I think you can still put me down as officially agnostic on the security risk posed by allowing Dubai Ports World to assume the management of six major US ports of entry. But even if the fears are more nativist than real, it seems like the White House will still not leave critics hanging — if nothing else, on old-fashioned and true-to-form insider and cronyism grounds.

Looking at the “secret agreement” the White House seems to have leaked this afternoon, here’s one point that sort of stands out.

The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

The failure to require the company to keep business records on US soil sounds like a pretty open invitation to flout US law as near as I can tell. Forget terrorism. This is the sort of innovative business arrangement I would think a number of Bush-affiliated American companies might want to get in on. Perhaps Halliburton could be domiciled in Houston, pay its taxes in Bermuda, do its business in Iraq and keep its business records in Jordan.

In the rest of the ‘secret agreement’ you can see other reasons why — in addition to trade secret regs — they chose to keep this pitiful deal a secret.

Read this …

Under the deal, the government asked Dubai Ports to operate American seaports with existing U.S. managers “to the extent possible.” It promised to take “all reasonable steps” to assist the Homeland Security Department, and it pledged to continue participating in security programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.

That paragraph is a beaut for the White House. “All reasonable steps” seems like a rather tepid standard of compliance with the Department of Homeland Security, doesn’t it? And didn’t we figure they’d want to help out regardless? Also, didn’t we figure they’d keep helping out trying to prevent loose nukes from coming into the country? Did we just want to be sure?

More pointedly for the White House, the ‘secret agreement’ seems to have included a series of pledges, albeit rather feeble ones, of cooperation with security and counter-terrorism measures.

See the problem here? They aren’t just hoisted on their own petard here; the petard is engaging them in an unnatural act, presumably pre-detonation. The White House’s whole premise seems to be that the DPW just isn’t involved in the security side of port management. Since that’s the case, the whole security argument is bogus.

But if they need to pledge to cooperate and assist with security and counter-terrorism then clearly they are involved in port security.

Bingo! Finally we’re getting details on Tom DeLay’s and Jack Abramoff’s work for Russian nationals buying influence in DC. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

Bush at cabinet meeting: “And so people don’t need to worry about security. This deal wouldn’t go forward if we were concerned about the security for the United States of America.”

One bit from today’s Boston Globe piece about Jack Abramoff and his Russian energy mogul clients that shouldn’t be missed:

Abramoff’s work on Russian affairs began in the mid-1990s, according to J. Michael Waller, the former editor of a Washington-based newsletter, Russia Reform Monitor. Waller said he was contacted by two Abramoff associates in 1997, and was asked to help organize Abramoff’s trip with DeLay to Russia.

“I was told by two of Abramoff’s colleagues that he wanted to represent the Russian government,” Waller said. He said Abramoff’s colleagues explained that Abramoff was working for Naftasib, the Russian energy company, and that “if he performed well on Naftasib then the Russian government would retain him.”

That made Waller uncomfortable, he added, because he had read Russian documents that said Naftasib supplied oil to the Russian military, so he declined to help Abramoff plan the trip.

“I was concerned that Abramoff was going to become an agent of influence for the Russian government and that he would mask that relationship,” Waller said.

Who’s to say he wasn’t? According to the Globe, Naftasib filtered at least $2.1M to Abramoff through a Dutch company that existed only on paper. That in itself suggests a strong element of subterfuge.

Naftasib is closely tied into the Russian government. Abramoff may have been trying to use his connection to them as a stepping stone to formally representing the Russians. But it’s not clear that would have made much of a difference. After all, look at what he was working on, nominally on behalf of Naftasib, an energy company:

Abramoff’s lobbying records also suggest that the money paid to Abramoff by Voor Huisen [the Dutch shell company] was used to promote Russian interests. One lobbying report said Abramoff was hired by Voor Huisen to “promote private housing in the former Soviet Union and other projects in energy and economics.” Other reports that Abramoff filed said he lobbied for Voor Huisen on matters ranging from aviation safety to disaster preparedness to unspecified issues ”pertaining to defense and security.”

And:

[The subpoena] asks for records relating to Naftasib’s interest in legislation, tax policy, and the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF, which is financed partly by the US government, has provided billions of dollars in loans and loan guarantees to the Russian government.

Geeslin said he had been told that the money was aimed at influencing the vote of DeLay, the former House majority leader, on legislation that shored up the IMF’s financing for Russia.

In reality, Abramoff seems to have been representing Russia, in practice if not on paper. He just never made it official. Then again, why bother? He wasn’t even officially representing Naftasib.

Money well spent?

The New Hampshire Union Leader reports that the RNC has now apparently spent some $2.8 million mounting its aggressive defense of convicted phone-jammer and election tamperer James Tobin.

Rep. Young (R-AK) Loses Shorts Over Abramoff Ties!

On February 10th, TPMmuckraker.com’s Paul Kiel reported on the Abramoff-organized congressional delegation that Rep. Don Young (R-AK) led to the Marshall Islands in February 1999.

