The Carlyle Connection - VPRO documentary - 2009

Washington has claimed a leading role for itself in the reconstruction of post-war Iraq after the destruction of Iraq by the coalition forces it's now mainly American companies who get the contracts for rebuilding the new Iraq in many cases these companies are run by people who are closely connected to Capitol Hill is this an example of conflict of interest or is this a new global way of doing business one of the companies that operate in this way is the Carlyle Group all their payroll are people like George Bush Senior James Baker the third and John Major the Karla group is one of the largest private investment banks in the US that has always managed to keep a low profile despite its size they invest in areas that are closely tied to government regulated industries aerospace and defense telecom health care and the banking business with 16 billion dollars under management they have the reputation of being the best connected company in the world how does the Carlyle Group operate who are the people behind it and how much power does Carlyle have Carlyle is a massive private equity firm and what a private equity firm does is essentially raise money from wealthy individuals and companies and funds and then turns and invest that money in a slightly higher risk form of investing than saying the stock market or the bond market what they do is they buy the stock directly from the company they take ownership shares and often controlling shares but they do not barrel in the public market and they often have control of the companies they buy which means that they do not have to because the companies are privately owned privately controlled they don't have to they don't they're not subject to the securities exchange laws in this country they'll purchase the company for a fraction of what it's really worth and then turn the company around and sell it off for a huge profit it's called the buyout practice the list of knowledgeable institutional investors in aerospace defense is a fairly short list and I think it would be widely acknowledged that at the top of that list is the Carlyle Group located here in Washington DC and considered by most people to be the premier investor in aerospace defense over quite a number of years what is new about Carlyle is the size and dimension of their success of my understanding is they are now the eleventh or twelfth largest defense contractor a multi-billion dollar annual enterprise with X almost obscenely high profit margins so please welcome Frank Vanilli Frank well super it's great to be here back at the conference's that are put on here as Jenny mentioned the Carlyle Group we're headquartered here in Washington DC it's a global private equity Merchants Bank and we probably do more leveraged buyout in venture capital investing related to defense and dual use technology than any other private equity firm in the world the defense industry valuation will grow primarily from two factors one is that either the size of the defense pie gets bigger as it has been over several years or the slice of the pie related to that particular part of the defense industry gets bigger the Carlyle Group plays in industries and in an area that are heavily influenced by politics and in order to do that effectively they hire some of the best known politicians from all over the world the first thing is you know where do the dollars go what is the defense budget and what does it look like this is the way it's commonly captured by the DoD controller and there's roughly 380 billion dollars in the FY 0 for defense budget that was recently submitted they hire defense experts like Frank Carlucci or Frank Finelli they hire politicians like George Bush Senior or James Baker the third and they hire businessman none of you know MBAs Ivy League MBAs you know very very bright business people from around the world most people think about this topic is simply the Iron Triangle the relationship of the Pentagon with Congress and industry so our practitioner who has been on all three sides of this triangle over the last 25 years or so and it really has been a lot of fun the Iron Triangle is in some ways uniquely American phenomenon it's the confluence of the military big business and politics and the combination of these three things is something that a number of US presidents in the past have warned against in particular Dwight Eisenhower was very upfront about warning against the possibility of creating a military-industrial complex by that he means a group of a business built around defense and military that becomes so learned and so powerful that it's actually able to influence the politics of of war nothing sort of personifies that that euphemism of the Iron Triangle better than the Carlyle Group they have it all in one under one roof Connell was founded basically on a fluke a couple of guys this guy Steve Norris who was a Marriott executive got together with with David Rubenstein who was a former Carter aide the two of them met frequently at a hotel in New York called the Carlyle Hotel it's up on the Upper East Side it's a beautiful old plush hotel I always liked Carlyle at sign of English it sounded old worldly it sounded it just seemed to have the right kind of ring to it so it was essentially you know the sort of fabricated legacy sounding like like like they had a history of success and and and big money old money and ultimately at the end of the day no one had a better idea but they decided they made a very stressed surgeon they decided to best company in Washington DC which at the time no one could really understand because all private equity firms of this nature were based in New York but as we talk to people about it particularly some of the