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Title: WMR SPECIAL REPORT on Ken Lay's death
Source:
Wayne Madsen Report
URL Source: http://waynemadsenreport.com
Published: Jul 5, 2006
Author: Wayne Madsen
Post Date: 2006-07-06 00:12:36 by BTP Holdings
Keywords: None
Views: 259
Comments: 13
July 5, 2006 -- SPECIAL REPORT. Just as WMR was looking into reports from our sources that investigators were checking into the stashing of Enron money in off-shore secret bank accounts prior to Enron's collapse, comes word from Aspen, Colorado that Enron founder Ken Lay, who was convicted of various counts of fraud in the largest corporate collapse in history, died from a massive heart attack while vacationing at his Aspen home. Ken Lay is taking to the grave a number of secrets that are politically and criminally embarrassing to the Bush crime family. A meeting held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on September 7, 1996 is a case in point. According to U.S. intelligence sources, a meeting was held between 40 representatives from Enron, Uzbek President Islam Karimov, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, and Taliban leaders from Afghanistan. Khashoggi reportedly represented Saudi government and business leaders at the meeting and periodically left the meeting, returning by private jet to Saudi Arabia, to obtain "permission" for certain agreements. Also involved in the Tashkent talks were representatives from UNOCAL, which had been negotiating with the Taliban on a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. UNOCAL consultants on that project included Bush administration resident Muslim neo-con Zalmay Khalilzad (a native of Afghanistan) and Hamid Karzai, who had good relations with the Kandahar-based Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. Fortunate for the Bush Crime Family: Ken Lay took many secrets to the grave. Prior to the Tashkent meeting, on June 23, 1996, $10 billion was wired by the Saudis from a Cypriot bank through Barclay's Bank in London and on to Houston. The Saudis needed to pump money into Enron to make the company a viable financial entity for negotiating the pipelines through both Iran and Afghanistan. Some of the money ended up in the hands of LJM1 (also known as LJM Cayman, LP), one of the corporate off-shore and off-balance sheet "partnership" contrivances set up by Enron with the help of its Chief Financial Officer, Andy Fastow. Two days after the Saudis wired the $10 billion to Enron, Saudi terrorists blew up the Khobar Towers, killing 19 U.S. military personnel. The Tashkent meeting was held to discuss a natural gas pipeline that would go from Uzbekistan, through Afghanistan, to Iran's southern coast. CIA financial experts, working with Enron, began to work on rectifying Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and Iranian accounting methods. At the time, Iran believed it was better to do a deal with the United States rather than let the Uzbek gas go to China. However, things radically changed in the Spring of 1997 when Iran broke off negotiations with the consortium. In the Spring of 1997, the Taliban sent envoys to Houston to meet with Enron and UNOCAL officials concerning the pipeline deal. Meetings were held at the Houstonian hotel but the Taliban studiously avoided any oil industry reception or dinners where wine was being served. After the US embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998, attacks pinned on Osama Bin Laden who was practically running eastern Afghanistan, President Clinton ordered all pipeline talks with the Taliban halted. Informed sources have told WMR that a major portion of the $10 billion wired by the Saudis to Enron passed through the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and was eventually used by Kinder Morgan to purchase major elements of Enron's natural gas pipeline system in the United States. To make the Iran and CentGas pipeline projects profitable, the Saudis wanted to hike the price of natural gas and that could only be accomplished by improving the natural gas pipeline network in the United States. The Saudis, who were major investors in Enron and saw the company facing a financial bath on the plan to pipe natural gas to India's Dabhol power plant, needed another firm to run the U.S. natural gas pipeline assets of Enron. And that company was Kinder Morgan. It was a great "inside" deal since Richard Kinder, who left Enron as President in November 1996, was an old college chum of Ken Lay and his partner at Kinder Morgan, Bill Morgan. Kinder, a native of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, once worked at the law firm run by Rush Limbaugh's brother, David Limbaugh. Although Kinder's break with Lay was said to be over Lay's failure to name him Chief Executive Officer in a deal where Lay would remain as Chairman of the Board, the truth is that Kinder was as ambitious as Lay and he saw a chance to profit from Enron's misdeeds and mistakes. The CEO position eventually went to Jeffrey Skilling, convicted with Lay on several fraud counts. Kinder is now one of Houston's wealthiest businessmen and he has been a major contributor to GOP coffers, including that of George W. Bush. The mortality rate among those close to various Bush criminal enterprises is extremely high. Lay's death follows by a few weeks that of Phillip Merrill, Dick Cheney's handpicked President of the Export-Import Bank who served in that capacity during a period when questionable loans were made to the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. There will undoubtedly be questions posed about the circumstances of Lay's untimely (or timely?) death. Aspen, Colorado is a vacation playground for some of Bush's most ardent (and richest) supporters and access to the town and its records (including medical examiner records) is strictly controlled. Lay and Skilling were scheduled for sentencing on September 11 but, more significantly, according to Federal sentencing guidelines, Lay was to have submitted a sworn financial statement to Judge Sim Lake by August 1. That statement should have contained all of Lay's financial assets, including any that may have been squirreled away in off-shore accounts or other "partnerships." With Lay's death, his sworn financial statement for the Federal court will be transformed into the filing of a probate will in the Harris County, Texas Court, moving the process from the oversight of the Federal judiciary to a county court in Texas.
