Jack Cashill on the death of former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and its connection to a BCCI official and extraordinary corruption at the highest levels of the Pakistani and the US government.
“The story begins in 1987, when Benzahir Bhutto, the eldest daughter of a former Pakistani prime minister, married a polo-playing idler by the name of Asif Ali Zardari.
Educated at Harvard and Oxford, the pretend populist Bhutto denounced the greed she saw around her, especially the “avaricious politicians” who were destroying her country.
Among the greediest was the nation’s strongman ruler, Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, who was not about to share what he had so brutally acquired.
Eight months after Bhutto’s marriage to Zardari, however, Zia died in what The New York Times called “a mysterious plane crash.” This unexpected tragedy, added the Times, “opened the way for Bhutto to win a narrow election victory.”
Although there were no subsequent arrests, few in Pakistan believe this crash to have been an accident.
Bhutto’s new husband, Zardari, quickly proved to be more avaricious a politician than Zia. His conspicuous gift for extortion as Bhutto’s Minister for Investment earned him the honorific “Mr. Ten Percent.”
In 1990, Zardari allegedly attached a bomb to a Pakistani businessman and forced him to withdraw money from his bank account. He was arrested for blackmail and convicted.
Largely because of Zardari, the President of Pakistan dismissed Bhutto in August 1990 for corruption and inability to maintain law and order. In 1993, however, Bhutto was elected Prime Minister once again, and Zardari’s conviction was overturned.
Brown likely met Bhutto and Zardari for the first time in South Africa in May 1994, where all three had gone to witness the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the country’s first black president.
At about this same time, back in Washington, according to Dresch, Brown made the acquaintance of a Bhutto protegee, Pakistani’s new ambassador, the glamorous Maleeha Lodhi.
With a Ph.D. in politics from the London School of Economics and her movie star looks, Lodhi, a single mom, took Brown and Washington by storm.
In November 1994, although Pakistan already had an official lobbyist, Lodhi chose to give some of her business to Patton Boggs, Brown’s former employer.
Signing the contract for Patton Boggs was none other than Lanny Davis, a partner who would soon earn his fifteen minutes of fame by flakking on nightly cable shows for Clinton during the Monica fiasco.
Lodhi and her lobbyists had one overriding mission: to kill or suppress the so-called Pressler amendment and close the books on a deal for American F-16 fighter bombers that had been initiated years before.
In brief, the amendment declared that no American military or technology aid could go to Pakistan unless it would “reduce significantly the risk that Pakistan will possess a nuclear explosive device.”
Pakistan was understandably miffed that George Bush applied the amendment in 1990 after Pakistan had already paid General Dynamics $658 million for 28 F-16s.
Amer Lodhi, Maleeha’s brother, saw an opportunity in the F-16 imbroglio. A former executive with the infamously corrupt Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), Amer got to know Brown through his sister. When in D.C., Zardari joined the party.
Inevitably, Amer Lodhi and Zardari came up with a scheme. Not surprisingly, it involved the always pliable Brown. Brown was to use his influence not to secure the F-16s, but to get Pakistan its money back.
Incredibly, Zardari and Amer Lohdi planned to pocket at least $400 million of the returned money minus an 8%, or $32 million, cut for Brown. For Brown, this was to be the mother of all insider deals.
Although Brown’s pull was scarcely worth $32 million, the Pakistani investment in Brown had an insidious intelligence about it. By involving Brown the Pakistanis were by extension implicating the White House in their scheme.
With the 1996 election at stake, exposure could damage the Clinton administration almost as much it would Bhutto’s. The best way to avoid exposure would be to keep Bhutto in power. If push came to shove, everyone would have an interest in doing just that..”