The Absurd Report

A recent piece of news has shed new light on what could be another storm for both the Clintons. Like an old shipwreck, the crashing waves are slowly revealing more from beneath the sand. Recently, we were treated to the revelation that an agent of Saddam Hussein’s essentially financed a junket to visit Iraq before the war and complain about the sanctions’ effect on the poor Iraqi children.
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Prosecutors say that trip was arranged by Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a Michigan charity official, who was charged Wednesday with setting up the junket at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Iraqi intelligence officials allegedly paid for the trip through an intermediary and rewarded Al-Hanooti with 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. [emphasis added]
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The one thing that stuck out to me most when I read that was the method of payment for Al-Hanooti: 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. During the grand old days of sanctions, this was a common method of the Hussein regime to do business.

Then, we learn this week that Hillary Clinton also received a visit from Al-Hanooti while at the White House in 1997. Ira Stoll of the New York Sun writes:
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It’s interesting that Hillary Clinton not only was behind the formation of the oil-for-food program, but that it was a direct contact with an agent of Saddam that accomplished the task.
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Contracts through oil-for-food largely went to Russian and French companies. All the oil-for-food money was kept in French banks. (Until 2001, curiously enough.) The U.N. collected a 2.2 percent commission on every barrel of oil sold, generating more than $1 billion in revenue. The Hussein regime also used the contracts to extort money from Iraqi businesses. Literally everyone had their hands in the pot. The response from the French banks to the Volker report is notable.

The report cited Banque Nationale de Paris, which held the escrow account for the $64 billion program and provided the letters of credit needed for the financing, saying it “was in a position to have firsthand knowledge” of what was going on but “did not recognize a particular responsibility to adequately inform the U.N.”
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The interesting thing about this (to bring it all full circle) is that the payment Al-Hanooti (and many others) accepted, was oil. Raw crude is not something that you can just bring down to the Exxon station on the corner and “cash in”. Especially when said crude comes from a brutal dictatorship that is currently under UN sanctions prohibiting its sale. The oil has to be laundered, so to speak; filtered through a series of shell companies and its source disguised. The people who did this were very specialized, and had to have a background in international finance as well as diplomatic connections.
One of these men was Marc Rich.
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What I would really like to know now — and I doubt anyone will ever ask or answer these questions — are three things:
1. What, exactly, is the relationship between Marc Rich and the Clintons - especially from 1997-2001?
2. Were the Clintons complicit in the founding of the corrupt oil-for-food program or did they just have their hands in the cookie jar like everyone else?
3. Why was the Clinton administration (presumably) completely unaware of the corruption… especially while considering Marc Rich’s pardon application?

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Tags: Culture of Corruption

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