WP: Bush Adviser Helped Law Firm Land Job Lobbying for CNOOC

[Pirate Smile]

Bush Adviser Helped Law Firm Land Job Lobbying for CNOOC

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 12, 2005; Page D01

President Bush's top independent intelligence adviser met last winter with investment bankers in China to help secure his law firm's role in lobbying for a state-run Chinese energy firm and its bid for the U.S. oil company Unocal Corp., according to his law firm, Akin Gump.

The involvement of James C. Langdon Jr., chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a major Bush fundraiser, underscores the tangled Washington connections beneath CNOOC Ltd.'s bid. Both CNOOC and its rival for Unocal, Chevron Corp., have enlisted lobbyists and public relations professionals with deep ties to the Bush White House and Republican leaders in Congress. Wayne L. Berman, a principal lobbyist for Chevron, is a Bush "Ranger," having raised at least $200,000 for the president's campaign. His wife, Lea, is the White House social secretary.


Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) said he will question the involvement of James C. Langdon Jr. with CNOOC. (By Alex Wong -- Associated Press)

Langdon's involvement, given his dual role as Bush intelligence adviser and energy lawyer at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, may prove politically problematic, some security experts said. Members of the intelligence board, known as PFIAB, are granted the highest security clearance and develop top-secret advisories and reports for the president, most of which are not even available to members of Congress.

"China is among the biggest intelligence challenges of the coming decades," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. "Along with the war on terrorism, it's not far behind, and one has to wonder whether Mr. Langdon's involvement in Chinese affairs will be tolerated by intelligence agencies that have different interests than those of Mr. Langdon's firm."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101671.html

[pfitz59]

1. I can smell the stink from here!

The entire Administration is a cancer, a festering sore, a malignancy on the body of American politics! Time to excise the lesion....

[54anickel]

2. There are a lot of "bizarre" ties between the Bush Junta and China

Wasn't BeelzeBush's uncle somehow involved in that business with one of our spy planes? Something doesn't smell quite right here....

[seafan]

3. Our government is wholly owned by the highest bidder/campaign donor.

Sadly, most people in America do not realize the extent to which we no longer have any semblance of a representative, democratic government.

It's time for radical, surgical excision of this disease that's murdering America.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Politically problematic? WTF? It's not politics, it's ethics

Bush and his Republican cronies are corrupt.

[AuntiBush]

14. It's time the "Culture of Corruption" comes to an End!

[oasis]

5. Curt Weldon will go after them like the other Retugs went after Enron.

Then it will all just go away.

[RamboLiberal]

6. Imagine how the Repukes, Blowhards and Freepers would react

if this was the Clinton, Gore or Kerry administration's adviser doing this. F*ckin hypocrites - it's okey dokey if their crime family sells out the nation's security!

[cosmicdot]

7. not to forget that Henry Kissinger is an CNOOC advisor ...

http://english.people.com.cn/english/200110/29/eng20011029_83454.html

a former Unocal consultant deeply involved in the pre-9/11 pipeline consortium ... he, also, is a Pentagon Defense Policy Board Advisor http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dpbmembers.html

Akin, Gump, et al follows the $$.

another Pentagon Board advisor is Thomas S. Foley ...
of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP -- small world, isn't it?

The law firm founded by Robert S. Strauss and Richard A. Gump in 1945 ... Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld ... Robert Strauss is one of Poppy Bush's presidential library foundation's Trustees.

Akin Gump, et al is involved in most places the BFEE/BushCo. hangs its hat. Just like one would find James A. Baker (Baker & Botts) or Brent Scowcroft.

for example: US-Saudi Arabian Business Council

from "Big Oil, the United States and corruption in Kazakhstan"
by Larry Chin

~snip~

"Strauss is a senior partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, the powerful Washington law firm, and Giffen would eventually become one of Akin, Gump's clients.

"Akin, Gump is a registered foreign agent for the Saudi regime. Three of George W. Bush's closest friends in Texas, James Langdon, George Salem and Barnett 'Sandy' Kress (a consultant on the Bush education program) are Akin, Gump partners.

"Akin, Gump, whose corporate clients include Enron, McDonnell Douglas and Bechtel, has also represented Saudi Arabians connected to Osama bin Laden, including Khalid bin Mahfouz, Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi and Salah Idris. Bin Mahfouz is a former director of BCCI, and is a private banker whose clients include the Saudi royal family.

"The Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi families are not coincidentally involved in oil field development projects in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. According to Professor Peter Dale Scott, 'Mahfouz/Al-Amoudi joint ventures include the port facilities in Yemen where the USS Cole was bombed by Islamic militants while it refueled, an alleged chemical weapons plant (El Shifa) in Kenya that former U.S. president Bill Clinton ordered destroyed .'

