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Michael Flynn, Top White House Officials Ignored Ethics Warnings to Push Saudi Nuclear Power Deal: Report


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2019 Feb 20, 12:16am   1,206 views  13 comments

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Top White House political appointees, including disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, “repeatedly” ignored warnings from legal and ethics advisers that pushing a private industry plan to sell nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia was riven with conflicts of interest and lacked proper safety controls, according to a report released Tuesday by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The report also revealed a memo that said President Donald Trump had appointed his longtime friend Thomas Barrack, a major Republican donor, “as a special representative to implement the plan and [directed] agencies to support Mr. Barrack’s efforts.” Nearly a quarter of the $7 billion in investments raised by Barrack’s global real estate and investment management firm, Colony Capital, Inc., since Trump won the nomination “has come from the Persian Gulf—all from either the U.A.E. or Saudi Arabia,” the committee noted, citing a New York Times report.

A spokesman for Barrack told the Times on Tuesday that he had never taken a job in the administration.

The private nuclear power effort was being pushed by a consortium of private energy interests led by two former U.S. generals, an admiral, and former Reagan administration national security adviser Robert “Bud” McFarlane. The consortium had retained Flynn in 2015 to sound out Saudi and other Middle Eastern governments on the plan, which Flynn continued to push when he entered the White House. Although Flynn is long gone, Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and top adviser, are still pursuing the plan, the committee said.

The proposed deal surfaces amid worries that Saudi Arabia will pursue nuclear weapons to counter its archenemy Iran.

“The committee is now launching an investigation to determine whether the actions being pursued by the Trump Administration are in the national security interests of the United States or, rather, serve those who stand to gain financially as a result of this potential change in U.S. foreign policy,” the report said.

Flynn, who pleaded guilty in late 2017 to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on lifting sanctions on Moscow, pushed the nuclear plan while hiding his prior employment by the private nuclear energy consortium behind the deal, the report says. Flynn, who was serving as an adviser to the nuclear consortium during the presidential transition period after the November 2016 elections, was aided in the scheme by another senior Trump national security council official, Derek Harvey, who was forced to resign in July 2017 over policy disagreements with Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster. An Arabic-speaking former Army intelligence officer, Harvey then joined the staff of Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time.

The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Representative Elijah Cummings, D-Md., expressed worry that “strong private commercial interests have been pressing aggressively for the transfer of highly sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia—a potential risk to U.S. national security absent adequate safeguards.” The nuclear consortium, which calls itself IP3 (standing for peace, power and prosperity) was co-founded by McFarlane, former U.S. Army generals John “Jack” Keane and Keith Alexander and former Admiral Michael Hewitt.

Only seven days after Trump was sworn in, Harvey invited Keane and McFarlane to the White House to discuss the plan, the report says, after which “Harvey directed the NSC staff to add information about IP3’s ‘plan for 40 nuclear power plants’ to the briefing package for President Trump’s scheduled call with [Saudi] King Salman.”

To the Cummings committee investigators, the proposed deal smacked of special interests trading on their White House connections.

“These commercial entities stand to reap billions of dollars through contracts associated with constructing and operating nuclear facilities in Saudi Arabia—and apparently have been in close and repeated contact with President Trump and his Administration to the present day,” the committee said. One unnamed senior official told the committee that IP3’s proposal was “not a business plan,” but rather “a scheme for these generals to make some money.”

Career White House ethics and legal advisers, including John Eisenberg, the Trump national security council’s legal adviser, repeatedly advised White House officials that Flynn’s involvement represented “a potential conflict of interest that could violate the criminal conflict of interest statute,” but the proposal has continued to the present day, the committee says.

The involvement of Kushner also presented a conflict of interest, the report stated. One of the power plant manufacturers involved in the deal, Westinghouse Electric, is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, the company that provided financial relief to the Kushner family by taking a 99-year lease on its financially struggling property at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Next week Kushner “is embarking on a tour of Middle Eastern capitals—including Riyadh—to discuss the economic portion of the administration’s Middle East peace plan,” the committee noted.

The committee says “multiple whistleblowers” have come forward to express their concerns about the nuclear proposal.

