{"id":6724,"date":"2006-02-28T09:46:10","date_gmt":"2006-02-28T14:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6724"},"modified":"2006-02-28T09:46:10","modified_gmt":"2006-02-28T14:46:10","slug":"support-for-the-port-deal-was-hardly-unanimous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/support-for-the-port-deal-was-hardly-unanimous\/","title":{"rendered":"Support for the port deal was hardly unanimous"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee met to discuss the administration’s Dubai Ports World deal, and several senators specifically inquired about whether any government agency raised concerns about the contract. Agencies, administration officials said<\/a>, were unanimous in their support.<\/p>\n

“Is there not one agency in this government that believes this takeover could affect the national security of the United States?” asked Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n

[Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt, representing the Bush administration before the Committee] said “all of those concerns were addressed” in the administration’s initial, three-month examination of the deal. When the interagency panel charged with reviewing foreign acquisitions met in mid-January — its only formal meeting on the Dubai Ports World acquisition — no agency raised further national concerns, Mr. Kimmitt said. That made an additional 45-day review unnecessary, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This explanation, while literally true, left out a few key details that would have offered a more helpful context. For example, Kimmitt didn’t mention that DHS initially balked<\/a> at the ports deal.<\/p>\n

The Homeland Security Department objected at first to a United Arab Emirates company’s taking over significant operations at six U.S. ports. It was the lone protest among members of the government committee that eventually approved the deal without dissent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The administration also neglected to report on the concerns raised by the Coast Guard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Coast Guard, in charge of reviewing security at ports operated by a Dubai maritime company, warned the Bush administration it could not rule out that the company’s assets could be used for terrorist operations, according to a document released yesterday by a Senate committee. […]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

[I]n a Dec. 13 intelligence assessment of the company and its owners in the United Arab Emirates, the Coast Guard warned: “There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that preclude” the completion of a thorough threat assessment of the merger.<\/p>\n

“The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities,” says the document, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Coast Guard document was, apparently, not enough to prompt the administration to conduct a more thorough 45-day investigation of the deal, which has some lawmakers confused.<\/p>\n

“Given the red-flag questions that the Coast Guard raised, very serious questions about operations, personnel and foreign influence, how could there not have been the 45-day investigation that’s clearly required by law?” asked Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine).<\/p>\n

It sounds like a reasonable question.<\/p>\n

To be fair, it’s worth noting that the Coast Guard report is still classified, and the excerpts released yesterday are only part of a larger document. What does the rest of the document say? We don’t know; reporters haven’t seen it.<\/p>\n

That said, to suggest that the various administration agencies all agreed during the review process that this deal wasn’t the least bit controversial now seems misleading, at best. The next 45 days will likely prove pretty interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Senate Armed Services Committee met to discuss the administration’s Dubai Ports World deal, and several senators specifically inquired about whether any government agency raised concerns about the contract. Agencies, administration officials said, were unanimous in their support. “Is there not one agency in this government that believes this takeover could affect the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}