedly financing terrorist groups. He was arrested in 1999, but he is still a shareholder of the Saudi Bank National Commercial. He had charities around the world and one of them, International Development Foundation in London, has just been banned by the charity commission in London because of our book. We also make lots of connections with BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the foreign bank closed 10 years ago after a huge scandal connected it to fraud, secret weapons deals, money laundering and the financing of terrorist groups]. We say the system financing bin Laden was more or less the revival of the BCCI. Even the associates of the BCCI are now involved in those networks. And bin Mahfooz was the operational director of BCCI.
Exactly how have the Saudis promoted Islamic terrorism?
Brisard: It's a political question for them. They have to support those religious fundamentalists because they are a large part of the regime of the kingdom and they need them to survive politically. Wahhabism, the Saudi form of Islam, is one of the harshest forms, and bin Laden is a product of his country.
Is there anything in the American press about your book you would like to correct?
Brisard: The main error is to say that the U.S. preferred oil to fighting against al-Qaida. That oversimplifies it. And it is also wrong to say John O'Neill told me that George Bush blocked inquiries into al-Qaida because of oil. It was not personally Bush [that O'Neill complained about]; it was a policy of putting diplomacy ahead of law enforcement going back to Clinton.
Why is the book so popular in France?
Brisard: Because there have been a lot of books about Sept. 11 and what happened and bios of bin Laden, but it's the first time that two investigators put facts on the table, documents, interviews and nothing else. We don't say it could have been stopped. If any government had known what was going to happen it wouldn't have happened. But we point out the role of the Western countries that led to Sept.11 -- back to 50 years ago, when we agreed to make an alliance with Saudi Arabia, and then by closing our eyes to the support they were giving fundamentalists around the world for the last 20 years.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Two French authors allege that before Sept. 11, the White House put oil interests ahead of national security.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Nina Burleigh
Feb. 8, 2002 | PARIS -- In a new book, "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth," two French intelligence analysts allege the Clinton and Bush administrations put diplomacy before law enforcement in dealing with the al-Qaida threat before Sept. 11, in order to maintain smooth relations with Saudi Arabia and to avoid disrupting the oil market. The book, which has become a bestseller in France but has received little press attention here, also alleges that the Bush administration was bargaining with the Taliban, over a Central Asian oil pipeline and Osama bin Laden, just five weeks before the September attacks. The authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, see a link between the negotiations and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy task force, with its conclusions that Central Asian oil was going to become critical to the U.S. economy. Brisard and Dasquie also claim former FBI deputy director John O'Neill (who died in the attack on the World Trade Center, where he was the chief of security) resigned in July to protest the policy of giving U.S. oil interests a higher priority than bringing al-Qaida leaders to justice. Brisard claims O'Neill told him that "the main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia."
The authors also allege that the Sept. 11 attacks were a calculated response to Western pressure on the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and permit the return of the long-exiled Afghan leader, King Shah. They say the terror attacks were aimed at sparking a widespread war in Central Asia and thereby reinforcing the Islamic extremists' grip on power.
Brisard, a private intelligence analyst who once worked for the French conglomerate Vivendi, compiled a report in 1997 on the financing behind the al-Qaida network. Dasquie is a journalist and editor of Intelligence Online. The authors are negotiating with American publishers now to get the book translated and published in England. They recently discussed their book with Salon.
How did you meet John O'Neill, and how often and where? Did you ever tape your discussions with him?
Brisard: I met him twice. The first time was in Paris in June 2001 and then in July in New York. I met him because I wrote some years ago a report about the bin Laden family and its financial connections with Osama bin Laden. Our meeting was in the process of the French sharing information with the FBI. He wanted to meet me again a month after our first meeting to discuss the points of my report, and so we met at the end of July 2001. I never taped him and that's why I only quote him directly three or four times. That's all I have and the rest is paraphrase. The discussion of O'Neill is only 10 pages in the book. It is the first 10 pages of the book. What he said is a synthesis of what we say in the book, and that's why we decided to put it on the first pages. That is, the role of Saudi Arabia, the role of oil and the way the investigation worked in the United States before Sept. 11.
Did O'Neill indicate that the FBI expected more attacks on the United States?
Brisard: No. Not even implicitly. We didn't talk about the threat itself. We focused on the sources and roots of the problems and the way to deter further action.
How much did Mr. O'Neill know about al-Qaida that the public didn't know until after Sept. 11, such as the extent of the training, the network and the hatred?
Brisard: John O'Neill clearly knew extensively about the threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. He told me the FBI had identified for years the financial supports of bin Laden. For instance, in the Yemen investigation [of the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole], he said everything pointed at Osama bin Laden but there was an unwillingness among U.S. diplomats to act and to put any kind of pressure against the governments. His investigation was made difficult because of this unwillingness, and in his mind it was especially because of the economic interests of the United States. I quote him saying that everything about bin Laden and al-Qaida can be explainable through Saudi Arabia. And when I asked why the U.S. was unwilling to go after the states that host bin Laden, he said because of oil.
In what sense was Saudia Arabia supporting bin Laden? He had been exiled.
Brisard: Yes, the official stance is he was banned in 1994 and his assets were frozen. This is the official position of the Saudi government. But we prove in our book that until 1998 he was able to use economic and financial structures in Saudi Arabia. He could have linked working bank accounts in Sudan with companies registered in Saudi. He had various contacts with Saudi officials. And remember, the Saudis were supporting the Taliban regime, which was hosting him. In Saudi Arabia, the left hand ignores the right hand. And the FBI was fully aware of the situation.
Other than the U.S. ambassador in Yemen sending O'Neill home because of his alleged insensitivity to the culture, exactly how did the State Department hinder the FBI investigation?
Brisard: O'Neill said the State Department has had an overwhelming role on these investigations. He was explicitly blocked in Yemen from further investigation. We now know from different files that the FBI was starting investigations on different aspects of Saudi Arabian support [of bin Laden], and those investigations were all stopped, even under Clinton. What John O'Neill said is that for him, there was a clear [conflict] between the FBI's goal, which was to go fast and to implicate members of the networks and eventually to implicate states that gave them support, and the State Department's goal, which was to move in a more diplomatic way to negotiate with those states and to some extent accommodate them. And what he said was that the diplomatic way was chosen over the security or law enforcement policy, and of course he was very angry about what happened to him in Yemen.
In your book, you allege that the Bush administration was negotiating with the Taliban last year over a proposed Central Asian oil pipeline through Afghanistan. Which Bush official conducted those talks?