McFarlane drafted memos mimicking White House official stationery for Flynn or Kushner to present to Trump stating “the President had appointed Mr. Barrack as a special representative to implement the plan and directing agencies to support Mr. Barrack’s efforts,” the committee found. Barrack, a billionaire financier who chaired the president’s inaugural committee, has close business ties to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to multiple news accounts. In 2017, Barrack hired Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager and deputy chairman of the inaugural committee, to the Washington, D.C. office of his company. A former business partner of onetime Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Gates pleaded guilty in 2018 to felony charges of conspiracy and making false statements to special counsel Robert Mueller’s office as part of his “Russiagate” probe.

In March 2017, Harvey, then the senior NSC aide for Middle East and North Africa issues, convened a conference call with Gates and Barrack to discuss the plan. An NSC staffer who joined the call later told colleagues that Harvey was trying to promote the IP3 plan “so that Jared Kushner can present it to the president for approval,” the committee said.

General H.R. McMaster, who succeeded Flynn as national security adviser, got wind of the IP3 proposal and, briefed on the potential conflicts of interests of Flynn, Gates and Barrack, told NSC staff that “they should cease working on” it, the committee found. But “officials inside the White House continued to move forward on the IP3 nuclear plan,” with Flynn continuing to push the effort with the administration after his firing in February 2017, the committee report said. It added that “more than five individuals separately confirmed that Mr. Harvey stated during a meeting on March 2, 2017: ‘I speak with Michael Flynn every night.’”

The committee’s interest in Flynn’s involvement was sparked by a June 9, 2017, Newsweek story revealing that the national security adviser had failed to fully disclose his work on behalf of a previous iteration of the nuclear consortium on his financial disclosure form. As then conceived, the project included “a U.S.-Russian partnership to build and operate plants and export the dangerous spent fuel under strict controls.”

In December 2017, Newsweek also exclusively reported that Flynn was texting with one of the executives involved in the nuclear project, Alex Copson, even as Donald Trump delivered his inauguration address. Sources told Newsweek that Russian interests are no longer involved in the plan.

But the Cummings committee expressed worry that the IP3 proposal represents “a potential risk to U.S. national security absent adequate safeguards.”

“Several NSC officials” warned Harvey that the plan appeared to “circumvent” Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, which prohibits any transfer of nuclear technology to a foreign country without the approval of Congress. The rule is designed to ensure that nuclear power projects will not be turned into bomb programs, and experts are alarmed that Saudi Arabia plans to do so, especially if Iran follows Trump’s lead and scraps the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration and five other powers to cap its nuclear weapons program for 10 years. In 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that, “Without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

The committee report said that “whistleblowers who came forward have expressed significant concerns about the potential procedural and legal violations connected with rushing through a plan to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia,” which it said is compounded by “a working environment inside the White House marked by chaos, dysfunction, and backbiting.”

None of the participants could be immediately reached for comment. In May 2017, McFarlane told Newsweek in a brief telephone interview that “he couldn’t comment on its status right now.” He also maintained that he didn’t know about Flynn’s involvement. “I know he was concerned” about nuclear proliferation, McFarlane said. Just last week, Keane organized a White House meeting of nuclear industry executives with Trump to discuss the proposal, Bloomberg reported

https://www.newsweek.com/michael-flynn-white-house-saudi-deal-1336273

#Nuclear #SaudiArabia #Trump #Flynn #Kushner #ConflictOfInterest

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1   anonymous   2019 Feb 20, 1:01pm  

Last November....Saudis Want a U.S. Nuclear Deal. Can They Be Trusted Not to Build a Bomb?

Before Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was implicated by the C.I.A. in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, American intelligence agencies were trying to solve a separate mystery: Was the prince laying the groundwork for building an atomic bomb?

The 33-year-old heir to the Saudi throne had been overseeing a negotiation with the Energy Department and the State Department to get the United States to sell designs for nuclear power plants to the kingdom. The deal was worth upward of $80 billion, depending on how many plants Saudi Arabia decided to build.

But there is a hitch: Saudi Arabia insists on producing its own nuclear fuel, even though it could buy it more cheaply abroad, according to American and Saudi officials familiar with the negotiations. That raised concerns in Washington that the Saudis could divert their fuel into a covert weapons project — exactly what the United States and its allies feared Iran was doing before it reached the 2015 nuclear accord, which President Trump has since abandoned.