people that both David Rubenstein and I worked with they thought we'd lost our minds that it was too late to what do we know about establishing a merchant banking business I was a finance guy from Marietta and David was a lawyer but we had this dream to build a Merchants Bank a private equity investment firm that could take capital and inter mediate that capital into companies or real estate or venture capital at the outset we really didn't envision entirely where it might go we saw it simply an opportunity to take advantage of Washington and the people here and the access that people had to transactions so to base the company in Washington he was a very strange decision but as it turned out it proved to be an extremely successful decision because of the direction that Carlisle eventually went in which was to play in these very heavily government government regulated industries and to use X politicians to sort of pave the way for them we started buying share as a coming called Fairchild which was here in the Washington area because we thought it was very cheap and what kind of company was it defense business they had a satellite business which we thought was very attractive and undervalued and we invested in Fairchild at one point we had I think almost 25 percent of the company and it was ultimately sold and we made an enormous amount of money and we began to see the opportunities in that area and which is one of the reasons why at the end of the Reagan administration we were very interested in in Frank ecology I will name as the next Secretary of Defense the best qualified man in America to carry on CAPS work Frank Carlucci when Frank Carlucci came barred he was coming straight from the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense he had just Reagan's term had just finished and Carlucci retired he came on board and really took them in a completely new direction into defense this was a time bear in mind where defense properties were worth almost nothing because the Cold War had just ended and this huge military buildup that had taken place during the 80s had suddenly evaporated which marked a great opportunity and no one knew that better than Frank Carlucci who had been in in the Pentagon watching this whole trend happen firsthand so Carlucci came on board and was able to take Carlyle 180 degrees in another direction sure enough a year two years later the Gulf War hit and everybody knows that wartime is boom time for the defense industry so once the Gulf War had these properties skyrocketed again and Carlisle made a ton of money they did very very well they really cleaned up during that three or four year swing and after that Carla said hey you know having these politicians on board is pretty great I mean they know things that nobody else knows in fact you know Frank Carlucci was setting up policies while he was in office as Secretary of Defense that he's now capitalizing on as chairman of Carlyle Group you know it's brilliant scheme if you think about it you set up the policies you leave office you go into business and then you exploit those policies they picked up George Bush James Baker Richard Armand is over there who was a former budget director in the White House Arthur Levitt the former SEC chairman William Cunard the former FCC Chairman in Europe you have former prime minister of the England John Major called Apollo from the head of a German central bank abroad geun-hye was the chairman of the Supervisory Board of BMW that the Asia part former Prime Minister of Thailand former President of the Philippines Fidel Ramos and at one point acidity from the prime minister of South Korea was on their board a man named mr. Park who used to head up the largest steel company in South Korea the list just goes on and on and on so these guys carry a tremendous amount of influence and they are able to predict trends in global markets predict trends in political political shifts and in some ways and this is the sort of the most insidious part and if you if you want to be cynical about the Carlyle Group you have to be concerned about their ability to influence these trends and actually affect change in government policy which would positively affect investments former government officials tended before Conwell to go to academic institutions or they tended some dis retired or many of them became lobbyists well for someone like Jim Baker who really had been at the pinnacle of American power for over ten years he'd been chief of staff even secretary the Treasury ultimately Secretary of State for Jim Baker to be a lobbyist or even to be a lawyer was not something that was terribly interested in him if you're a Republican during a Democratic administration in the White House for example someone like James Baker you're able to revolve out of the White House into The Carlyle Group work there for a period of time and then when that Democratic administration is through like Clinton's was through in 2000 you're able to revolve right back into the White House : Powell did that : Powell did a little consulting for the Carlyle Group he knows the guys very well he knows Frank Carlucci very well Frank Carlucci was his mentor as he came up through the ranks and I think his relationship with the Garlic who personifies the gray area that the Carlyle Group works within some of these guys are never officially hired you know some of them are only put on retainer some of them are paid in very ambiguous ways like through investments that they make through the Carlyle Group or the amount of money that they help raise that kind of thing so it's it's never really clear at any given time who exactly is working for the Carlyle Group no one really knows unless you know they officially unless unless the Carlyle