NYT, pg1, Miller: Report U.S. Profits In Iraqi Oil Sales Under Hussein

THE SANCTIONS
Report Cites U.S. Profits in Sale of Iraqi Oil Under Hussein
By JUDITH MILLER and ERIC LIPTON

Published: October 9, 2004


WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 - Major American oil companies and a Texas oil investor were among those who received lucrative vouchers that enabled them to buy Iraqi oil under the United Nations oil-for-food program, according to a report prepared by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The 918-page report says that four American oil companies - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Bay Oil - and three individuals including Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. of Houston were given vouchers and got 111 million barrels of oil between them from 1996 to 2003. The vouchers allowed them to profit by selling the oil or the right to trade it.

The other individuals, whose names appeared on a secret list maintained by the former Iraqi government, were Samir Vincent of Annandale, Va., and Shakir al-Khafaji of West Bloomfield, Mich., according to the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer.

The fact that these companies and individuals received oil from Iraq does not mean they did anything illegal, experts on the program said. Such allocations may have been proper if the individuals and companies received appropriate United Nations approval.

In interviews on Friday, spokesmen for the oil companies and for the El Paso Corporation, which assumed control of the assets of a company, Coastal Corporation, once run by Mr. Wyatt, said the transactions had been legal. But each confirmed that they had received subpoenas from a federal grand jury in New York, which is investigating "transactions in oil of Iraqi origin" as part of the oil-for-food program, according to a federal financial filing by El Paso....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/09/international/middleeast/09sanctions.html?oref=login

Once I saw that name, I declined to read the article.

Oh, I forgot, she writes for the SCREW YORK TIMES, the Nazi propaganda rag that let Kit Seelye shit all over John Kerry last night!

The Weekly World News has more credibility than THE SCREW (ALL THE GOP LIES KARL TELLS US TO PRINT) YORK TIMES!

He's a big Houston oilman so he's associated with the Bush family oil clique. Wyatt was there when Bush Sr. was first introduced to the Bush family oil connections.

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/company/cnn42430.htm

"Oscar S. Wyatt, the Texas oilman known for his dealings with Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, is back in the energy business. Mr Wyatt and a group of investors agreed to buy Enron's natural gas pipelines in North America for $ 2.2 bn, Enron's acting CEO said.

<snip>

"Mr Wyatt, who was once called 'meaner than a junkyard dog' in an article by Texas Monthly magazine, and a partner started the Hardly Able Oil Company in 1951 using the proceeds from an $ 800 loan on Mr Wyatt's car, a 1949 Ford. He eventually expanded his operations, which provided South Texas cities with natural gas, into a conglomerate with extensive dealings in the Middle East and elsewhere."


http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=4069

"While some consensus efforts are being fought by environmentalists who fear a surrender to local economic interests - such as in Quincy, Calif. (HCN, 9/29/97) - here the opposition would come from Oscar Wyatt, an oil-industry multimillionaire with extensive holdings around Vernal whose wife describes him, somewhat humorously, as a modern version of a Russian czar."

El Paso Energy and Enron were behind the energy scam in CA which resulted in brown outs and bilking CA out of lots of money by raising energy costs because of the "crisis" they created.

Ahnuld has not sought to get these two companies to refund the money they made by bilking CA taxpayers via this scam.

made by bilking CA taxpayers via this scam.<<

And he is helping the common man exactly how? What a nice little puppet... who woulda thunk such a strong man could be so friggin weak?

We'll see what Kerry does about this in a few.... I am sure things will change by several orders of magnitude after Nov. 3rd.

I never thought that American corporate interests would make the mafia pale in comparison... never, never, never..... datsa real nize....

with the late Texas Gov./U.S. Treasury Sec'y John Connally.

It is certainly true that Wyatt had a close business relationship with Saddam Hussein, so close and lucrative for Coastal, in fact, that Wyatt and Connally traveled to Iraq during the "human shields" episode in the run-up to the first Gulf War. Saddam stupidly freed the "shields" (or "guests" as he called them) and the bombing began almost immediately after that.

Wyatt was opposed even to the first Gulf War. As an oilman, he probably knew that what Saddam was saying about the Kuwait oil companies "slant drilling" into the Iraqi oilfields was true.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6214647/site/newsweek

But an uncensored copy of the Duelfer report obtained by NEWSWEEK indicates Houston oil mogul Oscar Wyatt got oil allocations from Saddam which could have earned him and Coastal Corp.—a company he founded and ran until 2000—profits of more than $22 million. Wyatt and wife Lynn are major donors to political causes: since 1989 they have given nearly $700,000 in contributions, of which more than $500,000 went to Democrats. Wyatt told NEWSWEEK that his company did buy oil from Saddam but that he never did so personally, and that his company's dealings all complied with U.N. rules.
................