Poster Comment: Madsen adds some good new info to what we have known previously about the oil intrigue in the Caspian Basin. Unocal and the Afghanistan pipeline By Larry Chin Part One of a two-part series Players on a rigged grand chessboard: Bridas, After the fall of the Soviet Union, Argentine oil company Bridas, led by its ambitious chairman, Carlos Bulgheroni, became the first company to exploit the oil fields of Turkmenistan and propose a pipeline through neighboring Afghanistan. A powerful US-backed consortium intent on building its own pipeline through the same Afghan corridor would oppose Bridas' project. The Coveted Trans-Afghan Route Upon successfully negotiating leases to explore in Turkmenistan, Bridas was awarded exploration contracts for the Keimar block near the Caspian Sea, and the Yashlar block near the Afghanistan border. By March 1995, Bulgheroni had accords with Turkmenistan and Pakistan granting Bridas construction rights for a pipeline into Afghanistan, pending negotiations with the civil war-torn country. The following year, after extensive meetings with warlords throughout Afghanistan, Bridas had a 30-year agreement with the Rabbani regime to build and operate an 875-mile gas pipeline across Afghanistan. Bulgheroni believed that his pipeline would promote peace as well as material wealth in the region. He approached other companies, including Unocal and its then-CEO, Roger Beach, to join an international consortium. But Unocal was not interested in a partnership. The United States government, its affiliated transnational oil and construction companies, and the ruling elite of the West had coveted the same oil and gas transit route for years. A trans-Afghanistan pipeline was not simply a business matter, but a key component of a broader geo-strategic agenda: total military and economic control of Eurasia (the Middle East and former Soviet Central Asian republics). Zbigniew Brezezinski describes this region in his book "The Grand Chessboard-American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" as "the center of world power." Capturing the region's oil wealth, and carving out territory in order to build a network of transit routes, was a primary objective of US military interventions throughout the 1990s in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Caspian Sea. As of 1992, 11 western oil companies controlled more than 50 percent of all oil investments in the Caspian Basin, including Unocal, Amoco, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Pennzoil, Texaco, Phillips and British Petroleum. In "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" (a definitive work that is a primary source for this report), Ahmed Rashid wrote, "US oil companies who had spearheaded the first US forays into the region wanted a greater say in US policy making." Business and policy planning groups active in Central Asia, such as the Foreign Oil Companies Group operated with the full support of the US State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA and the Department of Energy and Commerce. Among the most active operatives for US efforts: Brezezinski (a consultant to Amoco, and architect of the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1970s), Henry Kissinger (advisor to Unocal), and Alexander Haig (a lobbyist for Turkmenistan), and Dick Cheney (Halliburton, US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce). Unocal's Central Asia envoys consisted of former US defense and intelligence officials. Robert Oakley, the former US ambassador to Pakistan, was a "counter-terrorism" specialist for the Reagan administration who armed and trained the mujahadeen during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. He was an Iran-Contra conspirator charged by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh as a key figure involved in arms shipments to Iran. Richard Armitage, the current Deputy Defense Secretary, was another Iran-Contra player in Unocal's employ. A former Navy SEAL, covert operative in Laos, director with the Carlyle Group, Armitage is allegedly deeply linked to terrorist and criminal networks in the Middle East, and the new independent states of the former Soviet Union (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrghistan). Armitage was no stranger to pipelines. As a member of the Burma/Myanmar Forum, a group that received major funding from Unocal, Armitage was implicated in a lawsuit filed by Burmese villagers who suffered human rights abuses during the construction of a Unocal pipeline. (Halliburton, under Dick Cheney, performed contract work on the same Burmese project.) Bridas Versus the New World Order Much to Bridas' dismay, Unocal