WSJ Spins Hunt Oil Deal, But Can't Fool Jason Leopold

The spin is almost invisible when the Wall Street Journal describes Henry Waxman's reaction to recent news pertaining to the Hunt Oil deal with Kurdistan:

House baron Henry Waxman [...] is upset with a separate contract that the Kurdistan Regional Government has signed with Texas's Hunt Oil. Mr. Waxman thinks the Bush Administration didn't do enough to stop the deal. Then again, this is old news, as the contract was signed last year. And while the Baghdad central government wasn't pleased the Kurds had moved on a contract without national approval, the deal hasn't impeded Iraq's broader progress.

Fortunately for the cause of truth and justice (not to mention personal sanity), Jason Leopold wasn't fooled; here he explains what Waxman is really upset about:

Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.

Despite those longstanding connections -– and Hunt’s work for George W. Bush as a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [PFIAB] -– the Bush administration expressed surprise when Hunt Oil signed the agreement last September.

At that time, administration officials said Hunt Oil’s deal with the Kurds jeopardized delicate negotiations among competing Iraqi sects and regions for sharing oil revenues, talks seen as vital for achieving national reconciliation.

“I know nothing about the deal,” President Bush said. “To the extent that it does undermine the ability for the government to come up with an oil revenue sharing plan that unifies the country, obviously if it undermines it I’m concerned.”

However, on July 2, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released documents showing that senior administration officials were aware that Hunt was negotiating with the Kurdistan government and even offered him encouragement.

Hunt also personally alerted Bush’s PFIAB about his oil company’s confidential contacts with Kurdish representatives.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, committee chairman, complained that the administration’s comments last year were “misleading.”

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed,” Waxman wrote.

Waxman said the Hunt-Kurdish case also raised questions about the veracity of similar administration denials about its role in arranging more recent contracts between Iraq and major U.S. and multinational oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.

Plus, there’s the longstanding suspicion that oil was a principal, though unstated, motive behind the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, which sits on the world’s second-largest oil reserves.

Administration officials -– and much of the mainstream U.S. media –- have ridiculed the oil motive charge as a conspiracy theory.

It's a conspiracy, that's for sure. But it's no theory. And the connections with Hunt go way, way, back.

Many of the oil companies now stepping forward to benefit from Iraqi oil were instrumental in both supporting Bush’s political career and giving advice to Cheney’s secretive energy task force in 2001.

For instance, Ray Hunt’s personal relationship with the Bush family dates back to the 1970s as Hunt, the chief of Dallas-based Hunt Oil, helped build the Texas Republican Party as it served as a power base for the Bushes rise to national prominence.

The Hunt family donated more than $500,000 to Republican campaigns in Texas, while Hunt Oil employees and their spouses gave more than $1 million to Republican causes since 1995, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ray Hunt also had strong ties to Dick Cheney during his years at the helm of Halliburton, the Houston-based oil-services giant. In 1998, Cheney tapped Hunt to serve on Halliburton’s board of directors, where Hunt became a compensation committee member setting Cheney’s salary and stock options.

In 1999, when Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush turned to Hunt to help fund his presidential campaign efforts in Iowa, according to Robert Bryce’s book, Cronies: Oil, The Bushes, And The Rise Of Texas, America's Superstate.

“By the summer of 1999, Bush had already raised $37 million but he wanted to conserve his campaign cash so he turned to a Texas crony, Ray Hunt, to help fund the Iowa effort,” Bryce wrote. “In July of 1999, Hunt was among a handful of Bush supporters who each donated $10,000 to the Iowa Republican party.”

In May 2000, Bush appointed Hunt finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hunt also donated $5,000 to the Florida recount battle and spent $100,000 on Bush’s inaugural party.

Leopold fills in some more background on Hunt Oil and its Bush connections, before describing the newly released evidence in this case (which the WSJ calls old news):

The new evidence suggests that Hunt Oil at least benefited from the administration’s wink and nod in striking the Kurdish oil deal.

In a July 12, 2007, letter to PFIAB, Hunt disclosed that Hunt Oil was “approached a month or so ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region.”

Hunt described a visit of a Hunt Oil survey team and stated, “we were encouraged by what we saw. We have a larger team going back to Kurdistan this week.”

In a second letter to PFIAB, dated Aug. 30, 2007, Hunt revealed that he would travel to Kurdistan in early September for meetings with the Kurdistan regional government, including its president, prime minister and oil minister.

