Reply #7: #4 - What Moore left out - the pipeline was to save Enron's Dabhol plant.

[Stephanie]

This is one reason why Cheney won't let the Energy papers out. The other is that they were busy divvying up the Iraqi oil fields in May 2001.

But the Afghanistant pipeline was to have provided cheap natural gas to the Indian power plant that Enron built in Dabhol. The gas supply might have saved Enron from the disaster that ultimately befell it.

The Enron-Cheney-Taliban Connection?
By Ron Callari, Albion Monitor. Posted February 28, 2002.

Could the Big Secret of the Enron scandal be that Cheney and the White House were working closely with the Taliban -- on Enron's behalf -- up to a few weeks before Sept. 11?

http://www.alternet.org/story/12525

Enron had a $3 billion investment in the Dabhol power plant, near Bombay on India's west coast. The project began in 1992, and the liquefied natural gas- powered plant was supposed to supply energy- hungry India with about one-fifth of its energy needs by 1997. It was one of Enron's largest development projects ever (and the single largest direct foreign investment in India's history). The company owned 65 percent of Dabhol; the other partners were Bechtel, General Electric and State Electricity Board.

The fly in the ointment, however was that the Indian consumers could not afford the cost of the electricity that was to be produced. The World Bank had warned at the beginning that the energy produced by the plant would be too costly, and Enron proved them right. Power from the plant was 700 percent higher than electricity from other sources.

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The book "Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth" by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasique claims that the U.S. tried to negotiate the pipeline deal with the Taliban as late as August, 2001. According to the authors, the Bush Administration attempted to get the Taliban on board and believed they could depend upon the regime to stabilize the country while the pipeline construction was underway. Bush had already indirectly given the Taliban $43 million for their supposed efforts to stamp out opium-poppy cultivation. Was this an award -- or a bribe? The circumstances make this a valid question.

Enron was unraveling at the seams, yet in early August, Kenneth Lay seemed optimistic, even exuberant. Was he whistling past the graveyard, or did he have secret information? The last meeting between U.S. and Taliban representatives took place five weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington; on that occasion, Christina Rocca, in charge of Central Asian affairs for the U.S. government, met the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan in Islamabad on August 2, 2001. Rocca said the Taliban representative, Mr. Zaeef, was aware of the strong U.S. commitment to help the Afghan people and the fact that the United States had provided $132 million in relief assistance so far that year. <so much more at link>