Group wants you to know if the Carlyle Group wants you to know then they put them up on the website and they put them in their brochures and that kind of thing but if you look on the Carlyle website today you don't see George Bush senior's name anywhere although he is working for the Carlyle Group George Bush senior is a fundraiser he is the kind of guy who can go into Kuwait or Saudi Arabia where they love him pack the house and get these guys to open up their wallets and give money to the Carlyle Group that's his role but if you look in over the history of this company George Bush Senior has clearly met with business leaders one on one met with political leaders in South Korea and in Saudi Arabia and that would lead one to believe that he's doing much much more than just giving speeches for the Carlyle Group I got a call one day from from Carlisle after I blasted them in the papers and they said that maybe we should get together and talk we had breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel everything was going very just fine we were eating our eggs and bacon and talking about the weather and and and then somewhere in the middle to the late part of the meal he said how come you're trashing former President Bush and he said he is a very very good decent man and you know I think I think it's really unfair what you've been doing about former President Bush and I said well you know all you have to do is tell the world what exactly he's doing for you and I said what is he doing for you and what's his position there how much money did he make last year and he said well I can't tell you how much he made he's he's out he's not has no official position and I said yes he does you he was a head of your business council in Asia last I checked he still is and he goes well that'sthat's just an advisory post and and he said he just gives speeches and I go how much does he get a speech and I said I heard it's well over 100 thousand dollars every time he opens his mouth and I said so if it's just a few speeches why you just tell us where and when and how much and then people like me will go away and he said well that's not possible George Bush seen it after he left the presidency he was working for carlile and made several swings through East Asia going to Thailand going to South Korea and other places sort of looking for investment opportunities for Carlisle and Carlisle family settled on South Korea and then the way that overlaps with with policy is under the during the Asia crisis the International Monetary Fund you know came in with this rescue package for South Korea that the United States backed and the u.s. used the IMF crisis to push through deregulation and and changes in rules around for leadership look changes that they had been unable to press through you know maybe 25 or 30 years of trade policy in a matter of months under this IMF package they just rammed all these changes through and one of the changes was allowing foreign banks to take ownership shares controlling shares of Korean banks and so Carlyle has been right in there and they fought one of the largest banks their commercial banks and so you can say that you know bush senior didn't cut the deal but you know when people when someone comes of that stature a former president former president who just left office recently comes to a country where he's where he had visited last as Vice President had and when he was vice president he spoke to the National Assembly of South Korea that gives a kind of stamp of approval for you know people wondering and who who this investment group is they say well it's backed by the former president of the United States and it carries a lot of weight and I have said that it's the worst kind of conflict of interest particularly when your son is the president knighted States so while jr. is talking to heads of state about war and other weighty matters Papa is talking to them or having conversations with them about Carlisle you know it's it's just I find it disgusting you Carlisle by United defense which is one of the largest military contractors in the country in 1997 and they went on to work with United defense on a very specific program called the crusader the crusader is a huge howitzer it's a mobile gun but it's but it came under fire by a defense panel that was paid to review the the all defense purchases of the Pentagon one fateful day we were having a hearing on the upcoming Defense Authorization legislation which is going to authorize almost an unprecedented amount of money for defense spending 400 billion dollars our men and women you deserve the best weapons the best equipment and the best trained and therefore I've asked Congress for a one year increase of more than 48 billion dollars for national defense the largest increase in a generation the defense panel looked at the crusader weapon in 1998 and they determined that it was too big and too slow for the modern-day warfare the United States was likely to engage in and they the panel recommended that the that the gun be the gun contract be terminated need to be agile and mobile and therefore we need to replace aging aircraft and get ready to be able to defend freedom with the best equipment possible members of the Pentagon had come and testified on Capitol Hill and said no no no we don't want the crusader because it doesn't fit in with our priorities but as a part of that 48 point 1 billion dollar increase in the 400 billion dollar defense request that came down from the president there inside there was money for the Crusader missile so then I started doing my research and I learned that was a the Crusader missile was manufactured by United defense industries and that that company was owned by the carlyle group and that the president's