And you thought the Marc Rich pardon was gone and forgotten?
Think again.
Though Congressional Republicans quickly wrapped up impolitic Pardongate
investigations, prosecutor Mary Jo White — a Clinton U.S. Attorney holdover
eager to prolong life in federal perkdom — won’t let go. And that’s a
good thing. Because, regardless of White’s motivation, it’s the right
thing.
White, this weekend, worked out an immunity deal for Denise
Rich — ex-wife of the fugitive billionaire who skipped out on millions in
taxes and traded with virtually every U.S. enemy imaginable, including
Iran during the hostage scandal. And White subpoenaed President
Clinton’s brother, Roger, who attempted to profit, working the
Presidential pardon syndicate, and failed. Still to be subpoenaed are
White’s former bosses Bill and Senatrix Hillary, and the Senatrix’s
tweedledee and tweedledum siblings, Hugh and Tony Rodham, the Oliver and
Hardy lookalikes who most profited. Don’t expect that, though. With
White’s history of whitewashing every Clinton scandal, this won’t be the
exception.
But while Ms. White continues her phony investigation, and Republicans
pray it’ll go away, there’s another reason, besides polls and
re-elections, that the GOP wants to get rid of this.
It’s found in income-tax returns just released by Vice President Dick
Cheney. While President Bush’s returns showed earnings of $894,800,
last year, The Washington Post reported, Cheney’s were $36 million.
That 36 mil resulted from Cheney’s exercise of stock options earned as
Chairman and CEO of Halliburton, an oil industry services firm.
And therein lies Cheney’s Marc Rich Streak. Anyone who believes that,
even more repellent than Rich’s status as tax evading fugitive, is his
shameless trade with Iran during the hostage crisis and with most other
U.S. enemies, must also be sickened by Cheney. Because he did the same
thing.
Rich did a clever little thing getting around U.S. trade
embargoes/boycotts of terrorist and human rights abusing nations.
According to the Wall Street Journal, he used offshore subsidiaries,
like Swiss Marc Rich Investment and other European-based entities, not
his U.S. corporation, to do the nasty deed. “Offshore subsidiaries of
some U.S. companies do business in embargoed countries, insulating
employees who are U.S. citizens from the deals,” the Journal reported.
That includes company Halliburton, and U.S. citizen Cheney, who oversaw
its subsidiaries.
Heading Halliburton, Cheney strongly supported doing business with
terrorism host countries, like Libya, Iran and Iraq. In 1998, the
British Globe-News quoted Cheney saying, “You’ve got to go where the oil
is. I don’t worry about it [the terrorism and human-rights abuses].”
Citing Iran, Myanmar (n? Burma) and Nigeria, Cheney complained that
Congress was a big blockade to developing new business overseas. Never
mind that Iran was on the State Department list of officially embargoed
terrorist nations and that Myanmar and Nigeria were embargoed for
egregious human-rights abuses. Cheney faulted Congress for getting
tough with and boycotting these nations. “I don’t agree with that
approach.”
Indeed, he didn’t. According to the British International Herald
Tribune, in 1998, while he ran Halliburton, its wholly-owned British
subsidiary, Brown & Root, oversaw construction of the Libyan “water
pipeline.” That’s how Cheney got around U.S. law. Just like Rich.
Western engineers who visited the “pipeline” cited widespread use of
American construction equipment, illegal under the embargo.
In reality, this steel pipeline, according to Western security experts,
was likely no water artery at all. With a 13-foot diameter, it’s wide
enough to hold vehicles, as well as several underground caverns, all
elusive to U.S. satellites and intelligence-gathering mechanisms. This
makes it mighty easy for terrorist Libya to make troop and weapons
movements and build-ups without U.S. knowledge, courtesy of Cheney. He
could have prevented the pipeline’s construction, but didn’t. His tax
forms reveal 36 million reasons why.
Incredible. First, he runs our nation’s military, but then has no
problem helping Libya — which bombed German discos containing U.S. Marines
and the flight of U.S. citizens over Lockerbie, Scotland — and trading
with Iran — which directed the bombing of the World Trade Center, the
killing of 240 U.S. Marines in Lebanon, and the torture, murder and
hanging display of U.S. military attach? Col. Higgins’ body.
Remember China, which shot down our plane, holding its inhabitants
hostage? The China we just apologized to. According to a 1997 New
Republic article, Cheney visited China with Morgan Stanley, whose board
he’d joined, to “invest.” He told China’s Xinhua News Agency, “I do not
really perceive any threat from China to the world or to the region.”
He told Reuters that he didn’t think China had embarked upon a “hostile
course” in the area. Huh? And Cheney’s a big supporter of the
Export-Import Bank, funded solely by our taxes — providing cheap loans
and guarantees to corporations that can’t get legitimate bank loans — to
make sales to countries like China. Cheney cut deals with former Soviet
Communist and KGB leaders near the Caspian Sea, too. The war in
Kosovo? Brown & Root — Cheney’s then-subsidiary — hugely benefited,
building the barracks there.
Just one month before being named Bush’s VP choice, Cheney, at the World
Petroleum Congress, attacked U.S. policy prohibiting trade and oil
exploration with countries sponsoring terrorism against Americans.
Before the Republican Convention, Sam Donaldson and Tim Russert asked
Cheney about his questionable use of subsidiaries to get around U.S. law,
something small business owner Joe Sixpack can never do. He confirmed
that foreign subsidiaries did his dirty work, but insisted no U.S. laws
were broken. Gee, that makes me feel better. His justifications for
trading with embargoed countries were nearly verbatim those used by Rich and
associates. And equally lame.
Sure, Marc Rich is a bad guy. And worse than Cheney for not paying
taxes and fleeing the country. Plus, he has a pseudo-celebrity, wannabe
songwriter ex-wife who greased the palms — and whatever else — of
President Clinton to get the privileged pardon. And that makes the
story sexy.
But Marc Rich is not vice president, the most powerful vice president
ever.
Dick Cheney is not the principled conservative congressman and secretary
of defense he once was. He sold his soul to the devil.
And sold us out.
How’d Trump do it? Here’s his secret weapon
Wayne Allyn Root