Two Oil-for-Food Hearings In Congress This Week (UPDATED 5-16)
By Andrew Cochran
A relatively quiet week for terrorism hearings in the U.S. Congress coming up, dominated by two Oil-for-Food hearings. The long-scheduled hearing at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has gathered the headlines with its focus on Saddam's use of OFF money to reward politicans and terrorist entities, with British MP George Galloway testifying. Claudia Rosett's latest column on that hearing says it all. (UPDATE 5-16: Monday Washington Post article on PSI documents (free registration): "Top Kremlin operatives and a flamboyant Russian politician reaped millions of dollars in profits under the U.N. oil-for-food program by selling oil that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein allowed them to buy at a deep discount, a Senate investigation has concluded." The WP website has a good graphic of the deals released by the subcommittee. The subcommittee's reports are here - scroll down to "Related Files."
The House Energy & Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee is holding an OFF hearing on Monday. John Fawcett, one of the leading counterterrorism investigators in the U.S., who has written a report on the OFF matter, will testify at that one. That subcommittee's press release on the hearing makes it clear that they are also pursuing Saddam's efforts to influence French and Russian politicians, and names targets from Saddam's intel reports.
Here's a quote from the Energy & Commerce oversight subcommittee's press release:
Subsequent memoranda identify specific officials through whom Iraq hoped to improve its relations with France, including:
(1) former French President Valry Giscard dEstaing;
(2) former Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua;
(3) Jean-Pierre Chevnement, a former French Minister of Interior and Defenseand 2002 presidential candidate;
(4) Pierre Joxe, a former Minister of Interior and Defense;
(5) Jacques Delors, a former French Finance Minister; and
(6) French Parliamentarians Serge Matheiu and Roselyn Bachelot.
A March 11, 2002 memo also lists the names of individuals and businessmen through whom we [IIS] will be able to approach the French President Jacques Chirac (the candidate for the French General Presidential elections, 2002) and the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, including (1) Patrick Maugein, an oil trader; (2) Roselyn Bachelot; (3) Sergei Rudasev, chairman of the Russian Committee of Solidarity with Iraq; and (4) Boghos Akubov, former official in the Russian Foreign Ministry.
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