Port Deal Update: Terrorists Tied-In, Congress Complains, Bush Backpedals

An AP article released today says that the 9/11 Commission's report "raised concers that UAE officials were directly associating with bin Laden as recently as 1999." The report also states that bin Laden visited a hunting camp used by the UAE in the Afghan desert.

According to the AP report, commission sources claimed that "Bin Laden regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited the Emiratis ... National technical intelligence confirmed the location and description of the larger camp and showed the nearby presence of an official aircraft of the United Arab Emirates."

Alongside this, in a September 14th, 2001 report, Guardian Unlimited reported that investigators had not only connected some of the September 11th terrorists to the UAE, but also noted that one of the bombers of the U.S.S. Cole had received his orders from a co-conspirator based inside the UAE.

The UAE (United Arab Emerites) has made a $6.8 billion bid to purchase the company that handles six major U.S. ports. The White House initially said that there was no reason to hold up the deal. In an impromptu press conference aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, Dubya told the members of the press that were traveling with him that he fully believed that the deal should be allowed to go through. It was revealed shortly afterward that the President had not even heard about the deal until after his administration had approved the deal. That did not, however, keep him from insisting that everything was fine, and that there was no security risk - an issue of concern to numerous members of Congress who have contacted the White House about the port deal.

The latest news is that 11 House representatives from the House Judiciary Committee, led by Jon Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), sent a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales questioning whether or not the port deal with Dubai was legal.

The letter, signed by Representatives Conyers, Howard Berman (D-CA), Rick Boucher (D-VA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Marty Meehan (D-MA), William Delahunt (D-MA), Robert Wexler (D-FL), Anthony D. Weiner (D-NY), Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), also puts forth several questions they would like answers to:

1. What is your legal authority for failing to conduct mandatory reviews even where security concerns could be implicated? Has this legal interpretation been reviewed and confirmed by anyone in the present Administration - either before or after the September 11, 2001 attacks?


2. Were memoranda or other materials prepared outlining this legal interpretation by anyone in the present Administration? If so, by whom? Please provide copies of such memoranda or other materials. Were any dissenting memoranda or other materials prepared? If so, by whom? Please provide copies of such memoranda or other materials.


3. Did the President review the decision to approve the DPW transaction? Did he delegate his mandatory authority to make these decisions to other individuals within the Administration? If so, when and to whom? Please provide a copy of any delegation materials.


4. How many foreign direct investment transactions have been approved by the Administration? How many of these have been subject to the mandatory 45-day review period required by the Byrd Amendment?

Question number 3 is an easy answer: No, he didn't review it. Scotty McClellan said as much in a press conference Wednesday. (Sorry... The only clip I could find concerning the press conference comes from The Daily Show. But that's okay, because it's funny, too!) According to McClellan, Dubya found out about the deal...after it had been approved...by watching the news.

In an attempt to convince everyone that the deal has to go through, the Pentagon today fell back on that old classic, "If it doesn't go through, the terrorists have won," according to a CNN article:

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the Senate Armed Services Committee that blocking the deal could ostracize one of the United States' few Arab allies.

"The terrorists want our nation to become distrustful," England said. "They want us to become paranoid and isolationist, and my view is we cannot allow this to happen. It needs to be just the opposite."

Meanwhile, Karl Rove, speaking today on Tony Snow's Fox News radio program, said the president is now considering delaying the deal, adding that the deal still isn't done in the United Kingdom.

From the article linked above:

"There are some hurdles, regulatory hurdles, that this still needs to go through on the British side as well that are going to be concluded next week," Rove said. "There's no requirement that it close immediately after that. But our interest is in making certain the members of Congress have full information about it, and that, we're convinced, will give them a level of comfort with this."

Quite a reversal from earlier in the week.

More as this story develops.

All the best,
Derek
(DCF)