Our Nation’s Peril
International Terrorism and Hill Bonin, Atypical
By Rense Johnson, Chairman of Citizens for Term Limits
When the President of the United States in his State of the Union address talks about energy independence and the unreliability of foreign sources of oil, it is useful to review a little history.
Mainstream press will never tell you this, and no more than one in 100,000 Americans know it, but international terrorism is being financed with money stolen from the large international oil companies.
Hill Bonin, a co-founder of Citizens for Term Limits, had been at one time president of Gulf Oil International. Hill ran all of Gulf’s world-wide foreign operations, which, as one could imagine, dwarfed Gulf’s domestic production. He held that job at the time during the Jimmy Carter Administration when OPEC host countries were picking off the international oil companies one by one, unilaterally invalidating their concessions and booting them out of their countries.
These big international oil companies, then called the “Seven Sisters” comprised Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard of New York, Standard of California, Texaco and Bonin’s company, Gulf, all American companies — together with British Petroleum (English) and Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands), the latter two each with a large U. S. presence in refining and marketing.
Bonin (now deceased) was an atypical major oil company executive. He understood what was going on and how to stop it. He told me before he died how he had gotten together with his opposite numbers from the other international oil companies and had gone as a group to our State Department, to ask permission to present a united front to the host countries.
He never mentioned it to me, but I’m sure he was recalling how the oil companies had dealt with Mohammad Mossadeqh, the Iranian leader who had confiscated the Iranian oil fields earlier. They had told him “OK, you’ve got the oil. What are you going to do with it, drink it? We have the downstream operations — transportation, refining, petrochemical and marketing capabilities.” They held all the cards. Mossadeqh had no choice but to come to terms. [Then think in today’s terms about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.]
A concession is actually an arms-length negotiated contract between the host country and the oil company, whereby the oil company agrees to spend large amounts of money exploring the concession area in the search for oil, and if successful gives the host country a share of the oil found.
That is the intent and purpose of concessions. But how much easier for a middle eastern country to kick the oil company out — lock, stock and barrel — and keep it all! Especially when aided and abetted by our own State Department. Read on.
To give a (transparent) cover of legitimacy to their theft, the OPEC countries indicated they would “pay” the oil companies for the oil they stole. Because middle eastern oil at that time had been designated “old oil” by our foolish regulatory system, it was assigned a price of $5.25 per barrel. (This was unilaterally assigned by the OPEC countries despite the fact that $5.25 was an artificial domestic US price — a phony Jimmy Carter price. Uncontrolled oil was selling for much more.) But because of the size of the reserves and the many decades before they would all be produced, “payment” was discounted at Jimmy Carter’s double-digit interest rates to pennies per barrel. Which the Arabs then sold back to us at $20 to $40 per barrel. [Costs in early 2006 are much higher, as we all know.]
Bonin would likely have been the next CEO of the parent company, but when T. Boone Pickens drove Gulf into the arms of California Standard, Bonin knew that Standard of Cal had all the CEOs they needed. That was when Bonin retired to Lafayette, Louisiana, where the oil industry’s loss was term limits’ gain.
At any rate, Bonin and his friends got the cold shoulder from our State Department. They were told that if they did what they were suggesting — they would all go to jail.
Even now it is difficult to understand what kind of thinking was behind such incredible stupidity.
This was the exact time when the oil companies could have and should have struck. The OPEC countries had no way of refining or marketing the oil, and could have wounded up. with egg on their faces. (Forgive the metaphor.) Now it is too late, for obvious reasons. They now have ways of handling downstream operations.
The effect this has had on the geopolitical history of our era has been tectonic. Think of where this country — and the world — would be now, had Bonin and his group gotten a green light from our State Department! Contemplate the hundreds of billions of dollars — perhaps trillions — that have been transferred from the US economy to these middle-eastern peoples, most of whom wish us harm — not to mention Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. You remember Chavez, who came to power in 1998.
We have discovered the extent to which terrorism is a Big Bucks industry. How much of the recent terrorism we have witnessed would not have been mounted for lack of the oil money? Likely just about all of it
Gulf War I might not have even been fought without the oil dollars stolen by Saddam Hussein. Saudi Arabia, to which we now cozy up, would have been just one more sheikdom teaching hatred but without the money to finance Usama Bin Laden — who would likely still be skulking in a cave somewhere.
But instead, thousands of lives have been lost, perhaps scores of thousands, not to mention the huge increment added onto America’s energy cost. All aided and abetted by our benighted State Department.
The essence of the foregoing was told to me by Hill Bonin before he died. The editorializing is mine. But what I heard from Bonin was after the fact. Mr. Richard Short, a Patriot living in Virginia Beach, who knew Bonin before I did, and lived through the experience with Bonin, verifies the story as I remember it.
History does not forgive stupidity, incompetence or mendacity.
The Korean War was started by a witless speech by Secretary of State Dean Atcheson, resulting in millions of Korean lives lost, and the lives of at least 50,000 American fighting men. You remember Dean Atcheson, the man who said he would not turn his back on Alger Hiss. The Bonin chapter is another State Department dot added to the sorry Korean episode. Now look at the State Department role in more recent events. My guess is that Secretary Colin Powell was hamstrung by his own subversive department, as he has tried to represent our country’s best interests in the recent past. Still another dot. The dots all connect.
Government bungling at all levels is not surprising. But such State Department fraudulence is close to treason.
Hill Bonin, a giant of an American, was hamstrung by State Department pygmies, as was Colin Powell later. I believe Powell could never be sure who in his State Department supported his initiatives.
It is encouraging to see possible evidence of spine in Condoleezza Rice’s State Department. Why? Perhaps because during her years as National Security Advisor she could see what was going on at State, and now realizes she must crack the whip.
We shall see
Even so, a top-to-bottom housecleaning of careerists at the State Department, root and branch, would be a giant leap forward.
Foggy Bottom indeed.
