http://yblogza.com/2003_08_01_archive.htmlOn Friday May 16, 2003, the Dutch magazine programme, Tegenlicht, aired an investigative insert, De Ijzeren Driehoek, on Washington-based private-equity merchant bank, The Carlyle Group. Featuring Dan Briody, author of The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group, and Tim Shorrock of The Nation, Tegenlicht interviews Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity and Carlyle Group co-founder and former Marriott director Steve Norris.
The 48-minute RealPlayer documentary shows the mechanisms The Carlyle Group uses to dominate a world where wars are markets and people are worth only as much as they able or willing to further the interests of a fast-growing military-industrial elite. It ultimately raises the rather lame question, "Do we have a conflict of interests at work in global politics or do we have a new way of doing business?"
Briody, author of the provocative January 2002 Red Herring article Carlyle's Way offers background. Not subject to SEC rulings, Carlyle operates under a cloak of secrecy and is now the world's 11th or twelfth largest defense contractor, enjoying a multi-billion dollar annual turnover, "obscenely high profit margins" and controlling interests in many major defense, aerospace, communications and infrastructure firms in Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East.
Bolstered by huge profits made off its sale of aerospace company Fairchild, Carlyle began operating in government-regulated industries, using former serving politicians as its front men. It has made its investors and those who work for it extremely wealthy. As Carlyle defense expert Frank Finelli points out at a select presentation, Carlyle's business is now to garner the largest slice of the US DoD's $380bn budget "pie".
Describing his 25 years working on every side of "The Iron Triangle" as "a lot of fun", Finelli and his business buddies are into what Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against, a military-industrial complex so large and powerful it directly influences the politics of war.
Briody takes center stage and introduces Steve Norris, whose statements openly back the reporter's contentions. Founded by Norris and former Carter aide David Rubenstein, Carlyle epitomises everything against which Eisenhower warned. To those operating at the confluence of big business, defense and politics, war is an excellent investment offering high returns.
With Norris and Rubenstein at the helm, Carlyle perfected its investment strategies. Its export of WMD and wholesale death to the highest bidder is now "the way things are around here".
Carlyle critic, Democratic congresswoman and conspiracy theorist Cynthia McKinney relates her run-in with Carlyle following criticism of the Bush administration's ignoring a defense panel review's rejection of United Defense Industries' Crusader missile
. Next up is the Center for Public Integrity's Charles Lewis, who recounts Carlyle's rebuttal of his criticism of Bush Sr., supposedly a fine and decent man.
A new Mafia, far more powerful than those serving it, i.e. the United States federal government, its defense apparatus, and the countries in which Carlyle operates, holds the world in the palms of its bloodstained hands. Nowhere is this 'super government' more evident than in the horror engulfing the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Yet, in two years of Cheney favouring Halliburton, a similar time considering the implications of Carlyle and similar companies' revolving door policies, and more than enough time to sweep the likes of Enron under the carpet, Americans have remained unmoved. Most see no conflicts of interest.
"...the Good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would normally not choose to go. But, we go where the business is."
Dick Cheney Blasphemer
Now that Americans have been told by their politicians that they are illegally occupying Iraq because it seems like a good way to spend upwards of $5bn monthly, it is this myopia, rather than any marriage of converging conveniences, that is the greatest problem facing Americans today.
The size and scope of Carlyle's investments and operations are what make it so dangerous. It owes its success to former Reagan Secretary of Defense and long-time Rumsfeld friend Frank Carlucci. Carlucci, capitalising on policies he set while in office, took Carlyle into the defense industry. Its fortunes boosted by the Gulf War, Carlucci brought on board George Bush Sr., James Baker III, Arthur Levitt of the SEC, Richard Darman, former White House budget director, William Kennard of the FCC, former British Prime Minister John Major, former Bundesbank chief Karl Otto Pohl, Eberhard Kuenheim of BMW, former Philippines president Fidel Ramos, and the former leaders of Thailand and South Korea.
It is here that the value of Tegenlicht's insert kicks in. Not satisfied with using their knowledge to predict global trends, the politicians waiting their next term on Capitol Hill earn their place on Carlyle's payroll by dictating those trends.
"I haven't been involved in a lot of venture deals where the participation of a president mattered that much."
Jack Biddle Novak Biddle Venture Partners
No civilised country would tolerate the close relationship Carlyle and, by practical extension, United States' president George W. Bush, enjoy with the Saudi royal family and its cohorts in terror, repression and murder. The behaviour of those setting the agenda of our global future is unconscionable at best and downright evil when taken at face value.
The documentary is thoroughly researched, well presented, and carries no trace of the conspiratorial. The facts speak for themselves. Sowing death, destruction and terror about the globe, George W. Bush and his power-crazed sidekicks, supporters and collaborators are everything they pretend others to be; namely, global terrorists bent on furthering selfish interests.
Returning to Tegenlicht's rather lame question, "Do we have a conflict of interests at work in global politics or do we have a new way of doing business?", I'd answer it with another. "Knowing the criminals running the United States are using conflicts of interest and a new way of doing business to their advantage, why the hell is the silence so deafening?"
"We're determined, as well, not to let murderers decide the future of the Middle East."
George W. Bush International Terrorist
If you're unable to view the Tegenlicht documentary, Carlyle's Way is essential reading. Alternatively, listen to Briody's NPR interview. While Tegenlicht offers a comprehensive rundown of the shadowy organisation's interests and front men, it is in Dutch. Here in Reality offers much the same information, as well as links to articles on Carlyle's nefarious business practices. Once past the gaudy banners at CarlyleGroup.Net, more detailed articles, including Tim Shorrock's Crony Capitalism Goes Global, give a thorough rundown on what should be common knowledge.
My interest in the subject is, of course, purely academic.
"Carlyle will always have to defend itself and will never be able to convince certain people that they aren't capable of forging murky backroom deals. George Bush's father does profit when the Carlyle Group profits, but to make the leap that the president would base decisions on that is to say that the president is corrupt."
David Snow Editor: PrivateEquityCentral.net
Indeed.