(Articles from news sources have been placed within for educational, research, and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.)

1906: Texas Oil Company registers the trademark name, "Texaco" production in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia

1930s: Rocky Mountain division of Pacific Western, a Getty subsidiary, begins oil exploration in Saudi Arabia

1933: Pacific Western wins Saudi Arabia concession SOCAL (Standard Oil Co. of California) discovers oil in Saudi Arabia

1936: Texaco joins with SOCAL (later Chevron), to found the Arab-American Oil Company [Aramco] Texaco purchases half interest in Bahrain Petroleum and California-Arabian Standard Oil Company (Calarabian) from SOCAL California-Texas company, Caltex, founded as a joint venture between SOCAL and Texaco as outlet for future oil production in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia

1949: Getty’s Western Pacific Oil Corporation signs concession for Saudi half of the Neutral Zone with Saudi government

1953: Getty acquires Tidewater Oil

1953: The Shah (of Iran) was brought to power by the CIA in 1953 and kept there with billions of dollars in U.S. weaponry

1954: Consortium of oil companies, including British Petroleum, Exxon, Socony, Texas Oil, Socal, Gulf, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and CFP form the Iranian Oil Participants Ltd. (IOP) and negotiate agreement with Iranian government and for oil production in Iran

1954: Bill Liedtke, John Overby, and George Bush form Zapata Offshore Oil Company

1956: All of J. Paul Getty’s oil holdings organized under Getty Oil 1956: Texas Oil Company acquires Regent Oil, a British company

1961: SOCAL buys Standard of Kentucky

1963: Pennzoil Company is formed through consolidation of South Penn Oil Company, STETCO Petroleum Corporation and Zapata (Geo Bush) Offshore Oil Company

1965: Pennzoil (Bush) Company acquires United Gas Corporation

1971: Gulf purchases 10% in Syncrude Canada Limited

1972: At the request of the Shah, Nixon and Kissinger agreed to supply Kurdish rebels with millions of dollars in military hardware (May 1975)

1972 The US produced and stockpiled weapons containing anthrax prior to the Biological Weapons Convention but has destroyed them. http://www.intelbriefing.com/afi/afi011009.htm

Jan 23, 1973 Shah of Iran announces that the 1954 operating agreement between a consortium of oil companies and Iran will not be renewed when it expires in 1979. The consortium was formed in 1954 as a means to settle a dispute between a new ministry in Iran and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). The consortium included Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard Oil of California, SOCONY-Vacuum, the Texas Company, Gulf, Royal Dutch-Shell, the Compagnie Francaise de Petroles, and the AIOC.

October 19, 1973: Oil embargo begins

March 18, 1974: Oil embargo ends

1974: Bahraini government acquires 60% interest in BAPCO

Jan 13, 1975 Business Week publishes Kissinger interview hinting at military action against oil countries in case of "actual strangulation."

1976: The elder George Bush becomes director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a post he retained for one year.

1975: Iran and the U.S. signed an accord that required Iran to buy $15 billion in U.S. goods and services over the next five years. That agreement was the largest of its kind in history (until Sept 1990 when Geo Bush proposed his $20 billion arms deal with the Saudis)

[Senator Kerrey Speaks on Government/Media Complicity: by Joel Bleifuss and Senator Bob Kerrey]

1977 Smallpox was officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization, after treating the last known case in Merca, Somalia.

1977: George W. Bush founds a Midland-based company that puts together private partnerships for oil drilling ventures, known as Arbusto Exploration. [CNN]

1978: George W. Bush runs for the U.S. House of Representatives. He wins the Republican primary but loses the race. [CNN}
Ken Lay contributes handsomely to Bush's 1978 congressional campaign sixteen years before Bush told the press he got to know the man on 10 January 2002. ("Bush Caught Red-Handed in Lie to American People", http://www.mediawhoresonline.com/ )

1978 Wolf Szmunes, the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) experimented on more than 1000 nonmonogamous men with vaccines, designed by Merck and other pharmacy companies

June 1978 Iran and Saudi Arabia block efforts of OPEC price hawks to fix the price of OPEC oil in a currency more stable than the U.S. dollar. Say world economy cannot support associated price increases. Are accused by hawks of being U.S. agents.

Sept 1978 Shah puts Iran under military rule. Muslim leader Noori arrested in crackdown of opposition groups.

Jan 1979 Shah leaves Iran on vacation, never to return. Bakhtiar government established by the Shah to preside until unrest subsides. One million Iranians march in Teheran in a show of support for the exiled Ayatollah Komeini, fundamental Muslim leader.

Mar 5, 1979 Iran resumes petroleum exports.

Spring 1979 Gasoline shortage/world oil glut.

Nov 4, 1979 Iran takes western hostages.

Nov 12, 1979 Carter orders cessation of Iranian imports to U.S.

Nov 15, 1979 Iran cancels all contracts with U.S. oil companies.

1980: Bahraini government acquires remaining interest in BAPCO

Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources. [The Blacklisted Journalist 4/1/02]

Sep 1980 Iraq breaks 1975 treaty with Iran and proclaims sovereignty over Shatt al-Arab waterway. Iraq invades Iran. Mutual bombing of installations.Iraq captures southern port of Khorramshahr.

1981: George Bush is sworn in as vice president under President Ronald Reagan. Saudis flood market with inexpensive oil in, forcing unprecedented price cuts by OPEC members. In October, all 13 OPEC members align on a compromise $32 per barrel benchmark. Later, benchmark price is maintained, but differentials are adjusted.

1980 - 1988: Iraq Iran at war

1982:, Arbusto (G.W. Bush oil Co) changes its name to Bush Exploration Co. and goes public in an effort to generate funds.

1984: SOCAL buys Gulf Corporation and after restructuring changes name to Chevron Corporation, Texaco acquires Getty, Chevron buys Gulf. Bush Exploration merges with Spectrum 7 Energy Corp.

1985-1989 "The Center for Disease Control (CDC) was responsible for most of the shipments of lethal American-produced Biochemical Warfare agents that were sold to Iran.." Source: Devon Jackson, NY Times/Village Voice

1986 – 1989: Milt Bearden, station commander managed America’s covert war in Afghanistan, helping the Moujaheddin drive out the Soviets between 1986-1989.

1988: George W. Bush pitches an Enron gas pipeline in Argentina. Neil Bush uses defrauded investors' money from Silverado to drill for oil in Argentina. [http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/MA00/argentina.html] http://www.thegully.com/essays/argentina/010607bush_menem.html )

November 1988: Presidential Election,George Bush Sr. elected. A few weeks after the U.S. presidential election in 1988, Terragno received a phone call from a failed Texas oilman named George W. Bush, "He told me he had recently returned from a campaign tour with his father," the Argentine minister recalls. The purpose of the call was clear: to push Terragno to accept the bid from Enron (http://www.ei.enron.com/presence/latin_america.html )....George W. wasn't the only Bush plying the family name in Argentina. His brother Neil had tried to funnel $900,000 in loans from Silverado Savings and Loan, where he served as a director, into a failed attempt to drill for oil in Argentina. The S&L eventually collapsed, costing taxpayers nearly $1 billion to bail out, and federal regulators banned Neil from certain banking activities.

