The Saudi-Bush Gravy Train

posted by TruthIsAll (330 posts) @ http://democraticunderground.com
Dec-13-01, 10:39 PM (ET)

It's a combination of of "All in the Family", "Friends" and "The West Wing"

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/americas_new_war/saud12112001.htm

Many of the same American corporate executives who have reaped millions of dollars from arms and oil deals with the Saudi monarchy have served or currently serve at the highest levels of U.S. government, public records show.

Those lucrative financial relationships call into question the ability of America's political elite to make tough foreign policy decisions about the kingdom that produced Osama bin Laden and is perhaps the biggest incubator for anti-Western Islamic terrorists.

Nowhere is the revolving U.S.-Saudi money wheel more evident than within President Bush's own coterie of foreign policy advisers, starting with the president's father, George H.W. Bush.

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The Carlyle Group has also served as a paid adviser to the Saudi monarchy on the so-called ``Economic Offset Program,'' an arrangement that effectively requires U.S. arms manufacturers selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to give back a portion of their revenues in the form of contracts to Saudi businesses, most of whom are connected to the royal family. A company spokesman said yesterday that arrangement was ended ``a few months ago,'' but said he did not know whether it was terminated before or after the Sept. 11 attacks.

--snip
These intricate personal and financial links have led to virtual silence in the administration on Saudi Arabia's failings in dealing with terrorists like bin Laden, said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group.

``It's good old fashioned `I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine.' You have former U.S. officials, former presidents, aides to the current president, a long line of people who are tight with the Saudis, people who are the pillars of American society and officialdom,'' said Lewis.

``So for that and other reasons no one wants to alienate the Saudis, and we are willing to basically ignore inconvenient truths that might otherwise cause our blood to boil. We basically look away,'' he said. ``Folks don't like to stop the gravy train.''

--snip
A significant portion of the millions of dollars U.S. companies and their politically influential executives have earned in deals with the Saudis has been through military contracts.

The Carlyle Group had a major stake in the large defense contractor B.D.M., which has multimillion-dollar contracts through its subsidiaries to train and manage the Saudi National Guard and the Saudi air force, U.S. Department of Defense records show. In 1998, Carlyle sold its controlling interest in B.D.M. to defense giant TRW International.

--snip
Along with former President Bush, other officials from past Republican administrations now at the Carlyle Group include: former Secretary of State James A. Baker III; ex-budget chief Richard Darman; and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt.

President Bush is himself linked to the Carlyle group: He was a director of one of its subsidiaries, an airline food services company called Caterair, until 1994. Six years later, when Bush was governor of Texas, the board of directors of the Texas teachers' pension fund - some of whom were his appointees - voted to invest $100 million with the Carlyle Group.

--snip
After serving as the elder Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney was hired to run oil-services giant Halliburton Co., where he worked until he resigned last year to campaign with the younger Bush. In 2000, his last year with Halliburton, Cheney received $34 million when he cashed out from the company.

Not surprisingly, Halliburton's links to Cheney and other Washington power brokers appear to have helped the company's business prospects in the Middle East.

Just last month, Halliburton was awarded a $140 million contract to develop an oil field in Saudi Arabia by the kingdom's state-owned petroleum firm, Saudi Aramco, and a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, along with two Japanese firms, was hired by the Saudis to build a $40 million ethylene plant.

Cheney isn't the only member of President Bush's inner circle whose work for firms connected to the Saudis has paid big dividends.

The current national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is a former longtime member of the board of directors of another giant oil conglomerate with business in the Saudi desert, Chevron, which merged with Texaco this year. Rice even has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.

--snip
Former advisers to the president's father also hold key positions with U.S. firms which have teamed up with the Saudis on major oil deals.

Former Bush Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady and a former Bush assistant, Edith E. Holiday, are both on the board of directors of Amerada Hess, an American petroleum firm currently teaming up with several powerful Saudi families to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan.

--snip
``I think the fact that they have these connections makes it important for this information to be made public,'' said Henry Siegman, a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Larry Noble, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., a non-partisan group that examines money and politics, said the Bush-Carlyle connection is a concern.

``It is well known that the father is a close adviser to his son and therefore it does raise concerns,'' Noble said ``It's not necessarily that the father has been compromised, but the danger is that it leads people to question George W. Bush. The public has a right to feel their leaders are making independent judgments without the influence of private interests.''

More...

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/americas_new_war/saud12112001.htm