father was on the payroll of the Carlyle Group and I said to myself now in all of the ethics briefings that we've had in Congress this is something that we're supposed to stay away from in our own personal conduct so when the time came for us to vote our committee to vote on the defense authorization bill I voted no as I generally do and I also wrote a dissent and prominently featured in my dissent is mention of the Carlyle Group and its relationship to the Crusader missile and then that's when everything began to fall apart what ended up happening was a wave of sentiment against the crusader began to build on on Capitol Hill and within the department of defense and this was something that the Carlyle Group didn't foresee and they began to wield their influence they sent people around to keep ala Titian representatives and senators began lobbying very heavily and we're able was able to keep this gun program alive despite an overwhelming sentiment against it they didn't realize that there would be this ensuing scrutiny of the request and therefore when a little bit of sunshine which is a great disinfectant was shed on this particular request and the relationship between the current president and the former president and this particular weapon system maybe at that point it was decided we'd better not deal with this and so they didn't eventually the noise around that got so strong that there was really nothing left to do but to cancel this gun program and don rumsfeld did cancel the program in a very public public ceremony but not until the gun pro the the gun had been kept alive long enough that the company united fan defense was able to go public it did very well and The Carlyle Group made 237 million dollars in that one day and what happened to you I was excoriated in the press I was vilified I was called unpatriotic and um then a very strange thing happened in my election I'm a Democrat what the Republicans did was the Republicans went out and got a black woman who was a Republican to run as a Democrat in my Democratic primary and then 47,000 Republicans crossed over and voted in my Democratic primary and of course they had done their homework in their research and they realized that generally on average I would get about 48,000 votes on a primary generally on average look you know give or take a hundred here are hundred there but general is about 48,000 so what the Republicans did and this this was not just a mere accident this of course was planned and they made sure that at least 47,000 and we can name them we have their names addresses telephone numbers so we know 47,000 to match the number of Democrats that would generally turn out armed voted in my election and of course I couldn't of course in the circumstances like that come out on the with the longer stick when the election tally was was had ended people should ask questions about Carlow the problem is what member of Congress democrat or republican wants to go and criticize a grandfatherly former US president whose son happens to be the sitting president I mean why don't you just take a gun and shoot your leg off I mean you know it is not going to be very popular in Washington DC you're not going to be invited to White House dinners you're going to be shut out on the hill when you deal with certain members who won't forget that you trashed a former president and his son if you have an organization that is able to operate behind the scenes without real accountability and that same organization has the ability to ruin political careers for people who are a little bit too inquisitive or a little bit too honest or to shape public thinking then we have the means for a kind of control globally that is probably unprecedented it's sort of like shadowboxing with a ghost you can't find the ghost you can't read their reports because they're privately held and and there's no obvious litigation against them no one and Congress has had a hearing about them they're so powerful no one wants to touch it because of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost just kidding and so so we have this problem here this is a mysterious immensely powerful company with virtually no scrutiny in the White House view there's no ethical or conflict in former President Bush and former Secretary of State Jim Baker using their kind to world context world leaders to represent one of the most well known military arms viewers the Carlyle Group the president has full faith that his family will conform with all proper ethics laws all ethics laws and will act properly in their conduct and that's exactly what they've been done and there are no questions it would be okay for for president former President Bush to go to the Middle East leaders and sell guns and tanks and planes again the president has full confidence that all members of his family are acting and with full accordance with all ethics laws on September 11th in somewhat of a horrible coincidence the Carlyle Group was holding our annual investor meeting here in Washington DC at the risk Carlton Hotel George Bush Senior was aptly named The Carlyle Group said that he left the light before September and was on his way to some location in the Midwest and I talked to someone who was at the meeting and they told me that the whole crew of Carlyle including Frank Carlucci and James Baker and David Rubenstein along with Shafiq bin Laden who was a representative of the bin Laden family and their fortunes were all in the same room together watching the events of September 11th take place and I was totally shocked I just couldn't believe that the all these people were in the same room watching highs event and you know it's just to see a confluence of international people of such political influence and