Brisard: [Assistant Secretary of State] Christina Rocca, in August 2001 in Pakistan, explicitly discussed the oil interest, not the pipeline.
Did you ever speak with Rocca?
Dasquie: I tried to, but when you are a foreign journalist you must ask the U.S. embassy in France before an interview. My correspondent in Washington also made requests. Since March or April 2001 we had tracked this story, because just after the United Nations' decision against the Taliban, it was crazy to see Taliban leaders coming into Washington and having meetings. Christina Rocca arrived at the State Department in June, and we knew her background at the CIA; she had managed all the relations between the agency and Islamic groups in Central Asia. Since around June I have been focused on Rocca. We made requests. The embassy said it was impossible. With no explanation.
Do you allege that she mentioned oil explicitly?
Dasquie: Madeleine Albright was the first to refuse to negotiate with the Taliban in 1997. Before that, from 1994 to '97, Clinton did negotiate with the Taliban. We describe the meeting of Rocca and some Taliban leaders in Islamabad in August 2001. There are documents to support it. And at the same time in Washington there are lots of meetings of the energy policy task force and lots of oil company representatives around Dick Cheney. The task force's conclusion is that Central Asia oil is a very important goal. And at the same time people are negotiating with the Taliban for the first time since 1994.
Brisard: We believe that when [Rocca] went to Pakistan in 2001 she was there to speak about oil, and unfortunately the Osama bin Laden case was just a technical part of the negotiations. I'm not sure about the pipeline specifically, but we make it clear she was there to speak about oil. There are witnesses, including the Pakistani foreign minister.
Are you saying that the Central Asian oil and pipelines were not an issue under Clinton, or just more of an issue for the Bush administration? And what are you basing that on?
Brisard: Oil was also an issue for the Clinton administration, but the difference between Clinton and Bush is, under Bush the economic argument became predominant and the U.S. thought they could pursue the Taliban to accept a deal on economics.
Dasquie: The area was of enormous strategic concern to many nations. The U.N. "six plus two" group [made up of the six countries that border Afghanistan, plus the United States and Russia] had tried to persuade the Taliban to take back the Afghan king in exchange for recognition. The biggest mistake of the U.N. and the U.S. was to consider the Taliban as independent and able to negotiate. Nobody saw the reality of the relationship between Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. So when the U.N.'s six-plus-two group and the U.S. said accept the king and give us Osama, it was incredible; it was like asking them to kill themselves. It was the very wrong way to negotiate. People say the only reason 9-11 happened is that Osama is a bad boy and the Muslims hate the U.S., but that is not enough. It is a pity to see that all our policies are built on that. It is very, very much more complex. They knew that if they did nothing they would lose. Everyone wanted to give power to the former king. When you think you are going to lose, the easy reaction is to be the first to attack. So 9-11 was not just a mad act, it was a political act meant to create a good ground for a big war in all Central Asia. Mullah Omar and bin Laden wanted to rally Muslims in Central Asia. In the last 10 years, the focal point of Islamists has taken off from the Middle East and gone into Central Asia.
The first President Bush has lots of connections with the Saudis and has made visits there as a private businessman with the merchant banking firm the Carlyle Group. Did you find any trace of the Carlyle Group on the financial trail?
Brisard: No. Carlyle has connections to the bin Laden family. Also, [Saudi banker and alleged terrorist financer] Khaleed bin Mahfooz financed the Bush oil companies in Texas in the late '70s and we discovered that he is also the primary financial support of Osama bin Laden. For years he was the personal banker of King Fahd, but now Mahfooz is under house arrest in Saudi Arabia for allegedly financing terrorist groups. He was arrested in 1999, but he is still a shareholder of the Saudi Bank National Commercial. He had charities around the world and one of them, International Development Foundation in London, has just been banned by the charity commission in London because of our book. We also make lots of connections with BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the foreign bank closed 10 years ago after a huge scandal connected it to fraud, secret weapons deals, money laundering and the financing of terrorist groups]. We say the system financing bin Laden was more or less the revival of the BCCI. Even the associates of the BCCI are now involved in those networks. And bin Mahfooz was the operational director of BCCI.
Exactly how have the Saudis promoted Islamic terrorism?
Brisard: It's a political question for them. They have to support those religious fundamentalists because they are a large part of the regime of the kingdom and they need them to survive politically. Wahhabism, the Saudi form of Islam, is one of the harshest forms, and bin Laden is a product of his country.
Is there anything in the American press about your book you would like to correct?
Brisard: The main error is to say that the U.S. preferred oil to fighting against al-Qaida. That oversimplifies it. And it is also wrong to say John O'Neill told me that George Bush blocked inquiries into al-Qaida because of oil. It was not personally Bush [that O'Neill complained about]; it was a policy of putting diplomacy ahead of law enforcement going back to Clinton.
Why is the book so popular in France?
Brisard: Because there have been a lot of books about Sept. 11 and what happened and bios of bin Laden, but it's the first time that two investigators put facts on the table, documents, interviews and nothing else. We don't say it could have been stopped. If any government had known what was going to happen it wouldn't have happened. But we point out the role of the Western countries that led to Sept.11 -- back to 50 years ago, when we agreed to make an alliance with Saudi Arabia, and then by closing our eyes to the support they were giving fundamentalists around the world for the last 20 years.
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Afghanistan, the Taliban
and the Bush Oil Team
by Wayne Madsen
democrats.com, January 2002
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 23 January 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources.
When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset. Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table.
Quite to the contrary, recent meetings between U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain and that country's oil minister Usman Aminuddin indicate the pipeline project is international Project Number One for the Bush administration. Chamberlain, who maintains close ties to the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan (a one-time chief money conduit for the Taliban), has been pushing Pakistan to begin work on its Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline.
Meanwhile, President Bush says that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan for the long haul. Far from being engaged in Afghan peacekeeping -- the Europeans are doing much of that -- our troops will effectively be guarding pipeline construction personnel that will soon be flooding into the country.
Karzai's ties with UNOCAL and the Bush administration are the main reason why the CIA pushed him for Afghan leader over rival Abdul Haq, the assassinated former mujaheddin leader from Jalalabad, and the leadership of the Northern Alliance, seen by Langley as being too close to the Russians and Iranians. Haq had no apparent close ties to the U.S. oil industry and, as both a Pushtun and a northern Afghani, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Afghan people, including the Northern Alliance. Those credentials likely sealed his fate.
When Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan last October, his position was immediately known to Taliban forces, which subsequently pinned him and his small party down, captured, and executed them. Former Reagan National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who worked with Haq, vainly attempted to get the CIA to help rescue Haq. The agency claimed it sent a remotely-piloted armed drone to attack the Taliban but its actions were too little and too late. Some observers in Pakistan claim the CIA tipped off the ISI about Haq's journey and the Pakistanis, in turn, informed the Taliban. McFarlane, who runs a K Street oil consulting firm, did not comment on further questions about the circumstances leading to the death of Haq.
While Haq was not part of the Bush administration's GOP (Grand Oil Plan) for South Asia, Karzai was a key player on the Bush Oil team. During the late 1990s, Karzai worked with an Afghani-American, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas project. Khalilzad is President Bush's Special National Security Assistant and recently named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House press release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was made of his past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad has worked on Afghan issues under National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron, itself no innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal. Rice made an impression on her old colleagues at Chevron. The company has named one of their supertankers the SS Condoleezza Rice.
Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, was, in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project.
Khalilzad's efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush campaign. Enron, which recently filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the nation's history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its Chairman Kenneth Lay, earlier in 2001. These meetings were presumably part of Cheney's non-public Energy Task Force sessions. A number of Enron stockholders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, currently serves as the Secretary of the Army.
A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney's selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow Enron, there were Wall Street rumors in late December that Halliburton, which suffered a forty per cent drop in share value, might follow Enron into bankruptcy court.
Assisting with the CentGas negotiations with the Taliban was Laili Helms, the niece-in-law of former CIA Director Richard Helms. Laili Helms, also a relative of King Zahir Shah, was the Taliban's unofficial envoy to the United States and arranged for various Taliban officials to visit the United States. Laili Helms' base of operations was in her home in Jersey City on the Hudson River. Ironically, most of her work on behalf of the Taliban was practically conducted in the shadows of the World Trade Center, just across the river.
Laili Helms' liaison work for the Taliban paid off for Big Oil. In December 1997, the Taliban visited UNOCAL's Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now on America's international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp. His rival Taliban leader in Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (not to be confused with the head of the Northern Alliance Burhanuddin Rabbani), favored Bridas, an Argentine oil company, for the pipeline project. But Mullah Omar knew UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also close to the Bush campaign and administration. And Kandahar was the city near which the CentGas pipeline was to pass, a lucrative deal for the otherwise desert outpost.
While Clinton's State Department omitted Afghanistan from the top foreign policy priority list, the Bush administration, beholden to the oil interests that pumped millions of dollars into the 2000 campaign, restored Afghanistan to the top of the list, but for all the wrong reasons. After Bush's accession to the presidency, various Taliban envoys were received at the State Department, CIA, and National Security Council. The CIA, which appears, more than ever, to be a virtual extended family of the Bush oil interests, facilitated a renewed approach to the Taliban. The CIA agent who helped set up the Afghan mujaheddin, Milt Bearden, continued to defend the interests of the Taliban. He bemoaned the fact that the United States never really bothered to understand the Taliban when he told the Washington Post last October, "We never heard what they were trying to say... We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' "
There were even reports that the CIA met with their old mujaheddin operative bin Laden in the months before September 11 attacks. The French newspaper Le Figaro quoted an Arab specialist named Antoine Sfeir who postulated that the CIA met with bin Laden in July in a failed attempt to bring him back under its fold. Sfeir said the CIA maintained links with bin Laden before the U.S. attacked his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and, more astonishingly, kept them going even after the attacks. Sfeir told the paper, "Until the last minute, CIA agents hoped bin Laden would return to U.S. command, as was the case before 1998." Bin Laden actually officially broke with the US in 1991 when US troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden felt this was a violation of the Saudi regime’s responsibility to protect the Islamic Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina from the infidels. Bin Laden’s anti-American and anti-House of Saud rhetoric soon reached a fever pitch.
The Clinton administration made numerous attempts to kill Bin Laden. In August 1998, Al Qaeda operatives blew up several U.S. embassies in Africa. In response, Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles to be launched from US ships in the Persian Gulf into Afghanistan, which missed Bin Laden by a few hours. The Clinton administration also devised a plan with Pakistan's ISI to send a team of assassins into Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden. But Pakistan's government was overthrown by General Musharraf, who was viewed as particularly close to the Taliban. The CIA cancelled its plans, fearing Musharraf's ISI would tip off the Taliban and Bin Laden. . The CIA's connections to the ISI in the months before September 11 and the weeks after are also worthy of a full-blown investigation. The CIA continues to maintain an unhealthy alliance with the ISI, the organization that groomed bin Laden and the Taliban. Last September, the head of the ISI, General Mahmud Ahmed, was fired by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his pro-Taliban leanings and reportedly after the U.S. government presented Musharraf with disturbing intelligence linking the general to the terrorist hijackers.
General Ahmed was in Washington, DC on the morning of September 11 meeting with CIA and State Department officials as the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Later, both the Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington, Haron Amin, and Indian intelligence, in an apparent leak to The Times of India, confirmed that General Ahmed ordered a Pakistani-born British citizen and known terrorist named Ahmed Umar Sheik to wire $100,000 from Pakistan to the U.S. bank account of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker.
When the FBI traced calls made between General Ahmed and Sheik's cellular phone - the number having been supplied by Indian intelligence to the FBI - a pattern linking the general with Sheik clearly emerged. According to The Times of India, the revelation that General Ahmed was involved in the Sheik-Atta money transfer was more than enough for a nervous and embarrassed Bush administration. It pressed Musharraf to dump General Ahmed. Musharraf mealy-mouthed the announcement of his general's dismissal by stating Ahmed "requested" early retirement.
Sheik was well known to the Indian police. He was arrested in New Delhi in 1994 for plotting to kidnap four foreigners, including an American citizen. Sheik was released by the Indians in 1999 in a swap for passengers on board New Delhi-bound Indian Airlines flight 814, hijacked by Islamic militants from Kathmandu, Nepal to Kandahar, Afghanistan. India continues to believe the ISI played a part in the hijacking since the hijackers were affiliated with the pro-bin Laden Kashmiri terrorist group, Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, a group only recently and quite belatedly placed on the State Department's terrorist list. The ISI and bin Laden's Al Qaeda reportedly assists the group in its operations against Indian government targets in Kashmir.
The FBI, which assisted its Indian counterpart in the investigation of the Indian Airlines hijacking, says it wants information leading to the arrest of those involved in the terrorist attacks. Yet, no move has been made to question General Ahmed or those U.S. government officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who met with him in September. Clearly, General Ahmed was a major player in terrorist activities across South Asia, yet still had very close ties to the U.S. government. General Ahmed's terrorist-supporting activities - and the U.S. government officials who tolerated those activities - need to be investigated.
