Al Jazeera America is owned by Al Jazeera Media Group, which
in turn is owned by the government of Qatar which just closed up shop in America. Al Jazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood (CAIR) Barack Obama network had about two viewers, less than CNN. Shutting Down April 30th 2016. It should be noted that Qatar loves Hillary and Bill Clinton and has provided cash to Hillary Clinton. The monarchy in Qatar had similarly been chastised by the State Department for a raft of human rights abuses.
A couple years before Al Jazeera purchased Al Gore’s Current TV and turned it into Al Jazeera America, Hillary Clinton told a Senate committee that Americans had a real appetite for the news operation -
But that country donated to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was running the State Department.
During the three full budgetary years of her tenure, Qatar saw a 14-fold increase in State Department authorizations for direct commercial sales of military equipment and services, as compared to the same time period in Bush’s second term.
The department also approved the Pentagon’s separate $750 million sale of multi-mission helicopters to Qatar.
That deal would additionally employ as contractors three companies that have all supported the Clinton Foundation over the years: United Technologies, Lockheed Martin and General Electric.
Qatar dumped millions of dollars
into Hillary Clinton
Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved
$165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments
have given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of
State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three
full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to
September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales
made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the
same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.
The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151
billion of separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that
donated to the Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in
completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush
administration. These extra sales were part of a broad increase in American
military exports that accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House. The 143
percent increase in U.S. arms sales to Clinton Foundation donors compares to an
80 percent increase in such sales to all countries over the same time period.
American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton
Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made
personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and
their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of
Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department
between 2009 and 2012.
The State Department formally approved these arms sales even
as many of the deals enhanced the military power of countries ruled by
authoritarian regimes whose human rights abuses had been criticized by the
department. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and
Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation and also gained State Department
clearance to buy caches of American-made weapons even as the department singled
them out for a range of alleged ills, from corruption to restrictions on civil
liberties to violent crackdowns against political opponents.
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton also accused some of
these countries of failing to marshal a serious and sustained campaign to
confront terrorism. In a December 2009 State Department cable published by
Wikileaks, Clinton complained of “an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi
officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a
strategic priority.”
She declared that “Qatar's overall level of CT cooperation
with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region.”
She said the Kuwaiti
government was “less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers
and facilitators plotting attacks.”
She noted that “UAE-based donors have
provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups.” All of these
countries donated to the Clinton Foundation and received increased weapons
export authorizations from the Clinton-run State Department.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Clinton
Foundation did not respond to questions from the IBTimes.
In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms
deals approved by Clinton’s State Department have delivered between $54 million
and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of
dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State
Department records. The Clinton Foundation publishes only a rough range of
individual contributors’ donations, making a more precise accounting
impossible.
Winning Friends, Influencing Clintons
Under federal law, foreign governments seeking State
Department clearance to buy American-made arms are barred from making campaign
contributions -- a prohibition aimed at preventing foreign interests from using
cash to influence national security policy. But nothing prevents them from contributing
to a philanthropic foundation controlled by policymakers.
Just before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, the
Clinton Foundation signed an agreement generally obligating it to disclose to
the State Department increases in contributions from its existing foreign
government donors and any new foreign government donors. Those increases were
to be reviewed by an official at the State Department and “as appropriate” the
White House counsel’s office. According to available disclosures, officials at
the State Department and White House raised no issues about potential conflicts
related to arms sales.
During Hillary Clinton’s 2009 Senate confirmation hearings,
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., urged the Clinton Foundation to “forswear”
accepting contributions from governments abroad. “Foreign governments and
entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation as a means to gain favor with the
secretary of state,” he said. The Clintons did not take Lugar’s advice. In
light of the weapons deals flowing to Clinton Foundation donors, advocates for
limits on the influence of money on government action now argue that Lugar was
prescient in his concerns.
“The word was out to these groups that one of the best ways
to gain access and influence with the Clintons was to give to this foundation,”
said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, an
advocacy group that seeks to tighten campaign finance disclosure rules. “This
shows why having public officials, or even spouses of public officials,
connected with these nonprofits is problematic.”
Hillary Clinton’s willingness to allow those with business
before the State Department to finance her foundation heightens concerns about
how she would manage such relationships as president, said Lawrence Lessig, the
director of Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics.
“These continuing revelations raise a fundamental question
of judgment,” Lessig told IBTimes. “Can it really be that the Clintons didn't
recognize the questions these transactions would raise? And if they did, what
does that say about their sense of the appropriate relationship between private
gain and public good?”
