September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front

Van Dyke, according to the lawsuit. Halliburton will appeal $77 million jury verdict.” [OilOnline,
11/4/2003]
Because of Mr. Cheney’s involvement on the Advisory Board to President Nazarbayev in
the creation of these various contracts being investigated by the FBI, it probably seemed
appropriate for President Nazarbayev to approach Cheney and request that Cheney run
interference on the FBI investigation. Evidently, there was an effort by the Department of
Justice to keep Nazarbayev’s name out of the trial, so it is possible Cheney encouraged
the Justice Department to “exempt Mr. Nazarbayev from prosecution” despite
Whitehouse claims to the contrary:
“WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have said that President Nursultan Nazarbayev of
Kazakhstan accepted large bribes in connection with dispensing his country's oil concessions during
the 1990's, and later tried to obstruct the federal inquiry into the payments, which came from
American oil companies, according to legal documents.
The allegations were made by the Justice Department in a sealed motion and described recently in a
letter of complaint from Kazakhstan's lawyers to the deputy attorney general. The letter was part of a
quiet effort to exempt Mr. Nazarbayev from prosecution.
Mr. Nazarbayev and his representatives have raised the issue with Vice President Dick Cheney and
other senior officials several times, but the effort to curb the investigation has been unsuccessful,
according to court records and officials of both governments. Administration officials said
Washington had rebuffed the Kazakhs' efforts.” [Bribery Inquiry Involves Kazakh Chief, and He's
Unhappy, New York Times, Jeff Gerth, 12/11/2002]
To a large degree, Mr. Nazarbayev’s name was not mentioned in the indictment, and he
was referred to as “co1” in the court documents (suggesting that contrary to what the
administration reported, the administration influenced the prosecutor to keep
Nazarbayev’s name out of the documents.) It is worth noting that while the Bush
administration publicly announced that Nazarbayev’s request to stifle the investigation
had been “rebuffed,” the facts suggest that is not what happened, and that the
administration actually did go out of its way to control the results:
“A source familiar with the grand jury investigations… said Ashcroft has quietly moved… to exert
control over the New York grand jury from Washington and to exercise “unusual” influence over the
Washington investigations. FTW has also received multiple reports that several high-ranking career
prosecutors in both New York and Washington have raised serious objections to Ashcroft’s actions and
his failure to publicly recluse himself in these cases.
Channing Phillips, speaking for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. told FTW, “I checked
with [Assistant U.S. Attorney] Wendy Wysong and she confirmed that the investigation is still
ongoing. There are three aspects to these investigations: one in New York, one in Washington [at the
U.S. Attorney’s office] and one at main Justice [DoJ headquarters]. If the attorney general had reclused
himself, we would know about it, and we are not aware of any such development.” ….Ashcroft’s
decision in this case had an impact on the grand jury process. According to the Times, “Officials in
Washington have not said where grand juries investigating the attacks will sit, or where the indictments
may eventually be brought.…”
The two grand juries have been investigating allegations that ExxonMobil, the world’s largest
corporation, and BP-Amoco paid cash bribes to the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev,
and his oil minister, Nurlan Balgymbayev, and that Mobil engaged in an illegal oil swap of Kazakh oil
through Iran in 1997. Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force -- now the center of a
constitutional battle over the release of its records -- was meeting representatives of both companies
after the grand juries had been empanelled as a result of information received from a Middle Eastern
source in 1997 and inquiries from Swiss banks in 1999. The fact that these known targets of criminal
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