Oil-for-Food exec a Russian spy
posted at 6:05 pm on March 28, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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The complicity of Russia in the Oil for Food scandal just got a lot clearer. The man responsible for setting the price of Iraqi oil and oversaw the production and sale of crude was a Russian agent in the SVR, the foreign intelligence service. He won the highest civilian commendation from Vladimir Putin for his penetration of the UN (via Newsbeat1):
A UN official who held a pivotal post in the Oil-for-Food programme for Iraq has been exposed by a defector as a Russian spy who diverted almost half a billion dollars to top Russian officials in “one of the richest heists in world history”.
Alexandre Kramar, who set the price of Iraqi crude as a UN oil overseer from 1996 to 2003, was an undercover agent for Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the SVR, his former handler says.
The revelation throws new light on the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, which implicated dozens of politicians, diplomats and businessmen around the world, as well as the UN official overseeing the programme, and the son of the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
It provides fresh evidence of Russia’s complicity in helping Saddam Hussein to circumvent UN sanctions imposed after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The crumbling of the UN embargo, which was designed to prevent Iraq from rebuilding its weapons of mass destruction, was one of the factors behind the US and British decision to go to war in 2003.
Kramar got unmasked not because of any investigation into the Oil-for-Food scam, but because his SVR handler in New York defected over seven years ago and revealed it in an upcoming book. Sergei Tretyakov considers Kramar his best operative during his career as SVR station chief in Manhattan, and for good reason: he turned a healthy profit. While he helped run the OFF program, Kramar delivered over $500 million in kickbacks to Russian government officials, during the administrations of both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
Russia, one will recall, bitterly opposed the efforts by the US to invade Iraq. Along with France, the Russians had deeply commercial reasons for their efforts to keep the status quo in place. With their spy in place and a tap into the flow of Iraqi crude, the Russians would never have a chance to profit like that in an open market. They needed Saddam in place, brutally oppressing his own people, so that Russia and Saddam could steal the money that was supposed to feed the Iraqis who suffered under the heavy economic sanctions that supposedly put Saddam in a “box”.
The use of a spy to subvert the UN OFF program is a breathtakingly cynical and morbidly evil act by Russia. It would never have been discovered, either, without the invasion that toppled Saddam and exposed the OFF fraud in 2003. Russia, with its deliberate and official manipulation of the program, kept Saddam in power and made it necessary to have a military intervention. Had the UN nations actually abided by the sanctions regime, Saddam may well have either capitulated or grown weak enough internally for the Iraqis to take him out themselves.
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Anything on George Galloway yet?
RobCon on March 28, 2008 at 6:11 PM
The Corleone family trembles as Ivan walks the streets.
Limerick on March 28, 2008 at 6:15 PM
Does this not seem like it is really really important?
VolMagic on March 28, 2008 at 6:20 PM
And we all thought Yeltsin was just a drunken idiot. I guess he was actually a filthy rich drunked idiot.
innominatus on March 28, 2008 at 6:30 PM
The only reason I’ve felt the UN ought to remain in NY was the expectation that the building was riddled with listening devices and that we knew when someone farted inside it.
Now it sounds like we knew squat. Let’s hope Russia’s “agent” in the UN wasn’t unknown to our intellig. svces. Also, let’s just assume they’re all “agents” and act accordingly.
JiangxiDad on March 28, 2008 at 6:32 PM
Captain Ed, is the picture becoming clearer?
Red Pill on March 28, 2008 at 6:33 PM
McCain’s “screw Russia” rhetoric in his last speech just started sounding a lot better to me.
Hopefully his “League of Democracies” idea includes us dropping out of the U.N. forever.
joewm315 on March 28, 2008 at 6:36 PM
If a diplomat accidentally dropped a ten dollar bill at an official function in Moscow, its an incident and a price has to be paid.
The Russians however can cause an a American war costing perhaps a trillion dollars, thousands of American lives and many more casualties, directly contribute advanced weapons, strategists (remember we shot them up when Baghdad fell, they had the gaul to complain) and directly benefit through the corruption of oil mandates, money laundering and and billions from those illegal weapons sales and much more and we will not hold them accountable for even so much as stopping the nuclear development in Iran.
The Russians will skate just like they already have countless times before.
I’ve always wanted somebody in the State Dept. to clear that stinky little foggy bottom up so us peons could understand it.
