Subject: McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam in Lobbying Effort
From: "Chris Lu" <[email-masked]>
To: "Chris Lu" <[email-masked]>, "Adam Hitchcock" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], "Valerie Jarrett" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], "Pete Rouse" <[email-masked]>, "Melody Barnes" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], "Jim Steinberg" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked],
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], "Jayne Thomisee" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked], "Katie Johnson" <[email-masked]>, "Elizabeth Utrup" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], "Phil Schiliro" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:30:21 -0500

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/14/mccain-transition-chief-a_n_134
595.html

HuffPost: McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort

By Murray Waas

The Washington lobbyist John McCain has named to head his presidential
transition team aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who McCain aide William Timmons worked closely with
over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded
guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had
acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.

During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with
the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously
unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be
awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent,
and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went
through.

Timmons' activities occurred in the years following the first Gulf War,
when Washington considered Iraq to be a rogue enemy state and a sponsor
of terrorism. His dealings on behalf of the deceased Iraqi leader stand
in stark contrast to the views his current employer held at the time.

John McCain strongly supported the 1991 military action against Iraq,
and as recently as Sunday described Saddam Hussein as a one-time menace
to the region who had "stated categorically that he would acquire
weapons of mass destruction, and he would use them wherever he could." 

Timmons declined to comment for this story. An office manager who works
for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career
to never speak to the press. Timmons previously told investigators that
he did not know that either Vincent or Park were acting as unregistered
agents of Iraq. He also insisted that he did not fully understand just
how closely the two men were tied to Saddam's regime while they
collaborated.

But testimony and records made public during Park's criminal trial, as
well as other information uncovered during a United Nations
investigation, suggest just the opposite. Virtually everything Timmons
did while working on the lobbying campaign was within days conveyed by
Vincent to either one or both of Saddam Hussein's top aides, Tariq Aziz
and Nizar Hamdoon. Vincent also testified that he almost always relayed
input from the Iraqi aides back to Timmons.

Talking points that Timmons produced for the lobbyists to help ease the
sanctions, for example, were reviewed ahead of time by Aziz, Vincent
testified in court. Proposals that Timmons himself circulated to U.S.
officials as part of the effort were written with the assistance of the
Iraqi officials, and were also sent ahead of time with Timmons' approval
to Aziz, other records show.

Moreover, there was a major financial incentive at play for Timmons. The
multi-million dollar oil deal that he was pursuing with the two other
lobbyists would only be possible if their efforts to ease sanctions
against Iraq were successful.

Vincent, an Iraqi-born American citizen with whom Timmons worked most
closely, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in January 2005 that
he had acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Tongsun Park, the second lobbyist who Timmons worked closely with, was
convicted by a federal jury in July 2006 on charges that he too violated
the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

As part of a plea bargain agreement with the Justice Department, Vincent
agreed to testify against Park and others in exchange for a reduced
prison sentence. He was the government's chief witness against Park
during Park's trial. Park was sentenced to five years in prison after
his conviction. 

A U.N commission headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker
conducted an exhaustive investigation of the oil-for-food program, in
which various individuals were found to have paid illegal kickbacks to
Saddam Hussein. The findings of the Volcker Commission detail the roles
of Vincent, Park and Timmons in trying to ease the sanctions. 

* * * * *

Timmons testified that he first introduced Vincent to Tongsun Park and
encouraged him to hire Park to work on the deal.

At the time Timmons introduced the two men, Park's notorious background
was well known:

In the 1970s, Park had admitted to making hundreds of thousands in
payments and illegal campaign contributions to U.S. congressmen on
behalf of the South Korean government. Park was indicted on 36 counts by
a federal grand jury, but fled to South Korea before he could face
trial. All of the charges were later dismissed in exchange for Park
providing information about which public officials received funds from
the South Korean government.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not long after Timmons suggested that Vincent
hire Park to assist their influence, lobbying, and back-channel
diplomatic efforts on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, much of
that effort became increasingly bizarre, corrupt, and - on occasion -
illegal.

Vincent testified that Park covertly received millions of dollars from
Saddam's government that was supposed to be used to bribe then-U.N.
Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali to ease international sanctions
against Iraq. But both men simply pocketed the money, according to
Vincent. (There is no evidence that Boutros Ghali even knew of Iraq's
intention to bribe him.)

Investigations by the Justice Department and the Volcker commission
disclosed that Park also served as the middleman for a million dollar
payment that investigators believed was a bribe for another senior
United Nations official. That official in fact admitted receiving the
money from Park, but said he did not know that the funds originated with
Saddam's regime.