went directly to regional leaders with its own proposal. Unocal formed its own competing US-led, Washington-sponsored consortium that included Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil, aligned with Saudi Prince Abdullah and King Fahd. Other partners included Russia's Gazprom and Turkmenistan's state-owned Turkmenrozgas. John Imle, president of Unocal (and member of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce with Armitage, Cheney, Brezezinski and other ubiquitous figures), lobbied Turkmenistan's president Niyazov and prime minister Bhutto of Pakistan, offering a Unocal pipeline following the same route as Bridas.' Dazzled by the prospect of an alliance with the US, Niyazov asked Bridas to renegotiate its past contract and blocked Bridas' exports from Keimar field. Bridas responded by filing three cases with the International Chamber of Commerce against Turkmenistan for breach of contract. (Bridas won.) Bridas also filed a lawsuit in Texas charging Unocal with civil conspiracy and "tortuous interference with business relations." While its officers were negotiating with Pakistani and Turkmen oil and gas officials, Bridas claimed that Unocal had stolen its idea, and coerced the Turkmen government into blocking Bridas from Keimir field. (The suit was dismissed in 1998 by Judge Brady G. Elliott, a Republican, who claimed that any dispute between Unocal and Bridas was governed by the laws of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, rather than Texas law.) In October 1995, with neither company in a winning position, Bulgheroni and Imle accompanied Niyazov to the opening of the UN General Assembly. There, Niyazov awarded Unocal with a contract for a 918-mile natural gas pipeline. Bulgheroni was shocked. At the announcement ceremony, Unocal consultant Henry Kissinger said that the deal looked like "the triumph of hope over experience." Later, Unocal's consortium, CentGas, would secure another contract for a companion 1,050-mile oil pipeline from Dauletabad through Afghanistan that would connect to a tanker loading port in Pakistan on the coast of the Arabian Sea. Although Unocal had agreements with the governments on either end of the proposed route, Bridas still had the contract with Afghanistan. The problem was resolved via the CIA and Pakistani ISI-backed Taliban. Following a visit to Kandahar by US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphael in the fall of 1996, the Taliban entered Kabul and sent the Rabbani government packing. Bridas' agreement with Rabbani would have to be renegotiated. Wooing the Taliban According to Ahmed Rashid, "Unocal's real influence with the Taliban was that their project carried the possibility of US recognition, which the Taliban were desperately anxious to secure." Unocal wasted no time greasing the palms of the Taliban. It offered humanitarian aid to Afghan warlords who would form a council to supervise the pipeline project. It provided a new mobile phone network between Kabul and Kandahar. Unocal also promised to help rebuild Kandahar, and donated $9,000 to the University of Nebraska's Center for Afghan Studies. The US State Department, through its aid organization USAID, contributed significant education funding for Taliban. In the spring of 1996, Unocal executives flew Uzbek leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum to Dallas to discuss pipeline passage through his northern (Northern Alliance-controlled) territories. Bridas countered by forming an alliance with Ningarcho, a Saudi company closely aligned with Prince Turki el-Faisal, the Saudi intelligence chief. Turki was a mentor to Osama bin Laden, the ally of the Taliban who was publicly feuding with the Saudi royal family. As a gesture for Bridas, Prince Turki provided the Taliban with communications equipment and a fleet of pickup trucks. Now Bridas proposed two consortiums, one to build the Afghanistan portion, and another to take care of both ends of the line. By November 1996, Bridas claimed that it had an agreement signed by the Taliban and Dostum—trumping Unocal. The competition between Unocal and Bridas, as described by Rashid, "began to reflect the competition within the Saudi Royal family." In 1997, Taliban officials traveled twice to Washington, D.C. and Buenos Aires to be wined and dined by Unocal and Bridas. No agreements were signed. It appeared to Unocal that the Taliban was balking. In addition to royalties, the Taliban demanded funding for infrastructure projects, including roads and power plants. The Taliban also announced plans to revive the Afghan National Oil Company, which had been abolished by the Soviet regime in the late 1970s. Osama bin Laden (who issued