The Taliban visits to Washington continued up to a few months prior to the September 11 attacks. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's South Asian Division maintained constant satellite telephone contact with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul. Washington permitted the Taliban to maintain a diplomatic office in Queens, New York headed by Taliban diplomat Abdul Hakim Mojahed. In addition, U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, who is also a former CIA officer, visited Taliban diplomatic officials in Islamabad. In the meantime, the Bush administration took a hostile attitude towards the Islamic State of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance. Even though the United Nations recognized the alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the Bush administration, with oil at the forefront of its goals, decided to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and curry favor with the Taliban mullahs of Afghanistan. The visits of Islamist radicals did not end with the Taliban. In July 2001, the head of Pakistan's pro-bin Laden Jamiaat-i-Islami Party, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, also reportedly was received at the George Bush Center for Intelligence (aka, CIA headquarters) in Langley, Virginia.
According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the one-eyed Taliban leader. The Village Voice reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden long enough for the United States to capture or kill him but, inexplicably, the administration refused. Meanwhile, Spozhmai Maiwandi, the director of the Voice of America's Pashtun service, jokingly nicknamed "Kandahar Rose" by her colleagues, aired favorable reports on the Taliban, including a controversial interview with Mullah Omar.
The Bush administration's dalliances with the Taliban may have even continued after the start of the bombing campaign against their country. According to European intelligence sources, a number of European governments were concerned that the CIA and Big Oil were pressuring the Bush administration not to engage in an initial serious ground war on behalf of the Northern Alliance in order to placate Pakistan and its Taliban compatriots. The early-on decision to stick with an incessant air bombardment, they reasoned, was causing too many civilian deaths and increasing the shakiness of the international coalition.
The obvious, and woefully underreported, interfaces between the Bush administration, UNOCAL, the CIA, the Taliban, Enron, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, the groundwork for which was laid when the Bush Oil team was on the sidelines during the Clinton administration, is making the Republicans worried. Vanquished vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman is in the ironic position of being the senator who will chair the Senate Government Affairs Committee hearings on the collapse of Enron. The roads from Enron also lead to Afghanistan and murky Bush oil politics.
UNOCAL was also clearly concerned about its past ties to the Taliban. On September 14, just three days after terrorists of the Afghan-base al Qaeda movement crashed their planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, UNOCAL issued the following statement: "The company is not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan in any way whatsoever. Nor do we have any project or involvement in Afghanistan. Beginning in late 1997, Unocal was a member of a multinational consortium that was evaluating construction of a Central Asia Gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan [via western Afghanistan]. Our company has had no further role in developing or funding that project or any other project that might involve the Taliban."
The Bush Oil Team, which can now rely on the support of the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, may think that war and oil profits mix. But there is simply too much evidence that the War in Afghanistan was primarily about building UNOCAL's pipeline, not about fighting terrorism. The Democrats, who control the Senate and its investigation agenda, should investigate the secretive deals between Big Oil, Bush, and the Taliban.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Wayne Madsen 2002. Reprinted for fair use only.
and the Bush Oil Team
by Wayne Madsen
democrats.com, January 2002
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 23 January 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources.
When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset. Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table.
Quite to the contrary, recent meetings between U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain and that country's oil minister Usman Aminuddin indicate the pipeline project is international Project Number One for the Bush administration. Chamberlain, who maintains close ties to the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan (a one-time chief money conduit for the Taliban), has been pushing Pakistan to begin work on its Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline.
Meanwhile, President Bush says that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan for the long haul. Far from being engaged in Afghan peacekeeping -- the Europeans are doing much of that -- our troops will effectively be guarding pipeline construction personnel that will soon be flooding into the country.
Karzai's ties with UNOCAL and the Bush administration are the main reason why the CIA pushed him for Afghan leader over rival Abdul Haq, the assassinated former mujaheddin leader from Jalalabad, and the leadership of the Northern Alliance, seen by Langley as being too close to the Russians and Iranians. Haq had no apparent close ties to the U.S. oil industry and, as both a Pushtun and a northern Afghani, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Afghan people, including the Northern Alliance. Those credentials likely sealed his fate.
When Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan last October, his position was immediately known to Taliban forces, which subsequently pinned him and his small party down, captured, and executed them. Former Reagan National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who worked with Haq, vainly attempted to get the CIA to help rescue Haq. The agency claimed it sent a remotely-piloted armed drone to attack the Taliban but its actions were too little and too late. Some observers in Pakistan claim the CIA tipped off the ISI about Haq's journey and the Pakistanis, in turn, informed the Taliban. McFarlane, who runs a K Street oil consulting firm, did not comment on further questions about the circumstances leading to the death of Haq.
While Haq was not part of the Bush administration's GOP (Grand Oil Plan) for South Asia, Karzai was a key player on the Bush Oil team. During the late 1990s, Karzai worked with an Afghani-American, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas project. Khalilzad is President Bush's Special National Security Assistant and recently named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House press release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was made of his past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad has worked on Afghan issues under National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron, itself no innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal. Rice made an impression on her old colleagues at Chevron. The company has named one of their supertankers the SS Condoleezza Rice.
Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, was, in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project.
Khalilzad's efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush campaign. Enron, which recently filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the nation's history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its Chairman Kenneth Lay, earlier in 2001. These meetings were presumably part of Cheney's non-public Energy Task Force sessions. A number of Enron stockholders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, currently serves as the Secretary of the Army.
A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney's selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow Enron, there were Wall Street rumors in late December that Halliburton, which suffered a forty per cent drop in share value, might follow Enron into bankruptcy court.
Assisting with the CentGas negotiations with the Taliban was Laili Helms, the niece-in-law of former CIA Director Richard Helms. Laili Helms, also a relative of King Zahir Shah, was the Taliban's unofficial envoy to the United States and arranged for various Taliban officials to visit the United States. Laili Helms' base of operations was in her home in Jersey City on the Hudson River. Ironically, most of her work on behalf of the Taliban was practically conducted in the shadows of the World Trade Center, just across the river.
Laili Helms' liaison work for the Taliban paid off for Big Oil. In December 1997, the Taliban visited UNOCAL's Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now on America's international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp. His rival Taliban leader in Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (not to be confused with the head of the Northern Alliance Burhanuddin Rabbani), favored Bridas, an Argentine oil company, for the pipeline project. But Mullah Omar knew UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also close to the Bush campaign and administration. And Kandahar was the city near which the CentGas pipeline was to pass, a lucrative deal for the otherwise desert outpost.
