Hillary's
Musharraf
By Greg Palast
15 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
He
was the other man in Hillary's life. But it's over now. Or is it?
You've seen all those creepy
photos of George Bush rubbing up against Pakistan's President Pervez
Musharraf, the two of them grinning and giggling like they're going
to the senior prom. So it's hard to remember that it was Hillary and
Bill who brought Pervez to the dance in the first place.
How that happened, I'll
tell you in a moment.
But first, let's get our
facts straight about the man in the moustache. Musharraf, according
to George Bush, The New York Times, NPR and the rest of press puppies
is, "our ally in the War on Terror." That's like calling Carmine
Gambino, "Our ally in the War on Crime."
Musharraf's the guy who
helped the Taliban take power in Afghanistan in 1996. And, through his
ISI, Pakistan's own KGB, he is still giving the Taliban secret protection.
And this is the same Musharraf
who let Khalid Sheik Muhammed, Osama's operations chief for the September
11 attack, hang out in Quetta, Pakistan, in the open, until Khalid embarrassed
his host by giving a boastful interview to Al Jazeera television from
his Pakistan hang-out.
And this is the same Musharraf who permitted his nation's own Dr. Strangelove,
A.Q. Khan, to sell nuclear do-it-yourself bomb kits to Libya and North
Korea. When the story off the flea-market in fissionable materials was
exposed, Musharraf (and Bush) both proclaimed their shock - shock! -
over the bomb sales. Musharraf didn't know? Sure. Those tons of lethal
hardware must have been shipped by flying pig.
But, unlike Saddam and Osama,
creations of Ronald Reagan's and George Bush Sr.'s Frankenstein factories,
Musharraf was a Clinton special.
And it all began with an
unpaid electricity bill. In 1998, Pakistan wouldn't pay up millions,
and they owed billions, to British and American electricity companies.
And for good reason: the contracts called for paying insanely high prices.
It smelled of payola - and ultimately, the government of Pakistan filed
charges against power combine executives and canceled the contracts.
That's the rule under international law: companies can't collect on
contracts they obtained by pay-offs.
But these weren't just any companies. One was a Tony Blair favorite,
Britain's National Power. The other was Entergy International, a sudden
big-time player in the international power market based out of, oddly,
Little Rock, Arkansas. Despite the Clinton Administration's claim to
fight foreign corruption, this was an exception. Clinton and Blair voted
to cut off Pakistan's funding from the IMF. Pay-up the power pirates,
they told Pakistan, or starve.
Why was President Clinton
so determined to crush Pakistan because of an unpaid bill to some Little
Rock company. This was not just any company. But that wasn't much. More
important, Entergy and its partners, the Riady Family of Indonesia had
just paid about half a million dollars to Hillary's old Rose Law Firm
partner Webster Hubbell. Odd that, hiring Hubbell. Why would Entergy
pay big bucks to a Hubbell as a "consultant" when he was on
his way to jail for a felony. Hubbell was doing time because he refused
to testify against Ms. Rodham.
Did President Clinton know
about the payment to Hubbell? Clinton denied it to the press,but under
oath, to the FBI, Bill said he, "wouldn't be surprised" if
the Riadys told him about the payoff to Hubbell in one of Bill's several
private meetings with
them in the Oval Office.
Was there a connection between Entergy's kindness to Hillary and her
law partner and the power company's extraordinary sway with the Administration?
From inside information on energy policies to favor requested of Tony
Blair's office by Hillary's office, Entergy could do no wrong. Certainly,
their consortium's executives wouldn't have to stand trial in Pakistan.
And Entergy got its money.
On December 22, 1998, Pakistan's military, at the direction of General
Pervez Musharraf, sent thirty thousand troops into the nation's power
stations. At the time, Entergy's partners told me, "A lot changed
since the army moved in. Now we have a situation where we can be paid.
They've found a way to collect from the man in the street." Yes:
at gunpoint, according to Abdul Latif Nizamani, a labor union leader
who spoke with me after Musharraf's gang had arrested him.
With Pakistan's army in
control of thenation's infrastructure, and acting as guarantor of payment
to the US and UK power giants, General Musharraf's final takeover of
the entire government nine months later - a "surprise" coup
to the Western press - was, a forgone conclusion. And the Clintons,
complicit, like Bush today, could say little.
Just months before he left office President Clinton paid a sudden visit
to Musharraf. Congressional Democrats were stunned. Musharraf had quickly
shown himself to be a Taliban-loving, unbalanced dictator who violated
US treaty terms by exploding a nuke and threatening to incinerate our
ally India. Notably, the Ambassador with Clinton made payments to the
electric companies a top item on his
agenda.
Favors done; favors repaid.
Nothing new under the sun, but it's a dangerous game, Senator Clinton.
All right, maybe you can say that President Clinton's blessing of the
radioactive dictator can't be blamed on Hillary despite the smelly money
chain going from Arkansas to Karachi. But, be honest, the lady sure
as heck ain't running on her record as a Senator; her whole pitch is,
"Re-elect Clinton."
And I'd rather tell you this story before you hear it from President
Giuliani.
Nevertheless, let's not
lose sight of the current danger. While the Clinton's may have handed
us the Lunatic of Lahore, it's George Bush who leaves mints on his pillow.
I have no information that Clinton knew of the sales to North Korea.
The Bush Administration did and, we discovered at BBC, blocked the CIA
investigation that could have exposed it in 2001. And that, Mr. Bush,
is a very, very dangerous game. The problem of creating Frankensteins,
whether an Osama or a Saddam or a Musharraf, is that these creatures
are often known to rise and turn on their creators.
But I'm sure we'll correct the error. Four years ago, as Bush was proclaiming
victory over the Butcher of Baghdad, I wrote, "Given our experiences
with Saddam and Osama, our monsters tend to get out of control after
about 11 years. Therefore, we can expect, in the year 2013, that President
Jeb Bush will have to order the 82d Airborne into Pakistan to remove
Musharraf, the Killer of Karachi."
Unfortunately, we may not have that long.
Based on Greg Palast's investigations
for the Guardian papers of Britain 1998-2001. Palast is the author of
the New York Times bestseller, ARMED MADHOUSE: From Baghdad to New Orleans
-- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. He is
currently on assignment in Ecuador for BBC Television.
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