1989 (B): Bin Laden, having returned from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia and the family business in 1989, moves to Sudan. With a personal fortune of around $250 million (estimates range from $50 to $800 million [Miami Herald, 9/24/01]), he begins plotting terrorist attacks against the US. [New Yorker, 1/24/00]

1989: George Bush (Sr.) is sworn in as the president of the United States. During that same year, George W. buys a 2 percent share of the Texas Rangers baseball team for $600,000 in borrowed money. He serves as managing general partner for five years, which nets him an additional 10 percent interest in the team. [CNN]

1989, Vladimir Pasechnik defected from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) to Great Britain while on a trip to Paris. He had been the top scientist in the FSU's bioweapons program, which is heavily dependent upon DNA sequencing. Dr. Christopher Davis of Virginia, was the member of British intelligence who de-briefed Dr. Pasechnik at the time of his defection Pasechnik spent the 10 years after his defection working at the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research at the UK Department of Health, Salisbury

June 1, 1990: Bush and other members of Harken Energy's audit board (including Harken's president, former Arthur Andersen accountant Mikel Faulkner) meet with Harken's accountants: Arthur Andersen. According to Robert Jordan, Bush's lawyer during ensuing the SEC probe, neither the accountants nor the committee members discuss the company's budget woes at this meeting --

despite the fact that Harken is about to take a hefty $23.2 million loss for the second quarter of the fiscal year, which is just ending. The minutes of the meeting would verify this claim, Jordan will tell the Washington Post in a 1999 campaign profile of Bush. But Harken refuses to release those records. ("Bush and Andersen's Texas Two-Step", http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=floyd20020130 )

June 22, 1990: Bush dumps Harken stock just before $23.2 million loss is disclosed. http://mediafilter.org/caq/BushFamilyPreys.html] On June 22, 1990, George Jr.sold two-thirds of his Harken stock for $848,560 -- a cool 200 percent profit. The move was well timed. One week after Junior sold his stock, Harken announced a $23.2 million loss in quarterly earnings and Harken stock dropped sharply, losing 60 percent of its value over the next six months.

Aug 2, 1990 Iraq invades Kuwait. Geo Bush orders troops to Saudi Arabia.

1990: George W. Bush sells two-thirds of his stock in Harken Energy. Over the next two months, Harken stock prices dropped in the wake of poor quarterly earnings. Critics then questioned the timing of his sale, asking whether he had advance warnings. In October 1993, a federal commission cleared him of any wrong doing. [CNN]

1991 . With the departure of Bob Strauss, the firm (Akins, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld) amends its name to Akin, Gump, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P. [www.akingump.com] Founded in 1945, the firm is a leading international law firm with more than 1,050 lawyers in offices in the United States and Europe. The firm supports more than 50 practice groups representing regional, national and international clients (This is the same firm the Mr. Idris, owner of the Sudan pharmeceutical company bombed by US cruise missles in 1998, used to fight the US, claiming no connection to terrorism)

The sacred soil that the U.S. infidel soldiers supposedly desecrated was located in a series of top secret facilities built during the 1980s by the U.S. military at a cost (mostly to Saudi Arabia!) of - are you ready? - over 200 BILLION dollars. This was the largest U.S. military construction project ever attempted outside the continental USA. As a Public Television program (later) reported in 1993: http://emperors-clothes.com/news/probestop-i.htm

November 6, 1991 Dissolution of Soviet Union; Last Kuwaiti oil fire is extinguished on

The key to the huge potential profits in Central Asia was distribution—how to transport the oil and gas from this isolated, backward and landlocked region to the world’s main energy markets. The only existing pipelines were those of the old Soviet distribution network through Russia. As the scramble for resources in the region intensified, the USwanted to undermine Russia’s economic monopoly, making sure that other rivals were kept out of the race. The pipelines therefore had to run through countries over which the US could exert substantial political influence, which excluded China and Iran. [The Taliban, the US and the resources of Central Asia]

1992: Bill Clinton defeated incumbent George Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race.

1992: Government records show that Dugway has had the Ames strain since 1992. Dugway's production of dried anthrax is part of the government's secret research program on how to defend against germ weapons, which gained momentum in the late 1990's. The Clinton administration began a series of projects aimed at understanding the nation's vulnerabilities to biowarfare and devising ways combat the threats.

1992 Bob Strauss returns to the firm as a full name partner and the firm happily becomes Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld LLP once again. Akin Gump partner Vernon Jordan is named Chairman of President Clinton's transition team. [www.akingump.com]

1992: Under Dick Cheney's direction, the Pentagon paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies -- like itself -- could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. Brown & Root Services BRS (a division of Halliburton) specializes in such work; from 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company worked in the former South Vietnam building roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.

Nov. 1992: Several corporations -- including oil giants Exxon and Mobil as well as J. P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan -- are clamoring to get into energy futures market. Some of those companies ask Wendy Gramm, chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and wife of Senator Phil Gramm, to exempt energy derivative contracts and related swaps from government oversight. Gramm acts quickly, scheduling a vote on the rule for January 1993, days before the Clinton administration would take over. Boosted by her support, the proposed rule passes. In five weeks whe will join the board of Enron. (" Enron made a sound investment in Washington", http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20020124/ts_usatoday/3799465&cid

=676 ; "Enron's Web of Complex

1993-95. R. James Woolsey is the director of the CIA from 1993-95. He served as an ambassador and United States representative to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Vienna from 1989-91.

The contracts for building those bases, ports, and airfields went in part to Saudi construction companies. Osama's family company, Saudi Binladin Group (the name is spelled differently but it's the same family) is intimate with the Saudi royal family; moreover it is the biggest Saudi construction company (and also a giant in the telecommunications field). http://emperors-clothes.com/news/probestop-i.htm

 April 1993, Chevron concluded a historic $20 billion, 50/50 joint venture deal with Kazakhstan to create the TENGIZCHEVOIL joint venture to develop the Tengiz oil field, estimated to contain 6-9 billion barrels of oil. DOE/EIA Reports on the Caspian 5/17/00 Page 9 Stalinist party boss, Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan visited Washington and Houston November 18-20 and signed contracts with Texaco, Mobil, Chevron and other US oil companies which are worth a staggering $600 billion over the next 40 years During his Washington visit, Nazarbayev was honored at a private dinner in the exclusive Metropolitan Club, hosted by longtime Democratic Party wheeler-dealer Robert Strauss, (of Law Firm: Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld) and attended by oil company CEOs, Clinton crony Vernon Jordan, Energy Secretary Federico Pena, and media personalities like Sam Donaldson--who led the toast to Nazarbayev--and William Safire. [Sagebrush Saloon – Chevrons War]

1993: Pennzoil Company assimilates Chevron

June 1993: California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and Enron begin their relationship in June. Each puts $250 million into Joint Energy Development Investments (JEDI) The partnership will invest in an array of North American natural gas businesses. ("CalPERS inadvertently linked to fall of Enron", [www.sacbee.com/content/business/story/1517906p-1594346c.html ] Keeping partnerships such as Jedi off its balance sheet was a paramount concern for Enron. The company created

scores of partnerships so it could keep their debts off its balance sheet. In Jedi's case, as much as $711 million in debts were held off the books, according to SEC filings.

July 1993 Oil prices plunge on speculation that Iraq will accept U.N. missile test site inspections and receive approval to resume oil exports.

Sept 27, 1993 Nuclear Nonproliferation and Export Control Policy The President today established a framework for U.S. efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles that deliver them.

November 1993: The Indian government approves Enron's Dabhol power plant, located near Bombay on the west coast of India. Enron has invested $3 billion, the largest single foreign investment in India's history. Enron owns 65% of Dabhol. This liquefied natural gas powered plant is supposed to provide one-fifth of India's energy needs by 1997. [Asia Times, 1/81/01, Indian Express, 2/27/00]

1994, Jose Trias met with a friend in Houston, Texas and was planning to go public with his personal knowledge of HHMI "front door" grants being diverted to "back door" black ops bioresearch. The next day, Trias and his wife were found dead in their Chevy Chase, Md. home. Chevy Chase is where HHMI is headquartered. Police described the killings as a professional hit. Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) funds a tremendous number of research programs at schools, hospitals and research facilities, and has long been alleged to be conducting "black ops" biomedical research for intelligence organizations, including the CIA.

1994: Pennzoil Company signs oil development deal with Qatar. Bush is elected governor of Texas with 53.5 percent of the vote.

