Rumsfeld set to get richer on Bird Flu

4 Comments

1. 

   vida on November 1, 2005 at 12:12 pm

   Gilead? Like the right wing distopia in A Handmaids Tale? Okay, I’m going to pull the covers over my head for a while now…

2. 

   Kidspeak on November 1, 2005 at 7:35 pm

   There has got to be a gene that the absence of which makes you have a total lack of ethics on a large scale.  

   Now THAT’s a research project that I’d like to spin to the National Institutes of Health!

   I’ve been sitting here reading the local papers about some of the more egregious ethical lapses of our local democratic office holders present and past (e.g. school board members, whose idea of a code of ethics for members is simply not being in the child abuse database. Hmm. I wonder if that’s what they meant by declaring that the Bushies would have the most “ethical” government ever. . . ).  

   And personally, I’ve been troubled that a book publisher – whose textbook I really like – has just offered to pay my $150 membership fee in one of my professional organizations. That’s a bribe anyway I look at it, though I could seriously use the money. My conscience just will not let me do it. And I’m wondering if I should even use their textbook lest anyone think that I took their money.

   But. . . millions of dollars for Tamiflu, and you are the leader of an entire branch of government, many members of which will be vaccinated at government expense????

3. 

   Kidspeak on November 1, 2005 at 7:38 pm

   Ductape, at this point, I have to go sit in the corner for a while and ponder the state of the world.  This is, , just, , I can’t stand the war, the deaths, the utter insanity, and the craveness of it all.  Time to perform a vital function.  I’m going to hold a cat for a while, and go eat chocolate, reverting to age 3!

4. 

   DuctapeFatwa on November 1, 2005 at 7:48 pm

   What if the reader learned that America’s only source of Anthrax vaccine comes from a company who’s majority owners have been George H.W. Bush’s Carlye Group and the brothers of Osama bin Laden? What is the reaction when one learns that the only customer of the company is the Federal Government, and the President’s father stands to make a huge profit from the Anthrax scare?

   The difference from the reader’s tale is that the following story is true-unlikely, as it may seem. .

   Elements of the story have appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, each one time, but until now, no complete account of this strange series of coincidences have appeared in print. This newspaper has constructed the story from the aforementioned press resources, Internet websites like Rense.com, and SEC information provided by sources.

   The Louisiana Weekly implies no conspiracy-merely an unusual story raising many questions.

   Most Americans today remember where they were on the morning of September 11th. The stockholders of the Carlyle Group are no exception.

   In the plush Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington DC, the annual investor conference of one of the most well connected companies in the world had just come to order. Present were former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of State James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family.

   They stood transfixed to televisions as the day’s events unfolded having no notion how unexpectedly important this little heard of company would become.

   That the Carlyle Group had its conference on America’s darkest day was mere coincidence, but there is nothing accidental about the cast of characters that this private-equity powerhouse has assembled in the 14 years since its founding. Among those associated with Carlyle are former U.S. president George Bush Sr., former U.K. Prime Minister John Major, and former President of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. And Carlyle has counted George Soros, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden’s estranged family among its high-profile clientele.

   The group has been able to parlay its political clout into a lucrative buyout practice (in other words, purchasing struggling companies, turning them around, and selling them for huge profits)–everything from defense contractors to telecommunications and aerospace companies. It is a kind of ruthless investing made popular by the movie Wall Street, and any industry that relies heavily on government regulation is fair game for Carlyle’s brand of capitalism. Carlyle has established itself as the gatekeeper between private business interests and U.S. defense spending. And as the Carlyle investors watched the World Trade towers go down, the group’s prospects went up.

   In running what its own marketing literature spookily calls “a vast, interlocking, global network of businesses and investment professionals” that operates within the so-called iron triangle of industry, government, and the military, the Carlyle Group leaves itself open to any number of conflicts of interest and stunning ironies.

