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The oily "Dr." K

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Since we all know that the Iraqi situation is far too complex to be explained by the global control of and flow of oil — forget for a minute that ours is an administration in which the President’s national security advisor has had an oil tanker named after her — why even bring up Henry Kissinger and oil? We’re all too polite and far too sophisticated for that sort of thing. We know from the press that “Dr.” K, appointed to head a panel investigating the 9/11 attacks, has, with White House support, refused to disclose his business clients. (Today, he began backing down slightly, offering to disclose them privately to the 9/11 families.) So how secret are his ties to his clients and who are those clients?

Out of curiosity — and after a tip from a friend — this morning I put the good “Doctor” and the oil company Unocal, which was deeply involved in negotiating with the Taliban to try to run a pipeline through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, into google.com, clicked on their search button, and about three second later up popped ten pages of references, in many languages, some nutty (it’s the Internet, after all) but not all of them.

The “journal” piece that follows from Salon.com is by Joe Conason, a fine investigative reporter. It appeared over a week ago and laid out not only what’s known of Kissinger’s involvement with Unocal, but where his ties to Unocal have been mentioned before, starting with Ahmed Rashid’s authoritative book Taliban and including past stories in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. Here, by the way, he crosses paths with another Bush advisor and Unocal advisor, Zalmay Khalilzad, until recently the American “consul” in Kabul and now appointed liaison to the Iraqi opposition.

I don’t know, call me naive, but this seems like the sort of story worth at least mentioning, if not following up right now; if, that is, any of us thought that oil had anything to do with any of this. (Kissinger also seems to have had some of the major oil companies on his list of clients.) If you were a genuine reporter and not just a guy with time on his hands, it wouldn’t even be hard to launch your research the first steps of which are just a google away. Tom

Joe Conason’s Journal
Regarding Henry: Will he explain his job for Unocal when the oil giant was cozying up to the Taliban?

Oh, Henry
Salon.com
Dec. 3, 2002

As a New Yorker who wants a full, fair and unsparing probe of 9/11, I’m not moving on just yet from the absurd appointment of Henry Kissinger to chair the new “independent commission.” Neither is the New York Times editorial board, whose latest salvo described Kissinger’s insouciance about his conflict of interests as “quaint.”

Quaint must be the polite way to say stunningly arrogant. But the wily Kissinger is probably quite right to brush off the halfhearted gnawing of the press corps, whose appetite for scandal has diminished markedly since the advent of the Bush administration. They’re already ignoring information about Kissinger that probably merits further exploration.

Two years ago, the appointment of an “independent” investigator with business ties to one of the president’s most generous political contributors – who also happens to have made the president a multimillionaire — would have drawn angry snarls.

[To find the rest of the Conason, simply put “Henry Kissinger and Unocal” into the google search window and look for the piece in the list that comes on screen.]

Oh, Henry
Salon.com
Dec. 3, 2002

As a New Yorker who wants a full, fair and unsparing probe of 9/11, I’m not moving on just yet from the absurd appointment of Henry Kissinger to chair the new “independent commission.” Neither is the New York Times editorial board, whose latest salvo described Kissinger’s insouciance about his conflict of interests as “quaint.”

Quaint must be the polite way to say stunningly arrogant. But the wily Kissinger is probably quite right to brush off the halfhearted gnawing of the press corps, whose appetite for scandal has diminished markedly since the advent of the Bush administration. They’re already ignoring information about Kissinger that probably merits further exploration.

Two years ago, the appointment of an “independent” investigator with business ties to one of the president’s most generous political contributors – who also happens to have made the president a multimillionaire — would have drawn angry snarls.

[To find the rest of the Conason, simply put “Henry Kissinger and Unocal” into the google search window and look for the piece in the list that comes on screen.]