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http://www.counterpunch.org/donahue0712.html
The Other Harken Energy Scandal
Oil, Death Squads and Corruption in Colombia
by Sean Donahue
Financial irregularities at Harken Energy during President Bush's
tenure at the Texas oil company have dominated headlines in recent
days. But the press has ignored a much bigger scandal: how Harken
Energy has benefited from war and terror in Colombia.
George W. Bush went to work for Harken Energy in 1986 when the
company bought out Spectrum 7, a company that had earlier purchased
Bush's failed Arbusto oil company. Harken gave Bush $2 million in
stock options, a $122,000 consulting job, and a seat on its board of
directors.
While Bush was working for Harken, Rodrigo Villamizar, an old friend
Bush had met at a fraternity party in 1972, became director of
Colombia's bureau of Mines and Minerals, the ministry that oversees
the sale of oil concessions by the state oil company, Ecopetrol.
According to a December 2001 report in Counterpunch,, Bush had helped
Villamizar out in the '70's by getting him first a job with the Texas
state senate's Economic Development committee, and then a seat on the
state Public Utilities Commission. Toward the end of Bush's tenure at
Harken, Villamizar returned the favor by granting Harken a series of
oil contracts in Colombia.
The bulk of the oil contracts were in the Magdalena Valley where
military officers, drug traffickers, and cattle ranchers had come
together to form right wing paramilitary groups that fought
guerillas, assassinated union leaders and human rights activists, and
terrorized peasants in order to force them off coveted land. Most of
the oil companies doing business in the region either tacitly
accepted or actively sought out the protection of these death squads.
A 1996 Human Rights Watch report documents the fact that the
Colombian military armed and assisted these groups and, under the
guidance of the CIA, integrated them into its intelligence networks.
The close cooperation between the military and the paramilitaries
continues today - and tends to be most rampant in areas where there
is a lot of oil production. The State Department has listed the
paramilitaries as terrorist organizations, but has looked the other
way as the <U.S.-funded> Colombian army has continued to rely on them
to do its dirty work in its war against dissidents. Harken is still
doing business in the Magdalena Valley, thanks in part to funding
from the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, and
paramilitaries continue to terrorize anyone who threatens corporate
interests in the region.
Noone is alleging that President Bush personally ordered
paramilitaries to kill peasants and intimidate union leaders in order
to improve Harken's bottom line. But at the same time, given his
close ties to Villamizar, and the fact that his father was President
at the time, its highly unlikely that Bush was ignorant of the human
rights issues involved in oil drilling in Colombia.
All of this has a very immediate relevance today because Villamizar,
who left Colombia to escape corruption charges and is now a covicted
felon and fugitive from justice, drafted the Colombia policy for the
Bush campaign in 2000, and still maintains close ties to the
President. Counterpunch reports that Villamizar, who should be
serving four years in a Colombian prison, was Bush's first choice to
serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs,
but turned down the appointment.
Villamizar's recommendations on expanding U.S. military aid to
Colombia have been largely accepted by the Bush administration, and a
new President in Colombia with links to the death squads is poised to
use expanded U.S. aid to dramatically escalate the country's forty
year civil war against leftist guerillas. Hundreds of U.S. military
advisors are on the ground in Colombia today. Officially they have no
combat role, but that is likely to change when the guerillas begin
treating the advisors as military targets. Colin Powell's old
doctrine of making sure the U.S. has clear military goals and a
viable exit strategy before getting involved in a war seems to have
been completely forgotten.
The cornerstone of Bush's new military aid package is a $98 million
grant to help the Colombian government establish a new battalion of
its army's 18th Brigade to protect an oil pipeline against guerilla
attacks. The 18th Brigade has a long history of ties to the
paramilitaries, and its own history of attacks on civilians - earlier
this year soldiers killed a teenage boy for walking too close to the
pipeline. Ironically the first beneficiary of this program will be
Occidental Petroleum, the company that helped the Gore family make
its fortune. But U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson has said that in the
long run the Pentagon is eyeing similar programs for other key
economic assets in Colombia. These would likely include pipelines
maintained by Harken's subsidiary, Global Energy Development, , a
natural gas pipeline operated by Enron, and projects involving Dick
Cheney's old company, Haliburton, as well as assets owned or used by
Texaco, Exxon-Mobil, and BP.
The Bush administration's conflicts of interest in Colombia need to
be investigated, exposed, and thoroughly examined before the U.S.
gets drawn deeper into Colombia's bloody war.
Sean Donahue is co-director of New Hampshire Peace Action and has
written and spoken extensively on U.S. policy toward Colombia. He is
available for interviews and speaking engagements and can be reached
at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
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