"Today, Giffen is still an Akin, Gump client, and the firm has represented him in all criminal proceedings."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI205B.html



imo, this stuff has been going on for a long time ... the Internet(s) is just helping to finally bring some of these things to more and more people


p.s. I just noticed that former Pentagon PR person Ms. Victoria Clarke* once working for the worldwide PR firm WPP (Hill & Knowlton), now of Comcast, is a Pentagon Advisor, too, as of 5/19/2004 ... so, she 'quit', but somehow still works for Rumsfeld

* credited with devising a program ... for embedding more than 500 journalists with U.S. forces during the war in Iraq

[WhiteTara]

8. Nothing to see here folks

move along. Wow! these guys aren't even the least bit subtle. They get out there and "do it in the road"!
:puke:

[dmr]

9. Henry Kissinger is a Chinese advisor

Thanks for posting this, Pirate Smile. I've been trying to keep up with this story. Here's a few links you might find interesting:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4191683.stm


China's global hunt for oil
By Mary Hennock
BBC News business reporter

- snip -

Running a Chinese oil company is a highly political business, and successful oil mandarins tend to have their eye on plum government jobs.

"Their attention is divided, let's say," is how one analyst puts it.

But CNOOC bosses have impressed. They talk fluent industry jargon, wooed Henry Kissinger onto their advisory board, and have a $4.3bn petrochemical project with Shell that is China's biggest joint venture investment.

More ...


http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={c80bd06d-0ac4-4a8c-8875-2bac39eb2878}&siteid=mktw&dist=SignInArchive&archive=true¶m=archive&garden=&minisite=


Chevron exec calls for WTO review of CNOOC unocal bid - FT

Last Update: 1:32 PM ET July 1, 2005


NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Chevron Corp. (CVX) on Thursday called for CNOOC Ltd.'s (CEO) unsolicited bid for Unocal Corp. (UCL) to be referred to the World Trade Organization, claiming its Asian rival was attempting to acquire a "critical resource" with "free money," The Financial Times reports in an article on its Web site.

In an interview with the newspaper, Peter Robertson, Chevron's vice-chairman, said: "There is something a little wrong with a set of trading rules that allow a government to enter a commercial playing field, in a sense, and to subsidize a bid to pick up these assets.

"If you can get free money, there is no end to this. So it seems like there is sort of a trade rules issue here that somebody needs to deal with," he told the FT.


More ...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15810498%255E643,00.html

Unocal bid mired in 'red star rising' fear
Geoff Elliott
04jul05

LOOK no further than Duncan Hunter, Californian Republican in the US Congress, for the kind of angst China's $US18.5 billion ($24 billion) bid for US oil company Unocal is causing in Congress.

Hunter is a "Buy American" and Fence-the-Mexican-Border kind of politician. He's also chairman of Congress's powerful Armed Services Committee and gets plenty of voice in Washington.
And he's alarmed about the rise of China - linking its growing economic might with national security fears.

- snip -

And it's not just Republicans. Democrats have been venting too. Consider this from Democrat Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, addressing Treasury Secretary John Snow and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan on the day the CNOOC bid for Unocal was announced: "I consider myself a free trader. I voted for CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) last week (and was) against slapping these tariffs on China, which I think would boomerang on our companies. But I don't think being a free trader is synonymous with being a sucker and being a patsy."

He urged Mr Snow, who chairs the review committee for foreign company takeover bids, to look at the bid on national security grounds.

"I would only tell you, Mr Secretary, if you don't review this one, that law is meaningless. And I'm telling you ... those of us that consider ourselves free traders have got to be aggressive in terms of using the existing tools on the books - I don't see the arguments for not doing a review."

More ....

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. Remember all the crap they gave to Clinton

because he asked Vernon Jordon to find Monica a job in NYC?

Where's the outrage freepers? God I hate hypocrites.

[truthisfreedom]

11. i love how bushco made the ultimate mistake, identifying the most corrupt

of their fundraisers with funny descriptions like "Rangers," etc...

they never planned to lose... but when everything begins to crash down around them, the Dems will easily identify those responsible for all of this corruption using the goofy descriptions!

[MaineDem]

12. Kicked and recommended

Do these people actually believe they are above any law???

[Pirate Smile]

13. kick

[Just Me]

15. Hmmm. I guess this particular cronyism ain't cool.

After all, it's just one example of the most horrid corrupt cronyism practiced by this junta.

[jbnow]

16. With administration being questioned more

I hope it spreads into many areas, including this sale. This might give some ammunition for people demanding answers and not accepting the vague responses bush has given so far, as though he has no say in this.

This is not the first questionable sale but hopefully it is the one too far. May this and other connections revealed help to stop the sale.

The broad MSM silence and acceptance is changing with this Rove thing and perhaps the dam is breaking. bush and gang has been ever more blatant because they were getting away with everything, not being pushed or confronted beyond their vague statements or denials. Those waving 9/11 flags can't blind the nation and the news forever.