On a frigid, rainy January day in 2001, Unocal was given reason to rejoice. George W. Bush had just taken the oath of office, and was now President of the United States. The power of the American government was immediately brought to bear in the situation. Enter Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad, who in the early 1990s served Unocal as an advisor on the nascent pipeline project. In 1997, Khalilzad was present with Unocal representatives when they hosted a delegation of Taliban officials in Houston.
NOTE: This meeting was hosted by Ken Lay who gave millions to the the Taliban.
Khalilzad was part of a full-court press by the Bush administration to see the pipeline deal through to completion. Their main objective was to bring the Taliban, who had become decidedly disinterested in then project, back on board. The American pitch to the Taliban, which was still hosting Osama bin Laden, became so intense that the Taliban hired an American public relations expert named Laila Helms to broker negotiations. High-level meetings between the Bush administration and the Taliban continued through August of 2001, with little gain. The Taliban simply was not interested in becoming part of the deal.
It was at this point, according to Brisard and Dasique, that the story takes a darker and more dangerous turn.
Pakistani news agencies reported in the weeks before September 11th that America had threatened war against the Taliban if they did not agree to the pipeline deal. “Accept our carpet of gold,” the Bush administration is reported to have said, “or be buried under a carpet of bombs.”
At the same time, John O’Neill was quitting his job in protest. A Deputy Director of the FBI, O’Neill was America’s chief bin Laden hunter. He had been in charge of the investigations into the bin Laden-connected bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, the destruction of an American troop barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the African embassy bombings in 1998, and the attack upon the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. Simply put, no one person in America’s counter-terrorism apparatus knew more about Osama bin Laden than John O’Neill.
Two weeks before September 11th, John O’Neill left the FBI in anger and disgust. He believed his government was actively hindering his ability to pursue dangerous Islamic terrorists because such investigations were discomforting Mideast regimes like the Taliban that were being courted by American petroleum interests. Brisard and Dasique quote O’Neill as saying, “The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.” Connections between the Taliban and Saudi Arabia, a nation bin Laden and a dozen of the 9/11 hijackers once called home, are too glaring to ignore.
