Imagine that. Last night we told you about Joe Allbaugh, President Bush’s longtime right-hand-man who just opened a company to get into the Iraq contract business. And last week we told you about how Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith’s old law firm, Feith & Zell, has now opened a new division specializing in hooking up clients with the sweetest deals in Iraq. Feith & Zell is now Zell, Goldberg & Co, though they haven’t yet gotten around to changing their website address, which is still www.fandz.com.
Well, there’s more.
Let me introduce you to the Iraqi International Law Group, a new outfit ready to help you secure contracts for rebuilding Iraq. And let me also introduce you to the head of IILG, Salem Chalabi.
Name sound familiar? Related to Ahmed Chalabi? You bet: Salem’s Ahmed’s nephew.
Now, Salem just got his website up online. And he seems to have gotten some help because up until a couple days ago the site address was registered under the name of Marc Zell. Right, that Marc Zell, Feith’s former law partner. And the help continues. According to Chalabi, Zell is working as the firm’s “marketing consultant.” In fact, at the bottom of the IILG website in the ‘contact’ section it lists the “Partner for International Marketing” as someone with the email address “mzell@iraqlawfirm.com”. And I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that that’s an email address for Marc Zell. Call me crazy.
In any case, I’d love to tell you that this latest twist is the product of my own sleuthing. But most of it comes from a very good article in Wednesday’s Guardian, passed on to me by a helpful TPM reader (DW).
(Well, actually I noticed the email address on the site, so I’ll give myself a small pat on the back.)
The contracts are becoming a key lever of power in Washington and in Baghdad. There’s much more of this to come.
