In The Spirit of Smilin' Joe Isuzu...
Well, it appears the Dubai ports deal is doubly problematic! Meanwhile, in the face of serious objections from his own party and from the Coast Guard, all Shrub has to say is "Trust me".
Oh, and "You're all racists!", of course.
Tags: Corruption, Profiteering
posted by Management at 11:16 PM
3 Comments:
BREAKING: Dubai Ports World Boycotts Israel
From this morning’s Jerusalem Post:
The parent company of a Dubai-based firm at the center of a political storm in the US over the purchase of American ports participates in the Arab boycott against Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The Jerusalem Post notes that “US law bars firms from complying with such requests or cooperating with attempts by Arab governments to boycott Israel.” Once upon a time, opposing such boycotts was important to the Bush Administration. From the BBC, 5/11/02:
“The US government is strongly opposed to restrictive trade practices or boycotts targeted at Israel,” said Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Kenneth Juster.
“The Commerce Department is closely monitoring efforts that appear to be made to reinvigorate the Arab boycott of Israel and will use all of its resources to vigorously enforce US anti-boycott regulations.”
…The Department of Commerce has issued more than $26m in fines and turned down export licenses to those found violating the law.
The boycott against Israel is an important distinction between P&O, the British company that currently operates 21 U.S. ports, and Dubai Ports World.
Republicans Split With Bush on Ports
White House Vows to Brief Lawmakers On Deal With Firm Run by Arab State
By Jim VandeHei and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 23, 2006; A01
Faced with an unprecedented Republican revolt over national security, the White House disclosed yesterday that President Bush was unaware of a Middle Eastern company's planned takeover of operations at six U.S. seaports until recent days and promised to brief members of Congress more fully on the pending deal.
One day after threatening to veto any attempt by Congress to scuttle the controversial $6.8 billion deal, Bush sounded a more conciliatory tone by saying lawmakers should have been given more details about a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates purchasing some terminal operations in Baltimore and five other U.S. cities.
"This is one where we probably should have consulted with or briefed Congress on sooner," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
But congressional Republicans renewed their vow to prevent the sale from being finalized next month and warned Bush, sometimes in taunting terms, that an overwhelming majority of lawmakers will oppose the sale on national security grounds. "Dear Mr President: In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO but HELL NO!" Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) wrote to Bush in a one-sentence letter.
The administration on Jan. 17 approved the sale of a London-based company that manages terminals at the U.S. ports to Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirates.
The U.S. government reviews business transactions with national security implications and decided after a 23-day review by mid-level officials that Dubai Ports World posed no threat . McClellan said Bush learned about the sale in recent days, after it had been widely reported.
In seeking to assuage critics, administration officials noted that the local or state ports authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard would be responsible for security at the six ports -- not Dubai Ports World, which would be responsible for running terminal facilities and loading and unloading ships and storing the containers they transport.
All dock workers are union members who must undergo background checks, officials stressed. Bush said that those attacking the sale were holding a Middle Eastern company to a different standard than the British port operator that is being acquired by Dubai Ports World.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) rejected Bush's call to allow the sale to go through early next month and they remain committed to delaying it, their spokesmen said yesterday.
Republican lawmakers have been flooded with phone calls and letters from constituents encouraging them to fight Bush over the port deal, even at the expense of GOP unity on combating terrorism -- possibly their best political issue. As a result, Bush and Republicans are divided over a national security issue as never before and bracing for a possible showdown that could force Bush to either delay the sale or veto a Republican bill against it, according to congressional and White House officials.
With the president's ratings mired around 40 percent approval, some Republican lawmakers who face tough reelection bids in November have been looking for ways to distance themselves from Bush without appearing to be soft on terrorism. The president, who once enjoyed near unanimous support from GOP allies on Capitol Hill, has seen a steady rise in Republican criticism over Iraq, Iran, warrantless domestic spying and now the port deal.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) said political pressure from constituents is driving the debate. Lawmakers, he said, are "responding to incredible local political pressure."
