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"...All words are wearying, one becomes speechless; the eye is never sated with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. Whatever has been is what will be , and whatever has been done is what will be . There is nothing new beneath the sun!
Sometimes there is something of which one says: 'Look, this is new!' - It has already existed in the ages before us." Ecclesiastes, 8,9,10
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..You will not be able to deduce it from this story, but the important, untold story here is; Bechtel, an American company, knew that if it wanted to build this pipeline in Iraq, it would have to have Israeli approval. This is evidence of the extraordinary power Israel has over the political process in America...
Washington Post News Service
JERUSALEM -- Foreign Minister Shimon Peres acknowledged. Tuesday that Israel was offered a discount on oil purchases amounting to $65 million to $70 million a year in return for approving an Iraqi pipeline project. But Peres said he didn't mention the offer to colleagues because he didn't take it seriously.
Speaking through an aide, Peres said the offer was made by Swiss financier Bruce Rappaport, a longtime supporter of Peres and his Labor Party, at a secret meeting in Israel in September 1985, when Peres was prime minister.
But Peres again denied that Rappaport had proposed paying part of the discount to his party.
After the meeting, Peres, at Rappaport's behest, composed a handwritten letter to U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, expressing support for the pipeline and asking to discuss the matter with U.S. officials when Peres traveled to Washington the following month.
He gave the note to Rappaport, who in turn gave it to E. Bob Wallach, an American lawyer hired by Rappaport. Wallach delivered the letter to Meese, his longtime friend.
In a memo Wallach wrote to Meese, he told the attorney general. of the Rappaport offer to Peres and added that he had been informed "that a portion of those funds will go directly to Labor."
The memo, released by Meese's lawyers Monday, has become the focus of a special investigation into whether Meese violated federal law by not initiating a probe after being told of a possible attempt to bribe a foreign government.
Peres and his aides Tuesday sought to staunch any political damage to himself and the Labor Party by insisting that Israel had approved the billion-dollar project nearly a year before Peres took office and that Wallach was an unreliable participant who, in the words of one Israeli official, "lived in a dream world."
"No new documents were published that cause me concern and I have nothing to say," Peres said Monday. "We all agreed that we favored the laying of the pipeline, so why would anybody need to use bribes?"
Peres's aide, who insisted on anonymity, said Peres thought there was no reason for Rappaport, who was representing Bechtel Co., to offer financial inducements. "He thought this guy is trying to throw us a bait."
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