Under the George W. Bush presidency, a tough line was taken against
the Russian incursion into Georgia and Russian pressure on the Ukraine. Bush laid
plans to create a missile-defense shield in Europe.
When Barack Obama became president, he and Hillary Clinton
decided to reset relationships with the Kremlin. At the heart of the reset was
what Newsweek called “a bevy of potential business deals[1]” which
included energy sources. This fitted nicely with Putin and the Kremlin’s
ambitions to control much of the world’s nuclear market, including uranium
stockpiles.
Rosatom, is the Russian State Atomic Nuclear Agency. It
controls the Russian nuclear arsenal. It’s head, Sergei Kiriyenko, was Russia’s
Prime Minister and its energy minister when Bill Clinton was President of the
United States.
Rosatom not only built the Bushehr nuclear reactors in Iran,
it also supplies them with uranium. Rosatom also operates in North Korea and
Venezuela.
During Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State, she
received many diplomatic cables outlining Moscow’s nuclear ambitions. For
example, in 2009, she received a classified cables informing her of Rosatom’s
plans to impose “a zone of pressure” on Eastern European governments for
supplies to the Kremlin-linked nuclear agency, particularly Ukraine and the
Kazakhstan uranium market.[2]
The cables also mentioned that the Russian military intelligence were involved
in these plans.
In June 2009, Rosatom bought a 17% stake in the Canadian
Uranium One company which had projects in Wyoming, Utah, Texas, and South
Dakota.
In December of 2009, Kiriyenko told a meeting of the Russian
presidium of Rosatom’s aggressive plans and President Putin agreed that the
Russian government would provide the money for Rosatom’s equity capital to buy
American uranium.[3]
This was happening at the time that Hillary Clinton was
directing negotiations with the Russian government for civilian nuclear energy.
As the State Department explained it, the 123 agreement, as it was called, “would
support commercial interests by allowing US and Russian firms to team up more
easily in joint ventures,” and in March 2010 Hillary was in Moscow meeting
with Putin. By then, Putin had set in motion the purchase of a controlling interest
in Uranium One by Rosatom.
By May of 2010, when Secretary of State Clinton brought the
proposed text of the US-Russian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement to
Congress, Rosatom was ready to become the majority controller of Uranium One.
While this process was taking place, Ian Telfer, the
chairman of Uranium One, began donating large sums into the Clinton Foundation,
through a Canadian entity called the Fernwood Foundation. According to records released
by the Clinton Foundation, Telfer had contributed sums of $100,001 to $250,000
to the Clinton Foundation but, according to Canadian tax records, Ferndale Foundation
donated more than two million dollars to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary
was Secretary of State.
The Clinton Foundation’s public disclosures did not list
Fernwood as a donor but between 2009 and 2011 Fernwood contributed over two
million dollars to the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, named
after the Clintons and Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining tycoon that flew Bull
Clinton around the world on his private jet to make connections for his mining
projects.[4]
They were dressed up as projects of the Clinton Foundation to foster economic
growth in the developing world but almost all concentrated on projects such as
mines and oilfields in which Giustra was invested. According to Canadian tax
records, almost all the funds CGSCI collected were transferred directly to the
Clinton Foundation.[5]
The fact that these donations were not listed in Clinton
Foundation’s public disclosures was an infringement of the memorandum of
understanding with the Obama White House and contradicts Mrs. Clinton’s written
statements to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Other Russian uranium
advisors and agents were multi-million-dollar contributors to the Foundation.[6]
The ties between business and politics are often blurred but
there is sufficient evidence that Putin directly ordered acquisitions that were
approved by the Russian Presidium. This
is important when one considers the destination and use of uranium.
Several senior congressmen, including Peter King, Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, Spencer Bachus, and Howard McKeon, were troubled by Rosatom’s
activities for United States national security interests. They pointed to
Rosatom helping to build the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran as “raising
red flags.” They wrote, “We believe the take-over of essential US
nuclear resources by a government-owned Russian agency…would not advance the
national security interests of the United States.”
Congressman Ed Markey pushed a bill in Congress said, “Russia
continues to train Iranian nuclear physicists and supplies sensitive nuclear
technology to Iran.”[7]
Faced with this opposition, Uranium One offered concessions.
It did not have an export license that allowed it to export or ship uranium out
of the United States. Supporters of the deal argued that, without an export
license, it was unlikely that American uranium would end up in Iranian reactors
or laboratories.
Despite these concerns, the Committee on Foreign Investment
in the United States approved the Russian purchase of Uranium One. CFIUS is an
elusive executive task force that evaluates any investment transactions that
might have an effect on American national security. The Secretary of States
tends to chair such meetings that includes other senior cabinet officials and
intelligence heads. The approval of the Uranium One deal for American uranium
assets did not discuss global markets as it assumed the material would remain
within America.
Concerns soon grew about “a growing nexus in Russian and
Eurasian states among governments, organized crime, intelligence services and
big business figures.”[8] In 2010, Dennis Blair, the director of
national intelligence warned Congress of “bribery, fraud, violence, and
corrupt alliances with state actors to gain the upper hand against legitimate
businesses.”[9]
Amidst this background, a small Canadian investment company
named Salida Capital became intimately involved with the Clinton Foundation. Salida
Capital was identified as a wholly owned subsidiary of Rosatom, the Russian
state nuclear agency.