In a bid to defuse the controversy, Bush has instructed aides to brief members of Congress on Dubai Ports World, its operations and the intelligence community's findings that the firm poses no risk to national security. The briefings began yesterday.
Some of the big names on K Street have joined the Dubai Ports World fight on the side of the United Arab Emirates-owned company.
These include former Senate majority leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), and a Democratic power couple in Washington, former representative Tom Downey (D-N.Y) and Carol M. Browner, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Dole's law firm, Alston & Bird LLP, led the effort by Dubai Ports World to steer its proposed acquisition of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. through the U.S. government approval process.
A senior White House official, who discussed internal strategy under the condition of anonymity, said Bush realizes that Republicans are dug in and that he may have to compromise. "We are sensitive to the fact that people have taken firm positions," the official said. But that effort was complicated by the disclosure that Bush and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow were unaware until this week about the purchase agreement and the administration's approval of the transaction last month.
Snow, whose department chairs the secretive executive branch panel that reviewed the proposed sale, told reporters in Torrington, Conn., that "I learned of this transaction probably the same way as members of the Senate did, by reading it in the newspapers."
Scores of lawmakers have complained that the transaction was not sufficiently scrutinized. Some lawmakers said Snow's comments reinforced the image of a quick and easy approval process.
At the Treasury Department, the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), which includes Cabinet officials and White House aides, examines sales with potential national security risks and usually attracts little attention.
Administration officials did not consider the sale of port terminal management to a Middle Eastern company dangerous or potentially controversial, White House aides said. Foreign-owned companies including a Chinese operation have controlled terminals at various U.S. ports for years -- and lawmakers have rarely complained. The White House said intelligence officials reviewed the sale and raised no concerns.
In a private briefing for House aides late yesterday, administration officials from the departments of State, Defense, Treasury and Homeland Security said the CFIUS met only once during a 23-day review of the sale and that the few objections raised were quickly addressed.
A Homeland Security official, for instance, argued successfully that the UAE company should be required to open its books without the threat of subpoena, participants said. Dubai Ports World agreed. Administration officials said they were trying to get a copy of that agreement to provide to lawmakers. The Associated Press reported last night that the administration, before approving the ports deal, secretly required the firm to cooperate with future U.S. investigations.
Under a 1993 amendment to the law that helped create the review panel, a more rigorous 45-day investigation is automatically required if "the acquirer is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government" and the acquisition "could result in control of a person engaged in interstate commerce in the U.S. that could affect the national security of the U.S."
Patrick Mulloy, a member of the government-appointed U.S.-China trade commission and a critic of the approval process, said that Treasury officials throughout the Clinton and Bush administrations have routinely ignored the 1993 language.
"The culture of the department is to oppose [the longer review] as an impediment to foreign investment," he said.
Joseph King, who headed the customs agency's anti-terrorism efforts under the Treasury Department and the new Department of Homeland Security, said national security fears are well grounded.
He said a company the size of Dubai Ports World would be able to get hundreds of visas to relocate managers and other employees to the United States. Using appeals to Muslim solidarity or threats of violence, al-Qaeda operatives could force low-level managers to provide some of those visas to al-Qaeda sympathizers, said King, who for years tracked similar efforts by organized crime to infiltrate ports in New York and New Jersey. Those sympathizers could obtain legitimate driver's licenses, work permits and mortgages that could then be used by terrorist operatives.
Dubai Ports World could also offer a simple conduit for wire transfers to terrorist operatives in the Middle East. Large wire transfers from individuals would quickly attract federal scrutiny, but such transfers, buried in the dozens of wire transfers a day from Dubai Ports World's operations in the United States to the Middle East would go undetected, King said.
But Robert C. Bonner, a former top U.S. customs official, said that the security concerns surrounding the purchase agreement have been "greatly exaggerated."
"The reality is the major terminal operators are all foreign-owned," Bonner said. "This one happens to be owned by Dubai, but Dubai . . . has been very supportive in the counterterrorism efforts."