While Clinton's State Department omitted Afghanistan from the top foreign policy priority list, the Bush administration, beholden to the oil interests that pumped millions of dollars into the 2000 campaign, restored Afghanistan to the top of the list, but for all the wrong reasons. After Bush's accession to the presidency, various Taliban envoys were received at the State Department, CIA, and National Security Council. The CIA, which appears, more than ever, to be a virtual extended family of the Bush oil interests, facilitated a renewed approach to the Taliban. The CIA agent who helped set up the Afghan mujaheddin, Milt Bearden, continued to defend the interests of the Taliban. He bemoaned the fact that the United States never really bothered to understand the Taliban when he told the Washington Post last October, "We never heard what they were trying to say... We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' "
There were even reports that the CIA met with their old mujaheddin operative bin Laden in the months before September 11 attacks. The French newspaper Le Figaro quoted an Arab specialist named Antoine Sfeir who postulated that the CIA met with bin Laden in July in a failed attempt to bring him back under its fold. Sfeir said the CIA maintained links with bin Laden before the U.S. attacked his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and, more astonishingly, kept them going even after the attacks. Sfeir told the paper, "Until the last minute, CIA agents hoped bin Laden would return to U.S. command, as was the case before 1998." Bin Laden actually officially broke with the US in 1991 when US troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden felt this was a violation of the Saudi regime’s responsibility to protect the Islamic Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina from the infidels. Bin Laden’s anti-American and anti-House of Saud rhetoric soon reached a fever pitch.
The Clinton administration made numerous attempts to kill Bin Laden. In August 1998, Al Qaeda operatives blew up several U.S. embassies in Africa. In response, Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles to be launched from US ships in the Persian Gulf into Afghanistan, which missed Bin Laden by a few hours. The Clinton administration also devised a plan with Pakistan's ISI to send a team of assassins into Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden. But Pakistan's government was overthrown by General Musharraf, who was viewed as particularly close to the Taliban. The CIA cancelled its plans, fearing Musharraf's ISI would tip off the Taliban and Bin Laden. . The CIA's connections to the ISI in the months before September 11 and the weeks after are also worthy of a full-blown investigation. The CIA continues to maintain an unhealthy alliance with the ISI, the organization that groomed bin Laden and the Taliban. Last September, the head of the ISI, General Mahmud Ahmed, was fired by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his pro-Taliban leanings and reportedly after the U.S. government presented Musharraf with disturbing intelligence linking the general to the terrorist hijackers.
General Ahmed was in Washington, DC on the morning of September 11 meeting with CIA and State Department officials as the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Later, both the Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington, Haron Amin, and Indian intelligence, in an apparent leak to The Times of India, confirmed that General Ahmed ordered a Pakistani-born British citizen and known terrorist named Ahmed Umar Sheik to wire $100,000 from Pakistan to the U.S. bank account of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker.
When the FBI traced calls made between General Ahmed and Sheik's cellular phone - the number having been supplied by Indian intelligence to the FBI - a pattern linking the general with Sheik clearly emerged. According to The Times of India, the revelation that General Ahmed was involved in the Sheik-Atta money transfer was more than enough for a nervous and embarrassed Bush administration. It pressed Musharraf to dump General Ahmed. Musharraf mealy-mouthed the announcement of his general's dismissal by stating Ahmed "requested" early retirement.
Sheik was well known to the Indian police. He was arrested in New Delhi in 1994 for plotting to kidnap four foreigners, including an American citizen. Sheik was released by the Indians in 1999 in a swap for passengers on board New Delhi-bound Indian Airlines flight 814, hijacked by Islamic militants from Kathmandu, Nepal to Kandahar, Afghanistan. India continues to believe the ISI played a part in the hijacking since the hijackers were affiliated with the pro-bin Laden Kashmiri terrorist group, Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, a group only recently and quite belatedly placed on the State Department's terrorist list. The ISI and bin Laden's Al Qaeda reportedly assists the group in its operations against Indian government targets in Kashmir.
The FBI, which assisted its Indian counterpart in the investigation of the Indian Airlines hijacking, says it wants information leading to the arrest of those involved in the terrorist attacks. Yet, no move has been made to question General Ahmed or those U.S. government officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who met with him in September. Clearly, General Ahmed was a major player in terrorist activities across South Asia, yet still had very close ties to the U.S. government. General Ahmed's terrorist-supporting activities - and the U.S. government officials who tolerated those activities - need to be investigated.
The Taliban visits to Washington continued up to a few months prior to the September 11 attacks. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's South Asian Division maintained constant satellite telephone contact with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul. Washington permitted the Taliban to maintain a diplomatic office in Queens, New York headed by Taliban diplomat Abdul Hakim Mojahed. In addition, U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, who is also a former CIA officer, visited Taliban diplomatic officials in Islamabad. In the meantime, the Bush administration took a hostile attitude towards the Islamic State of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance. Even though the United Nations recognized the alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the Bush administration, with oil at the forefront of its goals, decided to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and curry favor with the Taliban mullahs of Afghanistan. The visits of Islamist radicals did not end with the Taliban. In July 2001, the head of Pakistan's pro-bin Laden Jamiaat-i-Islami Party, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, also reportedly was received at the George Bush Center for Intelligence (aka, CIA headquarters) in Langley, Virginia.
According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the one-eyed Taliban leader. The Village Voice reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden long enough for the United States to capture or kill him but, inexplicably, the administration refused. Meanwhile, Spozhmai Maiwandi, the director of the Voice of America's Pashtun service, jokingly nicknamed "Kandahar Rose" by her colleagues, aired favorable reports on the Taliban, including a controversial interview with Mullah Omar.
The Bush administration's dalliances with the Taliban may have even continued after the start of the bombing campaign against their country. According to European intelligence sources, a number of European governments were concerned that the CIA and Big Oil were pressuring the Bush administration not to engage in an initial serious ground war on behalf of the Northern Alliance in order to placate Pakistan and its Taliban compatriots. The early-on decision to stick with an incessant air bombardment, they reasoned, was causing too many civilian deaths and increasing the shakiness of the international coalition.
The obvious, and woefully underreported, interfaces between the Bush administration, UNOCAL, the CIA, the Taliban, Enron, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, the groundwork for which was laid when the Bush Oil team was on the sidelines during the Clinton administration, is making the Republicans worried. Vanquished vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman is in the ironic position of being the senator who will chair the Senate Government Affairs Committee hearings on the collapse of Enron. The roads from Enron also lead to Afghanistan and murky Bush oil politics.