National security experts assert that the overlap between
the list of Clinton Foundation donors and those with business before the the
State Department presents a troubling conflict of interest.
While governments and defense contractors may not have made
donations to the Clinton Foundation exclusively to influence arms deals, they
were clearly “looking to build up deposits in the 'favor bank' and to be well
thought of,” said Gregory Suchan, a 34-year State Department veteran who helped
lead the agency’s oversight of arms transfers under the Bush administration.
As Hillary Clinton presses a campaign for the presidency,
she has confronted sustained scrutiny into her family’s personal and
philanthropic dealings, along with questions about whether their private
business interests have colored her exercise of public authority.
As IBTimes
previously reported, Clinton switched from opposing an American free trade
agreement with Colombia to supporting it after a Canadian energy and mining
magnate with interests in that South American country contributed to the
Clinton Foundation. IBTimes’ review of the Clintons’ annual financial
disclosures also revealed that 13 companies lobbying the State Department paid
Bill Clinton $2.5 million in speaking fees while Hillary Clinton headed the
agency.
Questions about the nexus of arms sales and Clinton
Foundation donors stem from the State Department’s role in reviewing the export
of American-made weapons. The agency is charged with both licensing direct
commercial sales by U.S. defense contractors to foreign governments and also
approving Pentagon-brokered sales to those governments.
Those powers are
enshrined in a federal law that specifically designates the secretary of state
as “responsible for the continuous supervision and general direction of sales”
of arms, military hardware and services to foreign countries. In that role,
Hillary Clinton was empowered to approve or reject deals for a broad range of
reasons, from national security considerations to human rights concerns.
The State Department does not disclose which individual companies
are involved in direct commercial sales, but its disclosure documents reveal
that countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation saw a combined $75
billion increase in authorized commercial military sales under the three full
fiscal years Clinton served, as compared to the first three full fiscal years
of Bush’s second term.
The Clinton Foundation has not released an exact timetable
of its donations, making it impossible to know whether money from foreign
governments and defense contractors came into the organization before or after
Hillary Clinton approved weapons deals that involved their interests. But news
reports document that at least seven foreign governments that received State
Department clearance for American arms did donate to the Clinton Foundation
while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary: Algeria, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait,
Thailand, Norway and Australia.
Sales Flowed Despite Human Rights Concerns
Under a presidential policy directive signed by President
Bill Clinton in 1995, the State Department is supposed to specifically take
human rights records into account when deciding whether to approve licenses
enabling foreign governments to purchase military equipment and services from
American companies. Despite this, Hillary Clinton’s State Department increased
approvals of such sales to nations that her agency sharply criticized for
systematic human rights abuses.
In its 2010 Human Rights Report, Clinton’s State Department
inveighed against Algeria’s government for imposing
“restrictions on freedom of
assembly and association”
tolerating “arbitrary killing,”
“widespread
corruption,” and a
“lack of judicial independence.”
The report said the
Algerian government “used security grounds to constrain freedom of expression
and movement.”
That year, the Algerian government donated $500,000 to the
Clinton Foundation and its lobbyists met with the State Department officials
who oversee enforcement of human rights policies. Clinton’s State Department
the next year approved a one-year 70 percent increase in military export
authorizations to the country.
The increase included authorizations of almost
50,000 items classified as “toxicological agents, including chemical agents,
biological agents and associated equipment” after the State Department did not
authorize the export of any of such items to Algeria in the prior year.
During Clinton’s tenure, the State Department authorized at
least $2.4 billion of direct military hardware and services sales to Algeria --
nearly triple such authorizations over the last full fiscal years during the
Bush administration. The Clinton Foundation did not disclose Algeria’s donation
until this year -- a violation of the ethics agreement it entered into with the
Obama administration.
The monarchy in Qatar had similarly been chastised by the
State Department for a raft of human rights abuses.
But that country donated to
the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton was running the State Department.
During the three full budgetary years of her tenure, Qatar saw a 14-fold increase
in State Department authorizations for direct commercial sales of military
equipment and services, as compared to the same time period in Bush’s second
term.
The department also approved the Pentagon’s separate $750 million sale of
multi-mission helicopters to Qatar.
That deal would additionally employ as
contractors three companies that have all supported the Clinton Foundation over
the years: United Technologies, Lockheed Martin and General Electric.