Prince Mohammed set off alarms when he declared earlier this year, in the midst of the negotiation, that if Iran, Saudi Arabia’s fiercest rival, “developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.” His negotiators stirred more worries by telling the Trump administration that Saudi Arabia would refuse to sign an agreement that would allow United Nations inspectors to look anywhere in the country for signs that the Saudis might be working on a bomb, American officials said.

Asked in Congress last March about his secret negotiations with the Saudis, Energy Secretary Rick Perry dodged a question about whether the Trump administration would insist that the kingdom be banned from producing nuclear fuel.

Eight months later, the administration will not say where the negotiations stand. Now lurking behind the transaction is the question of whether a Saudi government that assassinated Mr. Khashoggi and repeatedly changed its story about the murder can be trusted with nuclear fuel and technology. Such fuel can be used for benign or military purposes: If uranium is enriched to 4 percent purity, it can fuel a power plant; at 90 percent it can be used for a bomb.

Privately, administration officials argue that if the United States does not sell the nuclear equipment to Saudi Arabia someone else will — maybe Russia, China or South Korea.

They stress that assuring that the Saudis use a reactor designed by Westinghouse, the only American competitor for the deal, fits with Mr. Trump’s insistence that jobs, oil and the strategic relationship between Riyadh and Washington are all far more important than the death of a Saudi dissident who was living, and writing newspaper columns, in the United States.

Under the rules that govern nuclear accords of this kind, Congress would have the opportunity to reject any agreement with Saudi Arabia, though the House and Senate would each need a veto-proof majority to stop Mr. Trump’s plans.

It is one thing to sell them planes, but another to sell them nukes, or the capacity to build them,’’ said Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Following Mr. Khashoggi’s death, Mr. Sherman has led the charge to change the law and make it harder for the Trump administration to reach a nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia. He described it as one of the most effective ways to punish Prince Mohammed.

“A country that can’t be trusted with a bone saw shouldn’t be trusted with nuclear weapons,” Mr. Sherman said, referring to Mr. Khashoggi’s brutal killing in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month.

Nuclear experts said Prince Mohammed should have been disqualified from receiving nuclear help as soon as he raised the prospect of acquiring atomic weapons to counter Iran.

“We have never before contemplated, let alone concluded, a nuclear cooperation agreement with a country that was threatening to leave the nonproliferation treaty, even provisionally,” said William Tobey, a senior official in the Energy Department during the Bush administration who has testified about the risks of the agreement with Saudi Arabia.

He was referring to the crown prince’s threat to match any Iranian nuclear weapon — a step that would require the Saudis to either publicly abandon their commitments under the nonproliferation treaty or secretly race for the bomb.

The Trump administration declined to provide an update on the negotiations, which were intense enough that Mr. Perry went to Riyadh in late 2017. Within the last several months, a senior State Department official engaged in further discussions over the deal in Europe.

The Saudi energy ministry said in a statement: “The Saudi government has repeatedly confirmed that every component of the Saudi atomic energy program is strictly for civil and peaceful uses. The Saudi government has decided to move with this project not only to diversify energy sources but also to contribute to our economy. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly called for a Middle East free from all forms of nuclear weapons.”

Saudi Arabia has long displayed interest in acquiring, or helping allies acquire, the building blocks of a program that could make nuclear weapons and protect the kingdom from potential threats from its neighbors — first Israel, then Iraq and Iran.

The Saudi government provided the financing for Pakistan to secretly build its own nuclear arms, the first “Sunni bomb,” as the Pakistani creators of the program called it. That financial link has long left American intelligence officials wondering if there was a quid pro quo: that if Saudi Arabia ever needed its own small arsenal, Pakistan could provide it — perhaps by moving Pakistani troops to Saudi territory.

The Saudis were also thinking of delivery systems. In 1988, the kingdom bought medium-range missiles from China that were designed to be fitted with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads, drawing protests from American officials.

Riyadh’s worries spiked in 2003 when it was revealed that Tehran had secretly built a vast underground plant for enriching uranium — a fuel for nuclear arms and reactors.

Back then, the Iranians made the same argument that the Saudis are currently making: that they needed to possess all of the production facilities necessary for fueling nuclear power plants. (The Iranians in 2011 opened one such plant, a nuclear reactor at Bushehr, built by the Russians.)