1994: Enron lobbies the Securities and Exchange Commission to receive an exemption from the Public Utility Holding Company Act. The Depression-era law was designed to prevent utilities from owning multiple plants in one geographic area, allowing them to jack up rates. ("Enron made a sound investment in Washington", http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20020124/ts_usatoday/3799465&cid =676 )

September 1994: In what was described as "the deal of the century," the Azerbaijan International Oil Consortium (AIOC ) signed an $8 billion, 30-year contract in September 1994 to develop three Caspian Sea fields—Azeri, Chirag, and Guneshli—with total reserves estimated at 3-5 billion barrels. Oil production is expected to reach 800,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) by the end of the next decade. DOE/EIA Reports on the Caspian 5/17/00 Page 9

February 1995, US authorities named bin Laden and his Saudi brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, among 172 unindicted co-conspirators with the 11 Muslims charged for the World Trade Center bombing and the associated plot to blow up other New York landmarks." ('Jane's Intelligence Review,' 1 October 1995) (So bin Laden is named as an unindicted co-conspirator a year before Sudan offered to extradite him.)

1995: Pennzoil Company agrees to concession agreement withEgypt for Gulf of Suez

Aug. 2, 1995 Saudi Arabia's King Fahd issues a decree replacing all members of the Council of Ministers who do not have blood ties so the royal Family. While most of the Council's top positions are unaffected by the reshuffling, Oil Minister Hisham Nazer is replaced with Ali bin Ibrahim al-Naimi. (WSJ)

DECISION BRIEF 2 October 1995

CASPIAN WATCH: RUSSIAN POWER-PLAYS ON 'EARLY OIL' HALLMARK OF KREMLIN EXPANSIONISM PAST -- AND FUTURE? (Washington, D.C.)

.oil companies from the United States, Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan), are scheduled to make a strategically monumental decision: Through which countries will the Consortium export the vast quantities of Azeri and other oil deposits it expects to tap from Caspian Sea reserves estimated to rival those of the North Sea and Alaskan North Slope, combined? At issue is whether Russia will enjoy monopoly control over these oil flows -- and the attendant revenue streams? Or will there ultimately be a southern, Western-oriented pipeline, for example, through Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan? 'Great Game' Redux…

The Bottom Line In light of the high stakes and the inadequate attention this issue has received to date from senior U.S. policy-makers, the Center for Security Policy will be producing a "Caspian Watch" of periodic Decision Briefs dealing with the upcoming decision and the repercussions that flow from it over time. Meanwhile, the Center urges the executive and legislative branches in Washington to accord the strategic Caspian Sea oil region the priority it deserves -- and to start safeguarding U.S. interests increasingly in jeopardy there.

October 21, 1995: The oil company Unocal signs a contract with Turkmenistan to export $8 billion worth of natural gas through a $3 billion pipeline which would go from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. Political considerations and pressures allow Unocal to edge out a more experienced Argentinean company for the contract. Henry Kissinger, a Unocal consultant, calls it "the triumph of hope over experience." [Washington Post, 10/5/98]

1995: Cheney became the CEO of Halliburton, a Dallas-based oil services giant that also owns Brown & Root Services. Halliburton does business in at least 100 countries. In 1998, Business Week reported that Cheney had been "courting politicians and business leaders through the booming Caspian Sea region in an all-out effort to secure key political ties with Azerbaijan and Kazakstan. Accounting for the world's third-largest oil reserves, the region is Cheney's best hope to secure big contracts for a long time to come." Cheney has succeeded. Along with the heads of Chevron and Texaco Inc., Cheney sits on Kazakstan's Oil Advisory Board, which serves as a sounding board for the country's president. Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company's help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million.. Dick Cheney helped broker the Chevron-Kazakhstan deal when he sat on the Kazakhstan Oil Advisory Board in the mid-'90s (Amarillo Globe-News, June 13, 1998)

[http://coopertiveresearch.org/completetimeline/]

1996: Dr. Christopher Davis of Virginia left British intelligence service in 1996 Davis was the member of British intelligence who de-briefed (microbiologist) Dr. Pasechnik when he defected (Dr. Pasechnik was a top scientist in the FSU's bioweapons program, which is heavily dependent upon DNA sequencing)

March 1996, prominent US senator Hank Brown, a supporter of the Unocal project, visited Kabul and other Afghan cities. He met with the Taliban and invited them to send delegates to a Unocal-funded conference on Afghanistan in the US. In the same month, the US also exerted pressure on the Pakistani government to ditch its arrangements with Bridas and back the American company.{The Taliban the US and the Resources of Central Asia]

March 1996 - October 1997, Iraq impeded inspectors from entering Iraqi security service and military facilities, and it interfered with some UNSCOM flights.

March 1996 March, 1996, Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa, then the Sudanese Minister of State for Defense, offered to extradite bin Laden either to Saudi Arabia or the United States. U.S. officials turned down the offer of extradition. 'The Washington Post' article that reported this goes into some length quoting U.S. officials attempting to explain exactly why they turned down the offer. The officials are quoted explaining that the Saudis were afraid of a fundamentalist backlash if they jailed and executed bin Laden, that they resented Sudan, that the U.S. resented Sudan, that the U.S. didn't have sufficient evidence to put him on trial. Everything, in fact, except the simplest explanation: that bin Laden was a U.S. asset - either part of the CIA, or someone whom the CIA used. Perhaps the 'Washington Post' writers were hinting at this explanation when they wrote:

Emphasis on the word 'treat' as in 'pretend that he was.' In any case, the Sudanese offer of extradition was turned down.

April 1996, Mobil announced that it had purchased from the Kazakh government a 25% share in the consortium developing Tengiz. Given adequate export outlets, Tengiz can reach peak production of 750,000 bbl/d_ by 2010.

DOE/EIA Reports on the Caspian 5/17/00 Page 9

April 30, 1996 In the United States, President Clinton approves the sale of $227 million of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. At current oil prices, roughly 12 million barrels would be sold. The Clinton Administration hopes that the sale will lower gasoline prices in the United States, which are at their highest levels in five years. (WSJ)

May 7, 1996 Tsunao Saitoh, who formerly worked at an HHMI-funded lab at Columbia University, was shot to death on May 7, 1996 while sitting in his car outside his home in La Jolla, Calif. Police also described this as a professional hit.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) funds a tremendous number of research programs at schools, hospitals and research facilities, and has long been alleged to be conducting "black ops" biomedical research for intelligence organizations, including the CIA.

May 13, 1996: Ramsey Yousef is accused of having designed the bomb that blew up in the World Trade Centre in 1993....His idea was to topple one of the twin towers onto the other..... perhaps 50,000 people would have perished. ...Yousef placed a bomb on a Philippines Airlines jet ...... testing a method he intended using to destroy three US passenger planes at a later date. The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition) Issue 382

Why couldn't the U.S. government have accepted the Sudanese offer to extradite bin Laden? Why couldn't they have jailed him, gotten together their best case and put him on trial? What exactly did the U.S. government have to lose? The worst that could have happened would have been that they failed to convict him and had to let him leave the country... JUST LET HIM GO, OH, ANYWHERE. MAYBE TO - AFGHANISTAN! [http://emperors-clothes.com/news/probestop-i.htm]

May 20, 1996 In New York, the United Nations and Iraq agree to U.N. Resolution 986, which provides Iraq with the opportunity to sell $1 billion of oil for 90 days for a 180-day trial period. Under the resolution, proceeds from the sale would be used for humanitarian purposes. The agreement comes following months of heated negotiations. Iraqi oil exports are expected to begin by the Fall of 1996, after a pumping station on the Iraq-Turkey pipeline is repaired and U.N monitoring and aid distribution facilities are put in place. Shortly after the agreement, the White House announces its decision to allow U.S. oil companies to purchase Iraqi oil exports. (FT, PON, WSJ)

June 1996: Mr. Dale Watson was named Deputy Chief of the CIA at the Counter-terrorist Center.

