Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 9, 2008 6:35:47 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Cheney PERSONALLY to Blame for Iran Having Ability to Make
Nuclear Weapons
Halliburton Charged with
Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
in Top 25 Censored Stories for 2007
Source: Global Research.ca, August 5, 2005, Title: “Halliburton
Secretly Doing Business With Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team,”
Author: Jason Leopold
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-halliburton-charged-with-selling-nuclear-technologies-to-iran/
Faculty Evaluator: Catherine Nelson
Student Researchers: Kristine Medeiros and Pla Herr
According to journalist Jason Leopold, sources at former Cheney
company Halliburton allege that, as recently as January of 2005,
Halliburton sold key components for a nuclear reactor to an Iranian
oil development company. Leopold says his Halliburton sources have
intimate knowledge of the business dealings of both Halliburton and
Oriental Oil Kish, one of Iran’s largest private oil companies.
Additionally, throughout 2004 and 2005, Halliburton worked closely
with Cyrus Nasseri, the vice chairman of the board of directors of
Iran-based Oriental Oil Kish, to develop oil projects in Iran.
Nasseri is also a key member of Iran’s nuclear development team.
Nasseri was interrogated by Iranian authorities in late July 2005
for allegedly providing Halliburton with Iran’s nuclear secrets.
Iranian government officials charged Nasseri with accepting as much
as $1 million in bribes from Halliburton for this information.
Oriental Oil Kish dealings with Halliburton first became public
knowledge in January 2005 when the company announced that it had
subcontracted parts of the South Pars gas-drilling project to
Halliburton Products and Services, a subsidiary of Dallas-based
Halliburton that is registered to the Cayman Islands. Following the
announcement, Halliburton claimed that the South Pars gas field
project in Tehran would be its last project in Iran. According to a
BBC report, Halliburton, which took thirty to forty million dollars
from its Iranian operations in 2003, “was winding down its work due
to a poor business environment.”
However, Halliburton has a long history of doing business in Iran,
starting as early as 1995, while Vice President Cheney was chief
executive of the company. Leopold quotes a February 2001 report
published in the Wall Street Journal, “Halliburton Products and
Services Ltd., works behind an unmarked door on the ninth floor of a
new north Tehran tower block. A brochure declares that the company
was registered in 1975 in the Cayman Islands, is based in the
Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and is “non-American.” But like the
sign over the receptionist’s head, the brochure bears the company’s
name and red emblem, and offers services from Halliburton units
around the world.” Moreover mail sent to the company’s offices in
Tehran and the Cayman Islands is forwarded directly to its Dallas
headquarters.
In an attempt to curtail Halliburton and other U.S. companies from
engaging in business dealings with rogue nations such as Libya,
Iran, and Syria, an amendment was approved in the Senate on July 26,
2005. The amendment, sponsored by Senator Susan Collins R-Maine,
would penalize companies that continue to skirt U.S. law by setting
up offshore subsidiaries as a way to legally conduct and avoid U.S.
sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act
(IEEPA).
A letter, drafted by trade groups representing corporate executives,
vehemently objected to the amendment, saying it would lead to
further hatred and perhaps incite terrorist attacks on the U.S. and
“greatly strain relations with the United States primary trading
partners.” The letter warned that, “Foreign governments view U.S.
efforts to dictate their foreign and commercial policy as violations
of sovereignty often leading them to adopt retaliatory measures more
at odds with U.S. goals.”
Collins supports the legislation, stating, “It prevents U.S.
corporations from creating a shell company somewhere else in order
to do business with rogue, terror-sponsoring nations such as Syria
and Iran. The bottom line is that if a U.S. company is evading
sanctions to do business with one of these countries, they are
helping to prop up countries that support terrorism—most often aimed
against America.
UPDATE BY JASON LEOPOLD
During a trip to the Middle East in March 1996, Vice President Dick
Cheney told a group of mostly U.S. businessmen that Congress should
ease sanctions in Iran and Libya to foster better relationships, a
statement that, in hindsight, is completely hypocritical considering
the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
“Let me make a generalized statement about a trend I see in the U.S.
Congress that I find disturbing, that applies not only with respect
to the Iranian situation but a number of others as well,” Cheney
said. “I think we Americans sometimes make mistakes . . . There
seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what’s best for
everybody else and that we are going to use our economic clout to
get everybody else to live the way we would like.”
Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton Corporation at the
time he uttered those words. It was Cheney who directed Halliburton
toward aggressive business dealings with Iran —in violation of U.S.
law— in the mid-1990s, which continued through 2005 and is the
reason Iran has the capability to enrich weapons-grade uranium.
It was Halliburton’s secret sale of centrifuges to Iran that helped
get the uranium enrichment program off the ground, according to a
three-year investigation that includes interviews conducted with
more than a dozen current and former Halliburton employees.
If the U.S. ends up engaged in a war with Iran in the future, Cheney
and Halliburton will bear the brunt of the blame. But this shouldn’t
come as a shock to anyone who has been following Halliburton’s
business activities over the past decade. The company has a long,
documented history of violating U.S. sanctions and conducting
business with so-called rogue nations.
No, what’s disturbing about these facts is how little attention it
has received from the mainstream media. But the public record speaks
for itself, as do the thousands of pages of documents obtained by
various federal agencies that show how Halliburton’s business
dealings in Iran helped fund terrorist activities there—including
the country’s nuclear enrichment program.
When I asked Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, a couple of
years ago if Halliburton would stop doing business with Iran because
of concerns that the company helped fund terrorism she said, “No.”
“We believe that decisions as to the nature of such governments and
their actions are better made by governmental authorities and
international entities such as the United Nations as opposed to
individual persons or companies,” Hall said. “Putting politics
aside, we and our affiliates operate in countries to the extent it
is legally permissible, where our customers are active as they
expect us to provide oilfield services support to their
international operations. “We do not always agree with policies or
actions of governments in every place that we do business and make
no excuses for their behaviors. Due to the long-term nature of our
business and the inevitability of political and social change, it is
neither prudent nor appropriate for our company to establish our own
country-by-country foreign policy.”
Halliburton first started doing business in Iran as early as 1995,
while Vice President Cheney was chief executive of the company and
in possible violation of U.S. sanctions.
An executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton in March
1995 prohibits “new investments (in Iran) by U.S. persons, including
commitment of funds or other assets.” It also bars U.S. companies
from performing services “that would benefit the Iranian oil
industry” and provide Iran with the financial means to engage in
terrorist activity.
When Bush and Cheney came into office in 2001, their administration
decided it would not punish foreign oil and gas companies that
invest in those countries. The sanctions imposed on countries like
Iran and Libya before Bush became president were blasted by Cheney,
who gave frequent speeches on the need for U.S. companies to compete
with their foreign competitors, despite claims that those countries
may have ties to terrorism.
“I think we’d be better off if we, in fact, backed off those
sanctions (on Iran), didn’t try to impose secondary boycotts on
companies . . . trying to do business over there . . . and instead
started to rebuild those relationships,” Cheney said during a 1998
business trip to Sydney, Australia, according to Australia’s
Illawarra Mercury newspaper.
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