intrigue to be gathered same place at the same time or something that affects all of them in completely different ways took place was just an amazing amazing scene in my mind one of the more embarrassing things that happened was after September 11th it emerged that the bin Laden family construction company had some money in Carlisle and after initially denying this it ended up that George Herbert Walker Bush had met with members of the bin Laden family and one of his trips to Saudi Arabia Deven London family had been introduced to call for many years before President Bush ever became associate with Carlisle and they were introduced in a quite legitimate way as a potential investor in in one of our investment funds which they did invest in and in addition we offered up and did perform certain financial advisory work in connection with an investment they were thinking about and indeed one that they did make in the United States where there was simply hard business analysis and advice rendered so I can tell you a bakr bin laden in his wildest imagination I suspect never imagined that Osama would go and do what he did so then you roll forward three or four years and all of a sudden 9/11 has happened and the first thing you know was well President Bush is associated with Carlo and Carlo has some bin Laden money well what's going on the relationships between Carla and Saudi Arabia began when Steve Morris developed a very nascent relationship with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who is a very wealthy very flamboyant Saudi Arabian Prince who loves the United States and loves to invest his money in the United States there was always a running joke you know there's always been periods where there were capital excess capital and people would try to figure out how to access that for a while it was the Japanese and it's always been the Kuwait ease and so forth and now it was the Sunnis and that was the Saudis and people would say let's try to find a prince to do something and it was the kind of thing he just said it was humorous and nowhere really so I remember when I got a call from from from dick Paulson saying we have a prince we want you to talk to I said right what else you want me to do you want what do you trying to do here do you want to be taking a lunch I mean what is to Billy month just no no no you got to take this seriously cuz I said alright okay because everybody heard these stories for years Prince Alwaleed is the grandson of the founder of the kingdom its Prince Ali bin Talal and Prince Talal his father had actually spent a fair amount of time around wash in fact owned a major estate in Washington at one point on at the time this was in the early 90s city city group which is America's largest bank was faltering it was in serious trouble it was in danger of declaring bankruptcy and Steve was able to put together a deal between the prince and Citigroup in which the Prince invested five hundred ninety million dollars into Citicorp and an investment like this was enough to save the bank and it was it was a big deal it was the biggest deal that Carlyle had ever made through the prince you got also in contact with the other yes truly through the profile and we another and then as I said we'd hired this gentleman Bowser Rahim to introduce us and so we went to to meet with a number of Saudi families and in fact as you as you know one of the families that was introduced to Carlyle and to me in those days was the bin Laden family the reason that all of this was able to happen is that the United States had just completed the Gulf War and I think 1991 and the Saudi monarchy was eternally grateful for what the United States had done it had restabilized the Middle East the big spa was that was the Gulf War and people seeing you know bush senior and James Baker as the heroes of the Gulf War the Gulf War of course was a fundamental proof of the wisdom of Saudi Arabia's founding king in developing a partnership in reliance with the United States the bargain that was struck basically gave the United States preferred access to Saudi energy in return for protection against foreign foes and when the requirement rose in 1990 the United States kept its end of the bargain stepped forward and helped to defend the kingdom and then liberate Kuwait and the result was that there was an enormous outburst of good feeling in both countries trade boomed and the military relationship of course became stronger than ever before the Saudi people close to the Saudi royal family as a kind of a as a favor to their benefactors Bush and Baker encouraged private Saudi businesspeople to invest in in the Carlyle Group a lot of what I was doing was trying to convince Prince Fajada borough who I think was an Air Force general but also he was the the minister in charge of the offset program The Carlyle would be a good financial adviser carlyle loyal to this program for Saudi Arabia which essentially was a program that encouraged investment from foreign countries into the kingdom but the money that was made from those investments what had to be reinvested some percentage of it had to be reinvested in the kingdom you tell your highness look we have access at a higher level to the some of these companies who have offset obligations we think will be helpful to you when getting that interest generated another I'm going to go do something just because Jim Baker says why don't you do this I mean that's great you know newspaper fodder and you can write about it in in Star magazine but that doesn't happen now can you get among rest can we go in and make a presentation to the right operating group and if it makes sense are they going to take it seriously yes that's what Jim Baker can do so Carlisle is managing this program