HILLARY'S MUSHARRAF..Mrs. Clinton's forgotten fling with the Killer

by Greg Palast/

He was the other man in Hillary's life. But it's over now. Or is it?

You've seen all those creepy photos of George Bush rubbing up
against Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, the two of them grinning
and giggling like they're going to the senior prom. So it's hard to
remember that it was Hillary and Bill who brought Pervez to the dance in
the first place.

How that happened, I'll tell you in a moment.

But first, let's get our facts straight about the man in the
moustache. Musharraf, according to George Bush, The New York Times, NPR
and the rest of press puppies is, "our ally in the War on Terror."
That's like calling Carmine Gambino, "Our ally in the War on Crime."

Musharraf's the guy who helped the Taliban take power in Afghanistan
in 1996. And, through his ISI, Pakistan's own KGB, he is still giving
the Taliban secret protection.

And this is the same Musharraf who let Khalid Sheik Muhammed,
Osama's operations chief for the September 11 attack, hang out in
Quetta, Pakistan, in the open, until Khalid embarrassed his host by
giving a boastful interview to Al Jazeera television from his Pakistan
hang-out.

And this is the same Musharraf who permitted his nation's own Dr.
Strangelove, A.Q. Khan, to sell nuclear do-it-yourself bomb kits to
Libya and North Korea. When the story off the flea-market in
fissionable materials was exposed, Musharraf (and Bush) both proclaimed
their shock - shock! - over the bomb sales. Musharraf didn't know?
Sure. Those tons of lethal hardware must have been shipped by flying pig.

But, unlike Saddam and Osama, creations of Ronald Reagan's and
George Bush Sr.'s Frankenstein factories, Musharraf was a Clinton special.

And it all began with an unpaid electricity bill. In 1998, Pakistan
wouldn't pay up millions, and they owed billions, to British and
American electricity companies. And for good reason: the contracts
called for paying insanely high prices. It smelled of payola - and
ultimately, the government of Pakistan filed charges against power
combine executives and canceled the contracts. That's the rule under
international law: companies can't collect on contracts they obtained by
pay-offs.

But these weren't just any companies. One was a Tony Blair
favorite, Britain's National Power. The other was Entergy International,
a sudden big-time player in the international power market based out of,
oddly, Little Rock, Arkansas. Despite the Clinton Administration' s claim
to fight foreign corruption, this was an exception. Clinton and Blair
voted to cut off Pakistan's funding from the IMF. Pay-up the power
pirates, they told Pakistan, or starve.

Why was President Clinton so determined to crush Pakistan because of
an unpaid bill to some Little Rock company. This was not just any
company. But that wasn't much. More important, Entergy and its
partners, the Riady Family of Indonesia had just paid about half a
million dollars to Hillary's old Rose Law Firm partner Webster Hubbell.
Odd that, hiring Hubbell. Why would Entergy pay big bucks to a Hubbell
as a "consultant" when he was on his way to jail for a felony. Hubbell
was doing time because he refused to testify against Ms. Rodham.

Did President Clinton know about the payment to Hubbell? Clinton
denied it to the press,but under oath, to the FBI, Bill said he,
"wouldn't be surprised" if the Riadys told him about the payoff to
Hubbell in one of Bill's several private meetings with
them in the Oval Office.

Was there a connection between Entergy's kindness to Hillary and her
law partner and the power company's extraordinary sway with the
Administration? From inside information on energy policies to favor
requested of Tony Blair's office by Hillary's office, Entergy could do
no wrong. Certainly, their consortium's executives wouldn't have to
stand trial in Pakistan.

And Entergy got its money. On December 22, 1998, Pakistan's
military, at the direction of General Pervez Musharraf, sent thirty
thousand troops into the nation's power stations. At the time,
Entergy's partners told me, "A lot changed since the army moved in. Now
we have a situation where we can be paid. They've found a way to
collect from the man in the street." Yes: at gunpoint, according to
Abdul Latif Nizamani, a labor union leader who spoke with me after
Musharraf's gang had arrested him.

With Pakistan's army in control of thenation's infrastructure, and
acting as guarantor of payment to the US and UK power giants, General
Musharraf's final takeover of the entire government nine months later -
a "surprise" coup to the Western press - was, a forgone conclusion. And
the Clintons, complicit, like Bush today, could say little.

Just months before he left office President Clinton paid a sudden
visit to Musharraf. Congressional Democrats were stunned. Musharraf had
quickly shown himself to be a Taliban-loving, unbalanced dictator who
violated US treaty terms by exploding a nuke and threatening to
incinerate our ally India. Notably, the Ambassador with Clinton made
payments to the electric companies a top item on his
agenda.

Favors done; favors repaid. Nothing new under the sun, but it's a
dangerous game, Senator Clinton.

All right, maybe you can say that President Clinton's blessing of
the radioactive dictator can't be blamed on Hillary despite the smelly
money chain going from Arkansas to Karachi. But, be honest, the lady
sure as heck ain't running on her record as a Senator; her whole pitch
is, "Re-elect Clinton."

And I'd rather tell you this story before you hear it from President
Giuliani.

Nevertheless, let's not lose sight of the current danger. While the
Clinton's may have handed us the Lunatic of Lahore, it's George Bush who
leaves mints on his pillow. I have no information that Clinton knew of
the sales to North Korea. The Bush Administration did and, we
discovered at BBC, blocked the CIA investigation that could have exposed
it in 2001. And that, Mr. Bush, is a very, very dangerous game. The
problem of creating Frankensteins, whether an Osama or a Saddam or a
Musharraf, is that these creatures are often known to rise and turn on
their creators.

But I'm sure we'll correct the error. Four years ago, as Bush was
proclaiming victory over the Butcher of Baghdad, I wrote,

"Given our experiences with Saddam and Osama, our monsters tend to get out of control after about 11 years. Therefore, we can expect, in the year
2013, that President Jeb Bush will have to order the 82d Airborne into
Pakistan to remove Musharraf, the /Killer of Karachi/."

Unfortunately, we may not have that long.

**********
Based on Greg Palast's investigations for the Guardian papers of Britain
1998-2001. Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, ARMED
MADHOUSE
<http://mailings. gregpalast. com//lt/t_ go.php?i= 52&e=NjA1Mjk= &l=-http- -www.gregpalast. com/order- the-book>:
From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a
White House Gone Wild. He is currently on assignment in Ecuador for
BBC Television.