As you read this, remember that Saddam's abuse of the UN oil-for-food program was once offered as significant evidence both in favor of the war, both because it proved Saddam was "evil" and because it showed that reliance on the UN was far too dangerous in a post-9/1 world:
Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators.
The admission is part of a settlement being negotiated with United States prosecutors and includes fines totaling $25 million to $30 million, according to the investigators, who declined to be identified because the settlement was not yet public.The penalty, which is still being negotiated, would be the largest so far in the United States in connection with investigations of companies involved in the oil-for-food scandal.
The $64 billion program was set up in 1996 by the Security Council to help ease the effects of United Nations sanctions on Iraqi civilians after the first gulf war. Until the American invasion in 2003, the program allowed Saddam’s government to export oil to pay for food, medicine and humanitarian goods.
Using an elaborate system of secret surcharges and extra fees, however, the Iraqi regime received at least $1.8 billion in kickbacks from companies in the program, according to an investigation completed in 2005 by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve....
According to the Volcker report, surcharges on Iraqi oil exports were introduced in August 2000 by the Iraqi state oil company, the State Oil Marketing Organization. At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of Chevron’s board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.
Ms. Rice resigned from Chevron’s board on Jan. 16, 2001, after being named national security advisor by President Bush
Chevron is set to admit in a legal proceeding that it should have known about the kickbacks. Condoleeza Rice was in charge of the committee that oversaw this program. Chevron began paying the illegal surcharges in June of 2000, a decision that this investigation shows was approved by "senior management." This was a full half year before Rice left the company to join the Bush administration.
Digby is right. Can you imagine the furor if this happened under a Democratic president? The current Sec. of State is directly implicated in the corruption that she herself used to justify the war. She was in charge of the committee that was responsible for this. She both could and should have known about this. In fact, she very well may have known about it. Chevron is about to publicly admit this and pay a massive fine.
You might expect such things to dominate the day's news coverage. Such expectations, of course, would be wrong. The story was buried on page C1 of yesterday's NYT. Bloggers covered it, of course. But where is everyone else?
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