Staff writers Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Paul Blustein and Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
Coast Guard Said It Couldn't Assess Risk in Port Deal (Update2)
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Coast Guard said questions about foreign influence, employees and operations made it impossible to assess the threat posed by a state-owned Dubai company's purchase of a firm that manages some terminal operations at six U.S. seaports.
``There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential'' for assets owned by DP World or London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. ``to support terrorist operations,'' says a December intelligence assessment by the Coast Guard that was released at a hearing today of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The document wasn't given to an administration panel assessing the national security risks of the acquisition, but its concerns ``were addressed and resolved,'' Clay Lowery, an assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, said.
Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins was skeptical. ``This report suggests there were significant and troubling intelligence gaps,'' she told Lowery and Admiral Thomas Gilmour, an assistant commandant with the Coast Guard. ``I don't see how you were able to close those gaps so quickly,'' she said. The administration panel approved the deal in January.
Gilmour said he'd have to discuss classified information to respond. Collins, a Maine Republican, recessed the public hearing to convene a closed session where Gilmore and other Bush administration witnesses could more fully describe why they thought the DP deal didn't pose a threat.
45-Day Review
DP World yesterday bowed to demands from U.S. lawmakers for a 45-day review of its deal to take over port facilities at U.S. cities including Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York and Newark, New Jersey. The container terminals are among the 29 DP World is acquiring as part of its purchase of P&O.
The acquisition, which was approved by President George W. Bush's administration on Jan. 23, has drawn criticism from U.S. lawmakers amid concern that giving control of some port facilities to DP World will threaten national security.
Dubai is one of seven sheikdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates, where two of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks came from. Bush has defended the sale, saying the UAE has been a vital ally in the war against terrorism.
U.S. senators, returning today from a week-long recess, immediately introduced legislation designed to insure the review goes forward and that they have a role in assessing the results and deciding whether the deal should be approved.
Review and `Separate'
DP World said it will ask a panel of administration officials known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to re-examine the deal. The sale originally was approved by the committee after a 30-day examination in which representatives of cabinet agencies and departments, including Homeland Security, concluded the deal satisfied U.S. requirements.
The company also agreed to ``separate'' the U.S. ports from the rest of the purchase, allowing P&O's North America-based executives to run the port operations. The review will begin March 2, the day DP World formally takes control of P&O, the company's chief executive, Mohammed Sharaf, said in a telephone interview yesterday in Dubai. P&O operates 29 port facilities around the world, including those in New York-Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans.
Levin's Concerns
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, challenged these assurances at today's hearing. ``If this closing takes place, Dubai owns these facilities'' and Bush would have to go to court to undo the deal, Levin said.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Congress should hold off any action to block the deal until the review is completed. Republican leaders in the House are scheduled to meet tomorrow when they return from their recess.
House Majority Leader John Boehner believes Congress should have input into approval of foreign acquisitions when national security is at stake, Kevin Madden, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican, said today.
``Mr. Boehner believes that Congress has a role in this issue with regard to procedural review and oversight,'' Madden said. Any investigation by congressional committees into the DP World acquisition should focus on whether legislation is needed to boost Congress's role in the approval process, he said.
Senate Legislation
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, introduced a bipartisan measure today that would require a 45-day review of the deal with 30 days thereafter for Congress to weigh the probe's results and disapprove the deal if necessary.
Schumer said the measure wouldn't be brought to a vote pending results of the review. Cosponsors of the legislation include Republicans Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Democrats Hillary Clinton of New York, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
The Schumer measure also would require Bush to put a hold on the acquisition and for administration officials to brief Congress on the review's findings. Currently, the administration alone determines whether the acquisition goes through.
Schumer said that, for the investigation ``to have real merit,'' the president should ``say he has an open mind.''
Clinton and Menendez also introduced a separate measure that would bar companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations.
Senator Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat, plans to introduce as early as today a measure that would require the director of national intelligence to approve any sale reviewed by the administration panel. It would require the panel to take into consideration the country where the acquiring company is based and require the president to inform Congress about proposed foreign acquisitions.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Jeff Bliss in Washington at jbliss@bloomberg.net;
Last Updated: February 27, 2006 18:06 EST
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