Who knew there'd be a Judith Miller article that was sourced by secret documents from the former Iraqi govt. I'm sure they're authentic. It's not like she was ever close to an Iraqi ex-pat who SPECIALIZED in forgery or anything oh wait a minute it is EXACTLY like that!

Some of those individuals were contributors to Dem politicians, including Bonier, Gephardt, KerrEy, Rockefellar, and Dingell.


http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/index.asp

this week it's the corrupt oil for food program. Careless Shrub may have to throw a few friends out of the zeppelin to stay afloat!

Also Judy's "close friend" Chalabi is controlling all the info coming out of the oil for food investigation. He won't let anyone look at the actual documents; we just have to take his word, delivered thru Judy.

Watching the death throes of these dinosaurs is bizarre--can't wait for the jail door to lock behind Judy's ass!

Oh well.

http://silflayhraka.com/archives/003653.html

On January 30th, Samir Vincent's name appeared on a list of organizations and individuals accused of receiving bribes in the form of commissions from sales of Iraqi oil. It was not the first time the Iraqi-American had been in in the news. As I detailed in an earlier post, Samir and another man, Michael Saba, became minor celebrities in the summer of 1990 when they escaped from Iraq, shortly after that country invaded Kuwait.

<snip>

In fact, as Robert Parry details in his book, Fooling America, Vincent and Saba did not escape from Iraq. They were on a personal mission from Saddam Hussein--a peace mission. ... "The Hamdoon proposal offered a complete military pullout from Kuwait in exchange for guaranteed Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf through some formula on Kuwait's Bubiyan and Warbah islands, total Iraqi control of the Rumaillah oil field, which dips slightly into Kuwaiti territory, and negotiations on oil prices with the United States.

<snip>

"Immediately upon his arrival in Washington, a travel-weary Saba went to the White House to meet with Sununu, whom Saba knew through Arab-American cultural activities. ... Vincent, a onetime Olympic athlete for Iraq and a Boston College graduate, arranged other contacts with the White House through a retired U.S. Army colonel, Carl Bernard, and through ex-CIA director Richard Helms."

<snip>

Samir Vincent faded from the news until recently, other than an brief mention in the Boston Globe when he was inducted into the Boston College Sports Hall of Fame and an article in the Catholic newsletter Saint Anthony Messenger, detailing some of his behind the scenes attempts to undermine the UN sanctions on Iraq during the late nineties via meetings with such moral luminaries as Billy Graham and Jimmy Carter. There's more on that, as well as his association with Jack Kemp, in the previous post.

He's donated a thousand bux. BUT, the corporation that he works for, Phoenix International (and it's employees), has donated over 256,000$. Guess which party. (starts with an "R")

I'm guessing that a guy named Ivan Selin is gonna come up in this mess. Why? He's the big contributor for Phoenix.
On Edit: Selin was Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, appt'd by Bush I. Formerly one of McNamara's "best and brightest", he went private.

http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou=0&txtName=&txtState=%28all+states%29&txtZip=&txtEmploy=phoenix+international&txtCand=&txt2004=Y&txt2002=Y&txt2000=Y&Order=N

I had a section about J. Miller in my PoliSci paper last week (media bias regarding the Middle East), and my prof underlined her name and wrote this in the margins: "She is an arrogant fool"....He rocks.

Did you ever read the book Germs by dear old Judy??

It is one scray book.
She repeatedly condems the Reagans and the Clintons for
negligence on the control of Germ warfare, but saves
grace for the Poppy Bush administration.
I look back now and see her allegience to Poppy as
true devotion.

Poppy, Rumsfeld and Chenney are the masterminds to 99%
of all the Germ warfare know to human existence.All the terror and
destruction that has been committed in the world in the last fifty years has their signatures and fingerprints all over it.

Well all I can say is.....We'll just hand them right over
to the world court and they can have at them all they want!!!

:crazy:

Crawford. The secondary goal is to beat the media. When I read that the Pickler is openly hostile to Kerry people on the plane I thought any ethical editor would pull her from covering Kerry. Any ethical editor would not allow someone with such obvious bias to continue to cover Kerry. The NYT should have fired Miller. These folks have tipped their hand, they will cover for Bush and the corporations as long as he is in office. When Kerry is elected he will need to reinstate the fairness act and cut all the heads off this hydra. I want fair reporting, that is one of the basic tenets of democracy. We should not settle for less.

Leased a pipeline that carried half the capacity needed in the western states: then didnt pump anything through it ....

DIdnt they also conspire with ENRON or sumfin ? ...