One of the more colorful details of Paul’s report was the fact that Rep. Young actually addressed the Marshallese legislature wearing Bermuda shorts. Apparently, for someone so used to the frosty climes of Alaska, the South Pacific warmth just got the best of him.

We based our report on the eyewitness account of Tony de Brum, then-Finance Minister of the Marshalls, who witnessed Young’s speech and his attire.

Late this afternoon, however, we receieved the news that at a press conference this morning back in Alaska, Rep. Young was asked about the Bermuda shorts incident and he denied wearing Bermuda shorts at any time during his brief sojourn in the Marshalls.

We thought Abramoff’s clients were the only ones who lost their shorts because of their association with the disgraced lobbyist. But it seems they’re not alone.

We’ll keep an eye on the local press and keep you posted on how this late-breaking shorts controversy develops.

So the real core of the Cunningham defense contracting bribery scandal gets underway. Mitchell Wade, the flashiest of the Duke’s bribers, but not the guy at the core of the scams, will enter a guilty plea U.S. District Court in Washington tomorrow morning. It’s certainly not a surprise in itself. As we’ve reported previously, Wade began cooperating with prosecutors very, very early in the course of the case. But we’ll be very interested to see what gets mentioned in his plea agreement and how far (and how high — as some close to the case have long speculated) he takes this into the Pentagon.

Hmmm. Rep. Don Young (R-AK) keeps telling the press up in Alaska that he “never had any personal or professional relationship with [Jack] Abramoff.” Now, as regular readers of TPM know, we have a cache of unpublished Team Abramoff emails from back in the day.

So this evening, after we heard about the Bermuda shorts dispute, I started leafing through the emails to see if Rep. Young’s name came up.

It didn’t take long.

The first one that caught my attention was an internal Team Abramoff email from Jennifer Calvert, a lobbyist who worked for Jack Abramoff, to Abramoff and Susan Ralston, Abramoff’s then-executive assistant.

It’s dated February 2nd, 2000 and the subject line reads “Suites – Don Young”.

The text of the email reads …

Don Young has asked for the use of our suites for some upcoming fundraisers. At this time, could we reserve the following events for Don Young?

Thursday, March 30, Caps vs. Pittsburgh game 7:00 p.m.

Monday, July 24, Orioles vs. NY Yankees game 7:35 p.m. (assuming we have the box)

So Young asked Abramoff’s deputy to ask Abramoff if he could use Jack’s skyboxes to hold his fundraisers. But Young doesn’t know Jack Abramoff from Adam.

Go figure.

(ed.note: For a breakdown of who footed the bill for the Abramoff skyboxes, see this July 2000 email from Ralston to Abramoff.)

$3,617,238.

Marina Nevskaya and Alexander Koulakovsky, two executives of the Russian energy company Naftasib with close ties to the Russian government and security services, appear to have funneled at least that much money to three DC GOP lobbyists between 1997 and 2004.

Almost $3.4 million went to Jack Abramoff and Ed Buckham of Alexander Strategy Group, arguably the two most powerful Republican lobbyists in town at the time, both with close ties to dethroned House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).

So what were Nevskaya and Koulakovsky looking to buy?

Let’s break it down.

Way back in 1997 and 1998, Naftasib used a Bahamian company called Chelsea Enterprises for its purposes. Besides $440,000 in lobbying fees paid through the company to Abramoff ($260K) and another lobbyist ($180K), they spent at least $57,238 paying for a trip to Russia by Tom DeLay and four of his staff. The details are murky. But this April 2005 article from the Post puts Naftasib at the center of that operation and strongly suggests that Naftasib and its two executives were the ultimate source of the cash.

Also in 1998, there was the $1 million that the pair funneled through a London law firm to the US Family Network, a front operation run by Buckham for various political work on behalf of Tom DeLay and others.

Finally, with yesterday’s Boston Globe story, we can add another $2.12 million paid to Abramoff through a Dutch front called Voor Huisen.

We’ve just added the lobbying disclosure documents for Voor Huisen to the TPM Document Collection. There you can see two $300K payments in 2001, two $300K payments in 2002, one $600K and one $300K payment in 2003, and then a meager $20K in 2004, when Abramoff was forced to leave Greenberg Traurig. As the Globe reports, “Abramoff resigned from Greenberg Traurig in March 2004. Within days, Voor Huisen was dissolved, according to Dutch records.”

The question of the hour, of course, is just what the Russians were after, especially since, in every case, Naftasib’s true role as the source of the money remained hidden.

A wide assortment of lobbying issues are listed on the various forms, including things like “promote pilot housing loan program in Russia,” and others as vague as “Appropriations Matters.” We also know that, according to Christopher Geeslin of the U.S. Family Network, the $1 million in 1998 was meant to “influence DeLay’s vote in 1998 on legislation that helped make it possible for the IMF to bail out the faltering Russian economy.” (DeLay did in fact vote for it.)

In any case, a million here and a million there and suddenly you’re talking real money, even in Washington.

What did they get for it?

A new call for a special prosecutor in the Abramoff investigation, and Rep. Don Young (R-AK) asks us to imagine him in Bermuda shorts. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.