his fatwa against the West in 1998) advised the Taliban to sign with Bridas. In addition to offering the Taliban a higher bid, Bridas proposed an open pipeline accessible to warlords and local users. Unocal's pipeline was closed—for export purposes only. Bridas' plan also did not require outside financing, while Unocal's required a loan from the western financial institutions (the World Bank), which in turn would leave Afghanistan vulnerable to demands from western governments. Bridas' approach to business was more to the Taliban's liking. Where Bulgheroni and Bridas' engineers would take the time to "sip tea with Afghan tribesmen," Unocal's American executives issued top-down edicts from corporate headquarters and the US Embassy (including a demand to open talks with the CIA-backed Northern Alliance). While seemingly well received within Afghanistan, Bridas' problems with Turkmenistan (which they blamed on Unocal and US interference) had left them cash-strapped and without a supply. In 1997, they went searching for a major partner with the clout to break the deadlock with Turkmenistan. They found one in Amoco. Bridas sold 60 percent of its Latin American assets to Amoco. Carlos Bulgheroni and his contingent retained the remaining minority 40 percent. Facilitating the merger were other icons of transnational finance, Chase Manhattan (representing Bridas), Morgan Stanley (handling Amoco) and Arthur Andersen (facilitator of post-merger integration). Zbigniew Brezezinski was a consultant for Amoco. (Amoco would merge with British Petroleum a year later. BP is represented by the law firm of Baker & Botts, whose principal attorney is James Baker, lifelong Bush friend, former secretary of state, and a member of the Carlyle Group.) Recognizing the significance of the merger, a Pakistani oil company executive hinted, "If these (Central Asian) countries want a big US company involved, Amoco is far bigger than Unocal." Clearing the Chessboard Again By 1998, while the Argentine contingent made slow progress, Unocal faced a number of new problems. Gazprom pulled out of CentGas when Russia complained about the anti-Russian agenda of the US. This forced Unocal to expand CentGas to include Japanese and South Korean gas companies, while maintaining the dominant share with Delta. Human rights groups began protesting Unocal's dealings with the brutal Taliban. Still riding years of Clinton bashing and scandal mongering, conservative Republicans in the US attacked the Clinton administration's Central Asia policy for its lack of clarity and "leadership." Once again, violence would change the dynamic. In response to the bombing of US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania (attributed to bin Laden), President Bill Clinton sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan. The administration broke off diplomatic contact with the Taliban, and UN sanctions were imposed. Unocal withdrew from CentGas, and informed the State Department "the gas pipeline would not proceed until an internationally recognized government was in place in Afghanistan." Although Unocal continued on and off negotiations on the oil pipeline (a separate project), the lack of support from Washington hampered efforts. Meanwhile, Bridas declared that it would not need to wait for resolution of political issues, and repeated its intention of moving forward with the Afghan gas pipeline project on its own. Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan tried to push Saudi Arabia to proceed with CentGas (Delta of Saudi Arabia was now the leader). But war and US-Taliban tension made business impossible. For the remainder of the Clinton presidency, there would be no official US or UN recognition of Afghanistan. And no progress on the pipeline. Then George Walker Bush took the White House.
March 6, 2002 | Online Journal
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#1. To: BTP Holdings (#0)
It is too convinient, too fishy Most probables: The SOB was given medication to induce heart attack or he may had a double made and sacrificed I just don't believe these criminal gangs! what do you think?
"To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can ever fight; and never stop fighting." E.E. Cummings
Why would this arms dealer be involved in making oil or natural gas agreements? He was a party to the Iran Contra mess.
The real deal is the responsibility of the banks and accounting firms and the SEC for the Enron fiasco. They are the ones who were allowed to skate first by the delay in prosecution and then by Ken Lay's death. When Enron went under, their assets were not frozen so they were able to get away with the financial crime of the century.
