From: deguc@holein1.Corp.Sun.COM (Bob Deguc)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: James Baker
Date: 15 Sep 92 18:50:39 GMT
Reply-To: deguc@holein1.Corp.Sun.COM
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: holein1.corp.sun.com

In article 92Sep15110251@world.std.com, art@world.std.com (Al Thompson) writes:
> In article <1992Sep15.054907.2013@Princeton.EDU> niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:
> 
> 
>    Well, giving them agricultural subsidies when we *knew* they were being
>    used to buy weapons, as well as allowing exports of military equipment
>    to Iraq by deleting the word "military" from the required documents.
> 
> We *knew*?  Can you establish this with some form of credible evidence?
> What military equipment?  Computers?

Here's some excerpts from a recent USN&WR article about Iraq-gate:


Also there is the fact that other countries/banks had stopped doing
business with Iraq siting their belief that they didn't believe that
Iraq could pay them back.  When similar objections were raised by
US government agencies, they were overruled by the State Dept.

"But as early as spring 1989, international bankers and U.S. intel-
ligence officials say Iraq was experiencing grave difficulties in
securing new loans from abroad.  After the conclusion of it's
eight-year war with Iran, in August 1988, Iraq refused to begin
paying down some $80 billion in debt incurred during the conflict.
Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad were aware of the problem
and reported on it in numerous cables.  Lenders also complained.
Recalls a New York banker who had extensive dealings with Baghdad:
'They said, basically that if we didn't extend new credits, they
wouldn't start paying on the old debt.'

Money troubles.  For that reason, Iraq's sources of new credit were
drying up.  Conveniently by the time the State Department had succeeded
in more than doubling the CCC guarantee program from $393 million in
loans in 1986 to more than $1 billion a year in 1988, 1989 and 1990.
Suddenly, Iraq was the largest participant in the CCC program.

This despite the fact that U.S., European and Israeli intelligence
services had already identified much of Iraq's weapons-procurement
network.  'There was just about no other place for the money to
come from,' says a U.S. official who reviewed the most sensitive
intelligence on Iraq during this period."
Source: USN&WR 18 May 1992 pg 44.

"In August 1988 Iran and Iraq - exhausted, broke and bloodied - staggered
to a cease-fire agreement.  In Washington in 1989, the State Department's
formidable new troika of Secretary James Baker, Under Secretary for
Political Affairs Robert Kimmitt and Deputy Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger
notched up the pressure to maintain the CCC loan guarantees to Iraq at
more than $1 billion annually.  Though there was opposition within the
Treasury and Agriculture departments, as well as in the Office of
Management and Budget, State prevailed."
Source: USN&WR 18 May 1992 pg 46


"U.S. officials need not have relied on whispered hints over canapes
and cocktails, however.  Since 1986, according to senior officals
knowledgeable about American intelligence reports on Iraq, the United
States scrutinized BNL and banks in Italy, Greece and France to
determine whether they were being used unwittingly by terrorists.
During the same period, BNL's Atlanta branch began lending heavily
to Iraq's Rafidain Bank.

Until August 1989, when FBI agents descended on the BNL branch in
Atlanta, BNL loans to Rafidain and other Iraqi-owned businesses
grew steadily.  U.S. investigators say most of these loans were not
recorded in BNL offices in New York or Rome, and bank executives
in both cities say they knew nothing of them.  An exhaustive report
just released by the Italian Senate, however, desputes that.  BNL
officials in Rome and New York knew a good deal about Iraqi business
drummed up by the Atlanta office, the report says.  That claim is
bolstered by U.S. intelligence reports, which state that the bank's
Rome officers knew what the Atlanta branch was up to."
Source: USN&WR 18 May 1992 pgs 46-47


Bob De Guc
I vote, therefore I am!!
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:45314 alt.politics.elections:13062