Some meeting in a motel room with documentation and stuff ? ...

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm ....

scandal was about Republicans or Democrats and she said Republicans and raised her eyebrows. I wonder what is going on.

that France and Russia agreed to buy Iraqi oil with euros instead of the US $$$ and that is why they didn't help the US invade Iraq. Like I said, it is not news but why are they slamming this now? To defend their own dirty dealings?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-10-10-embargo-qna_x.htm

U.S. weapons report details corruption of oil-for-food program
The United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The sanctions were modified in 1996, when the oil-for-food program was created to address the suffering of Iraqis.

At the time, world support for the continued embargo was weakening. The idea was that Iraq could sell some of its oil so long as proceeds went to food or medicine, not weapons.

However, Saddam Hussein's regime found ways to turn the program to its advantage. That corruption is detailed in a report released last week by the chief U.S. weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer.

http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/2000/11/iraq-001114a.htm

Switch to euros takes effect for UN's oil-for-food scheme for Iraq
14 November 2000 -- Iraq's request to switch the currency used in its United Nations-administered oil sales from dollars to euros has been approved, the office overseeing the effort announced today.

The Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP), which coordinates the "oil-for-food" scheme that allows Baghdad to use a portion of its oil revenues to purchase humanitarian goods, said the issuance of letters of credit for the purchase of Iraqi oil in euro denominations came into effect on 7 November. (translate this to the "food for oil" program.)

"From now on the Iraq oil will be sold in euros," Hasmik Egian, a spokesman for the Office, told the UN News Service. "A bank account has been opened in euros," she added. (And don't think the Bush administration didn't know how this would hurt the US economy.)

Meanwhile, OIP today released its latest statistics on the programme, reporting that the Security Council committee monitoring the sanctions against Baghdad last week approved a new contract for a Spanish company to purchase 1.5 million barrels of Iraqi oil destined for the European market.

Since the current phase of the oil-for-food programme began in June, the committee has approved 116 contracts for the sale of over 436 million barrels of Iraqi oil.

"Last year, a senior Iranian oil representative suggested in a speech in Europe that European oil purchases might be increasingly traded in euros in the future. China and Russia have hinted that they may begin to hold more of their foreign currency reserve assets in euros in place of dollars.

If the euro were to increasingly become the alternative international currency of choice in competition with the dollar, the global demand for greenbacks would fall, the value of the dollar would decline, and the U.S. government would find it far more difficult both to export inflation and to finance its budget deficits. The financial clout and muscle of the American government would be dramatically undermined over time with the dollar increasingly no longer the only global reserve currency in town.

With the American military serving as the keeper of the oil fields in an occupied Iraq, the first policy change undoubtedly would be that all Iraqi oil sales will be once again exclusively in dollars. This would give the U.S. government the chance to try to stem the tide toward international use of the euro in place of the dollar and to put pressure on the Saudi government to maintain its long-established policy of dealing only in dollars on the oil market. And at the same time Iranian enthusiasm for euro dealings might be tempered if the American liberators are just next door."

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0303a.asp

and more here:

http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20030523170052571

"Russia 'Sold' UN Iraq Vote For Oil and Debt: Press

Friday, May 23 2003 @ 05:00 PM EDT

"In a clear gesture towards Moscow, Powell said that the future Iraqi administration would 'take fully into account' its eight billion dollar debt obligations to Russia .."

MOSCOW - Russia dropped its opposition to a UN resolution lifting sanctions on Iraq once it believed its Soviet-era debt and massive oil contracts in the country would be respected, the Russian press said Friday, May 23.

"Russia 'sold' its vote in exchange for the respect of contracts and debt," the Izvestia daily said, quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

After weeks of opposition to the U.S.-sponsored resolution, Russia voted in favor Thursday of lifting the 13-year-old sanctions on Iraq, effectively handing over temporary control of Iraq's oil revenues to the United States and its allies through an internationally-audited Development Fund.

"U.S. concessions made to the anti-war coalition do not change the substance of things, but help save face for those who extolled the key role of the UN," Izvestia said."

"The tender, for which bids are due by June 10, switches the transaction back to dollars - the international currency of oil sales - despite the greenback's recent fall in value. Saddam Hussein in 2000 insisted Iraq's oil be sold for euros, a political move, but one that improved Iraq's recent earnings thanks to the rise in the value of the euro against the dollar."

excerpted from the Financial Times spin on Iraq re-entering the oil market in mid 2003.

http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/Web%20Pages/FINANCIAL%20TIMES_Iraq%20returns%20to%20international%20oil%20market.htm

I still don't get it. Who were we protecting here? The UN? Iraq? The GOP donnors? How is this BS helping justify anything?