Mid 1996: Pakistan was not the only source of assistance (to the Taliban). Saudi Arabia also provided substantial financial and material aid. Shortly after the Taliban took control of Kandahar, JUI head Maulana Fazlur Rehman began to organise "hunting trips" for royalty from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. By mid-1996, Saudi Arabia was sending funds, vehicles and fuel to support the Taliban’s push on Kabul. The reasons were two-fold. On the political plane, the Taliban’s fundamentalist ideology was close to the Saudi’s own Wahabbism. It was hostile to the Shiite sect and thus to Riyadh’s major regional rival—Iran. On a more prosaic level, the Saudi oil company, Delta Oil, was a partner in the Unocal pipeline and was pinning its hopes on a Taliban victory to get the project off the ground.

June 24, 1996: The Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan signs a deal with Enron "that could lead to joint development of the central Asian nation's potentially rich natural gas fields." [Houston Chronicle, 6/25/96] The $1.3 billion venture teams Enron with the state companies of Russian and Uzbekistan. [Houston Chronicle, 6/30/96]

July 8, 1996: The US government agrees to give $400 million to help Enron and a Uzbeki state company develop natural gas fields in the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan. [Oil and Gas Journal, 7/8/96]

July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 bound for Paris, exploded shortly after takeoff from New York's Long Island, killing all 230 people on board.

July 18, 1996 The United Nations formally approves an Iraqi aid distribution plan, a major step forward in the direction of allowing Iraq to sell oil under Resolution 986. (DJ)

July 21, 1996: Officials of Al Hayat, a prominent Arabic-language newspaper, said they received faxes in London and Washington early on Wednesday, warning of a planned attack on an American target. The letter was signed by a group identifying itself as the Movement of Islamic Change, the Jihad wing. [New York Times]. This was learned shortly after TWA 800 was shot down it.....a connection to Sheikh Rahman, and a threat that apparently the U.S. government does not consider to be credible ?.

August 1996: Osama Bin Laden began issuing public calls for a jihad against the US in August 1996 [The Taliban, the US and the resource of Central Asia]

August 13, 1996: Unocal and Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia come to agreement with state companies in Turkmenistan and Russia to to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan. [Unocal website, 8/13/96]

August 25, 1996 U.S. officials investigating reports that Islamic terrorists have smuggled Stinger ground-to-air missiles into the United States from Pakistan. Senior Iranian sources close to the fundamentalist regime in Tehran claimed this weekend that TWA flight 800 was shot down last month by one of three shoulder-fired Stingers of the type used by Islamic guerrillas during the Afghanistan war. The sources said the missiles arrived in America seven months ago... [Times of London]

September 22, 1996: More than 150 credible witnesses saw a missile destroy TWA 800. "Some of these people are extremely, extremely credible," a top federal official said. U.S. military experts, who debriefed them and independently confirmed for the FBI that their descriptions matched surface-to-air missile attacks.. Investigators are reviewing an anonymous threat received after the October 1, 1995 conviction of radical sheik Omar Abdel Rahman .... the threat was that a New York airport or jetliner would be attacked in retaliation........ (The New York Post)

Three high-speed objects were picked up on radar crossing the aircraft's flight path just before it began its fatal dive. On June 18, 2000 the Chairman of the Egyptian Civil Authority hand delivered a letter (Click for pdf file) to the Administrator of the FAA requesting assistance in identifying these high-speed returns but was denied the information he requested. (For similar reports of high speed objects reported by other aircraft flying into and out of Kennedy airport please read The Tale of the Tapes.) Were these objects missiles fired in the same sequence as that which brought down TWA 800? (See the article "On A Clear Day You Can See Forever").

September 27, 1996: The Taliban conquer Kabul [AP, 8/19/02], establishing control over much of Afghanistan. The oil company Unocal is hopeful that the Taliban will stabilize Afghanistan, and allow its (gas) pipeline plans to go forward. In fact, "preliminary agreement [on the pipeline] was reached between the [Taliban and Unocal] long before the fall of Kabul." "Oil industry insiders say the dream of securing a pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why Pakistan, a close political ally of America's, has been so supportive of the Taliban, and why America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of Afghanistan." [Telegraph, 10/11/96]

September 1996: Greased with over $1.8 million in contributions from the big three utility companies, California lawmakers unanimously enact deregulation law. Legislation promises competition, 20% decreases. Gov. Pete Wilson signs the bill into law, saying that the landmark legislation is a major step in our efforts to guarantee lower rates, provide consumer choice and offer reliable service, so no one literally is left in the dark. We've pulled the plug on another outdated monopoly and replaced it with the promise of a new era of competition. ("Energy 'Crisis' Was A $71 Billion Hoax, And It's Not Over, Report Says", http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/utilities/pr/pr002170.php3 )

October 11, 1996: The Telegraph publishes an interesting article about pipeline politics in Afghanistan. Some quotes: "Behind the tribal clashes that have scarred Afghanistan lies one of the great prizes of the 21st century, the fabulous energy reserves of Central Asia." "'The deposits are huge,' said a diplomat from the region. ‘Kazakhstan alone may have more oil than Saudi Arabia. Turkmenistan is already known to have the fifth largest gas reserves in the world.'" [Telegraph, 10/11/96]

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is one of the most important think-tanks advising the US government, as well as many other governments abroad. CFR members include the Pentagon's top advisers,

Hollinger and their board members, including Henry Kissinger, have connections to Sunday Times, Chase Manhattan Bank, AT&T, American Express, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, Hasbro and Israeli Yellow Pages.

Hollinger also owns the Jerusalem Post. It's very convenient to follow Richard Perle’s strategy, supported by his friends James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage. Richard Perle was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson's office in the 1970's after the National Security Agency (NSA) caught him passing Highly-Classified (National Security) documents to the Israeli Embassy. He later worked for the Israeli weapons firm, Soltam.

[www.cfr.org]

February 24, 1997 Qatar inaugurates the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporting facility and formally launches Qatar Liquefied Gas Co., which will have total output capacity of 6 million tons per year of LNG. The facilities are part of a new $7.2 billion industrial zone which also includes a sea port with a capacity to handle 25-30 million tons of LNG annually. Qatar plans to build more gas liquefaction plants in the area to exploit its natural gas reserves of around 237 trillion cubic feet. (DJ)

1997: World oil supply increases by 2.25 million barrels per day in 1997, the largest annual increase since 1988. Driving oil prices down further (to approx $17 per barrel)

1997: Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski publishes a book in which he portrays the Eurasian landmass as the key to world power, and Central Asia with its vast oil reserves as the key to domination of Eurasia. He states that for the US to maintain its global primacy, it must prevent any possible adversary from controlling that region. Almost prophetically, he notes that because of popular resistance to US military expansionism, his ambitious strategy could not be implemented "except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." [The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, 1997 (the link is to excerpts of the book from a From the Wilderness article)]

1997: Battelle Memorial Institute, a military contractor in Ohio, has experience making powdered germs participated in a secret Central Intelligence Agency program, code-named Clear Vision and begun in 1997, that used benign substances similar to anthrax to mimic Soviet efforts to create small bombs that could emit clouds of lethal germs. 1997 BioPort, from Lansing, Michigan (former Michigan Biologics Products Institute MBPI) is founded by Fuad al-Hibri (Ex-Porton International UK) and Admiral William Crowe, 76, former military chief under President Ronald Reagan. Their main purpose is to develop anti bio-agents.