Timmons told federal investigators that he was unaware of these
particular activities, and investigators were unable to uncover any
evidence to contradict that claim.

Timmons also claimed that he was motivated to push forward with the
lobbying campaign with Vincent and Park not only to assist Saddam's
regime but also because he believed that his actions would serve U.S.
interests, that they would help the people of Iraq obtain needed
medicine and food being denied them by sanctions, and would serve to
facilitate a rapprochement of relations between Hussein and the U.S.
that would be beneficial to both countries.

But there was a financial incentive in play as well. During the same
period, Vincent was hard at work obtaining contracts with Iraq to
purchase and resell Iraqi oil allowed under international sanctions;
Timmons would have stood to benefit financially from those contracts.

Timmons claimed to investigators that any contracts offered to him,
Vincent, and Park would be awarded solely on merit, and had nothing to
do with their lobbying efforts. 

But Vincent told investigators that their work clearly gave them an
inside track. And in other instances, in which Timmons was not involved,
Vincent profited from lucrative oil-for-food contracts awarded by Iraq
as compensation for his effort to buy influence in the U.S. and at the
U.N. for Saddam's regime. 

At Park's trial, Vincent testified that he, Park, and Timmons stood to
make as much as $45 million in profits from one particular oil venture
with Saddam's regime had it gone forward. Park testified that he was
unsure exactly what percentage of the proceeds each of the three men
would have personally received. The deal ultimately fell through.

An investigator who worked on the U.N. investigation of the oil-for-food
program told me that Timmons clearly should have or did understand that
he was the possible recipient of oil contracts from the Iraqi government
because of his lobbying and back channel diplomatic efforts on behalf of
Saddam: "He would have to be the most naive person in the world to
believe that was not the case," the official told me. "I guess William
Timmons is just a natural born oilman. He is either deceiving himself to
rationalize what he has done or taking the rest of us for fools."

Between 1997 and 2001, according to the Volcker report, Vincent received
five such contracts from Saddam's regime. 

In his guilty plea agreement with the Justice Department, Vincent
admitted: "I received those allocations because of the work I had done
on behalf of the Government of Iraq in helping set up the oil-for-food
program."

* * * * *

Samir Vincent was well positioned for the task at hand when he began his
influence and back channel diplomacy campaign with the Iraqis; he had
been boyhood friends of two of Saddam Hussein's closest advisers, Nizaar
Hamdoon and Tariq Aziz.

Hamdoon, who died in 2003, was Saddam's foreign minister, and Tariq Aziz
had variously served as Baghdad's ambassador to the United States,
ambassador to the United States, and Iraq's deputy prime minister. 

But Vincent also sought to enlist the help of a Washington insider or
lobbyist if his efforts were to have any chance of success. 

His initial plan to purchase Iraqi oil through the American Red Cross
faced opposition from the U.S. government. Vincent's partner at the
time, an American businessman named John Venners, suggested that they
needed "help from some people that he knew very well" who "used to be
high up in the government." Venners recommended William Timmons. 

As Time magazine's Michael Scherer recently reported, Timmons is "a
Washington institution," having worked as a senior aide to every
Republican president since Richard Nixon. He also serves as chairman
emeritus of Timmons and Company, "a small but influential lobbying firm
he founded in 1975 shortly after leaving the White House."

According to Vincent's testimony, Timmons immediately opened doors for
the Iraqi-American lobbyist. He talked to then-Deputy Secretary of State
Lawrence Eagleburger on Vincent's behalf. He also contacted then-Sen.
Bob Dole and John Bolton, then-undersecretary of state for international
affairs, to discuss Vincent's plan.

In a meeting with U.N. officials, Vincent pressed his case armed with
"talking points" that Timmons had written for him. Before using them,
Vincent said that he first sent the talking points to Nizaar Hamdoon and
Tariq Aziz, with Timmons' approval. 

After the meeting, Vincent traveled all the way to Baghdad to report
back to Tariq Aziz what had occurred. Later, he had another meeting with
Hamdoon and Aziz at the United Nations mission in New York to plan on
next steps. Vincent testified he made formal minutes of that meeting,
typed them up, and then traveled to Washington to personally give them
to Timmons. This was routine practice as Vincent, Timmons, and the
Iraqis worked together. 

Timmons himself was apparently loathe to meet with Hamdoon or Aziz
personally. But virtually the entire time they worked together, Vincent
would relay to Timmons what the Iraqis had to say and vice versa. 

