Posted on 05/26/2002 5:52:53 AM PDT by rdavis84
My father worked for and retired from Texaco, does this mean I'm going to be linked to this scandal??? ;-) Going by this, anybody who owned stock in the oil companies is guilty of having "ties" to this scandal. It's the way business is done. It may not be pretty, but these companies do what they have to do in these countries. There is a lot of working going on in and around Nigeria right now, it's only a matter of time before somebody conjures up some kind of scandal and ties this person or that to it.
— W.B.T., Scranton, PA
A. Secretary of State Albright is divorced. Not long ago, however, the New York press was reporting that she was “stepping out” with diamond king Maurice Templesman. His business interests have included, to go along with those diamonds, the funding of so-called liberation movements in Africa.
Templesman has played among the elite set for some time, including living in the apartment of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Social observers may recall that Templesman and Mrs. Onassis entertained President and Mrs. Clinton aboard the businessman’s yacht in 1993 in Martha’s Vineyard. Templesman has been a major supporter of the Democratic Party and, of late, has worked with the State Department on a diamond consortium in Angola.
There are other possible political ramifications in these relationships. The late Michael Kennedy, who died recently in a skiing accident, was tied to the Angolan communists through his Citizens Energy project, which helped found the Angola Chamber of Commerce, widely regarded as a front for the Reds in Angola.
The Kennedy family has long had oil interests in Angola; Citizens Energy Corporation has been granted an oil concession by the ruling regime in Luanda. Angola also had an influential role in the overthrow of the government in Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the takeover there by Marxist-Leninist Laurent Desire Kabila.
Needing help from the West, Kabila recently brought back the “spin doctor” of the late dictator Mobutu, his longtime adversary, as noted in a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal. This is the same Kabila who was once written off by Che Guevara as a “womanizer and a drunk.” Yet he hopes to establish an “economic renaissance” in the Congo, based on its oil and diamonds, as noted in the Journal — which also reported that this renaissance wouldn’t work without the help of foreigners.
Accordingly, it is interesting that Secretary of State Albright visited the Congo not long ago and came out for more foreign aid for the new strong man.
From The New American. I originally found out about connection from a Portugese-Angolan partner of mine. I have and even better New Yorker article somewhere but can't find it. The truth is pretty nasty. We supported Castro's puppets so the Kennedys could enrich themselves.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/departments/right_answers/1998/vo14no07_answers.htm
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