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An old scandal that may well be relevant to the 9-11 disaster. Remember
Roger Tamraz? He was a CIA asset, come to find out (see below), and it was
the Agency that maneuvered him into contacting the DNC to promote his (and
the CIA's) pet Caspian pipeline project, a scandal that tainted the Clinton
administration (though not the CIA, as it should), and currently lurks in
the background of 9-11. Tamraz, incidentally, negotiated with Pavel Borodin,
a Yeltsin crony and the man who groomed Putin for power, at the Russian end
of the campaign soft money scheme. Borodin is reported to have stashed
Russian loot at Banco del Gottardo, a Swiss bank (once overseen by Roberto
Calvi of P-2 infamy) that handled funds for a Russian biological weapons
producer that has done business with Islamic extremists, and probably bin
Laden. � AC
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New York Daily News - OpEd Page - Wednesday, Sept. 24, 1997
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Scandal may be CIA's conduct
By Lars-Erik Nelson
Washington -- In their obsession with which telephone Vice President Gore
may have used to raise campaign money, Senate investigators have glided past
a far bigger scandal: CIA interference in U.S. politics.
The case is put most starkly by Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ): "What's the
CIA doing making an undercover call to the head of the Democratic National
Committee?"
If Torricelli is right -- and testimony appears to support him -- the CIA's
operations division lobbied to help one of its intelligence assets, oilman
Roger Tamraz, get into the White House to peddle an oil pipeline scheme.
In the process of helping Tamraz, an operations officer identified only as
Bob used a cover identity when talking to DNC Chairman Don Fowler.
Whoops! That's called covert operations -- and the CIA is not supposed to
run operations on U.S. soil, let alone against a U.S. political party.
"Tamraz played the system like an organ," says an intelligence official.
Seeking U.S. support for a planned pipeline out of the Caspian Sea oil
fields, he first used a retired CIA official, Ed Pechous, to secure an
appointment with National Security Council staffer Sheila Heslin.
Then, when Heslin had doubts about Tamraz' trustworthiness, current CIA
officials sanitized his shady biography. Then Bob repeatedly lobbied the NSC
on Tamraz' behalf, Heslin testified.
In addition, Bob called Gore's office to help Tamraz, officials said.
The DNC staff had warned Fowler against Tamraz. Then, last Oct. 18, Bob
telephoned Fowler about helping to get Tamraz into the White House.
Bob -- his full identity is classified -- admitted to Senate
investigators that he may not have told Fowler who he actually was.
Funny -- Fowler has been accused of trying to manipulate the CIA to help
Tamraz as a pay-off for Tamraz' $300,000 in Democratic campaign
contributions last year.
But the CIA went to bat for Tamraz well before he made his first
contribution, and the sequence of calls shows that the CIA initiated the
contact with Fowler, not vice versa.
"The amazing thing to me is that this Bob of the CIA was nothing short of an
agent for Tamraz and his pipeline scheme," Sen Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said
in a telephone call yesterday. "Bob was working overtime to get Tamraz into
the White House to change U.S. policy."
Why should the CIA help Tamraz? (A) He was a long-time intelligence asset in
the Middle East. (B) Maybe his pipeline would further U.S. interests in the
Caspian region. Or (C) He had a practice of hiring CIA officers after they
retired. If CIA agents could help him score a $2 billion pipeline project,
they might be feathering their own nests.
The CIA likes to claim that it works only for the President. But in this
case, Durbin said, "Tamraz had the CIA in his back pocket." The White House
was the target.
Perhaps most amazing of all, Bob says he had no idea who Fowler was when he
called him.
Imagine: a CIA operations officer calling the chairman of the Democratic
National Committee to vouch for Tamraz -- without knowing whom he was
talking to.
Fowler, for his part, was much ridiculed for saying that he had no
recollection of talking to the CIA. Now that claim becomes a little more
understandable.
This may be a comedy of errors, a sinister plot, mere greed on the part of
government officials looking toward an easy retirement or more evidence of a
CIA that carries out its own policies for its own purposes.
In any case, says New Jersey's Torricelli, "This has crossed the line from
campaign finance abuses into an intelligence problem."
What an irony: The congressional investigation into campaign finance abuses
began with the suspicion that China and other mysterious foreigners may have
tried to buy their way into the American political system.
Now we find that the clearest example of someone's buying political access
for cash in an attempt to change U.S. policy -- Tamraz -- had the active
support of the CIA. As Walt Kelly said, We have met the enemy, and it is us.
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