UNOCAL was also clearly concerned about its past ties to the Taliban. On September 14, just three days after terrorists of the Afghan-base al Qaeda movement crashed their planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, UNOCAL issued the following statement: "The company is not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan in any way whatsoever. Nor do we have any project or involvement in Afghanistan. Beginning in late 1997, Unocal was a member of a multinational consortium that was evaluating construction of a Central Asia Gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan [via western Afghanistan]. Our company has had no further role in developing or funding that project or any other project that might involve the Taliban."
The Bush Oil Team, which can now rely on the support of the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, may think that war and oil profits mix. But there is simply too much evidence that the War in Afghanistan was primarily about building UNOCAL's pipeline, not about fighting terrorism. The Democrats, who control the Senate and its investigation agenda, should investigate the secretive deals between Big Oil, Bush, and the Taliban.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Wayne Madsen 2002. Reprinted for fair use only.
It's kind of hard to believe'
Ex-Enron workers rip Skilling's story
By KIRSTIN DOWNEY
Washington Post
Across Houston, Enron employees watched former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling's congressional testimony on television, turning incredulous, angry and then sarcastic by turns, as a man they knew as savvy and detail-oriented pleaded memory failure and ignorance about critical financial transactions at the now-collapsed energy giant.
"Jeff Skilling said nothing," said Jessie Patterson, one of several former Enron employees who gathered in sports bars and other after-work haunts to watch their former boss testify before Congress on Thursday.
John Everett / Chronicle
Former Enron Corp. employees Jessie Patterson, left, and Tony Huang were among a group who went to Ruggles Restaurant at Enron Field on Thursday to watch former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling testify before Congress.
"He might as well have taken the Fifth," Patterson added, "because he didn't say anything that brought any closure. I wanted to know what happened."
Helen Mathews, who lost her $35,800-a-year job as a senior administrative assistant, turned on the TV in her Houston apartment after returning home from the unemployment office.
"It's kind of hard to believe: A CEO who doesn't know how the company made its money," said a bemused Mathews, who is in her 50s and worked at Enron for five years. She wondered aloud why he had agreed to testify, when others evaded congressional questioners, but said she imagined he did it because he believed he could outwit them.
"He probably figured he was smart and could deal with it," she said of Skilling, whom she described as a "hotshot" with more than a touch of arrogance. "Like he thinks he's the man."
Digna Showers, 53, who lost her job as an administrative assistant as well as $450,000 in her retirement fund, grew indignant as she listened to Skilling testify.
"He is lying; he knew everything," said Showers, who said she had seen Skilling frequently over her 18 years with the firm, where Skilling was known for his intimate grasp of the inner doings at the company. "I am getting sicker by the minute."
"(Skillings) has an MBA from Harvard," said Showers, who is the primary supporter of her husband, a disabled schoolteacher. "He's knowledgable. He's twisting things around. He's not answering things directly."
For Dorothy Ricketts, 46, a former business analyst at Enron who earned $70,000 a year, the testimony provided one more disturbing twist in what for her had been a 12-year saga at Enron. Much of her retirement money was tied up in Enron stock. How much, she won't say. "It hurts too much to talk about it," she said.
She said she had believed what Enron executives told her about its business prospects, and was eager to show her loyalty by buying company stock.
"I guess you could say I believed the hype,and what they were telling us," Ricketts said.
Watching the testimony at her Missouri City home produced odd feelings. "I don't understand how he could be in the position he was in, and say he didn't know what was going on. It's unbelievable. He doesn't recall a lot."
Alice Johnson, 50, a market services analyst at Northern Natural Gas, said she found herself wondering when "the real truth" would emerge.
Johnson has not lost her job at the former Enron subsidiary but fears she will under its new owner, Dynegy Inc. She said she sometimes saw Skilling in meetings during the 28 years she worked at the firm. She recalled him as "knowledgable," with a razor-sharp sense for business but also a short fuse.
"He wasn't conscious of people, just the bottom line," she said.
Ex-Enron workers rip Skilling's story
By KIRSTIN DOWNEY
Washington Post
Across Houston, Enron employees watched former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling's congressional testimony on television, turning incredulous, angry and then sarcastic by turns, as a man they knew as savvy and detail-oriented pleaded memory failure and ignorance about critical financial transactions at the now-collapsed energy giant.
"Jeff Skilling said nothing," said Jessie Patterson, one of several former Enron employees who gathered in sports bars and other after-work haunts to watch their former boss testify before Congress on Thursday.
John Everett / Chronicle
Former Enron Corp. employees Jessie Patterson, left, and Tony Huang were among a group who went to Ruggles Restaurant at Enron Field on Thursday to watch former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling testify before Congress.
"He might as well have taken the Fifth," Patterson added, "because he didn't say anything that brought any closure. I wanted to know what happened."
Helen Mathews, who lost her $35,800-a-year job as a senior administrative assistant, turned on the TV in her Houston apartment after returning home from the unemployment office.
"It's kind of hard to believe: A CEO who doesn't know how the company made its money," said a bemused Mathews, who is in her 50s and worked at Enron for five years. She wondered aloud why he had agreed to testify, when others evaded congressional questioners, but said she imagined he did it because he believed he could outwit them.
"He probably figured he was smart and could deal with it," she said of Skilling, whom she described as a "hotshot" with more than a touch of arrogance. "Like he thinks he's the man."
Digna Showers, 53, who lost her job as an administrative assistant as well as $450,000 in her retirement fund, grew indignant as she listened to Skilling testify.
"He is lying; he knew everything," said Showers, who said she had seen Skilling frequently over her 18 years with the firm, where Skilling was known for his intimate grasp of the inner doings at the company. "I am getting sicker by the minute."
"(Skillings) has an MBA from Harvard," said Showers, who is the primary supporter of her husband, a disabled schoolteacher. "He's knowledgable. He's twisting things around. He's not answering things directly."
For Dorothy Ricketts, 46, a former business analyst at Enron who earned $70,000 a year, the testimony provided one more disturbing twist in what for her had been a 12-year saga at Enron. Much of her retirement money was tied up in Enron stock. How much, she won't say. "It hurts too much to talk about it," she said.
She said she had believed what Enron executives told her about its business prospects, and was eager to show her loyalty by buying company stock.
"I guess you could say I believed the hype,and what they were telling us," Ricketts said.
Watching the testimony at her Missouri City home produced odd feelings. "I don't understand how he could be in the position he was in, and say he didn't know what was going on. It's unbelievable. He doesn't recall a lot."
