Spotlight Falls On Cheney
by Ian McPherson US Vice President Dick Cheney is a secretive character. He was embroiled in controversy in 2001 when Enron, a member of his controversial Energy Task Force, collapsed in the world's largest corporate fraud. Despite numerous political requests, and a long, drawn-out court battle, he and his department have refused to release any documentation regarding the secret Energy Task Force meetings, amid speculation that Ken Lay or others from Enron may have had undue influence over the crafting of the Bush administration's Energy Policy.
Just this month, a US federal appeals court upheld a lower court's finding that the White House isn't immune from the proceedings, which focus on the Task Force's deliberations and decisions, and rejected Cheney's legal submission to the court that the lawsuit should be blocked. In the absence of documents from Cheney's department, the litigant (Judicial Watch) has been forced to subpoena documents supplied to the Energy Task Force by the US Commerce Department.
Earlier this year, the Vice President was embroiled in another scandal, the awarding of a no-bid Pentagon contract awarded to Halliburton for extinguishing any oil fires in Iraq. Cheney worked for Halliburton until he joined the Bush administration in 2000, and Halliburton continues to pay Cheney up to $US1 million per year in deferred compensation. Californian Democrat Henry Waxman was particularly vocal about the contract, which was awarded in secrecy, without obtaining competitive quotes. "The amount Halliburton could receive in the future is virtually limitless," said Waxman. "It is simply remarkable that a single company could earn so much money from the war in Iraq."
The controversy escalated again when the New York Times discovered that the contract also granted Halliburton the rights to run and manage the Iraq oil industry for the immediate future. Henry Waxman again rose to the occasion; "I know that I would never give a no-bid contract to any company that ripped me off. I don't understand why this administration isn't sensitive to the appearance of impropriety when it is so well-known that the VP made his millions from Halliburton." Cheney is understood to have received a $US30 million payout on leaving Halliburton.
Now the Vice President finds himself involved in another controversy - the fraudulent Iraq-Niger nuclear proliferation claims.
Some background
Former US ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger in February 2002 to ascertain the validity of these nuclear proliferation claims. He determined that the Iraq-Niger reports were based on forged documents and were fraudulent. His findings were later supported by the UN Nuclear agency (IAEA), when the documents were finally supplied to them. Wilson's findings were, according to Wilson himself, in an opinion article he penned for the New York Times, duly reported to all concerned in the Bush administration early in March 2002.
Now it appears that Wilson was sent to Niger at the behest of none other than Vice President Cheney's department. So Cheney knew that the Iraq-Niger nuclear proliferation claims were illegitimate early in 2002. Yet Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press", 3 days before coalition forces invaded Iraq; "we believe he (Saddam Hussein) has reconstituted nuclear weapons."
Further, in the same interview, he opined that the IAEA was incorrect in its conclusion that Iraq was no nuclear threat. Here's an excerpt from the interview: Russert (Meet the Press), "The International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program; we disagree?"
Vice President Cheney; "I disagree, yes. And you'll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of the intelligence community disagree. We know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. El Baradei (Director of the IAEA) frankly is wrong."
Three significant days in September 2002
Seymour M. Hersh, a Pulitzer-award winning writer for the New Yorker magazine, traced out the timeline surrounding the bogus nuclear claims, and the part these claims played in swaying US Congress to vote for war in Iraq.
On September 24, 2002, CIA head George Tenet and a group of senior intelligence officials briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq's weapons capability. Tenet declared that a shipment of high-strength aluminum tubes, which was intercepted on its way to Iraq, had been destined for the construction of centrifuges that could be used to produce enriched uranium, even though the evidence was contested by international and US nuclear scientists. This evidence was also later discounted by the IAEA, as the tubes were of an incorrect design for an enrichment program.
On September 24, 2002, in London, the Blair government made public its "dodgy dossier", containing the information that Iraq had sought to buy “significant quantities of uranium” from an unnamed African country, “despite having no active civil nuclear power program that could require it.” This quote from the dossier hit the front page of most of the UK daily newspapers, including the Guardian, which all spread this spurious information far and wide. The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, for instance, ran the Guardian article, “African gangs offer route to uranium”.
On September 26, 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell also cited Iraq's attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of its persistent nuclear ambitions, before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The testimony from Tenet and Powell, plus the publication of claims from the "dodgy" UK dossier, resulted in the acquiescence of the US Democrats, who were openly questioning the rush to war, and the silencing of all debate surrounding Iraq's claimed weapons capability. Two weeks later, the Congressional resolution for war against Iraq passed overwhelmingly, giving President George W. Bush a mandate for a military assault on Iraq.
No weapons found, no nuclear ambitions uncovered
We now know the outcome of all this scare-mongering. Iraq possessed no "weapons-quality" biological or chemical weapons, regardless of the Blair government's dodgy claim that they could be deployed "in 45 minutes". Iraq also possessed no reconstituted nuclear weapons program, nor any connection to Niger, regardless of the insistent UK and White House claims.
The Iraq scientist charged with the responsibility for Iraq's nuclear ambitions did have some parts from Iraq's old nuclear program buried under his rose bushes, but the parts were obsolete and damaged by this unique form of storage. George W. Bush initally reacted that this was "the smoking gun", but later developments ruled this out. Investigations revealed that Iraq's nuclear plans, uncovered from pre-Gulf War I documents, were seriously flawed and would not have worked correctly should they have ever been built.
There is still some debate over the "mobile weapons labs", but the international consensus is that they were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist. Evidence also exists that the UK sold Iraq the trailers, through the British company, Marconi Command & Control. Which was not only an embarrassment for George W. Bush, but the start of the political nightmare for Tony Blair.
