Corporate Criminal of the Week: The Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group is a multi-billion dollar corporation that specializes in buying, restructuring, and selling financially troubled companies. The Carlyle Group is also the 11th largest military contractor in the United States. With these statistics, it may seem odd that the Indy would single out this corporation, except for one important reason: the Carlyle Group has been doing business with the Saudi Bin Laden Group (a multi-billion-dollar construction group run by Osama Bin Laden's brother). While this connection was mainly ignored in the corporate media, the Carlyle Group was eventually exposed by the independent media for a $2 million deal it made with the Bin Laden Group. The firm also made approximately $50 million a year training the Saudi Arabian National Guard (Carlyle also advises the Saudi royal family on its Economic Offset Program).

There is no doubt that Carlyle Group has been doing business with members of Osama Bin Laden's family. At the very best (even though members of Osama's family claimed they have cut him off), there is really no way to verify whether Osama's brother (running the Bin Laden Group) has really severed all ties to Osama Bin Laden. At the very worst, the Carlyle Group is guilty of working with those that may have been directly involved in financing and supporting the attacks of September 11th. Unfortunately, we will never know because the corporate media has not had the courage to ask this question.

What is certain though, is that many politicians in high positions in the U.S. government have been involved with the Carlyle Group. George Bush Sr. works as an advisor for the group, along with former Secretary of State James Baker. Both have made hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting the Carlyle Group.

But the connections in government to the Carlyle Group do not end there. George Bush's old firm Arbusto Energy, was also funded by an investment banker named James Bath,(an advisor for the Bin Laden family). One of the Bin Laden companies' major partners is the H.C. Price Company, a joint partnership between Dresser Industries and Shaw Industries, which are both owned by the Halliburton corporation. And guess who ran Halliburton? You guessed it, none other than Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney even coordinated the Dresser-Shaw purchase back in 1998.

With all the connections between U.S. politicians and Osama Bin Laden's family in mind, it is important to ask exactly what these connections mean. Judicial Watch spokesman Larry Klayman has said, "This conflict of interest has now turned into a scandal. The idea of the President's father, an ex-president himself, doing business with a company under investigation by the FBI in the terror attacks of September 11th is horrible." David Singer from the New York Times stated, "It stands to reason, that President Bush consults with his father on issues of the day. In a normal situation, this would be appropriate, but President Bush's father being effectively an agent of the Saudi Arabian government, it raises, in the least, a conflict of interest problem."

If Bin Laden's brother may still be supporting Osama (with Carlyle Group compliance), the question then becomes, do we want to bomb Saudi Arabia and Washington to take a firm stand against terrorism? Is this the way a rational state should pursue its foreign policy? Instead of bombing innocent people in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, the American people need to question the Bush Administration's links to radical terrorist groups.

The American people should demand a full investigation into the Bin Laden Group and the Carlyle Group, even if it leads to an indictment against George Bush Sr., Dick Cheney, and head officials of the Carlyle Group. This is a direct way that Americans will be able to hinder terrorist groups and make the U.S. a safer place.