FBI Grills Jack Kemp About Iraqi Contact (oil for food)

[TacticalPeek]

FBI Grills Jack Kemp About Iraqi Contact

The former vice presidential candidate has been connected to the Iraqi-American businessman who was indicted this week in the Oil-for-Food scandal. Kemp denies any wrongdoing

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 7:07 p.m. ET Jan. 19, 2005

Jan. 19 - Former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp has been questioned by the FBI about his dealings with an Iraqi-American businessman who this week became the target of the first Justice Department criminal indictment in the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal, NEWSWEEK has learned.

Kemp today confirmed that the FBI interviewed him last October about his contacts with Samir A. Vincent, a Northern Virginia oil trader who on Tuesday pled guilty to four criminal charges, including violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq and failing to register with the Justice Department as an agent of Saddam Hussein.

Specifically, the indictment states that Vincent illegally lobbied U.S. officials on behalf of the Iraqi government and received in exchange, along with unidentified co-conspirators, “millions of dollars in cash” as well as allocations for more than 9 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil under the Oil-for-Food program.

Sources familiar with the investigation say that Kemp, who was Bob Dole’s running mate in the 1996 presidential election, had a number of contacts with Vincent, which have been closely scrutinized by federal prosecutors. The contacts began in the late 1990s when Vincent—who Justice officials say was secretly acting as an Iraqi government agent—approached Kemp and offered to work with him on a plan that could have led to the easing of sanctions on Saddam’s regime.

more
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6845383/site/newsweek

[ooglymoogly]

1. one more nail in the coffin for pug hypocrisy eom

[ewagner]

2. This should be interesting.........

"...along with unidentified co-conspirators..."


Wonder who they have in mind? Do you think we'll ever know?

[saltpoint]

3. Does the FBI have anyone intelligent enough to interview Kemp?

No fan of Republicans generally, I think Kemp is one of the brighter of that bunch. His work at HUD is much missed.

I wonder how many Republicans wished Kemp and not Dole had been their nominee in 1996.

[oneighty]

4. Poor Jack

As he nervously tosses an old Buffalo Bills football back and forth between his trembling hands.

Empower America indeed.

180

[quaoar]

5. Fabulous

The Republicans have been trumpeting oil-for-food as the great scandal of our age to take everybody's mind off Bush's catalog of outrages and trash the U.N.

But what goes around comes around, doesn't it?

I guess Rush will have to move on to some other fiction now.

[JI7]

6. interesting, isn't Kemp one of the better Republicans around ?

[Auntie Bush]

8. But Kemp wants a FLAT tax. What a disaster that would be! n/t

[JI7]

9. i don't mean policy positions

i mean just as a person.

[underpants]

10. I sure hope Kemp isn't "Left Behind" by the GOP

After all, Tim LaHaye isn't merely a fringe figure like Hal Lindsey, the former king of the genre, whose 1970 Christian end-times book "The Late Great Planet Earth" was the bestseller of that decade. The former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, LaHaye was a member of the original board of directors of the Moral Majority and an organizer of the Council for National Policy, which ABCNews.com has called "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of" and whose membership has included John Ashcroft, Tommy Thompson and Oliver North. George W. Bush is still refusing to release a tape of a speech he gave to the group in 1999.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/07/29/left_behind/

[msanthrope]

7. WH eliminating the competition for 2008? n/t

[noonwitch]

11. They're going after Carter, Kemp is their sacrifice

The freepers are playing this as a Carter scandal.

The GOP would sacrifice Kemp to get Jimmy.

[GarySeven]

12. Jack Kemp opposed Poppy for the nomination

First rule of the Republicans: revenge

[Guns Aximbo]

13. he'll quickly be covered with a thick layer of....

Teflon.

[Supersedeas]

14. but but but we are SUPPOSED to be demonizing Kofi Kofi Kofi

not a former Republican Presidential hopeful.

That goes for David Duke too....

[underpants]

15. Yeah that is the best part of this

All the screaming yelling from the right to try to set this investigation in stone and the first person the FBI wants to talk to is Kemp. Hilarious.