Alice Johnson, 50, a market services analyst at Northern Natural Gas, said she found herself wondering when "the real truth" would emerge.
Johnson has not lost her job at the former Enron subsidiary but fears she will under its new owner, Dynegy Inc. She said she sometimes saw Skilling in meetings during the 28 years she worked at the firm. She recalled him as "knowledgable," with a razor-sharp sense for business but also a short fuse.
"He wasn't conscious of people, just the bottom line," she said.
The Times U.K.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 07 2002
Arrogance and fear: the American paradox
ANATOLE KALETSKY
Is America about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? To judge by the incoherent, paranoid mood of the World Economic Forum in New York, American politicians, businessmen and media commentators appear to be on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown.
Consider what America has achieved in the past six months. It has won a war that was said to be unwinnable. It has coped with a human and social tragedy on a scale not seen in the West since the Second World War, responding with an admirable combination of dignity, restraint and courage. On the economic front, a recession described by many experts as the greatest peril to face the world economy since the 1930s has ended almost before it began. The bursting of the Internet bubble — widely described as the greatest financial speculation in history — has left some investors severely chastened, but has done no permanent harm to the US economy or even to confidence on Wall Street.
How have Americans responded to all this good news? Not since the early 1980s have I seen America’s business elite so lacking in confidence, not just about their immediate economic prospects, but about the long-term outlook for capitalism and the world. The arrogance of American politicians on the world stage is a natural reaction to this fundamental lack of economic and social self-confidence, as it was in the early Reagan years.
Whether the wider American public shares this manic-depressive paranoia is uncertain, but opinion polls suggest that it does. How else can one explain the record approval ratings of a President who tells them that — far from celebrating their Afghanistan victory — they should prepare for a third world war that will last for decades and expose them to unprecedented dangers? Objectively, Americans should now feel more secure than ever. The Taleban have been overthrown with little loss of American lives. An unprecedented global coalition has defended modern civilisation from a perverted medieval fundamentalism. The round-up of terrorists has been successfully extended to every corner of the world, helping to stabilise pro-Western regimes from the Philippines to Peru.
Let me quote President Arroyo of the Philippines, who has far more reason to fear Islamic terrorism than any American. Speaking at the forum she said: “Victory is now at hand. When President Bush said he would go into Afghanistan, everyone predicted that it would be a long drawn-out war, but it took only a few weeks for the back of the terrorist movement to be broken.”
President Arroyo is clearly right. Hundreds of terrorists have been arrested, their plans uncovered and their networks opened to infiltration. Laws have been tightened around the world. New security measures have been introduced making aircraft and public buildings far safer than before. Technologies are being deployed to make terrorist attacks even more difficult and a repeat of September’s massacre literally impossible. An anthrax attack on the US Congress has been dealt with and has turned out to be much less lethal than expected.
Yet the Bush Administration’s response to all these victories has been to terrify the American public with bloodcurdling rhetoric about the infinitely greater horrors of nuclear and biological terrorism that lie in wait.
There are many possible reasons why Mr Bush may prefer to whip up irrational war hysteria rather than rest on his laurels.He may be genuinely convinced that terrorists are about to acquire nuclear weapons from Iraq, North Korea or Iran, but this seems unlikely, if only because there are more plausible sources of supply in Russia and the former Soviet republics, not to mention India and Pakistan.
Any pretext to topple President Saddam Hussein would obviously be attractive to the White House. This would also be a great boon for the world and the Middle East, if the job could be done by internal dissident forces and accomplished with as little bloodshed as the overthrow of the Taleban. Unfortunately, this is a very big if, since there is no military opposition in Iraq comparable to the Northern Alliance and Saddam runs a modern police state, very different from the ramshackle medieval theocracy of the Taleban.
There are other less creditable reasons for whipping up war hysteria. Mr Bush wants to make sure that he cannot be blamed for a lack of vigilance in the event of some totally unpredictable and random terrorist outrage, which could occur, by the law of probabilities, regardless of whatever precautions might be taken sometime in the next few years. The Pentagon has been looking for an enemy ever since Mr Bush’s election, to justify a vastly expanded defence budget. Moreover, the interests of Israel have a commanding influence on some of the key policymakers in Washington — and Israel’s interests are unfortunately identified at present with the extreme Zionism of Ariel Sharon. For Saudi Arabia, which is increasingly recognised in America as the main wellspring of the fundamentalist poison seeping through all Islamic countries, it is convenient if America’s anger is deflected on to Iraq and Iran.
America’s new paranoia is also driven by a domestic political agenda. The social conservatives on the Republican Right are praying (literally) that a revival of the Cold War mentality of the 1950s might restore some of the conservative moral values that were weakened by the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s, which were totally swept away by the Clinton Administration. War fever has given Mr Bush an excuse to tear up his promises about balanced budgets and to propose additional tax cuts that would benefit America’s biggest corporations and richest citizens. Last, but not least, it is clearly in the Republicans’ interest to sustain the war fever until the crucial congressional elections on November 5.
All this is obvious enough — and all of these themes were widely discussed in the background of the New York forum, if only sotto voce. It is also obvious that America’s paranoia and arrogance will pose at least a temporary danger to the global anti-terrorist coalition. What is less obvious, but may prove more insidious and lasting, is the effect of the new paranoia on the global victory of American capitalist values, which seemed so decisive in the past decade.
By identifying America primarily as a military power, by asserting that it will pursue its perceived national interests regardless of international laws, coalitions or treaties, by emphasising its unchallengeable superiority over every other nation and global institution, by claiming an unconditional moral hegemony over any adversary he cares to identify, and by acting so blatantly in the interests of the US business establishment, Mr Bush is weakening America and playing into the hands of its opponents.
He is fostering the belief that America’s wealth and power are illegitimate and coercive when, in reality, America is powerful because people all over the world volunteer to buy its products and absorb its values. But that is not how the world perceives things. And the more America brandishes its military power, the more it will be met with antagonism, revulsion and misunderstanding.
Even US businessmen seem to be losing confidence in the legitimacy of the system that made them rich. The millionaire corporate executives at the World Economic Forum applauded enthusiastically whenever speakers mentioned injustice, inequality and the need for more government, regulation and income redistribution on a global scale. Every mention of the global triumph of US capitalist values was greeted with embarrassed silence.
All this may be no bad thing. Perhaps global inequalities have become intolerable. Perhaps the imbalance between materialism and spirituality does need redressing. Perhaps Europe — and especially Britain — could benefit by distancing themselves further from brash American values. But as Mr Bush pushes America ever further towards the extremes of military unilateralism, there is a growing danger of a repeat of the global ideological backlash of the 1960s — and a near certainty that US influence in the world will diminish.