After Vincent's first meeting with U.N. officials, Aziz and Hamdoon
suggested that something called a "non-paper" be presented the next time
Vincent met with the same officials. Non-papers are diplomatic
communications in which parties can propose positions in writing, but do
not have to fear if they leak to the public or press, because they do
not officially represent positions of the government.

At the request of Aziz and Hamdoon, Timmons authored the non-paper which
Vincent could rely on for that second meeting. Both Aziz and Hamdoon
also reviewed the paper before Vincent used it.

On March 15, 1995, Timmons wrote a memo (which is a matter of public
record as an exhibit in the case) advocating that they and the Iraqis
should enlist the assistance of U.S. oil companies to make their case.

Timmons once again apparently understood that his audience was the Iraqi
government. Vincent testified that Timmons gave him the memo knowing
that the document was "supposed to solicit the thoughts of the Iraqi
government, if this is something they would seriously consider." Vincent
dutifully passed Timmons' memo on to Nizaar Hamdoon, he testified.

Weeks later, in April 1995, Vincent was summoned to Iraq to meet with
Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

As to Timmons' claims that he kept his distance from Vincent and Park
and did not know much about what they and the Iraqis were up to, this
exchange between a federal prosecutor and Vincent once again suggests
otherwise:

Q: And when you returned to the United States, did you tell anyone about
your visit with Saddam Hussein? 

A: I told Bill Timmons and Tongsun Park.

Q: Why did you tell Bill Timmons about your visit with Saddam?

A: To let him know that we were talking to the leader of Iraq, and in
essence we have access and assure him that any messages we were relaying
between Iraqi and Tariq Aziz and anyone else, it was being transmitted
to the president, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq. 

 

* * * * *

Presciently, Time's Scherer noted that McCain's own staffers had early
concerns that appointing Timmons could prove detrimental to the Arizona
Senator's presidential ambitions:

His [lobbying] registrations include work on a number of issues that
have become flashpoints in the presidential campaign. He has registered
to work on bills that deal with the regulations of troubled mortgage
lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, a bill to provide farm subsidies and
bills that regulate domestic oil-drilling. 

By tapping Timmons, McCain has turned to one of Washington's steadiest
and most senior inside players to guide him in the event of a victory --
but also to someone who represents the antithesis of the kind of
outside-of-Washington change he has recently been promising. One
Republican familiar with the process said the decision to involve
Timmons could become a political liability for the campaign's reformist
image, especially in the wake of the controversies over the lobbying
backgrounds of other McCain staffers, including campaign manager Rick
Davis. "It's one more blind spot for Rick Davis and John McCain," the
person said.

 

Timmons' work to relax international sanctions against Iraq, as well as
to benefit financially from Saddam Hussein's regime, may be another such
flashpoint.

The Volcker report makes clear that when Timmons first got involved with
Vincent and the Iraqis, the lure of millions of dollars was at least one
incentive. By early 1992, Timmons and his associates were already
"pursu[ing] the purchase of sale of Iraqi oil and the exploration by a
consortium of companies of the Manjoon field in Iraq," the report said.

According to the report, the venture was dependent on Vincent's belief
"that sanctions against Iraq would be lifted immediately and that the
Iraqi government might grant a long-term concession to an American oil
company."

Later, when Timmons pressed the case even more aggressively that
sanctions against Saddam's regime be eased, he, Vincent and Park hoped
to profit as well, according to the Volcker report. "Continuing through
1994 and 1995, Mr. Vincent and Mr. Park, along with Mr. Timmons and
others, persisted in their efforts to establish a foothold in the Iraqi
oil business," the report stated.

At one point, Timmons even boasted to investigators that it was his
ideas that later became the basis for the United Nations' oil-for-food
program.

Under that program, the United Nations allowed Iraq to sell its oil
under U.N. supervision, with the proceeds placed in U.N. escrow accounts
to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods for the Iraqi
people.

However, a major flaw in the program was that Saddam Hussein's regime
was allowed to play a role in the selection of oil companies awarded
contracts. Because of lax oversight of the program, Saddam's government
was able to demand that foreign oil companies -- including American ones
-- provide more than $1.7 billion in kickbacks to his regime.

One of the most outspoken critics in the U.S. Senate of the oil-for-food
program was John McCain:

"We need to have a full and complete cooperation on the part of the U.N.
about this whole oil-for-food program, which stinks to high heaven,"
McCain told Fox News in Dec. 2004. "We're talking about billions and
billions of dollars here that were diverted for many wrong purposes. And
this is an example of corruption.

"And by the way, it's an argument, maybe a small one, but maybe an
argument that justifies our action in Iraq. Because clearly the
sanctions and the framework of those sanctions was completely eroded."

Additional reporting by Patrick B. Anderson.