Speakup on March 28, 2008 at 6:43 PM
I thought I was a jaded person. I thought I was a cynic. I thought I was ready for any form of corruption from the U.N. I thought wrong. This is so beyond the pale. Why the frack hasn’t the Media run story after story on this heinous crime? Theft of the century, maybe? But no, we need to hear about Global Warming and other tripe. I’m sickened.
Viscount_Bolingbroke on March 28, 2008 at 6:48 PM
I’ve always advocated Get the USA out of the UN, Get the UN out of the USA.
cjs1943 on March 28, 2008 at 6:51 PM
This further obliterates the whole idea that peace could have been achieved if only Bush would have kept working with the UN negotiating with Saddam. Saddam, Russia and France were making money hand over fist, they would have gladly negotiated forever.
RJL on March 28, 2008 at 6:53 PM
Communists have been focused on brining the United States of America to its knees ever since Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848. The progress that was made in the Reagan years was due to the fact that both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were Christians.
Unfortunately, since the Berlin wall came down, many people in this country let their defenses down, too. That has been a mistake.
Watch this movie. At the very least, follow the link and watch the trailer. This is real, and it’s not an isolated event.
Joe McCarthy was right. Communists have worked their way into every branch of our government. And if we’re not careful, this next election could determine whether they end up controlling the Supreme Court of the United States.
McCain was forced to vote for Roberts and Alito because he wouldn’t have had a chance to be the Republican nominee if he had voted against either of them. Why did McCain call Alito “too conservative”? We need to ensure that our next President won’t put another Souter on the Supreme Court.
Red Pill on March 28, 2008 at 7:09 PM
1) Most of the media is controlled by “Democratic Socialists”/Communists.
2) Global Warming is a hoax to get people to vote for “Democratic Socialists”/Communists.
Red Pill on March 28, 2008 at 7:12 PM
Amen! I second the motion. The UN is likely the most corrupt body on the planet. And President Bill Clinton unconstitutionally put our military troops under the command of the UN in Somalia. That’s what led to Black Hawk Down.
Red Pill on March 28, 2008 at 7:16 PM
Bingo!
Red Pill on March 28, 2008 at 7:17 PM
McCarthy was right and the Commies and their faux Democracy are still out to take us down.
That just doesn’t excuse our limp wristed stupidity that we’ve displayed, to the Russians benefit, these last twenty years.
Speakup on March 28, 2008 at 7:27 PM
One other thing that the Democratic Socialists/Communists don’t seem to understand is some simple logic. I learned this in High School:
If p->q (”p implies q”) is true, then !q->!p (”not q implies not p”) is also true, but !p->!q (”not p implies not q”) is indeterminate (you don’t know if it’s true of not).
Example:
If it’s raining implies that there are clouds nearby, then if there are no clouds nearby then it’s not raining. That’s an example of p->q is true so !q->!p is also true. But !p->!q is indeterminate: If it’s not raining, it’s indeterminate whether or not there are clouds nearby.
Application:
If we find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that proves that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is equally true that if there were never weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, then we wouldn’t find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. However, the statement “we didn’t find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so that implies that there were never weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” is indeterminate. Not finding them does not prove that they were never there. The following are all possible answers to not finding them:
1) They never existed.
2) They existed, but were destroyed before we found them.
3) They existed, but were shipped out of the country before we found them.
4) They existed, but were hidden so well that we have yet to find them.
There is evidence to suggest that #3 is true.
Red Pill on March 28, 2008 at 7:32 PM
It never really happened. Nobody knows about it. Nobody has been punished for it. So, it never happened.
TheBigOldDog on March 28, 2008 at 7:42 PM
And but for that big toe nail that got ripped off nobody would even remember.
Speakup on March 28, 2008 at 7:55 PM
And this is the same massively corrupt and criminal organization that Senator Barack Obama wants the United States to donate .7 of our GNP to (estimated to be @ $845 Billion over the next 15 years), to help eradicate “global poverty.” All the thieves . . . er, diplomats, at the U.N. must be salivating over the prospect of getting their grubby hands on that much U.S. cash. It’ll make their oil-for-food pilfering look like nickel and dime stuff.
AZCoyote on March 28, 2008 at 8:01 PM
Let’s give the UN control of the seas and our economy via LOST! Yeah, that’ll do it…
Maquis on March 28, 2008 at 8:39 PM
Most people Look at the presidents of the last 48 years this way:
Try looking at that from a different perspective:
See if historical events doesn’t make more sense in that light. I know some of you will claim that Carter is Christian, but I think believe that true Christians support Israel and the Jews. Carter doesn’t. Anybody remember who Carter’s National Security Advisor was? Zbigniew Brzezinski. Think about that from a Communist standpoint. Some of his “accomplishments” include the transition of Iran to an anti-Western Islamic state, arming the mujaheddin in Afghanistan (some of which would later form the Taliban and would shelter Al Qaeda camps), and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.