April 1, 1997: The Indian village of Katalwadi, at the forefront of protests against Enron's Dabhol Power project, is attacked by Enron supporters armed with swords, sharpened hoes (colloquially known as "choppers"), wooden sticks, light bulbs filled with acid, and explosive soda bottles. Following the attack, the police arrests and charge the anti-Enron villagers with criminal offenses, including attempted murder, under the Indian Penal Code. The perpetrators of the attack, however, are detained only briefly the following day and are not charged with assault. 1997 sees a number of attacks on people opposed to Enron's power plant. ("The Enron Corporation: Corporate Complicity in Human Rights Violations", http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/enron/enron5-0.htm )

May 1997: Police beat and arrest nearly 180 protesters who are demonstrating peacefully outside the Dabhol Power Corporation gates. ("The Enron Corporation: Corporate Complicity in Human Rights Violations", http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/enron/enron5-0.htm )

May 20, 1997 President Clinton signs an executive order barring new U.S. investment in Burma (also known as Myanmar), effective May 21 and renewable annually. U.S. companies have invested about $250 million in Burma, primarily in the oil and gas sector. The biggest U.S. investor is Unocal, which is building (with France's Total) a $1.2 billion pipeline from Burma's Yadana natural gas field to an electric power plant in Thailand. (DJ)

June 1997: Maharashtra police raid a fishing village where many residents oppose the Enron power plant.They arbitrarily beat and arrest dozens of villagers, including Sadhana Bhalekar, the wife of a well-known protester against the plant. They break down the door and window of Bhalekar's bathroom and drag her naked into the street, beating her with batons. Bhalekar is three months

pregnant at the time. ("Enron: History of Human Rights Abuse in India", http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/01/enron_012302.htm )

July 17, 1997 A Federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating whether a renegade Saudi millionaire .... has been funneling money to terrorist groups in the United States.... An official ... said that the money had been delivered to groups in Detroit, Jersey City and Brooklyn ....He (bin Laden) was ... linked to Ramzi Ahmed Yousef ...in the three years before the attack on the Trade Center ..... Yousef lived in Pakistan in a house paid for by bin Laden, the State Department report said.[New York Times]

July 1997 The U.S. State Department decided in July 1997 that proposed exports of natural gas from Turkmenistan to Turkey via Iran did not technically violate U.S. law. In addition, the State Department has opposed large-scale oil swaps with Iran by U.S. companies. Officials from Turkmenistan and Pakistan and representatives from Unocal and Saudi Arabia’s Delta Oil signed an agreement to build the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan line. The 900+mile pipeline would have cost between $2 billion and $2.7 billion, and would have carried approximately 700 Bcf of gas from Turkmenistan’s Daulatabad gas field to the central Pakistani city of Multan. [DOE/EIA Reports on the Caspian 5/17/00]

July 1997: In the immediate aftermath of the Mazar-e-Sharif debacle, an abrupt policy about-face, the Clinton administration ended its opposition to a Turkmenistan-Turkey gas pipeline running across Iran. The following month, a consortium of European companies including Royal Dutch Shell announced plans for such a project. A separate deal struck by Australia’s BHP Petroleum proposed another gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and eventually India. US and Turkey jointly sponsored the idea of a "transportation corridor," with a major oil pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey’s Ceyhan port on the Mediterranean. Washington began to urge Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to participate in the plan by constructing gas and oil pipelines, respectively, under the Caspian Sea, then along the same corridor. [The Taliban, the US and the Resources of Central Asia]

July? 1997: Bush advisor, Karl Rove, arranges a job for Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition, at Enron. ("Associates of Bush Aide Say He Helped Win Contract", http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/25/business/25REED.html ) The Rove associates say the recommendation, which Enron accepted, was intended to keep Mr. Reed's allegiance to the Bush

campaign without putting him on the Bush payroll. Mr. Bush, they say, was then developing his "compassionate conservativism" message and did not want to be linked too closely to Mr. Reed, who had just stepped down as executive director of the Christian Coalition, an organization of committed religious conservatives. At the same time, they say, the contract discouraged Mr.

Reed, a prominent operative who was being courted by several other campaigns, from backing anyone other than Mr. Bush.

August 1997: The CIA creates a secret task force to monitor Central Asia's politics and gauge its wealth. Covert CIA officers, some well-trained petroleum engineers, travel through southern Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to sniff out potential oil reserves. [Time, 5/4/98]

August 4, 1997 The FBI has linked two suspects in a Brooklyn suicide-bombing plot to the militant Mideast group Hamas. Palestinian security officials think the two suspects could be members of a new group, financed by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, which takes its orders from Hamas or another Islamist group. (The Brooklyn group knew that their colleagues had brought down TWA 800 and told their story to the FBI. It preferred not to believe them .... ) TIME.com

August 9, 1997 Swissair Flight 127 nearly hit by an unidentified flying object, possibly a missile, near the area off New York where a TWA airplane crashed in 1996. The 747 was cruising at 23,000 when the pilot interrupted an address to passengers to report the near miss by a round white object, says a report by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. [Canadian Press] The captain and co-pilot said an oblong and wingless object shot past at great speed - only fifty metres away from their Boeing Seven-Four-Seven. The American air traffic authorities said it was probably a weather balloon. The U.S. preferred a "balloon" to a "rocket" explanation despite the pilots objections ..... [Neue Zuricher Zeitung]

October 1997 Unocal set up the Central Asian Gas Pipeline (CentGas) consortium to build the (natural gas) pipeline. Construction was scheduled to begin in 1998. [DOE/EIA Reports on the Caspian 5/17/00 Page 64[

October 27, 1997: Halliburton, (a company with future Vice President Cheney as CEO) announces a new agreement to provide technical services and drilling for Turkmenistan, a country in Central Asia. The press release also mentions that "Halliburton has been providing a variety of services in Turkmenistan for the past five years." On the same day, a consortium to build a pipeline through Afghanistan is formed. It's called CentGas, and the two main partners are Unocal and Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia. [Halliburton press release, 10/27/97, CentGas press release, 10/27/97]

Mr. Moore's practice has solidly and notably embraced the regulatory and transactional needs of the natural gas industry. While Langdon went east in international energy circles, Moore's international experience has been concentrated in Central and South America. "Charley and Jim have tremendous experience and resources. My international work has focused primarily on Mexico, but I believe forward-looking legal services for regulated industries must include the global marketplace. Akin Gump clients will benefit greatly from our unique, comprehensive and multifaceted services," Ms. Watkins commented.

Currently, Ms. Watkins represents Western Resources in its application to merge with Kansas City Power and Light Company, and her previous electric utility merger experience complements that which the firm gained from its work on the Cinergy and First Energy merger transactions. Along with Western Resources and other electric utility and gas industry clients, Watkins also represents several telecommunications industry entities. Glenn E. Johnson focuses on oil and gas development and gas pipeline regulatory work before the Railroad Commission of Texas, in addition to the associated litigation and appellate work. Mr. Johnson entered private practice in 1976 and served from 1977 until 1979 as a Hearings Examiner in the Gas Utilities Division of the Railroad Commission. He is board certified in administrative law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. A frequent speaker before industry groups, he was appointed by Governor George Bush in 1996 to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission.

Becky M. Bruner is joining the Washington office as of counsel. She has over 10 years of experience working in both state and federal agencies on energy regulatory matters. From 1994 through 1996, she served as legal adviser to FERC Commissioner (now Chairman) James J. Hoecker. Prior to that, she was a trial attorney with the electric litigation section of the FERC. Ms. Bruner also spent three years as a trial attorney and hearings examiner at the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

Catherine J. Webking also concentrates in administrative law matters, representing clients before the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Railroad Commission of Texas. Before law school, Webking was a production engineer with Mobil Oil Corporation. She received her J.D. with honors in 1991 from the University of Texas, where she was elected to Order of the Coif. She earned her B.S. in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University in 1985.

Akin Gump Chairman Bruce McLean stated, "Historically, one of Akin Gump's strengths has been our full-service energy practice devoted to all aspects of the domestic and global markets. With the addition of Gail's regulated industries practice group, we expand our integrated approach to the energy industry's rapidly changing environment, resulting in enhanced services to our clients."

November 1997, During US Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s visit to Pakistan she denounce the Taliban’s policies towards women as "despicable" and warned Pakistan that it risked international isolation. Washington began to exert pressure on Pakistan over the Taliban’s involvement in the heroin trade and the dangers of "Islamic terrorism".