Cheney's Maps
 | | Left: A comprehensive map of Iraq's oil reserves,
obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of
Information Act, used during meetings with Enron
and other corporations involved in Vice President
Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force. |
In a controversy yet to unfold, the US federal court investigating Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force has been handed oil maps of Iraq requested by the Energy Task Force from the US Commerce Department. These maps detail the known oil deposits in Iraq, the oil fields currently producing, the oil fields under consideration for development, all refineries, pipelines, terminals and more. Additional documents supplied to the court detail all foreign suitors for Iraq oil field contracts, as of March 2001. One can only ponder why Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force requisitioned these documents, especially as the US had been unable to buy Iraq oil since Gulf War I, after which Hussein refused to sell oil to the US, and US companies were excluded from buying from Iraq under US-enforced UN sanctions. Regardless of these sanctions, Halliburton, Dick Cheney's company, used its international subsidiary KB&R to sell millions of dollars woth of oil equiument to Iraq. The PDFs above were sourced from Judicial Watch. More information is available on the website. The military-industrial complex?
Anyone studying the success of Halliburton (the company Dick Cheney used to run) since the September 11 attacks, cannot fail to appreciate how far the company has come. From its financially troubled state under Cheney, the company now commands a growing list of contracts from the Bush administration and the Pentagon, including the overall running of the Iraq oil industry.
Below I have listed the contracts that Halliburton, and its subsidiary Kellog, Brown and Root, have been awarded in regard to US military operations.
Halliburton: - A two-year contract to put out oil fires in Iraq, awarded without competitive bidding and with a maximum value of $US7 billion. The contract was later found by the New York Times to include pumping and distributing Iraqi oil, in effect "running" the Iraq oil industry.
- A ten-year exclusive contract to supply logistics to the US Army worldwide. This contract was awarded without a price cap, despite a $US2 million settlement of a criminal investigation for price fraud, and despite a US Government Accounting Office investigation into cost overruns by Halliburton for logistics in the Balkans. This contract has produced over $US800 million in revenues so far.
- A contract with the World Health Organization (WHO) for disabling and destroying “unconventional” weapons in Iraq.
- A five-year $US37 million contract for building permanent holding cells for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, built with labor from India and the Philippines.
Kellog, Brown & Root (a division of Halliburton): - A five-year $US300 million contract to provide logistical support to the US Navy.
- On March 25, the US Army Corps of Engineers, using a no-bid contract system, awarded KBR $US71.3 million in work orders to repair and operate oil wells in Iraq. That contract has a two-year duration with a spending ceiling of $US7 billion.
- Since March 2002, the US Army has issued 24 task orders to KBR, totaling $US425 million, under the contract for work related to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Eleven more work orders totaling $US103 million have been issued under the same contract, for work related to the war in Afghanistan.
- As the Army's sole provider of troop support services, KBR received work orders totaling $US529.4 million related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq under a 10-year contract with a potential profit of up to $490 million. There are no cost-controls in the contract that also has no spending ceiling — it pays a minimum of one percent and up to seven percent of whatever KBR spends. The company will be evaluated only twice annually.
- Under similar contracts, the Army paid KBR $US1.2 billion from 1992 through 1999 to support US troops, mainly in the Balkans. An extension of that contract from 1999 through 2004 is projected to cost $US1.8 billion.
Setting the right example
US international credibility is in tatters, and President George W, Bush has been assailed by questions and allegations surrounding the poor intelligence on Iraq. Few European and Asian nations are willing to commit peacekeeping troops to Iraq, with Germany, France and India all refusing to assist.
Tony Blair is also under attack for his "dodgy" intelligence, and his spin doctor Alistair Campbell's actions, especially since the recent suicide of intelligence weapons expert Dr. Peter Kelly, who has been exposed as the source of comments published by the BBC on the government's Iraq dossier.
And should the US administration need to intervene in Iran or Syria, if a nuclear or WOMD crisis erupted, would the world trust its intelligence, or its ability to discern which intelligence is correct? At this point, I would have to say no.
More scandals to come?
The last thing the US needs now is a further scandal surrounding Vice President Cheney's secretive Energy Task Force, which appears to have initiated studies into Iraq's oil wealth well before the Iraq war and the September 11 attacks. Whilst it is clear that discussions on Iraq were included in these clandestine meetings, and we may never know exactly why if Cheney manages to block the court case, there is a very real need for government transparency in this issue, and all issues vital to national security, such as energy.
The war in Iraq has rid the world of one very nasty dictator. It would be a crying shame if it was seen to be little more than an "oil grab" and an opportunity for the Bush administration to engage in political cronyism. Yet there is a real risk that much of the world will view it this way, further eroding the US's international reputation, should the likes of Halliburton and Bechtel continue to command the lion's share of profit from the war.
When President Dwight D. Eisenhower retired from politics in 1961, he had this (and quite a bit more) to say about the dangers of the military-industrial complex: "Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations."
"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society."
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
It appears that secret, and dubious, CIA intelligence has been deliberately chosen, and used to scare the public, in making a case for war against Iraq. I am compelled to remind you that Iraq is a country that was incapable of defending itself - even against its Arab neighbours - and had suffered decades of sanctions because it did not "tow the US line" on energy. If US Congress and the US public have been misled, when they needed to accurately assess another country's threat to the United States, in a time of purportedly dire peril - and it was all garbage - it is vital that these matters are thoroughly investigated and the information made public. Even if George W. Bush might like these slurs to go away, they won't. This is a matter of US worldwide credibility. There is much more at stake here than George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, and the billions of dollars to be made from war and oil. What is at stake is the reputation of the United States as a beacon of freedom, democracy, justice and fair-dealing in the western world. And that is something worth fighting for. See you all in the next issue! Ian McPherson
DownUnder Editor |