That insistence is what set off the Iranian nuclear crisis. Over the years, several nations have demonstrated that it is possible to turn ostensibly civilian programs into sources of bomb fuel, and thus atomic warheads and military power. Israel recently released an archive of material, stolen from Tehran in January, to prove that the Iranian government deceived the world for years.

The Saudis, meanwhile, had no equivalent facilities. They promised to get them.

“Whatever the Iranians build, we will also build,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief, warned as the Obama administration sought to negotiate what became the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran.

Under that pact, Iran is currently spinning a small number of nuclear centrifuges, though it had to ship 97 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country. The Saudis believe they need to be positioned to match Iran’s every move, though experts say it would take a while. “No one thinks the Saudis would be able to do this anytime soon,” said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “They couldn’t plausibly build a weapon without outside help.”

The core challenge for the Trump administration is that it has declared that Iran can never be trusted with any weapons-making technology. Now, it must decide whether to draw the same line for the Saudis.

The United States’ own actions may be helping to drive the Saudis’ nuclear thinking. Now that the Iran agreement, brokered with world powers, is on the edge of collapse after Mr. Trump withdrew the United States, analysts are worried that the Saudis may be positioning themselves to create their own nuclear program in response.

The kingdom has extensive uranium deposits and five nuclear research centers. Analysts said Saudi Arabia’s atomic work force was steadily growing in size and sophistication — even without producing nuclear fuel.

Saudi leaders saw a political opening when Mr. Trump was elected.

In its early days, the administration spent considerable time discussing ways that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states could acquire nuclear reactors. Michael T. Flynn, who briefly served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, backed a plan that would have let Moscow and Washington cooperate on a deal to supply Riyadh with reactors — but not the ability to make its own atomic fuel.

As a precondition, American economic sanctions against Russia would have been dropped to allow Moscow to join the effort. Mr. Flynn was fired in early 2017 as questions swirled around his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, including about ending the trade restrictions.

In late 2017, Mr. Perry, the energy secretary, picked up the nuclear cooperation issue. Excluding Russia, he began negotiating with Riyadh over the terms. Whether the Saudis would be banned from fuel production quickly became a flash point in Congress.

At his Senate confirmation hearing in November 2017, Christopher A. Ford, the assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, called the safeguards a “desired outcome.” But he equivocated on whether the United States would insist on them.

Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described the administration’s approach as “a recipe for disaster.”

In February, Mr. Perry led a delegation to London to discuss a pact that would ban fuel production, known as a 1-2-3 agreement, for at least 10 to 15 years. (As it happens, the time frame is about how long the Iranians are banned from fuel production under the Obama-era nuclear agreement, which Mr. Trump has called “a disaster.”)

The Saudi delegation was led by the energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, who resisted the proposal.

Nuclear experts said the kingdom wanted to build as many as 16 nuclear power plants over the next 20 to 25 years at a cost of more than $80 billion. Recently, it scaled back its initial plan to the construction of just two reactors. Westinghouse, based in Pennsylvania, would provide the technology, but probably under a license to South Korean manufacturers.

The crown prince made headlines in March by shifting the public discussion over Riyadh’s intentions from reactors to atomic bombs. In a CBS News interview, he said that if Iran acquired nuclear arms, Saudi Arabia would quickly follow suit.

“Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb,” Prince Mohammed told “60 Minutes.” “But without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

A few days later, Mr. Falih, the energy minister, raised concerns about the outcome of negotiations with Washington by insisting publicly that Riyadh would make its own atomic fuel.

He said in an interview with Reuters that he was hopeful for a deal.

“It will be natural,” he said, “for the United States to be with us and to provide us not only with technology, but to help us with the fuel cycle and the monitoring, and make sure we do it to the highest standard.”

But Mr. Falih emphasized that the kingdom had its own uranium deposits and wanted to develop them rather than relying on an overseas supplier.

“It’s not natural,” he said, “for us to bring enriched uranium from a foreign country.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-nuclear.html
2   anonymous   2019 Feb 20, 1:04pm  

Counting down - Fake News ! - New York Times article - yuuggee threat to America (NYT) per Potus earlier today - enemy of the people no less !