November 26, 1997: An industry newsletter reports that Saudi Arabia has abandoned plans to have open bids on a $2 billion power plant near Mecca, deciding that the government will build it instead. What's interesting is that one of the bids was made by a consortium of Enron, the Saudi Binladen Group (run by Osama's family), and Italy's Ansaldo Energia. [Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections, 1/22/98]

December 4. 1997 Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon warns Iraq will not allow oil to flow during a third six-month phase of the U.N.'s oil-for-food sale until the U.N. approves aid distribution. The U.N. Security Council approves a third six-month phase following the end of the second six-month phase. Like the first two phases, the third phase allows Iraq to sell up to $1.07 billion of oil in each of two 90-day periods. However, the sales level may be increased by the Security Council in January 1998 after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reports on Iraq's needs. The next day Iraq stops pumping oil into the Iraqi-Turkish pipeline at the end of the second six-month phase of the United Nations (U.N.) oil-for-food program. (WP, NYT)

Unocal executives fête Taliban ministers at their homes in Texas. (" Oil barons court Taliban in Texas",http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=006576086753008&rtmo=lzoPFokt&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/et/97/12/14/wtal14.html ; "Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline",http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/west_asia/newsid_37000/37021.stm )

"The Islamic warriors appear to have been persuaded to close the deal, not through delicate negotiation but by old-fashioned Texan hospitality. Last week Unocal, the Houston-based company bidding to build the 876-mile pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, invited the Taliban to visit them in Texas...The Taliban ministers and their advisers stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus...The men, who are accustomed to life without heating, electricity or running water, were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marvelled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms. After a meal of specially prepared halal meat, rice and Coca-Cola, the hardline fundamentalists - who have banned women from working and girls from going to school - asked Mr Miller about his Christmas tree." November 1997, a Taliban delegation was feted by Unocal in Houston, Texas and met with State Department officials during the visit. [The Taliban, the US and the Resources of Central Asia]

Dec. 9, 1997: The Enron executive committee approves a buyout -- that includes a corporate guarantee of $633 million -- of the interest of the California public employees pension fund in the JEDI partnership. ("Enron Directors Backed Moving Debt Off Books ",http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64820-2002Jan30.html )

December 14, 1997: It is reported that Unocal has hired the University of Nebraska to train 400 Afghani teachers, electricians, carpenters and pipefitters in anticipation of using them for their pipeline in Afghanistan. 150 students are already attending classes. [Telegraph, 12/14/97] Unocal, with the support of Washington, continued to actively woo the Taliban leaders who, in an effort to obtain the most lucrative deal, were playing the American company off against Bridas. Unocal provided nearly $1 million to set up the Centre for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Omaha as a front for an aid program in Taliban-held Kandahar. The main outcome of the company’s "aid" was a school to train the pipefitters, electricians and carpenters needed to construct its pipelines. {The Taliban, the US and the Resources of Central Asia]

1998: Pennzoil-Quaker State Company was formed with merger of Pennzoil and Quaker State. Simultaneous with the Pennzoil-Quaker State merger, the Pennzoil Company's marketing, manufacturing and fast oil change businesses (Pennzoil Products Group) is spun off and renamed the PennzEnergy Company

1998: Officials at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah said that in 1998 scientists there turned small quantities of wet anthrax into powder to test ways to defend against biowarfare attacks.

January 1998: DOE Publishes Strategic Plan for Hydrogen "Dependence of foreign energy sources is expensive. We suffer trade deficits and use our military to protect our energy supply abroad. Environmentally, the Nation is being forced to react to the need for cleaner urban air and—global climate change. –The solution is a clean, sustainable, domestic energy supply. Hydrogen can be one of the answers. ---lowering the cost of technologies to produce hydrogen directly from sunlight and water –"

Watson was concerned about "chemical, biological, and nuclear materials within the criminal and terrorist communities. These weapons of mass destruction represent perhaps the most serious potential threat facing the United States today..."

Feb. 28, 1998 Unocal VP International Relations addressed US House of Representatives clearly stating that the Taliban government should be removed and replaced by a government acceptable to his company. He argued that creation of a 42 inch pipeline across Afghanistan would yield a Western profit increase of 500% by 2015.

Early 1998: Bill Richardson, the US Ambassador to the UN, meets Taliban officials in Kabul (all such meetings are technically illegal, because the US still officially recognizes the government the Taliban ousted as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan). US officials at the time call the pipeline project a "fabulous opportunity" and are especially motivated by the "prospect of circumventing Iran, which offered another route for the pipeline." [Boston Globe, 9/20/01]

March 1998 Unocal announced a delay in finalizing the pipeline project due to Afghanistan's continuing civil war

March 2, 1998 Security Council agreement, threatening "the severest consequences" if Iraq reneged. Iraq allowed presidential site inspections

April 10, 1998: Jerome Hauer met with Barbara Rosenberg on April 10, 1998, at a "roundtable on genetic engineering and biological weapons" under President Clinton. The small group of outside experts and cabinet members included: William Cohen (at the time Secretary of Defense), CIA boss George Tenet, Craig Ventner (Celera), Joshua Lederberg (Rockefeller University, Defense Science Board), Thomas Monath (Oravax/Acambis, former CDC and USAMRIID), Jerome Hauer, and Barbara Rosenberg. [http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm]

1998: (exact date?)Officials at the Army's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah said that in 1998 scientists there turned small quantities of wet anthrax into powder to test ways to defend against biowarfare attacks. 1998 paper study on anthrax in the mail was one secret project. (Dr Rosenberg is making the astonishing suggestion that there may have been a deadly follow-up by somebody else. Last time she questioned the investigation, she was attacked by the FBI and the White House. But she says she's prepared to speak out again because she's so afraid of what might happen next.) The CIA have told Newsnight they totally reject Dr Rosenberg's theory and say they were unaware of ANY project to assess the impact of anthrax sent through the mail.

1998 (exact date?) BioPort signed a new contract with the US government. They have to develop vaccines against anthrax and have 3 years time for that to finish the production. The vaccines should be available in 2001. They got a $50 million contract for developing AVA (Anthrax Vaccine Absorbed) for 2.5 million US Soldiers 1998, the BioPort Corporation was founded for the express purpose of buying the Michigan Biologic Products Institute from the State of Michigan. MBPI was the only firm in the U.S. making Anthrax vaccine, and their sole client was the U.S. government. Until recently, BioPort has not been able to deliver any vaccine due to continuous problems with the FDA in areas such as sterility, contamination, as well as improper procedures and record keeping.

BioPort now has on its Board of Directors Admiral William J. Crowe, Jr. In October 1985 Crowe was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired from that position in 1989 and was appointed US Ambassador to Britain. Admiral Crowe, a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations, was given ownership of 22.5% of BioPort's stock without investing any money. Crowe's role at the company was to facilitate cooperation and good relations with government agencies and to secure military contracts from the Department of Defense.

1998 (exact date?) The OraVax company (Bioweapon Vaccines) had been likewise linked to shady backroom dealings with Clinton administration officials in 1998 regarding government orders for a yet to be tested West Nile Virus vaccine. (source: . Dr. Leonard Horowitz, a Public health consumer advocate and author of Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare (Tetrahedron Publishing Group; 1-888-508-4787),

http://www.baltech.org/lederman/816proof.html "....The role of Oravax, the commercial vaccine manufacturer directly connected to the major players in this issue-the CDC, the Ft. Dietrick bio-warfare lab, Plum Island, former OEM chief Jerry Hauer and Mayor Giuliani-remains unexamined in the media yet Oravax stands to make billions from its West Nile Virus vaccine if WNV hysteria continues to spread. That Oravax was developing a WNV vaccine before the 1999 outbreak, that its VP went to Washington with Jerry Hauer and the head of Rockefeller University in 1998 to pressure President Clinton to stockpile billions of dollars worth of vaccines or that according to the NY Times, Oravax's stock value had lost 90% of its value-making a mosquito-born epidemic the only chance of company survival-are clues of significance that might prove a financial angle to WNV...."