which made them in some ways a gatekeeper to the investment community in Saudi Arabia I mean they knew where the where the money was coming from and where it was going to so they had a very unique position in Saudi Arabia and and grew very close with the royal family with the bin Laden family and they were they were able to really cozy up with the with the Saudis and and get a lot of investments from there and this became a huge arena for corruption because instead of just paying a bribe to somebody in the royal family now you could set them up in business and you could say well this business is part of our offset commitment to you that goes with this arms sale and so we're going to take you know this son of this Prince and create a little company for him that's going to be funded by Boeing but all Boeing is doing is recycling the money out of the arms deals they get nine billion they kick some of the back so Carlyle I think was brought in to try to put some legitimacy on this process that was the foot-in-the-door into Saudi Arabia from there they were able to expand their business in in the kingdom through they bought a company called Vanel the vanillin corporation is sensitive it took the company five years to win the contract with the Saudis and the negative interest displayed by some in Congress and the medium has made the company men less than enthusiastic about talking about the Saudi agreement we've been in business since 1931 and we've been in Saudi Arabia around the Duran airbase for five years for the US government and we've had technical services operations since 1944 I was on the board of directors of vanilla for about a year and a half Carl really didn't own that company directly it was it was acquired by BDM which was a company that we owned I had a controlling interest in which we'd acquired as to say earlier as I mentioned and vanilla from what I could see as a director and they say I was a direct with this company for a year and a half was simply in the business of providing advice and training to the Saudi National Guard these are Saudi Arabian recruits at the United States Naval Training Center in San Diego classes are conducted in English but when the men drill the commands are strictly and out of it and the marking style is British the Saudi national guard's main purpose is to defend the Saudi monarchy against internal threats so this wasn't the case of a US company helping them protect themselves from Iran or another country it was it was if there is a challenge to Saudi rule from the Saudi people this US company is going to help the Saudi national guard put down that rebellion then Bowman's loss in the Saudi Arab region of star 3-yard saying Jake assessments of adult and tyndall effect revolt thankfulness laughter force an Americana delete from the answer Hassan abouts dog Americans militare what about on the ODC notion Allah heard at the training as I recall there were four deaths and this was attributed to Saudis with connections to the Hezbollah movement backed by Iran initially there was talk that Iran might have been behind it but since that time there's been discussion that it was a fundamentalist link to the network now known as al-qaeda and and when you see the kind of litany of al Qaeda operations every time there's a new terrorist attack this will generally be included oh cool of Monrovia we filled him with a bomb he had in harbour sunny be a military mom a widow fear in karate would dominate daddy oh yeah he know Raymond and Robert Darwin who knows all along hello bill Kayla yes Katya muslimeen a filler rock under here jnanam and no more Tintin how does 100 million it was a very strategic decision because the people behind that bombing were well aware that United States companies were directly intertwined with the protection and a sustenance of the Saudi regime it is it was an American presence there's no question about that it was an American presence in Saudi and that that's been part of the whole bin Laden theme is that you've got infidels on the on the Saudi soil and and I suspect that the nel is an inviting target for those kinds of people I've spoken to people in the Pentagon on the services who think it was a huge blunder to keep so many US forces in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War that that was just a provocation that was just giving Osama bin Laden kind of a big billboard to use to recruit people to say see the US presence is not even hidden anymore you know they don't even have the decency to pretend that they're not the power behind the throne in Saudi Arabia certain countries have been targets of the United States with regard to terrorism yet the biggest country involved in terrorism is Saudi Arabia they finance it and we have treated them with kid gloves we have treated them as if they're not involved in terrorism at all is that because of groups like Carlisle that have significant investments with Saudi Arabian interests is that because george w bush's father is in fact part of the Carlyle Group and as close to the bin Laden family and that is why we asked george w bush to have his father remove himself from the Carlyle Group because it prevents a it presents a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of a conflict of interest I believe the Carlyle people at least when I was there and I know in my own situation we spent an awful lot of time thinking about that and worrying about thinking about what about the appearances of things about how something we do might be perceived and whether we care or not about it too and honestly we simply believed that we had something to offer to the Saudis and the Kuwaiti s and to other people with whom we invested in in that people quite legitimately had built up a