   For example, it is hard to ignore the fact that Osama bin Laden’s family members, who renounced their son 10 years ago, stood to gain financially from the war being waged against him until late October, when public criticism of the relationship forced them to liquidate their holdings in the firm. Or consider that U.S. president George W. Bush is in a position to make budgetary decisions that could pad his father’s bank account.

   But for the Carlyle Group, walking that narrow line is the art of doing business at the murky intersection of Washington politics, national security, and private capital; mastering it has enabled the group to amass $12 billion in funds under management.

   Some of those same connections have watchdogs howling, but they also will keep Carlyle in the black for as long as the war against terrorism endures.

   The press has turned some focus on Carlyle’s connections with the nation’s 11th-largest defense contractor, United Defense. Wartime is apparently boom time because less than a month after U.S. troops began bombing Afghanistan, the Carlyle Group filed to take public United Defense, a company it has owned for nearly a decade. That this company could even make a public offering is a testament to the Carlyle Group’s pull in Washington.

   Even more evidence of the Group’s pull comes when one learns that United Defense makes the controversial Crusader. It is a 42-ton, self-propelled howitzer that moves and operates much like a tank and can lob ten 155-mm shells per minute as far as 40 kilometers. The Crusader has been in the sights of Pentagon budget cutters since the Clinton Administration, which argued that it was a relic of the Cold War era-too heavy and slow for today’s warfare. Even the Pentagon had recommended the program be discontinued. But remarkably, the $11 billion contract for the Crusader is still alive, thanks largely to the Carlyle Group.

   “This is very much an example of a cold war-inspired weapon whose time has passed,” noted Steve Grundman to the New York Times, a consultant at Charles River Associates, a defense and aerospace consultancy in Boston. “Its liabilities were uncovered during the Kosovo campaign, when the Army was unable to deploy it in time. It is exceedingly expensive, and it was a wake-up call to the Army that many of its forces are no longer relevant.”

   But the Carlyle Group would have none of that. While it is impossible to say what U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was thinking when he made the decision to keep the Crusader program alive, people close to the situation claim to have a pretty good idea. Mr. Carlucci and Mr. Rumsfeld are good friends and former wrestling partners from their undergraduate days at Princeton University. And while Carlyle executives are quick to reject any accusations of them lobbying the current administration, others are not so sure.

   Ironically, though, while the press has covered the conflicting tale of the Crusader’s re-authorization in some depth, it has all but ignored the Carlyle Group’s greatest post Sept. 11 triumph, the rise in profits of its investments, BioPort.

   BioPort Corporation is the only company in the United States with a license to make the Anthrax Vaccine. In actuality, BioPort does not actually make the vaccine; it acquired the lab that does, in 1998, Michigan Biologic Products Institute, from the State of Michigan.

   Along with the actual Anthrax Vaccine, BioPort acquired Michigan Biologic Products Institute’s sole and exclusive customer for the vaccine, the U.S. Department of Defense.

   Yet, the great paradox of the situation comes when one learns that since acquiring Michigan Biologics, BioPort has barely delivered a drop of the stuff!

   Only 4% of the vaccine contracted for has been delivered. FDA audits have uncovered suspicious record keeping and contamination problems, causing the FDA to ban delivery of the product. Despite this ban, the U.S. Government has continued to front BioPort millions of dollars to keep the operation going.

   It turned out to be a good investment. Market demand has pushed the price of the product high above the contracted for $3.50 an ounce.

   The Bin Laden family trust invested in BioPort at the advice of the Carlyle Group as they have in a myriad of projects. The brothers did divest themselves of their ownership stakes after the Wall Street Journal briefly mentioned the close relationship between Carlyle and their family. George H.W. Bush and the others continue to profit from BioPort. Some estimates put the shortage created by the FDA bans as driving the price of the vaccine up to thousands of dollars per ounce. (The same amount of Anthrax treatment Cipro that sells for $20 in India now costs $690 in the U.S).

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