1998 (exact date needed) Jerome Hauer convinced New York Mayor Rudi Guilliani to develop a vaccine against the West Nile virus - almost one year before this virus broke out in New York. To this end, Hauer introduced Col. Thomas Monath of Oravax (now Accambis) to Guliani and organised a business deal. [The Fly on the Wall 0802 News Special, August 13, 2002, 5:10 pm]

June 19, 1998 The United Nations (U.N.) Security Council unanimously approves a resolution allowing Iraq to spend $300 million on spare parts for its oil industry. The funding is intended to help Iraq increase oil exports under the fourth phase of the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. The spare parts are expected to expand Iraq's oil export capacity from 1.6 million barrels per day to 1.8 million or 1.9 million barrels per day. (NYT) (DJ)

June 23, 1998: Future Vice President Cheney, working for the Halliburton energy company, states: "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." The Caspian Sea is in Central Asia. [Cato Institute Library, Chicago Tribune, 8/10/00]

June 24, 1998 OPEC agrees, to another round of oil production cuts. (Recent oil prices fallen to lowest levels in a decade). OPEC to cut production by 1.355 million barrels per day, effective July 1, 1998, bringing the group's total reductions since March 1998 to 2.6 million barrels per day. Together with promises from non-OPEC nations such as Russia, Oman, and Mexico, world oil producers have pledged to cut world-wide production by approximately 3.1 million barrels per day. (WP) (WSJ) (NYT)

June 1998 (B): Enron's agreement to develop natural gas with the government of Uzbekistan is not renewed. Enron closes its office there. The reason for the "failure of Enron's flagship project", inability to get natural gas out of the region. Uzbekistan's production is "well below capacity" and only 10% of its production is being exported, all to other countries in the region. The hope was to use a pipeline through Afghanistan, but "Uzbekistan is extremely concerned at the growing strength of the Taliban and its potential impact on stability in Uzbekistan, making any future cooperation on a pipeline project which benefits the Taliban unlikely." A $12 billion pipeline through China is being considered as one solution, but that wouldn't be completed until the end of the next decade at the earliest. [Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections, 10/12/98]

July 1998: Dale Watson was appointed Inspector Deputy Assistant Director of the National Security Division (NSD), FBI Headquarters, Washington, D.C

Aug. 4, 1998 -- McCarthy, Crisanti & Maffei, Inc. (MCM), global financial analysis firm merged with and Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a provider of strategic knowledge to the global energy industry. The combined company will have in excess of $70 million in revenues in 1997 and will be known as Global Decisions Group. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Dr. Daniel Yergin, President of CERA is a leading authority on energy and international politics, as well as the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power. His forthcoming book, The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That is Remaking the Modern World,

August 1998 Iraq refused to implement an UNSCOM plan for completing its work and barred UNSCOM from inspecting new facilities.

August 7, 1998: Terrorists bomb the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The bomb in Nairobi, Kenya kills 213 people, including 12 US nationals, and injures more than 4,500. The bomb in Dar es Salaam kills 11 and injures 85. The attack is blamed on al-Qaeda. [PBS Frontline, 2001]

August 9, 1998: Northern Alliance capital Mazar-e-Sharif is conquered by the Taliban, giving them control of 90% of Afghanistan, including the entire pipeline route. CentGas, the consortium behind the gas pipeline that would run through Afghanistan, is now "ready to proceed. Its main partners are the American oil firm Unocal and Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia, plus Hyundai of South Korea, two Japanese companies, a Pakistani conglomerate and the Turkmen government." However, the pipeline cannot be financed unless the government is officially recognized. "Diplomatic sources said the Taliban's offensive was well prepared and deliberately scheduled two months ahead of the next UN meeting" to decide if the Taliban should be recognized. [Telegraph, 8/13/98]

August 10, 1998 The State Department received information on June 12 that bin Laden was threatening "some type of terrorist action in the next several weeks". Was one of these attacks related to another Swissair incident in mid-June 1998 which Bobet revealed was reported to Swissair but not to the American authorities? In this case the pilots didn't have to duck... The UFO Research Coalition Report on Swissair 127 ISBN 1-928957-00-5 (1999) Page 26 In July 1998, Bobet advised us that Swissair had experienced another UFO sighting in the vicinity of JFK International Airport in mid-June. The airplane had been airborne only several minutes, and was en route to Zurich. All three cockpit crew members saw the object. No report was made to Air Traffic Control authorities at the time, and apparently no notification of U.S. authorities was made subsequently. Only Swissair management was briefed by the crew. But there was a similar incident in England also in mid-June which did involve ducking ...

[International News Electronic Telegraph]

Aug. 20, 1998 Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks (75-80) on Afghanistan and Sudan targets--after bomb attacks on embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam [The US] blamed the bombings on Osama bin Laden, the former Saudi who it accuses of backing many attacks on US targets. It said that the pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum was linked to Mr bin Laden and was used to produce chemical weapons. The US was forced to admit within hours that the plant was not a Sudanese government facility, but a private factory belonging to Salah Idris, a Saudi businessman. But it then said that Mr Idris was himself linked to terrorism and to Mr bin Laden http://www.independent.co.uk/stories/B0405918.html August 1998, the Clinton administration launched cruise missiles against Osama bin Laden’s training camps at Khost in Afghanistan [The Taliban, the US and the Resource of Central Asia]

Sudanese factory owner Salah Idris then hired the powerful and prestigeous law firm of Akins, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld to fight back. Even more interesting is that Bob Strauss of this very firm had been nominated in 1991 by, then President George Bush, to be Ambassador to the Soviet Union and then Russia after the collapse. Very interesting that a firm with strong connections to Bush and oil interests would get this case)

Note: Richard Clarke, Adviser to the President (George W. Bush 2001-?) for Cyberspace Warfare. Clarke, who was originally with the State Department during the elder Bush's Administration, was demoted for covering up Israeli violations of the Arms Exporting laws. In August 1998, Clarke was one of the key figures who planted false information about Sudan's involvement in the East Africa U.S. Embassy bombings, which led to U.S. cruise missile attacks on a Sudanese pharmaceutical company in Khartoum. Clarke shopped in disinformation from British-Israeli covert operations stringer Yosef Bodansky that targetted Sudan. ~ Source: Patrick Martin and Michele Steinberg

Hunting Bin Laden Frontline Interview with Milt Bearden

Milt Bearden: ... Nothing I have said suggested Osama bin Laden is not a component in international terrorism. I challenge the fact that Sudan [is] always assumed to be a component in all of the current international terrorism. I think any of those statements that you made should have been trumped at about the time the Sudanese said, "Okay, this is a bad guy, we'll kick him out." And they took that step which was very visible, absolutely documentable, and they did it. ...

Frontline: You're not saying Osama bin Laden is not a terrorist or is not an enemy of the United States?

Milt Bearden: Osama bin Laden has chosen to make himself an enemy of the United States. He has issued these disputable fatwahs, these Islamic proclamations, to kill all ... Americans and Jews. Therefore, he's made himself a component, and I think that the United States is absolutely justified in taking out Osama bin Laden. But to oversimplify it by linking him to every known terrorist act in the last decade is an insult to most Americans. And it certainly doesn't encourage our allies in this to take us very seriously. Osama bin Laden is a legitimate target for the United States, period. But then, to completely reinforce it with all of these insupportable accusations, I think is a disservice and an oversimplification

Frontline: And you think that we're a target just simply because we're a superpower.

Milt Bearden: Partly, but we're also a superpower who insists on being perceived by the least fortunate of the Islamic world as being somehow against them. It is not missed in Friday prayers that we sent 75 million dollars worth of missiles flying against the two poorest Islamic countries in the world, Afghanistan and Sudan. I spent too many years living in the shadow of one mosque or another not to take what happens at Friday prayers seriously. And that's what's going on. ...

Frontline: Because so much of what we hear about Osama bin Laden comes out of his Afghanistan experience, I'm trying to get this straight, he was mostly a philanthropist and a financial contributor, and a minor combat figure, who happened to dabble in combat?