portfolio of friends and acquaintances and business experience and and knowledge of how to deal in high-pressure situations the tendencies of people what they might do we we think that's a good thing when your sign is the sitting president the United States interacting with the same countries and ruling elites that you and your company are interacting with it's pretty apparent that there's a conflict issue here and the problem is very few people in this country are talking about this no one really wants to go there that there have been a few sporadic news stories about Carlisle and there have been a few skunks at the garden party like myself talking about the former president but generally speaking the glare of publicity and the spotlight of public attention has not been put on former President Bush or his son about this problem if the American people knew all the connections between prominent Republicans and Democrats in our country with Saudi Arabia we'll all of these institutions that are same relationships yeah yeah business and personal relationships with these institutions that have far more to do with funding and sustaining terrorism than iraq does george w bush would not be reelected in 2004 this is george w bush the President of the United States at this moment the regime of Saddam Hussein is being removed from power and a long era of fear and cruelty is ending American and coalition forces are now operating inside Baghdad and we will not stop until Saddam's corrupt gang is gone I think among the key strategists for the war on Iraq in the Bush administration there's definitely a notion of Simas as part of their plan to transform relationships in the Persian Gulf and so I think their feeling is if that they can have a pliable regime in Baghdad that will play ball and oil politics and so forth they'll be far better positioned to deal with Saudi Arabia that if they can remake Iraq into their image into under US control it'll be much more pliable regime than the Saudis and they'll they'll have much more freedom of operation in in the middle least they won't have to depend so much on Saudi Arabia and they'll have this client you know client state in Iraq in the new era that is coming to Iraq your country will no longer be held captive to the will of a cruel dictator you will be free free to build a better life if the US actually takes over Iraq and as this whole rebuilding they're going to have to rebuild their telecommunication systems you know if you're a clever investor and you want to think for the long term surely they would be thinking telecom that's one ear that's one area the other area of course would be defense you know defense has very you know extensive investments of Turkey and extensive joint ventures in Turkey and Saudi Arabia if if the u.s. installs a pro US government you know that the defense contracts in Iraq are going to go to American companies as well there's a big market and it's a wealthy country and what what kind of business opportunity for Carlow could there be any real well I think they're going to be busy investing in companies that did provide infrastructure initially Road building bridge building telecommunications building companies you know establishing all kinds of things selling refrigerators selling a self setting up a cell phone system selling handsets to the average Iraqi is going to want to have the same cell phone they have in Kuwait so the big market so it's going to be a big opportunity there I think it'd be a big opportunity pristine I gather this has turned out to be one of them one of the best weeks in in years on Wall Street absolutely stocks roaring higher here the Dow up eight days in a row that hasn't happened in more than three years and the best week in more than 20 years and now the Dow and the SP are positive for the year erasing all of those big losses from earlier this year oil prices tumbling how much more scenario Loree first an update we've just received word from the Pentagon the US and Great Britain say they want the u.s. involved in a post-war Iraq they also want a restarting of the oil-for-food program and they want to make sure the u.s. is involved in humanitarian relief and deliveries to the Iraqi people that's the very latest live from Washington I'm Brian Andrews Seven News okay I got ya says it was explored of Wales

Channel: vpro documentary

Views: 106,862

Rating: 4.875186 out of 5

Keywords: The Carlyle Group, private banking, best connected company, Saudi Royal Family, Carlyle Group Documentary, carlyle documentary, Financial world, Backlight Financial world, Financial world documentary, documentary, vpro documentary, vpro documentaries, vpro backlight, Free documentary, subtitled documentary, documentary subtitles, docu

Id: B55RozuF0WM

Length: 48min 49sec (2929 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 09 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/hidflect1]

I supported the Carlyle Group in Tokyo in the 2000's and they were crooks. They were sent 10,000's of emails every week from mostly business people all over the world feeding them whatever tidbit of insider info that could be gleaned. The size of the operation was staggering. One of my jobs was to back up the Outlook .pst file every week before it would hit the 2GB size limit.

[u/bplurt]

One of the most insidious uses of language is the description of the arms trade as 'defence industry' (or 'defense' if you're USAian)

The US War Department used that name until 1949. The UK had a War Secretary until 1964. At least they were honest about it.

[u/Missing_Trillions]

Unfortunately, the audio crackles a bit. This version has better audio. The first minute or two is in dutch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqb7Wf_KCG8