The greatest danger to America’s dominant position today is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is the arrogance of American power.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 07 2002
Arrogance and fear: the American paradox
ANATOLE KALETSKY
Is America about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? To judge by the incoherent, paranoid mood of the World Economic Forum in New York, American politicians, businessmen and media commentators appear to be on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown.
Consider what America has achieved in the past six months. It has won a war that was said to be unwinnable. It has coped with a human and social tragedy on a scale not seen in the West since the Second World War, responding with an admirable combination of dignity, restraint and courage. On the economic front, a recession described by many experts as the greatest peril to face the world economy since the 1930s has ended almost before it began. The bursting of the Internet bubble — widely described as the greatest financial speculation in history — has left some investors severely chastened, but has done no permanent harm to the US economy or even to confidence on Wall Street.
How have Americans responded to all this good news? Not since the early 1980s have I seen America’s business elite so lacking in confidence, not just about their immediate economic prospects, but about the long-term outlook for capitalism and the world. The arrogance of American politicians on the world stage is a natural reaction to this fundamental lack of economic and social self-confidence, as it was in the early Reagan years.
Whether the wider American public shares this manic-depressive paranoia is uncertain, but opinion polls suggest that it does. How else can one explain the record approval ratings of a President who tells them that — far from celebrating their Afghanistan victory — they should prepare for a third world war that will last for decades and expose them to unprecedented dangers? Objectively, Americans should now feel more secure than ever. The Taleban have been overthrown with little loss of American lives. An unprecedented global coalition has defended modern civilisation from a perverted medieval fundamentalism. The round-up of terrorists has been successfully extended to every corner of the world, helping to stabilise pro-Western regimes from the Philippines to Peru.
Let me quote President Arroyo of the Philippines, who has far more reason to fear Islamic terrorism than any American. Speaking at the forum she said: “Victory is now at hand. When President Bush said he would go into Afghanistan, everyone predicted that it would be a long drawn-out war, but it took only a few weeks for the back of the terrorist movement to be broken.”
President Arroyo is clearly right. Hundreds of terrorists have been arrested, their plans uncovered and their networks opened to infiltration. Laws have been tightened around the world. New security measures have been introduced making aircraft and public buildings far safer than before. Technologies are being deployed to make terrorist attacks even more difficult and a repeat of September’s massacre literally impossible. An anthrax attack on the US Congress has been dealt with and has turned out to be much less lethal than expected.
Yet the Bush Administration’s response to all these victories has been to terrify the American public with bloodcurdling rhetoric about the infinitely greater horrors of nuclear and biological terrorism that lie in wait.
There are many possible reasons why Mr Bush may prefer to whip up irrational war hysteria rather than rest on his laurels.He may be genuinely convinced that terrorists are about to acquire nuclear weapons from Iraq, North Korea or Iran, but this seems unlikely, if only because there are more plausible sources of supply in Russia and the former Soviet republics, not to mention India and Pakistan.
Any pretext to topple President Saddam Hussein would obviously be attractive to the White House. This would also be a great boon for the world and the Middle East, if the job could be done by internal dissident forces and accomplished with as little bloodshed as the overthrow of the Taleban. Unfortunately, this is a very big if, since there is no military opposition in Iraq comparable to the Northern Alliance and Saddam runs a modern police state, very different from the ramshackle medieval theocracy of the Taleban.
There are other less creditable reasons for whipping up war hysteria. Mr Bush wants to make sure that he cannot be blamed for a lack of vigilance in the event of some totally unpredictable and random terrorist outrage, which could occur, by the law of probabilities, regardless of whatever precautions might be taken sometime in the next few years. The Pentagon has been looking for an enemy ever since Mr Bush’s election, to justify a vastly expanded defence budget. Moreover, the interests of Israel have a commanding influence on some of the key policymakers in Washington — and Israel’s interests are unfortunately identified at present with the extreme Zionism of Ariel Sharon. For Saudi Arabia, which is increasingly recognised in America as the main wellspring of the fundamentalist poison seeping through all Islamic countries, it is convenient if America’s anger is deflected on to Iraq and Iran.
America’s new paranoia is also driven by a domestic political agenda. The social conservatives on the Republican Right are praying (literally) that a revival of the Cold War mentality of the 1950s might restore some of the conservative moral values that were weakened by the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s, which were totally swept away by the Clinton Administration. War fever has given Mr Bush an excuse to tear up his promises about balanced budgets and to propose additional tax cuts that would benefit America’s biggest corporations and richest citizens. Last, but not least, it is clearly in the Republicans’ interest to sustain the war fever until the crucial congressional elections on November 5.
All this is obvious enough — and all of these themes were widely discussed in the background of the New York forum, if only sotto voce. It is also obvious that America’s paranoia and arrogance will pose at least a temporary danger to the global anti-terrorist coalition. What is less obvious, but may prove more insidious and lasting, is the effect of the new paranoia on the global victory of American capitalist values, which seemed so decisive in the past decade.
By identifying America primarily as a military power, by asserting that it will pursue its perceived national interests regardless of international laws, coalitions or treaties, by emphasising its unchallengeable superiority over every other nation and global institution, by claiming an unconditional moral hegemony over any adversary he cares to identify, and by acting so blatantly in the interests of the US business establishment, Mr Bush is weakening America and playing into the hands of its opponents.
He is fostering the belief that America’s wealth and power are illegitimate and coercive when, in reality, America is powerful because people all over the world volunteer to buy its products and absorb its values. But that is not how the world perceives things. And the more America brandishes its military power, the more it will be met with antagonism, revulsion and misunderstanding.
Even US businessmen seem to be losing confidence in the legitimacy of the system that made them rich. The millionaire corporate executives at the World Economic Forum applauded enthusiastically whenever speakers mentioned injustice, inequality and the need for more government, regulation and income redistribution on a global scale. Every mention of the global triumph of US capitalist values was greeted with embarrassed silence.
All this may be no bad thing. Perhaps global inequalities have become intolerable. Perhaps the imbalance between materialism and spirituality does need redressing. Perhaps Europe — and especially Britain — could benefit by distancing themselves further from brash American values. But as Mr Bush pushes America ever further towards the extremes of military unilateralism, there is a growing danger of a repeat of the global ideological backlash of the 1960s — and a near certainty that US influence in the world will diminish.
The greatest danger to America’s dominant position today is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is the arrogance of American power.
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