The Truth of 911 Shall Set You Free From The Lie
Iran was originally in on the pipeline deal with Bridas of Argentina. With Bridas squeezed out (they won the lawsuit a few years ago) and Iran out of the picture, enter the neocons and big oil. Adnan Khashoggi was part and parcel of anything to do with these kinds of big money operations in that area of the world. Iran-Contra was the beginnings of the slush fund operation of the Bush Crime Family. A great many neocons were also involved at some point in all of the hooliganism surrounding the shady deals which have funded the Bush cabal's effort to implement funding of their version of the New World Order.
"To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can ever fight; and never stop fighting." E.E. Cummings
I was aware of Bridas back in '99 when I was researching with others about why we were bombing Serbia off the map. I knew we were trying to cut Russia's throat to keep them out of the loop. I knew of the fight over getting an Afghani pipeline.........as well as many other 'istan' republics. Knew about the Caspian Sea reserves. Learned a bit about China's coming needs not only for petroleum but natural gas--their projected needs over the next 20 - 30 years makes our usage appear to be rather 'gnatish'. Remember when Roger Tamraz testified befored Fred Thompson's Senate committee about spending something like $300,000 for a chance to say hello to bill clinton--and when questioned about not getting more than something like 30 seconds for that $300,000, he said he'd spend double that or more next time...........he stood to make a couple million in 'consulting fees' on the pipeline deal he was trying to get our gubmint to 'like'. While I worked for an oil company for nearly 10 years, it was after good ol' Roger's testimony, that I received a great amount of knowledge about oil, or "what makes the world go around".
I remember now chatting with you on another thread about this. It's good to bring it up again since there might be some out there who are not aware of it. I had the chance to dump on the bots over this after the Iraq invasion. But it still comes back to Israeli hegemony in the M.E. The oil is just a side show since it holds the money and power issues up for all to see.
"To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can ever fight; and never stop fighting." E.E. Cummings
A book that might interest you, and others, is ROCKEFELLER. It had a pair of authors.........one of which was the red diapered david horowitz and I believe the other fella, without going to my bookshelves to verify, was Peter Collier. I found it in a used book store in Missoula, Montana...this was back before 1994 so it isn't a new or near new book. Obviously it traces the Rockefeller family--way back before JD was born, covers how he got involved with oil, and how he spread out all over the world. I was surprised at how far back connections to Russia and China went. And found the South American connections interesting. I believe it was Venezuela that wound up hating their guts.......it goes into some detail about how screwing works. If anyone is interested, I'll dig the book out and check authorship, for certain, publisher, date, isbn number, etc. It's a pretty thick book, and has some pictures. It certainly kept my interest all the way through.
The old man was the best at screwing the competition and at making a monopoly.
"To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can ever fight; and never stop fighting." E.E. Cummings
He was a real freak for details, accounting for each and every penny all through childhood. And many people don't know it wasn't just oil they were into...........social engineering was important, too--to them. It's been too long ago, now.....but I think that their fingers into education was why I grabbed onto it...I know I had it written down as a book to look for whenever I was going where books were. Never saw it in our public library.
"This year, the first of about 78 million baby boomers turns 60, including two of my dad's favourite people: me and President Clinton." BAXTER DEATH LOOKS A LOT LIKE FOSTER'S Enron - Baxter's Suicide Was Murder Say Top Cops Kenneth Lay Suffers Bushacide, But What Are Friends For SUDDEN INSTANT DEATH SYNDROME - A Clinton Disease - II Press 1 for English, Press 2 for English, Press 3 for deportation
Press 1 for English, Press 2 for English, Press 3 for deportation
or In my view, out of the three or four probabilities, that is the first.
"Ken Lay is taking to the grave a number of secrets that are politically and criminally embarrassing to the Bush crime family."
#2. To: Max (#1)
what do you think?
#3. To: BTP Holdings (#0)
Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi
#4. To: BTP Holdings (#0)
#5. To: rowdee (#3)
Why would this arms dealer be involved in making oil or natural gas agreements? He was a party to the Iran Contra mess.
#6. To: BTP Holdings (#5)
#7. To: rowdee (#6)
I was aware of Bridas back in '99 when I was researching with others about why we were bombing Serbia off the map.
#8. To: BTP Holdings (#7)
#9. To: rowdee (#8)
it goes into some detail about how screwing works.
#10. To: BTP Holdings (#9)
#11. To: BTP Holdings (#0)
George W. Bush 
#12. To: TommyTheMadArtist (#11)
#13. To: Max (#1)
The SOB was given medication to induce heart attack
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