I sought the new legal ban on fund-raising for terrorist groups because several people in the administration had thwarted the CSG's attempts to go after terrorist money. In January 1995 we had persuaded the President to issue an Executive Order making it a felony (under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act) to raise funds for or transfer funds to designated terrorist groups or their front organizations. Rick Newcomb, the head of an obscure but powerful office in the Treasury (the Office of Foreign Assets Control), was eager to use the new authority ...
... Newcomb used the Customs police to enforce his edicts and, after CSG review, he had them set to raid the [Holy Land Foundation of Richland, Texas], break the locks, seize the records and assets, plaster posters on the doors and windows proclaiming that the place had been raided. Then FBI Director Louis Freeh and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin objected. Freeh was concerned with alienating Arabs in America and claimed that use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act might be challenged in court. Rubin claimed that he feared the law might not hold up under challenge. He had also been reluctant to support any moves against money laundering for fear that it would cause capital flight from the U.S.
The raid did not occur ...
Incredibly, the legal authorities we sought were not approved by the Congress in 1995. I had thought these issues were bipartisan, but the distrust and animosity between the Democratic White House and Republicans in the Congress was strong and boiled over into counterterrorism policy. The World Trade Center attack had happened, the New Yourk landmarks and Pacific 747 attacks had almost happened, sarin had been sprayed in the Tokyo subway, buses were blown up on Israeli streets, a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City had been smashed to bits, but many in the Congress opposed the counterterrorism bill. Republicans in the Senate, such as Orrin Hatch, opposed expanding organized crime wiretap provisions to terrorists. Tom Delay and other Republicans in the House agreed with the National Rifle Association that the proposed restriction on bomb making infringed on the right to bear arms. We would have to try again in 1996 to strengthen our ability to fight terrorism.
Whatever became of Louis Freeh (you might ask)?
June 2001: Upon resigning from the bureau, lauded by Attorney General John Ashcroft who called him "a model law enforcement officer".
September 2001 - January 2006: Appointed to the board of directors of the bank holding company and credit card issuer MBNA where he also served as general counselor, corporate secretary and (perhaps not altogether ironically) ethics officer. MBNA was a "prime mover" in lobbying to get the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 passed. MBNA was subsequently
Since 2005: Director of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (big Pharma)
Since 2007: Managing Partner law firm of Freeh Sullivan Sporking, LLP
May 2007: Board of Directors, Fannie Mae
Consultant: Daimler AG (formerly DaimlerChrysler AG)
Consultant: E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
Apparently, none of those jobs takes up 40 hours of his work week. OR, perhaps he's just part of the revolving door between government and corporations using his former government connections to help pass legislation favorable to corporations.
And whatever happened (again, you might ask) to Robert Rubin?
From Mother Jones via Common Dreams:
In 1999, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, always a good friend to Wall Street, finally brokered a deal between the administration and Congress that allowed banking deregulation to move forward. Shortly after the compromise was reached, Rubin took a top position at Citigroup, which went on to embark upon mergers that would have been rendered illegal under Glass-Steagall. As the New York Times put it, Rubin would be leading “what has become the first true American financial conglomerate since the Depression”-a conglomerate that could exist only because of legislation he had just shepherded through Congress.
No way could the top position at Citigroup be viewed as a "reward" for successfully brokering that deal. No way at all. More from Mother Jones via Common Dreams:
Passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 was celebrated in a Wall Street Journal editorial as an end to “unfair” restrictions imposed on banks during the Great Depression, under the headline “Finally, 1929 Begins to Fade.” But Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, writing in Mother Jones, warned that the legislation, which amounted to the “finance industry’s deregulatory wish list,” would “pave the way for a new round of record-shattering financial industry mergers, dangerously concentrating political and economic power.” Mokhiber and Weissman also predicted that such mergers would eventually “create too-big-to-fail institutions that are someday likely to drain the public treasury as taxpayers bail out imperiled financial giants to protect the stability of the nation’s banking system.”
Good call Mokhiber and Weissman.
2001: [Rubin] sparks controversy in contacting Treasury Department acquaintance to ask:
if the department could convince bond-rating agencies not to downgrade the corporate debt of Enron, a debtor of Citigroup. Rubin wanted Enron creditors to lend money to the troubled company for a restructuring of its debt; a collapse of the energy giant might have serious consequences for financial markets and energy distribution. The Treasury official refused. A subsequent congressional staff investigation cleared Rubin of any wrongdoing, but he was still harshly criticized by political opponents.
July 2001: becomes member of Harvard Corporation, executive governing board of Harvard University.
October 2003: Named Vice Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization whose roots have ties to Woodrow Wilson, Howard Lippman, Herbert Hoover, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefellar, John Foster Dulles, Herbert H. Lehman, Henry Stimson, Averill Harriman, and John Kenneth Galbraith (who resigned in 1970), many serving politicians, plus all three branches of the military.
2006: Founding member of the Hamilton Group, which under the auspices of the Brookings Institute is a Free Trade globalization advocate.
2007: Member, African Progress Panel (along with Tony Blair, Koffi Annan and Michel Camdessus among others).
Rubin's bona-fides as a member of the Military-Industrial-Politcal-Financial complex are indisputable. It's also reassuring to not his footprints upon Enron and the bursting housing bubble. Truly one of the elite makers and shakers of the land.