Those meetings led to the oil agreement between Hunt Oil and the Kurdish leaders -- and now have raised questions about Bush’s denial that he had any advanced knowledge about the deal.

“State Department officials similarly disavowed involvement in the contract,” Waxman said in the letter to Rice. “Department officials claimed that to the extent they were aware of any negotiations, they actively warned Hunt Oil not to enter into a contract because it was contrary to U.S. national security interests.

“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed.”

See? Wall Street Journal readers may believe that Henry Waxman is upset because he "thinks the Bush Administration didn't do enough to stop the deal".

But now you know better.

J.F.K. and the Bay of Pigs

“If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.”

-– George H. W. Bush, cited in the June 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter.

A BLAST FROM THE PAST: Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this letter to his brother Nov. 8, 1954:

"Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this -- in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man rom other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

One of those Texas Oil Millionaires, and part of the "tiny splinter group" is none other than George H. W. Bush.

41’s bio:

…A few months before the end of the war, while on rotation home, he married Barbara Pierce, whose father published the magazines Redbook and McCall’s. After the war,
...
Although he was offered a job at his father’s firm, Brown Brothers, Harriman and Company, Bush moved, with his wife and infant son, to west Texas, where he worked for Dresser Industries, an oilfield supply company. He started at the bottom, sweeping warehouses and painting machinery, but soon became a salesman of drilling bits.

By 1950, he had gone into business for himself, forming the Bush-Overby Company with partner John Overby in Midland, Texas. This company, which dealt in oil and gas properties, grew and took on more partners. In 1954, George Bush co-founded and became the president of Zapata Offshore Company.

DRESSER INDUSTRIES:

…Prescott Bush was a director of Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton. Former United States president George H. W. Bush worked for Dresser Industries in several positions from 1948-1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation.

Halliburton’s Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said

…But in 1998, Cheney oversaw Halliburton’s acquisition of Dresser Industries Inc., which exported equipment to Iraq through two subsidiaries of a joint venture with another large U.S. equipment maker, Ingersoll-Rand Co.

ZAPATA OIL: THE BAY OF PIGS AND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION

Starting about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion in the spring of 1961, we have the first hints that Bush, in addition to working for Zapata Offshore, may also have been a participant in certain covert operations of the US intelligence community.

Such participation would certainly be coherent with George’s role in the Prescott Bush, Skull and Bones, and Brown Brothers, Harriman networks. During the twentieth century, the Skull and Bones/Harriman circles have always maintained a sizable and often decisive presence inside the intelligence organizations of the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Office of Strategic Services, and the Central Intelligence Agency. [MORE]

Dick Russel dot org

Leave it to the old Kennedy assassination researcher to come up with a good one. As we read about the decimation of the striper’s principal food supply – a small, boney fish called the menhaden – by commercial fishing operations intent on exploiting it for use in Omega-3 fish oil, we find ourselves back at “the Bay of Pigs thing”, as Nixon put it. For who is America’s largest purveyor of Omega-3 fish oil and the major destroyer of the menhaden supply but … Zapata Oil!

Oh, yes, dear reader. The same Zapata Oil that was run by George H.W. Bush until he sold it in the mid-1960s, believed to have been a CIA front for the Bay of Pigs invasion. We will never know all the details because, as Russell reminds us, potentially revealing financial documents were “accidentally” destroyed at the SEC when Bush became vice-president under Reagan. The company is now known as Omega Protein, and it is owned by the same man who bought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United: Malcolm Glazer.

Famous Texans.com - Howard Hughes

…Throughout the 1950s, as the power of three entities grew – the Hughes empire, organized crime, and the new Central Intelligence Agency – it became all but impossible to distinguish between them. By the end of the decade, Hughes’ chief of staff, Robert Maheu, had orchestrated the CIA’s dirtiest secret – plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro with the help of two heads of organized crime. Vice President Richard Nixon was the White House action officer in the clandestine attempts to oust Castro.

Zapata Off-Shore, the oil company owned by future CIA director and U.S. president George Bush after he split it off from Zapata Oil partner Hugh Liedtke in 1954, had a drilling rig on the Cay Sal Bank in 1958. These islands had been leased to Nixon supporter and CIA contractor Howard Hughes the previous year and were later used as a base for CIA raids on Cuba.

Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy largely because of a scandal over a never repaid $205,000 “loan” Nixon’s brother received from Hughes. As attorney general, Robert Kennedy secretly investigated the Hughes-Nixon dealings.

