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by Tom Turnipseed
A Creeping Collapse in Credibility
at the White House. From Enron Entanglements to Unocal Bringing the
Taliban to Texas and Controlling Afghanistan
Common Dreams, January 11, 2002
The Bush Administration's
entanglement with Enron is beginning to unravel as it finally admits that
Enron executives entered the White House six times last year to secretly
plan the Administration's energy policy with Vice-President Cheney before
the collapse of the Texas-based energy giant. Meanwhile, even more trouble
for our former-Texas-oil-man-turned-President is brewing with reports that
unveil Unocal, another big energy company, for being in bed with the
Taliban, along with the U.S. government in a major, continuing effort to
construct pipelines through Afghanistan from the petroleum-rich Caspian
Basin in Central Asia. Beneath their burkas, Unocal is being exposed for
giving the five star treatment to Taliban Mullahs in the Lone Star State
in 1997. The "evil-ones" were also invited to meet with U.S. government
officials in Washington, D.C.
According to a December 17, 1997
article in the British paper, The Telegraph, headlined, "Oil barons court
Taliban in Texas," the Taliban was about to sign a "£2 billion contract
with an American oil company to build a pipeline across the war-torn
country. ... The Islamic warriors appear to have been persuaded to close
the deal, not through delicate negotiation but by old-fashioned Texan
hospitality. ... Dressed in traditional salwar khameez, Afghan waistcoats
and loose, black turbans, the high-ranking delegation was given VIP
treatment during the four-day stay."
At the same time, U.S. government
documents reveal that the Taliban were harboring Osama bin Laden as their
"guest" since June 1996. By then, bin Laden had: been expelled by Sudan in
early 1996 in response to US insistence and the threat of UN sanctions;
publicly declared war against the U.S. on or about August 23, 1996;
pronounced the bombings in Riyadh and at Khobar in Saudi Arabia killing 19
US servicemen as 'praiseworthy terrorism', promising that other attacks
would follow in November 1996 and further admitted carrying out attacks on
U.S. military personnel in Somalia in 1993 and Yemen in 1992, declaring
that "we used to hunt them down in Mogadishu"; stated in an interview
broadcast in February 1997 that "if someone can kill an American soldier,
it is better than wasting time on other matters." Evidence was also
developing which linked bin Laden to: the 1995 bombing of a U.S. military
barracks in Riyadh which killed five; Ramzi Yuosef, who led the 1993 World
Trade Center attacks; and a 1994 assassination plot against President
Clinton in the Philippines.
Back in Houston, the Taliban was
learning how the "other half lives," and according to The Telegraph,
"stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus."
The Taliban representatives "...were amazed by the luxurious homes of
Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller,
a vice-president of Unocal, they marveled at his swimming pool, views of
the golf course and six bathrooms." Mr. Miller, said he hoped that Unocal
had clinched the deal.
Dick Cheney was then CEO of
Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed
Cheney in 1998, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as
suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's
almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn't
see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected
regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in
places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go.
But we go where the business is." Would Cheney bargain with the harborers
of U.S. troop killers if that's where the business was?
The Telegraph reported that Unocal
had promised to start building the pipeline and paying the Taliban
immediately, with the added inducements and a donation of £500,000 to the
University of Nebraska for courses in Afghanistan to train 400 teachers,
electricians, carpenters and pipefitters.
The Telegraph also reported, "The
US government, which in the past has branded the Taliban's policies
against women and children "despicable", appears anxious to please the
fundamentalists to clinch the lucrative pipeline contract." In a paper
prepared by Neamatollah Nojumi, at the Tufts University Fletcher School of
Law and Diplomacy, Nojumi wrote in August 1997 that Madeline Albright sat
in a "full-dress CIA briefing" on the Caspian region. CIA agents then
accompanied "some well-trained petroleum engineers" to the region.
Albright concluded that shaping the region's policies was "one of the most
exciting things that we can do."
It's also exciting to the Bush
Administration. According to the authors of Bin Laden, the Hidden Truth,
one of the FBI's leading counter terrorism agents, John O'Neill, resigned
last year in protest over the Bush Administration's alleged obstruction of
his investigation into bin Laden. (A similar complaint has been filed on
behalf of another unidentified FBI Agent by the conservative Judicial
Watch public interest group.) Supposedly the Bush Administration had been
meeting since January 2001 with the Taliban, and was also reluctant to
offend Saudi Arabians who O'Neill had linked to bin Laden. Mr. O'Neill,
after leaving the FBI, assumed the position of security director at the
World Trade Center, where he was killed in the 911 attacks.
As America's New War now begins
focusing on other "rogue nations," Unocal's stars have magically aligned.
About two months after the Houston parties, Unocal executive John Maresca
addressed the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific and urged support
for establishment of an investor-friendly climate in Afghanistan, "... we
have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin
until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of
governments, lenders and our company." Meaning that Unocal's ability to
construct the Afghan pipeline was a cause worthy of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Maresca's prayers have been
answered with the Taliban's replacement. As reported in Le Monde, the new
Afghan government's head, Hamid Karzai, formerly served as a Unocal
consultant. Only nine days after Karzai's ascension, President Bush
nominated another Unocal consultant and former Taliban defender, Zalmay
Khalilzad, as his special envoy to Afghanistan.
When Unocal makes big bucks from
the pipeline they should donate 50% of all pretax profits to the 911 Fund.
And they should also cut a very special check to the widow of FBI Agent
O'Neill.
Tom Turnipseed is an attorney,
writer and civil rights activist in Columbia, South Carolina.
turnipseed.net
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