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House Opens Inquiry Into Proposed US Nuclear Venture In Saudi Arabia (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: President Trump's former national security adviser and other White House officials pushed a venture to bring nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia over repeated legal and ethical warnings that potential conflicts of interest around the plan could put American security at risk, concluded a new report from House Democrats released on Tuesday. The 24-page report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee outlined actions taken in the early weeks of the Trump administration to secure government backing to have American companies build dozens of nuclear power plants across Saudi Arabia, potentially at the risk of spreading nuclear weapons technology. But House Democrats said there was evidence that as recently as last week, the White House was still considering the proposal.
Claims presented by whistle-blowers and White House documents obtained by the committee show that the company backing the nuclear plan, IP3 International, and its allies in the White House were working so closely that the company sent a draft memo to the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, to circulate just days after the inauguration. Mr. Flynn had worked on the plan for IP3 during the Trump campaign and transition, the Democrats said, and continued to advocate for it in the White House. Even after Mr. Flynn left the White House in February 2017, officials on the National Security Council pushed ahead, the Democrats said, ignoring advice from the N.S.C.'s ethics counsel and other lawyers to cease all work on the plan because of potentially illegal conflicts. At a March 2017 meeting, a National Security Council aide tried to revive the IP3 plan "so that Jared Kushner can present it to the President for approval," the Democratic report said, a reference to Mr. Trump's son-in-law and top adviser. The draft memo also referenced another close Trump associate, Thomas J. Barrack, who served as chairman of the president's inaugural committee. It said that Mr. Trump had appointed Mr. Barrack as a special representative to implement the plan, which it called "the Middle East Marshall Plan." The memo also directed agencies to support Mr. Barrack's efforts.
Claims presented by whistle-blowers and White House documents obtained by the committee show that the company backing the nuclear plan, IP3 International, and its allies in the White House were working so closely that the company sent a draft memo to the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, to circulate just days after the inauguration. Mr. Flynn had worked on the plan for IP3 during the Trump campaign and transition, the Democrats said, and continued to advocate for it in the White House. Even after Mr. Flynn left the White House in February 2017, officials on the National Security Council pushed ahead, the Democrats said, ignoring advice from the N.S.C.'s ethics counsel and other lawyers to cease all work on the plan because of potentially illegal conflicts. At a March 2017 meeting, a National Security Council aide tried to revive the IP3 plan "so that Jared Kushner can present it to the President for approval," the Democratic report said, a reference to Mr. Trump's son-in-law and top adviser. The draft memo also referenced another close Trump associate, Thomas J. Barrack, who served as chairman of the president's inaugural committee. It said that Mr. Trump had appointed Mr. Barrack as a special representative to implement the plan, which it called "the Middle East Marshall Plan." The memo also directed agencies to support Mr. Barrack's efforts.
Aluminium and Steel from Canada? National Security Risk.
Wahhabi Nuclear? Potential profit!
Literally nothing. He's giving nuclear technology to a nation that hates Israel and funds and supplies terrorists.
They still 100% support him unconditionally.
Bush gave the Saudis weapons, Obama gave the Saudis a TON of weapons. After all that some power plants seem pretty tame.
Not that I support this nonsense. We shouldn't be doing ANY business with the Saudis while they're carrying out a genocide in Yemen.
It's how you run them.
To get pure plutonium suitable for bombs you run them balls out for a short period, then reprocess the fuel.
When run for power, you end up with a mix of plutonium isotopes. Which puts you back where you started with Uranium. Doing isotope separation.
This was about countering Iran. Machiavellian trick to get a concession from them, or alternatively maintain the Shia/Sunni stalemate in the face of Iran's inevitable nuke.
This is of course applicable to 'conventional' enriched uranium fueled nukes.
My understanding is that Saudi owns a couple of nukes, but they have them stored in Pakistan, for political reasons. Not unlike Japan, who has them, but hasn't done the final assembly.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Learn to read yourself. This is about (A) nuclear power, as the summary notes, and (B) my own personal observation that everyone complaining now was very, very quiet when we were giving money to Iron to help support a much more direct nuclear power -> nuclear weapons route.
It's fine if you want to complain now about Saudi Arabia getting nuclear weapons - as long as you were complaining then.
Personally I am on the fence about SA getting nuclear weapons, but I still support helping them obtain nuclear power plants with oversight. At least they would ACTUALLY let us monitor, unlike Iran.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fake news doesn't want to talk about the Uranium One deal though. I wonder why?
Hey Anonymous Coward, the mainstream media discussed it extensively at the time.
For example:
https://www.latimes.com/nation...
Problem was their fact-based analysis didn't reinforce your lies, so you decried it as "FAKE NEWS!"
Here's the truth: the current logic of Trump and company is to accuse very loudly "the other side" of precisely the crimes they're engaged in. This is intended to later muddy the waters, to issue call backs to "why weren't *they* investigated?", and generally underplay the outrage by making it something the public has felt for years and felt frustrated because nothing was done against "those" people. Having said all that, I wonder how pizza-gate will turn out.
We didn't give Iran their nuclear capability, but Trump is wanting to give it to the Saudi.
Fuel for power plants is not even close to weapons grade, and the power plant deal includes extra safeguards. It actually lowers the chance of the Saudis building a bomb.
TFA contains implications of guilt-by-associate and innuendo about "potential conflicts of interest" but it didn't mention a single concrete problem with the deal. It means jobs for Americans, and lower CO2 emissions in Saudi Arabia.
Yessir. Here is an example of the innuendo about "potential conflicts of interest":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-trump-appointees-promoted-selling-nuclear-power-plants-to-saudi-arabia-over-objections-from-national-security-officials-house-democratic-report-says/2019/02/19/6a719762-3456-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html