According to Canadian tax records, Salida Capital received
an anonymous donation of $3.3 million into its charitable foundation, the
Salida Capital Foundation, and it began to pump large sums of money into the
Clinton Foundation that amounted to almost three million dollars in less than
two years.[10]
Salida Capital also began sponsoring speeches by Bill
Clinton. Why would Rosatom, a Russian state nuclear agency, not known for
philanthropy, begin funneling vast sums of money into the Clinton Foundation at
a time when it was pushing for influence in obtaining America’s uranium assets? And why would Rosatom begin paying Bill
Clinton $500,000 for speaking fees via Salida Capital at a time they were
chasing US government approval for the sale of American uranium? His fee rage
at that was between $150,000 to $185,000. The timing, and the amount of monies
given to the Clintons, raises serious questions.
Bill Clinton hadn’t given a speech in Moscow for five years.
Suddenly, at the time that Rosatom was attempting to take over America’s
uranium stockpile, he was invited to speak the for half a million dollars by a
Cypriot registered company called Renaissance Capital. This firm is top heady
with former Russian intelligence officers with close ties to Putin, according
to Peter Schweizer in his book “Clinton Cash.”
Hillary Clinton, who had been a hawk in opposing US
strategic assets to foreign governments reversed herself and allowed the
Russian purchase of Uranium One which was approved on October 22, 2010 by CFIUS,
the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. The result was that
Uranium One and half of the projected American uranium assets were transferred
to a private company controlled by the Russian State Nuclear Agency. Although
the Russians said they intended to own just 50% of the company, today it owns
the company outright.
The Russian purchase of a large share of America’s uranium
stockpile raised serious national security concerns for the very reasons that
Mrs. Clinton had rejected previous deals. The question needs to be asked why
$145 million was transferred into her Foundation or her Initiative fund, and
her husband’s radically increased speaking fees were “pay to play’ for her
decision to advance the Russian deal? As
Peter Schweizer points out in his book, based on State Department ethics
documents as of 2016 she never revealed these transactions to her colleagues,
the Obama White House, or to Capitol Hill.
If Secretary Clinton did not disclose the ties between
Uranium One executives and the Clinton Foundation to members of CFIUS she may
have violated the terms of the 2008 Memorandum of Understanding that she signed
with the Obama Administration designed to avoid conflicts of interests between
her role and decisions as Secretary of State and donations to her Clinton
Foundation. She may also have violated government rules on ethical conduct.
In September 2013, the presidents of Russia and Iran, Putin
and Rouhani, announced that “Tehran and Moscow will cooperate in the future
construction of a second nuclear power plant at Bushehr.”[11]
Despite assurances to Congress that no uranium would leave
the United States, and despite Rosatom not having an export license, a shipment
of yellow-cake uranium - material used to make nuclear fuel and weapons – was
sent to Canada followed by shipments to Europe and from there to unknown
locations between 2012 and 2014.
On January 9, 2017, the National Post reported that the
Obama Administration had approved the Russian shipment of a huge shipment of
uranium to Iran on the assurance that Iran had no interest in weapons.[12]
Under the much criticized Iran nuclear deal, inspections by
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cannot be performed in Iranian
military facilities.[13]
Although, IAEA inspectors can check civilian facilities such as Bushehr and
Fordow, they are prevented from inspecting suspect activities in the Parchin
military complex. The last time inspectors were allowed there was in 2015 where
they reported finding amounts of uranium. It is suspected that this facility is
one of the off-limits Iranian military sites in which nuclear weapons research
and testing, using uranium, is taking place.
Ali Akhbar Salehi, one of Iran’s vice presidents, boasted
that Iran could have enriched uranium within five days if President Trump
reneged on Obama’s nuclear deal, according to a report in the Independent
newspaper on August 22, 2017.[14]
How would this be possible if the Iranian’s did not have processed yellow-cake
illegally? And where did that yellow cake come from?
What a sad epilogue it would be if the nuclear missile that
Iran may launch at Israel contains American uranium sold to the Russians by the
Obama-Clinton Administration via the Uranium One deal.
Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy
at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
He is the author of '1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel.'
https://www.amazon.com/1917-Palestine-Land-Israel-extraordinary/dp/154230010X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513357281&sr=1-1&keywords=1917.+from+palestine+to+the+land+of+israel
[3] http://old.themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/2009/12/article/rosatom-gets-465m-to-buy-uranium-assets/396701.html/
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/us/politics/canadian-partnership-shielded-identities-of-donors-to-clinton-foundation.html
[7] https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/may-25-2010-markey-and-fortenberry-introduce-resolution-of-disapproval-of-proposed-nuclear-deal
[10]
“Clinton Cash.” Peter Schweizer. Page50.
[12] http://nationalpost.com/news/world/iran-to-receive-huge-shipment-of-natural-uranium-from-russia-in-transfer-deal-approved-by-u-s