Trump declares New York Times 'enemy of the people'. The president's tweet did not refute any specific reporting from the Times, but marked yet another escalation in his sustained attacks on his hometown paper and the media as a whole.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/430716-trump-declares-new-york-times-enemy-of-the-people

Anyway, yes there is an attempt at a non binding resolution in the Senate to stop the sale to KSA

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-saudi-idUSKCN1Q12UT
3   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Feb 20, 3:49pm  

Boy, the Qataris are really spending money.
4   anonymous   2019 Feb 20, 4:43pm  

So odd that no one from the Trump support unit is attempting to put a positive spin on this
5   Bd6r   2019 Feb 20, 4:46pm  

REALLY, REALLY good idea to give Saudis nuclear capabilities...
6   anonymous   2019 Feb 20, 4:47pm  

d6rB says
REALLY, REALLY good idea to give Saudis nuclear capabilities...


As I was reading this - I thought the very same thing. Got to hand it Kushner for having such vision.
7   Bd6r   2019 Feb 20, 4:58pm  

Kakistocracy says
REALLY, REALLY good idea to give Saudis nuclear capabilities...


As I was reading this - I thought the very same thing.

Might solve overpopulation and global warming! WIN-WIN!
8   porkchopXpress   2019 Feb 20, 6:22pm  

ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz
9   MisdemeanorRebel   2019 Feb 20, 6:55pm  

d6rB says
REALLY, REALLY good idea to give Saudis nuclear capabilities...


I'm noticing the difference between the Leftist/Media Spin on the Glorious Awesome Iran Deal, and that of a 50+ year Major Trading Partner and Ally.
10   rdm   2019 Feb 20, 7:03pm  

MisterLearnToCode says
that of a 50+ year Major Trading Partner and Ally.


And incubator of most of the 911 terrorists...
11   MrMagic   2019 Feb 20, 7:13pm  

Is Flynn in jail yet?? What's taking so long?

Hmmmm....
12   anonymous   2019 Feb 20, 7:33pm  

13   anonymous   2019 Feb 21, 2:38am  

Trump officials tried to fast-track nuclear tech transfer to Saudi Arabia

"Middle East Marshall Plan" appeared to be mostly about money for ex-generals, not policy.

An interim report from the staff of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform shows evidence that members of the Trump transition team and administration attempted to push through a plan from a consortium advised by former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn to sell nuclear technology to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The plan would have led to the construction of 40 nuclear power plants and facilities to enrich uranium fuel. The technology, while focused on civil nuclear power, could give the Saudis resources that could be used to build nuclear weapons. The plan would also have pumped billions into a number of US companies involved in the nuclear industry, including the bankrupt nuclear services company Westinghouse Electric—which would have build the reactors.

Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told NPR's Ari Shapiro in an interview that the details in the report were "bonker-balls…can't come up with a better word. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. It's a half-baked, grandiose plan with all kinds of things that could go wrong in it and people screaming at them to stop. And they don't stop."

Despite repeated wave-offs by national security officials, members of the White House team and Trump confidants outside the White House—including Tom Barrack, the chairman of the Trump inauguration committee and a close friend of the president—continued to press forward on the scheme. Barrack, who urged Trump to take on Paul Manafort as his campaign manager, also tried to broker a secret meeting between Manafort and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, according to a New York Times report.

We’re simply making plans for Michael

The effort was part of what was labeled the "Middle East Marshall Plan," a package advanced by IP3 International, a private company led by a retired admiral and with a board of assorted retired Army and Marine Corps generals, former Republican administration officials, and congressmen. Flynn signed on as an advisor to IP3 just before joining the Trump transition team. The Saudi nuclear sales push is the entire focus of the company.

According to the House report, Derek Harvey—the senior director for Middle East and North African Affairs for the National Security Council from January to July 2017—told NSC staff members immediately after Trump's inauguration that Flynn had decided to adopt IP3’s plan to develop “dozens of nuclear power plants” in Saudi Arabia during the transition while he was still serving as an advisor to IP3. Harvey also said that Barrack would be made a special representative, with credentials equivalent to an ambassador, to guide the plan.

On January 27, Harvey met with representatives of IP3, including its co-founders, retired General Jack Keane, Reagan administration National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, and a group of other retired generals working with the firm. Immediately after the meeting, Harvey told NSC staffers to add information about IP3’s “plan for 40 nuclear power plants” to the briefing package for President Trump’s call with Saudi Arabia's King Salman—stating that "this was the 'energy plan' that had been developed and approved by General Flynn during the presidential transition," according to the report.