Anybody know who is one of Senator Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers for the presidential campaign of 2008? Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Others of you will be surprised that I have George H. W. Bush down as a Communist. I think I’m right about that. Both George H. W. Bush and Dick Cheney are members of the Trilateral Commission. George W. Bush is a Christian, but some of the people he trusts around him are not. He trusts his own father, because he is his father. He trusts Cheney because his father told him to trust Cheney.
In my opinion it appears that the communists were behind the assassination of JFK, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (when Leonid Brezhnev was still in power), and the attempted assassination of George W. Bush.
In my opinion it appears that the Christian presidents all fought the Communists (including George W. Bush, as Russians are supporting Iranians fighting us in Iraq), while the Communist presidents all sabotaged our military in conflicts around the world.
Communists are clearly anti-Christian. They killed the parents of Gorbachev’s wife Raisa during the Second World War for having Christian icons in their home.
Christian Presidents of the USA fight against Communism around the world.
Communist Presidents of the USA fight for Communism in the USA.
In my opinion it appears that the three remaining Presidential candidates are all Communists. Shout me down all you want, but compare and contrast McCain’s record in the Senate with the published agenda of the Communist Party USA.
We can’t afford to make a mistake this November. Pray. Now.
When God works a miracle to make a true Christian (one who can confess with their mouth that “Jesus is Lord”) candidate for President again this election, vote for that candidate!
This isn’t about Congress establishing a religion (1st amendment, often misconstrued to incorrectly imply a “separation of church and state”). This about following the recommendation of the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court:
Red Pill on March 28, 2008 at 8:41 PM
Reason number 198,749 to kick the UN out of the USA. Ba$tard$.
Zorro on March 28, 2008 at 8:47 PM
Captain Ed,
Please dig for answers on this:
I’d like to know what was discussed during their three-hour long “brief dialogue” with Russian officials.
Red Pill on March 28, 2008 at 8:49 PM
Is history is repeating itself? You tell me…
Past: Kim Philby:
Son born to military officer in foreign country.
Introduced to and became an admirer of Communism.
Referred him to a Communist front organization called the World Federation for the Relief of the Victims of German Fascism in Paris. The World Federation was one of innumerable fronts operated by the German Communist Willi Münzenberg who was a leading Soviet agent in the West.
Present: John McCain
Son born to military officer in foreign country.
Introduced to and possibly became an admirer of Communism. (his Senate record sure seems to indicate an admiration for socialism/communism)
Klaus Martin Schwab (born March 30, 1938) is a
SwissGerman economist and businessman, best known as the president and founder of the World Economic Forum. His wife and former secretary, Hilde, works with him on some of his projects. He was born in 1938 in Ravensburg, Germany.Red Pill on March 29, 2008 at 12:55 AM
Bingo. And how many people died because of their venality? Paging Cindy Sheehan.
Buy Danish on March 29, 2008 at 8:26 AM
It depresses me that the only Google news return for “Alexandre Kramar” comes from The Times; has his name been misspelled, or does the western world not give two hoots about this issue?
Apeking on March 29, 2008 at 11:12 AM
This story is huge if true. Bad enough most of the UN nations are anti American but now we have to worry about plants from the Russians. When I was in the military in the 90’s there was a grizzled old warrant officer who hammered it into our heads that just because the Soviet Union was falling apart it didn’t mean that they weren’t the biggest threat still. He said there were still too many communist hard liners in the government. We need to wake up, Russia does everything they can to counter us. This is no different than what they did as a communist country. They just want back their old power and the west lets them bully their way to it.
kongzilla on March 29, 2008 at 12:49 PM
I’m sure PBS’s “Frontline”, or perhaps the taxpayer-funded PBS shill Bill Moyers, will immediately rushh out an expose of this development-but only if they can find a way to tie the evil Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld into the equation.
It’s interesting to note that a Google news search on “Alexandre Kramar” returns exactly ONE hit, namely the story Ed links to. The rest of the “objective news media” are totally ignoring this story. Gee, I wonder why?
Del Dolemonte on March 29, 2008 at 1:12 PM
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