Allen Dulles, the later CIA director, who was the architect [together with Vice President Richard Nixon and George Bush] of the Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Allen Dulles was fired by President Kennedy because of the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs. Yet Allen Dulles was appointed by Lyndon Johnson to serve on the Warren Commission to “investigate” JFK’s death.

Allen Dulles & the CIA

Dulles was fired from the CIA by Kennedy in 1961 over Operation Northwoods. Another cover CIA operation aimed at gaining popular support for a war against Cuba by framing Cuba for stage real or simulated attacks on American citizens. Dulles was replaced by John McCone.

Allen Dulles and the Bush family
John Foster Dulles, Allen’s brother was hired by George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush to cover up improprieties in their business dealings in Poland and nazi Germany.

White House For Sale: The Hunts of Texas

Ray Hunt ranked No. 78 on the 2003 “Forbes 400 Richest Americans” list. Hunt’s fortune originated in rights his father bought in 1930 to a sea of 5 billion barrels of east Texas crude.

Polygamist H.L. Hunt pumped $100 million into trusts that he left to two of his three families. Placid Oil fed his first family’s trusts, while Hunt Oil benefited the family that H.L. started with a Hunt Oil secretary.

Ray Hunt later formed Hunt Consolidated as an umbrella for Hunt Oil, his Dallas real estate empire and other other ventures. Hunt Oil and Halliburton Co. (where Hunt sits on the board) are developing the $1.6 billion Camisea gas project in a Peruvian rain forest reserve established to protect indigenous people.

Gas will be shipped to a processing plant in the buffer zone of Peru’s only marine sanctuary in pipelines cut through the rain forest. On environmental grounds in mid 2003 the U.S. Export Import Bank rejected a request for $214 million in public funding for Camisea, which Amazon Watch calls “the most damaging project in the Amazon Basin.” Two weeks later, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) stepped in with $135 million in loans.

While the United States controls 30 percent of the IDB’s multilateral vote, Camisea promoters lined up the votes to approve this funding with U.S. IDB Director Jose Fourquet abstaining. Until recently, the company website said that Hunt Oil Vice President Hunter Hunt (Ray Hunt’s son) served as George W. Bush’s “primary Policy Advisor responsible for energy issues.”

Ray Hunt is a veteran powerbroker. After raising $4 million for then-Senator Phil Gramm in a single 1995 fundraiser, Hunt boasted that this one-day take was “the largest in the history of American politics.” A monument to Hunt’s local political influence is Dallas’ $210 million, 53-acre Reunion complex, which Hunt spent a year secretly planning with then-City Manager George Schrader without informing the city council.

The city received just one bid for the huge project in 1973 and approved a remarkable contract with Hunt. One provision stipulated that the city would refurbish the old Union Terminal train station and then rent two floors of it to Hunt for $100 a year over 100 years. Accusing the city of breaching this contract, Hunt later pressed a $1.4 million claim.

The City Council voted in 1993 to pay Hunt a $440,000 settlement. “This is giving welfare to the rich,” complained dissenting council member Domingo Garcia. “Somebody owed us money, and they threatened to take us to court. Now, we’re paying people to be quiet.”

After Dallas’ First Republic Bank failed in 1989 at a record taxpayer cost of $3.6 billion, Hunt and other ex-directors and officers of the bank (see Robert Dedman) agreed to pay $17.5 million in 1993 to settle related charges. “Those were very rich, very important, and some very self-important people,” a federal prosecutor said. “They don’t understand that when you have enormous problems you have to do something about it or quit the bank. It is endemic among directors across the country. But there is a peculiar brand of it in Texas.”

Then-Governor Bush fast-tracked an oil tax break in 1999 by declaring it a legislative emergency. Billed as relief for small producers, the tax cut benefited energy giants as well as the oil companies of nine future Pioneers, including a $85,176 tax break for Hunt energy interests. Bush appointed Hunt to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 2001.

Top Secret Cronies

Bush has stacked his foreign advisory board with his Texas business pals, who stand to profit from access to CIA and military intelligence.

By Robert Bryce | 11/17/2005

...With Scowcroft out, Bush's cronies are in. Last month, the White House announced that Dallas oil billionaire Ray Hunt, one of Bush's biggest financial backers, was reappointed to the PFIAB. So was Cincinnati financier William DeWitt Jr., who has backed Bush in all of his business deals going back to 1984, when DeWitt's company, Spectrum 7, bailed out the faltering entity known as Bush Oil Co. The new appointee of note to the PFIAB is former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a Bush confidant since his days in Midland, Texas....

[many thanks to Kira for this material]