The IP3 plan draft was sent to Flynn on January 28, 2017 by McFarlane, a board member of IP3 and co-founder of the US Energy Security Council. The email said, “In the enclosed memo you would call upon the relevant cabinet officers to lend their support to this historic program. I recommend that you sign it.”

The draft memo, written to be signed by Flynn, stated, "Tom Barrack has been thoroughly briefed on this strategy and wants to run it for you. He’s perfect for the job. Rex [Tillerson, then Secretary of State] and [Defense Secretary Jim [Mattis] are supportive of Tom’s focus on this also."

Laws, shmaws

After Harvey's pronouncement of the plan, career NSC staffers warned him that "any transfer of nuclear technology must comply with the Atomic Energy Act, that the United States and Saudi Arabia would need to reach a 123 Agreement, and that these legal requirements could not be circumvented."

Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act requires that countries receiving nuclear technology from the US must comply with a number of requirements focused on nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, including a guarantee that transferred nuclear material, equipment, and technology will not have any role in nuclear weapons development or any other military purpose, except in the case of cooperation with nuclear-weapon states. Enrichment of nuclear fuel must be covered under a separate agreement and must be overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The law also dictates that the US can demand the return of any transferred equipment if the IAEA reports a violation.

Harvey was reported to have ignored the warnings and continued to insist that the decision had already been made. The House report states:

Both career and political staff inside the White House reportedly agreed that Mr. Harvey’s directive could violate the law. One senior political official stated that the proposal was “not a business plan,” but rather “a scheme for these generals to make some money.” That official stated: “Okay, you know we cannot do this.” Yet, just days after the President’s inauguration, IP3 officials sent documents directly to General Flynn for President Trump to approve, including a draft Cabinet Memo stating that the President had appointed Mr. Barrack as a special representative.

Even after the NSC legal advisor John Eisenberg ordered a stop to all work on the plan and senior officials told IP3 representatives to take their plan through normal government agency channels, Harvey persisted. McFarlane continued to push to get the plan in front of Trump, sending an email to Harvey with a subject line reading, “We’re Very Close to Losing Our Position in the Middle East.” McFarlane sought "a public US government statement or letter of support for the IP3 plan, ideally ahead of then-Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington, D.C.," the congressional staff report states.

Harvey managed to work the plan into Trump's agenda for the March 2017 meeting with then-Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office, and his "readout" of the meeting included a reference to "a new United States-Saudi program... in energy, industry, infrastructure, and technology worth potentially more than $200 billion in direct and indirect investments within the next four years.” Nobody else in the NSC had been aware of any such plan.

But the seed was planted, and Trump has continued to be "directly engaged in the effort, maintaining contact with IP3 about the plans and expressing his support for the transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia," the report states. "These reports also indicate that Saudi Arabia is refusing to agree to prohibitions on enriching uranium and processing plutonium similar to those agreed to by other countries in the region."

Gold’s not about cash in this case

The UAE's Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR). UAE signed an agreement to never seek technology to enrich uranium or plutonium as part of its 123 Agreement with the US, making it the "gold standard" for nuclear power technology transfer and nonproliferation.

That's a reference to the "Gold Standard" for Section 123 agreements in nonproliferation circles, set by the 2009 agreement between the US and the United Arab Emirates, in which the UAE declared it would never pursue fuel enrichment and reprocessing technologies. Saudi Arabia has never signed such an agreement, and it has repeatedly refused to consider one—a point raised by Republican Senators Marco Rubio, Todd Young, Cory Gardner, Rand Paul, and Dean Heller in an October 31, 2018 letter to President Trump urging him to not go forward with a nuclear power agreement.

"We remain concerned that the Saudi Government has refused, for many years, to consider any agreement that includes so-called 'Gold Standard' requirements against pursuing technologies to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium-laden spent nuclear fuel," the senators wrote in their letter to Trump. The murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi-led bombing of Yemen, and apparent interference in the government of Lebanon, the senators noted, "have solidified our reservations about pursuing a potential US civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, and increased our willingness… to block such an agreement at this time."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/report-trump-officials-tried-to-fast-track-nuclear-tech-transfer-to-saudi-arabia/

US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Interim Report Cited in the beginning of the article, 24 pages:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5743865/House-Oversight-Whistleblowers-Saudi-Nuclear.pdf

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