Did Big Oil participate in planning invasion of Iraq?Document puts lie to oil ex

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Subject:Did Big Oil participate in planning invasion of Iraq?Document

puts lie to oil executives' testimony

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/oil-d05.shtml

 

Document puts lie to oil executives' testimony

 

Did Big Oil participate in planning invasion of Iraq?

By Thomas Eley

5 December 2005

 

 

 

An official White House document recently acquired by the Washington

Post puts the lie to testimony given by executives of five leading oil

firms on November 9 before a joint meeting of the Senate Energy and

Commerce committees regarding their collaboration in 2001 with Vice

President Dick Cheney's " energy task force, " officially known as the

National Energy Policy Development Group.

 

Even before the hearings, the oil bosses had been offered a blank

check to lie by Republican Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens of

Alaska. Stevens, in a transparent attempt to spare the executives

possible charges of perjury, waived the normal procedure of swearing

in witnesses before congressional committees. The hearings were

ostensibly called to discuss the suspiciously rapid increase in oil

prices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but Stevens's maneuver

suggests that he expected the matter of Cheney's task force might

arise. Nonetheless, the executives have placed themselves in potential

legal jeopardy through their apparently false testimony. According to

US Code, it is illegal to make " any materially false, fictitious or

fraudulent statement or representation " before Congress.

 

During the hearing, Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey

asked the executives, " Did your company or any representatives in your

companies participate in Vice President Cheney's energy task force in

2001—the meeting? " Lee R. Raymond of Exxon Mobil, David J. O'Reilly of

Chevron and James J. Mulva of ConocoPhillips responded in the

negative, while Ross Pillari of BP America and John Hofmeister of

Shell Oil pleaded ignorance.

 

The document acquired by the Washington Post, which is based on Secret

Service data of those admitted to the White House, directly

contradicts this testimony. Meetings occurred among top oil executives

and task force director Andrew Lundquist along with Cheney's personal

aide, Karen Y. Knutson, and possibly Cheney himself.

 

As the Post reports, " According to the White House document, Rouse

[former Exxon vice president] met with task force staff members on

Feb. 14, 2001. On March 21, they met with Archie Dunham, who was

chairman of Conoco. On April 12, according to the document, task force

staff members met with Conoco official Huffman and two officials from

the US Oil and Gas Association, Wayne Gibbens and Alby Modiano.

 

" On April 17, task force staff members met with Royal Dutch/Shell

Group's chairman, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Shell Oil chairman Steven

Miller and two others. On March 22, staff members met with BP regional

president Bob Malone, chief economist Peter Davies and company

employees Graham Barr and Deb Beaubien. "

 

Confronted with documentation that such meetings in fact took place,

the oil executives and the vice president have remained obstinate.

Only one former executive who met the task force, Allan Huffman,

previously CEO of Conoco, confirmed that he attended such a meeting in

2001. Spokesmen representing the current CEOs stood by their

apparently false testimony given to the joint Energy and Commerce

committee hearing. Cheney's office refused to comment.

 

After its creation in 2001, Cheney shrouded his energy task force in

secrecy and refused to turn over relevant transcripts to the

Congress's Government Accountability Office (GAO) under the bogus and

utterly cynical claim that any public scrutiny of White House

documents would constitute an attack on the independence of the

executive branch. It had long been assumed, although never proven,

that the task force's policy recommendations—many of which have

subsequently become law—had been either suggested or actually written

by the largest oil firms. Environmentalist groups protested that they

and other concerned parties were barred from participation.

 

The Post article's revelations arrive after a protracted legal

struggle failed to force the release of White House documents related

to the energy task force. The GAO dropped its lawsuit against the

White House over the affair in 2003 after losing a court case in 2002.

The environmentalist organization Sierra Club and the right-wing

Judicial Watch carried forward a joint lawsuit that began in 2001,

alleging that Cheney maintained improper contact with the oil industry

in the drafting of the task force's reports. The suit, which demanded

that the records be released, was appealed to the Supreme Court, which

on June 24, 2004, reversed a lower court ruling ordering Cheney to

release the records.

 

If released, task force papers will no doubt demonstrate conclusively

that the largest oil executives played a dominant role in crafting

Bush's energy policy. That would come as no surprise to any serious

observer, and would demonstrate once again the degree to which the

federal government has become a pliant tool wielded directly by

powerful corporate interests for their own benefit. Yet, even if

especially egregious, such pandering to big business does not

necessarily imply a formal illegality, and in any case would be in

keeping with longstanding Washington tradition. So why have Cheney and

the White House for so long refused to release documentation of the

meetings? And why would the oil executives care if it were revealed

they were present at task force meetings—so much so that they provided

apparently false testimony before Congress on the matter?

 

Only the release of the documents would have fully resolved these

questions. But one possible explanation relates directly to the

immediate source of the crisis that threatens to consume the Bush

administration: the war in Iraq.

 

In fact, the Bush administration's energy policy was not based only on

the dismantling of corporate regulations and the loosening of

restrictions on oil exploration in the United States. It had an even

more important foreign component: the plan to invade and colonize

Iraq, and then privatize and expropriate its enormous oil wealth for

the direct benefit of American oil concerns and US capitalism as a whole.

 

It has been long-since established that in 2001, Cheney's task force

discussed Iraq's oil. In 2003, Judicial Watch gained access to

Commerce Department papers that had been produced by the task force.

Found among the documents, according to a July 18, 2003, Associated

Press report, were " a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and

pipelines as well as a list entitled `Foreign Suitors of Iraqi

Oilfield Contracts.' " Among the specifically listed " foreign suitors "

were Russian and French concerns.

 

It is more than plausible that during White House meetings, oil

executives discussed such a " hypothetical " invasion of the defenseless

country. The oil companies stood to benefit enormously, and there is

no reason to believe that these powerful and well-connected men were

unaware that the Bush administration and its coterie of neo-liberal

strategists had placed the invasion of Iraq as a top priority. Indeed,

the plan to invade Iraq was well known and publicly discussed among

the Washington elite for years.

 

Revelations that the White House in 2001—two years before the invasion

of Iraq and months before 9/11—invited oil executives to contribute

planning toward the division of Iraq's oil wealth would take on an

explosive character under conditions in which all the official

justifications—especially WMD—have been conclusively debunked as crude

fabrications, and the war itself spirals uncontrollably toward

ever-greater disaster. It would also explain why Cheney and the White

House remain so intent on preventing any public accounting of what

went on during the energy task force's meetings, and why the oil

executives would attempt to deny their very presence.

 

See Also:

US Supreme Court declines to order release of Cheney energy taskforce

papers

[29 June 2004]

 

A victory for government by stealth: US congressional arm abandons

suit against Cheney

[27 February 2003]

 

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