Bearden: What I can say is that the hype that surrounds Osama bin Laden--most of it generated by the US media and backed up by statements that verge on hyperbole from the United States government--that this man was literally swinging through the valleys of the Hindu Kush with a dagger in his teeth and single-handedly driving out the Soviet army, this did not happen. The Afghan people did that. The Arab role in the combat situation on the ground was minimal to nonexistent, period. And to suggest otherwise is simply to either gloss over history or to create history for your own reasons.

Frontline: I can imagine someone out there watching saying. "This is the CIA talking." You're not going to admit that you created the most dangerous public enemy in the world.

Bearden: You bet I would. If I could look you in the eye and say, "Trust me, Osama bin Laden was my guy. If it wasn't for the CIA he wouldn't be anything then, he wouldn't be anything today," if I could say that with a straight face, I think that would speed up the process of removing Mr. bin Laden as a source of great, great concern for the United States. I can't say that because it's simply not true. You can find nobody who is familiar with the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan in those years that would say bin Laden played any role other than the fund-raiser. ...

Frontline: We've talked to people that say not only was bin Laden in combat, but there are photographs of him with a helmet on, a rifle, commanding troops.

Bearden:... Afghanistan, the jihad, was one terrific photo op for a lot of people. I will give you that he possibly was engaged in a battle in 1987 where the Saudi contingent and the Gulf Arab group carried off their role reasonably well. I have said that. ... But to carry that beyond ... that series of battles, I simply won't go along with [that] regardless of how many pictures someone can cough up showing bin Laden with a walkie talkie or bin Laden with a Kalishnakov. Anybody that goes in can get a photo op in Afghanistan in those years. ...

Frontline: So, really what we're looking at is some fact but a lot of fiction.

Bearden: There's a lot of fiction in there. But we like that. It's the whole Osama bin Laden mythology. It's almost part entertainment. We don't have a national enemy. We haven't had a national enemy since the evil empire slipped beneath the waves in 1991. And I think we kind of like this way. We like this whole international terrorist thing oddly enough at a time when it probably is changing its character dramatically.

August 22, 1998, Unocal announced that CentGas had not secured the financing necessary to begin the work, and on August 22, 1998, Unocal suspended construction plans due to the continuing civil war in Afghanistan. Unocal stressed that the pipeline project would not proceed until an internationally recognized government was in place in Afghanistan. While the governments of Turkmenistan and Pakistan, as well as the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan, have continued discussions on the route, there does not seem to be any near-term likelihood that it will be built. (DOE/EIA Reports on the Caspian 5/17/00 Page 64)

Unocal cancels plans to exploit massive natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan. ("Hell to pay",http://www.willpitt.com/WillPitt.htm ) Utilities begin taking steps to divest themselves of power generation plants. Rates they can charge consumers are capped until the utilities complete that task, expected in 2002. ("Chronology of California's power crisis", http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/04/06/state1705EDT0232.DTL )

August 1998 Five months after ascending to CFO of Enron, Andrew Fastow pays $289,000 for 68 wooded acres with a cabin near Norwich, Vt. The mortgage will be paid off in March 2000. ("Architects of Enron's rise bred its demise", http://chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0201200329jan20.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed )

August 14, 1998 The Senate and House passed a resolution, S.J.Res. 54 (P.L. 105-235, signed), declaring

Iraq in "material breach" of the ceasefire.

September 2, 1998 Swissair jet from JFK crashes off Nova Scotia not far from the city of Halifax A Saudi Arabian prince was among those killed in the Swissair plane crash off Canada. The English-language Saudi Gazette quoted a Swissair source confirming that Prince Bandar Bin Saud Bin Saad Abdul Rahman al-Saud was among the 229 passengers and crew killed when the plane plunged into the Atlantic near Nova Scotia (September 5, 1998 The Hindu Online)

September 14, 1998: Yossef Bodansky, director of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, said 'sama Osam bin Laden) maintains connections' with some of his nearly two dozen brothers. He would not elaborate." ('San Antonio Express-News,' 14 September 1998)

October 29, 1998: Oil monopolies redivide region:.. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have become "independent." They all border on different segments of the Caspian Sea. The new governments are not only pro-capitalist but are the virtual playthings of Amoco, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and British Petroleum. These governments have provided huge concessions (property rights) to the biggest oil monopolies. In Soviet times this oil would have been used to meet the energy needs of the [Soviet] people. Now as these same oil companies--learn that oil deposits located under the Caspian Sea may amount to as much as 200 billion barrels worth $4 trillion, they are embarking on a new era of dangerous competition and piracy. [Brian Becker, in Workers World, 29 October 1998]

US intelligence learns that al-Qaeda is trying to establish a terrorist cell within the US and are planning to strike a US domestic target. Oct – Nov 1998 [cooperativeresearch.org]

November 14, 1998, with the United States about to launch airstrikes, Iraq pledged cooperation, narrowly averting U.S. air strikes but prompting President Clinton to openly declare a U.S. policy of regime change (in Iraq).

December 1, 1998: A US intelligence assessment: "[bin Laden] is actively planning against US targets... Multiple reports indicate [he] is keenly interested in striking the US on its own soil... al-Qaeda is recruiting operatives for attacks in the US but has not yet identified potential targets." Later in the month, a classified document signed by a senior US official states: "The intelligence community has strong indications that bin Laden intends to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the US" [cooperativeresearch.org]

December 4, 1998: CIA Director Tenet issues a "declaration of war" on al-Qaeda, in a memorandum circulated in the intelligence community. Tenet says, "Each day we all acknowledge that retaliation is inevitable and that its scope may be far larger than we have previously experienced... We are at war... I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the [larger intelligence] community." Yet it is later found that few FBI agents had ever heard of the declaration. There is no shift in budget priorities, either. For example, the number of CIA personnel assigned to its Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) stays roughly constant until 9/11. [cooperativereasearch.org]

December 5, 1998: In the wake of the al-Qaeda US embassy attacks, the US gives up on putting a pipeline through Afghanistan. Unocal announces it's withdrawing from the CentGas pipeline consortium, and closing three of its four offices in Central Asia. A concern that Clinton will lose support among women voters for upholding the Taliban also plays a role in the cancellation. [New York Times, 12/5/98] FTW Unocal suspended its pipeline project and pulled all its staff out of Kandahar and Islamabad. The final nail in the coffin came at the end of 1998, when oil prices halved from $25 to $13 a barrel, rendering Unocal’s pipeline project uneconomic, at least in the short term. At the same time, the Clinton administration’s demands for the handover of bin Laden, as well as action on drug control and human rights, became the basis for a series of punitive UN sanctions imposed on the Taliban in 1999 [The Taliban the US and the Resources in Central Asia]

1998 (date needed) Milt Bearden (ex CIA) writes a book: The Black Tulip: A Novel of War in Afghanistan. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks. pp.1-322. An overview of the Soviet-Afghanistan war, from the perspectives of the agents in both the CIA and the KGB. Bearden’s theme is to expose the dark side of being a government spy, showing that everyone is surrounded by inevitable danger. The Soviet Union is depicted as a corrupt state--trying to expand--dominance over the Eastern hemisphere. Bearden empasizing that many of the Russians disagreed with the actions of their government. The Afghans are mentioned, it in a violent or religious context." Milt Bearden. a thirty- year veteran of the CIA, masterminded and ran the CIA’s covert operations in Afghanistan. The novel brings history to life because it is based on actual events. [Kelly Tran] [Milt Bearden lives in Lyme NH recently gave a talk at the CFR and has had interviews mysteriously disappear OFF the web]

body

December 21, 1988: Pan Am 103 bombed over Lockerbie. The fire is being blamed on an entertainment system wiring problem yet the heat was so intense that aluminum was melted. Why has an incendiary device not be considered? Strangely, on board the aircraft was a Saudi prince whose family Osama bin Laden is attempting to overthrow.

As the 1998-99 LOW PETROLEUM PRICE CRISIS demonstrated, both state and federal governements need to act to reduce regulatory costs on domestic production" [ IPAA Americas Oil and Gas Producers – From Cheney Task Force notes]

Oil prices continue to plummet