NEW YORK – It was in a beat-up VW van that Barack Obama’s “Choom Gang” of high-school buddies in Hawaii traveled more than three decades ago.
Last weekend, some of those old friends – “choom” means to smoke marijuana – and a college roommate rode with the president to a wedding in Florida, this time on Air Force One.
Choom gangers Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb were among the guests, according to a White House press pool report, along with Occidental College roommate Hassan Chandoo.
Another Occidental roommate, Wahid Hamid, joined Chandoo and former members of the Choom Gang in August for a flight on Marine One to Camp David to celebrate Obama’s 55th birthday.
Hamid, who became a campaign fundraiser for the president, accompanied Obama to Karachi, Pakistan, in 1981 to visit Chandoo’s family, a trip Obama touted during his 2008 run to bolster his foreign-policy credentials.
Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.
But not only is Hamid tied to Obama, he has a connection to Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation through the UAE-based company Gulftainer, which last November was quietly awarded a deal secretly negotiated with the Obama administration to manage the Port Canaveral shipping port for 35 years.
WND reported the brother and business partner of Gulftainer’s chairman, Hamid Jafar, is Jafar Dhia Jafar, best known as Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s top nuclear scientist.
Hamid, a former member of the Pentagon’s Defense Business Board under President Obama, has direct business connections with the Jafar family, according to a report issued by the Center for Security Policy in December.
WND reported in May 2015 the Gulftainer deal bears investigating as a Clinton Foundation “pay-to-play” scheme because the UAE has been a major donor to the troubled foundation.
Jafar has been called the Middle East’s foremost uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons productions experts. His brother, Hamid Jafar, is a wealthy Iraqi oilman and chairman of the Crescent Group, the parent company of Gulftainer.
The CSP report noted Crescent Petroleum, a sister company of Gulftainer, also owned and operated by the Jafar family, was investigated in 1993 by the Treasury Department and three congressional committees to determine if it was a front company for Saddam.
The report goes on to note that Jafar Jafar, who oversaw the production, movement and concealment of Iraq’s nuclear program, initially fled Baghdad and Iraq in 2003 as invading U.S. forces hunted down Saddam’s top WMD scientists. Upon his surrender, Western intelligence officials subjected Jafar to extensive interrogation.
“Dr. Jafar is infamous for his uranium enrichment genius, is known to possess ties to Iran, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE, and was in communication with Pakistani nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan,” the Center for Security Policy report said.
Gulftainer executive Badr Jafar, the son of Hamid Jafar and the nephew of the nuclear physicist, has ties to supermodels linked with President Bill Clinton and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s famed Lolita Island.
Ports deal
As a U.S. senator from New York, Hillary Clinton led the Democratic Party opposition to the Dubai Ports deal in 2006.
But Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew, a former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, approved the Gulftainer deal without seeking the formal approval of the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS.
Hamid Jafar and Badr Jafar have both served on the board at the UAE-based private equity firm the Abraaj Group, where Hamid is a partner.
On April 8, 2016, Fox News reported the Abraaj Group – a $500,000 to $1 million contributor to the Clinton Foundation – was linked to a corruption probe in Pakistan involving favors granted to K-Electric, a power company owned and managed by the Abraaj Group since 2009.
Fox News noted former Pakistani oil minister Asim Hussain was arrested last year amid allegations that he helped harbor terrorists in a string of hospitals he owned and doled out illegal contracts to companies, including K-Electric. Both Hussain and K-Electric have denied the allegations.
Fox News further reported that in 2012, the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Cooperation – a federal agency that dispenses corporate loans under the guidance of the U.S. State Department – selected while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state the Abraaj Group to manage its $150 Middle East investment fund.
Two weeks later, the Abraaj Group co-sponsored the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting.
Then, in October 2015, according to Fox News, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation again pledged up to $250 million to help fund the Abraaj Group’s K-Electric operations.
The announcement came less than a month after the Sindh Rangers, a Pakistani law enforcement agency, issued a 12-page report accusing Hussain of passing illegal favors to K-Electric.
Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.
