FBI Grills Jack Kemp In Oil-For-Food Scandal

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FBI Grills Jack Kemp In Oil-For-Food Scandal
Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

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.

Over several years continuing until 2003, Vincent talked to Kemp roughly once a month about his proposal to improve U.S.-Iraqi relations, according to Kemp and Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and friend of Kemp’s who discussed the matter with him and offered to speak for him to NEWSWEEK on this matter. Davis, who was the former White House special counsel to President Clinton, said the discussions took place when Vincent would either come by Kemp’s office in Washington or call him on the phone.

Davis confirmed that in 2001, Kemp personally approached Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell about a version of his proposal, in which Kemp and other emissaries would fly to Iraq and negotiate an arrangement by which United Nations inspectors would be allowed back into the country in exchange for a gradual phase-out of U.N. sanctions. Kemp talked to Cheney at a social gathering about the plan and was rebuffed, Davis and Kemp said. Kemp also telephoned Powell about his proposal in which the former congressman would be joined on a trip to Baghdad by Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, and an associate of former president Jimmy Carter. Powell “showed no interest,” Davis said. (In September 1999, Vincent arranged for a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders to visit the United States and meet with Carter and Billy Graham, the Los Angeles Times reported today.)

Spokesmen for the State Department and Cheney’s office declined to respond to questions about contacts from Kemp on the grounds that the matter was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department.

Kemp said that Vincent had told him that Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister at the time, and other Iraqi officials were open to the idea of permitting U.N. inspectors back into Iraq. "I thought he was being honest with me," Kemp told NEWSWEEK. "Call it naivete, but that was the extent of it." He added that he is "happy" that Vincent is now cooperating with the Justice Department in its ongoing probe.

"A 21st Century Marshall Plan"

Kemp, who first became famous as a quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, today is chairman of an energy-trading company called Free Market Global and cochairs a conservative policy group called FreedomWorks. He maintains close contacts with top members of the Bush administration. Just last month, Kemp attended the White House ceremony at which President Bush presented the Medal of Freedom awards to former Iraq war commander Gen. Tommy Franks, former CIA director George Tenet and former U.S. administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer. Kemp attended as a personal guest of Franks, who serves on the board of Kemp’s energy firm.

In July 2003, shortly after the war, Kemp issued a statement declaring that he was trying to set up what he called “a 21st Century Marshall Plan” to foster economic development in the Middle East. A press release that Kemp issued at the time listed Vincent as a member of the committee developing the plan, along with such notables as former secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of State James Baker and former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

Vincent was first identified as a participant in the Oil-for-Food Program late last year when he was listed as a recipient of oil “vouchers” granted by Saddam’s regime in the lengthy report written by Charles Duelfer, the CIA’s chief weapons investigator in Iraq. After the Duelfer report came out, Kemp’s organization, FreedomWorks, temporarily removed the press release mentioning Vincent from its Web site, the group’s spokesman, Andrew Porter confirmed to NEWSWEEK.

Davis said that Kemp had put Vincent on the Marshall Plan committee because “he seemed to have knowledge about the Middle East and connections with the Iraqi government.” Kemp also said that he asked Carlucci, the chairman emeritus of the Carlyle Group, the prominent international investment firm, about Vincent. Carlucci told Kemp that Vincent was a "good guy," said Kemp, who added that Carlucci and Vincent were tennis partners. A spokesman for Carlucci, who served as Defense secretary during President Ronald Reagan’s second term, declined to comment on his relationship with Vincent.

One source close to the Vincent investigation said that Kemp and Vincent had discussions in which business dealings were “contemplated” but never consummated. But Kemp adamantly denied there were any such talks-and said his company, Free Market Global, has done no business in Iraq. “Never, never did [Kemp] discuss any business ventures with Vincent,” Davis added.

Kemp also serves on the board of a Kuwaiti-based company, Global Investment House, which has been seeking to set up business ventures in Iraq. But Kemp said that it has been unable to establish any such ventures due to the security problems in Iraq and that the Kuwaiti firm had no dealings with Vincent.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Vincent’s indictment and guilty pleas, portraying the Iraqi-American businessman as one of a number of “accomplices in corrupting and weakening the international sanctions program imposed” on Saddam Hussein after the first Persian Gulf War.

In a brief court appearance in New York on Tuesday, Vincent told U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin that in the early 1990s, he had become concerned about the effect that sanctions were having on the Iraqi public. He said that between 1992 and 1996, he met with Iraqi officials in New York and Baghdad to discuss the creation of a program under which Iraq would be allowed to sell crude oil under U.N. auspices and use the proceeds for humanitarian supplies. He said that during the course of these discussions, Saddam’s regime promised to pay “millions of dollars to me and others” if the U.N. set up an oil-for-food program.

Vincent said that after a visit to Baghdad in February 1996, he signed agreements with Iraqi officials regarding the setting up of an oil-for-food program and that subsequently “several million dollars in cash” was sent by the Iraqi government to Iraqi officials in New York. “Several hundred thousand dollars of this money was given to me in Manhattan, and the rest was given to others, one of whom I understood was a United Nations official,” Vincent said. He did not identify the U.N. official.

Between 1996 and 2003, Vincent told the judge, he continued to meet with Iraqi officials in Baghdad and New York to talk about how to persuade the U.S. government to ease sanctions against the Iraqi regime. It was during this time, he told the judge, that he “came to know a number of former U.S. government and U.S. intelligence officials who I understood had the ability to relay messages to policymakers.” Vincent said he used his contacts with the former U.S. officials to pass messages back and forth between Washington and Baghdad.

In his court appearance, Vincent did not identify any of these contacts among former U.S. government officials. But Davis acknowledged that it was in the early part of Vincent’s financial relationship with the Iraqi government that he first contacted Kemp and began dealing with the former congressman. Davis said that Vincent first called Kemp after reading a newspaper column that Kemp wrote in either 1998 or 1999 talking about his proposal to ease sanctions on Iraq in exchange for a return of “robust” U.N. weapons inspections. Vincent apparently discussed Kemp’s proposal with Aziz and the Iraqi ambassador to the U.N. Kemp, for his part, raised it with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who turned down the idea, according to Kemp and Davis.