Why would Cheney want to out Plame and Brewster Jennings?

formercia

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Tue Apr-11-06 06:57 AM
Original message

Why would Cheney want to out Plame and Brewster Jennings?

Edited on Tue Apr-11-06 06:58 AM by formercia

They were working in the UAE on Nuclear counter proliferation. It had little to do with Joe Wilson and the Niger documents but more to do with what Halliburton was doing in the UAE while Cheney was its CEO. Brewster Jennings was getting too close to exposing the activities and they had to be stopped.

http://www.forbes.com/global/2004/0419/041_print.html

Trading With The Enemy
Matthew Swibel, 04.19.04

If you want to get round export controls, just sell the product to a front company in Dubai. The middlemen will take it from there.
On paper the shipment was harmless enough. Sixty-six American-made spark gaps--high-speed electrical switches used in medical devices to break up kidney stones--traveled from the manufacturer in Salem, Massachusetts late last summer to a buyer in Secaucus, New Jersey. From there, according to the export declaration, they were to be shipped to their ultimate destination in Cape Town, South Africa. But these spark gaps can also be used to detonate nuclear bombs--and it turned out that the goods were aimed at an end user in Pakistan, with a stopover in Dubai. The commercial capital of the United Arab Emirates, where trading activity accounts for the biggest single chunk (16.5%) of a $20 billion economy, has become a favorite diversion point on the Persian Gulf for shady cargo. With no export controls and hardly any bureaucracy at ports, airports and free zones, this entrep�t provides stellar cover for smugglers hoping to bypass U.S. embargoes.
On Oct. 3 U.S. investigators got a tip from a South African source. The shipment was headed for Islamabad via a DHL freight-forwarding service on Emirates Airlines--Dubai's government carrier. Hours after the Emirates Airbus jet landed at Dubai International Airport on Oct. 20, a U.S. special agent there tracked down the spark gaps to the airline's cargo shed, contacted its director of security and demanded to inspect the box. The response? Not a chance, according to the U.A.E.'s director of customs. The next day the goods, valued at $30,000, arrived in Pakistan aboard another Emirates flight.

The alleged shipper, an Israeli national named Asher Karni, was arrested in December at Denver International Airport. He awaits trial in the U.S. for conspiring to export goods without a license, a crime that could result in a ten-year sentence and a $250,000 fine per count. Neither Emirates Airlines nor the U.A.E. has been criticized publicly by U.S. officials.

--snip--

Still, "companies are playing fast and loose," says Adam Pener of Conflict Securities Advisory Group, a Washington, D.C.-based consultancy to multinational businesses. Halliburton, for example, manages to do business with Iran obliquely. Its Dubai-based affiliate, Halliburton Products & Services Ltd., allegedly has no Americans on staff; the Houston oil services company claims it has no direct ownership of the operation. Nevertheless, FORBES has obtained documents showing how Kala Ltd., the British arm of the National Iranian Oil Co., solicited at least 17 separate bids from the affiliate during 1997 and 1998 (when Vice President Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive). A few bids include handwritten notes that say "FOB Dubai Airport" or "FOB Dubai port"--meaning that the U.A.E. was just a way station between Halliburton and Tehran. Halliburton would not comment on the bids. In any event, earlier this year the Treasury Department reopened a 2001 inquiry into Halliburton's Iran operations and its Dubai-based partner.