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The man who oils India's
wheels
By Ramtanu Maitra
No
US ambassador since John Kenneth Galbraith
massaged the Indian ego more efficiently than
Robert D Blackwill. The former envoy to India
(2001-2003) is now reportedly cultivating his
Indian 
friends to win a lobbying contract for his
firm, Washington-based Barbour, Griffith and
Rogers International (BG&R). [1]
Blackwill's timing is right. India has
terminated its relationship with Akin, Gump,
Strauss, Hauer and Field as a result of its
failure to stop US government consideration of the
sale of F-16s to Pakistan.
Blackwill
resigned suddenly last November from his position
as number two in the National Security Council
(NSC), heading the Iraq Stabilization Group. He
was considered a shoo-in for the NSC job in
President George W Bush's second term, but his
difficult temper, and his enemies, led to his
summary resignation and dashed his hope to replace
Condoleezza Rice as head of the NSC.
The Bush league
Being close to
former president George H W Bush, however,
Blackwill has friends in high places. Soon after
Rice sat him down and told him to quit, former
Republican National Committee chairman and present
Mississippi governor Haley Barbour's lobbying
firm, Barbour, Griffith and Rogers International,
hired Blackwill as president, and put him to work.
The appointment was not only a "Good
Samaritan" act by Blackwill's friends; it also
enhanced BG&R's prestige and made it a potent
competitor for a host of contracts in Iraq, India
and elsewhere. It is difficult to imagine at this
point that any country that wants to be friends
with the White House would turn down BG&R's
advances.
Besides Blackwill and Haley
Barbour, who is administering a "red state",
BG&R also boasts a number of close associates
of the extended Bush family. Ed Rogers, vice
chairman and co-founder of BG&R with Haley
Barbour in 1991, served as the deputy assistant to
Bush senior and executive assistant to the White
House chief of staff. Additionally, Rogers was the
senior deputy to Bush-Quayle campaign manager Lee
Atwater from February 1987 through the general
election in 1988. Rogers also worked in the White
House Office of Political Affairs during the
Ronald Reagan administration when George H W Bush
was vice president of the US.
The other
partner, Lanny Griffith, chief operating officer
at BG&R, joined the firm as partner in 1993.
Previously, Griffith served Bush senior as
assistant secretary of education for
intergovernmental and interagency affairs from
November 1991 until January 1993. He also served
in the White House as special assistant to the
president for intergovernmental affairs and was
the southern political director for the 1988
Bush-Quayle presidential campaign.
The
Kuwait incident
But Blackwill has a special
service to offer to BG&R with regard to India.
Considered a highly successful ambassador,
Blackwill mesmerized Indians with his pro-India
and pro-Israel policies. Serving in Delhi at a
time when the anti-Muslim and pro-Israel Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) was leading the National
Democratic Alliance, Blackwill seized on the deep
involvement of 
Islamic militants in the September 11 attacks to
push Washington closer to New Delhi.
New
Delhi, for its part, found this a great
opportunity as well to move closer to Israel and
the US. India hoped to influence Washington to
accept India's nuclear weaponization and its
unquestionable importance in the region. To that
effect, Blackwill played a very important role for
India during the period 2001-2003.
But his
difficult temper and ostensible refusal to suffer
fools also created many enemies in the US State
Department. Many of those enemies were not fools.
For instance, his high-handed pro-India and
anti-Pakistan reports from New Delhi led to the
virtual removal of the US ambassador to Pakistan,
Wendy Chamberlain. The undermining of Chamberlain,
a protege of US Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage, antagonized both Armitage and Secretary
of State Colin Powell.
There is perhaps
another reason why the State Department's top two
did not appreciate Blackwill as much as Indian BJP
leader L K Advani did. According to Powell and
Armitage, Blackwill is too pro-Israel. His
high-profile activity further weakens the US image
in dealing with the difficult Israel-Palestine
situation. There is no doubt that Powell did not
appreciate more roadblocks in dealing with that
complex and violent issue.
The fallout
from the enmity between these powerful individuals
showed up later. Blackwill, who had told the
Indians that he would go back to academia, instead
joined the NSC (July 2003-November 2004) under
Rice, and was trusted with the thorny portfolio of
Iraq policy. It was whispered then that Blackwill
would be the NSC chief in Bush's second term in
the event of Rice shifting to some other post.
Then, last September, Blackwill splashed
into the news with reports that he had verbally
abused and physically hurt a female embassy
staffer during a visit to Kuwait. Since he
resigned rather promptly, before any formal
investigation took place, the content and sequence
of things that led to the event remain unclear.
Reports claim that Blackwill arrived at the Air
France counter at Kuwait airport and learned he
was not on the flight manifest. He then turned in
fury to an embassy secretary who had accompanied
him to the airport and demanded that he be given a
seat on the flight, grabbing her arm at one point,
officials said. The incident was reported to Rice
by none other than Powell. It was also said that
Powell and his deputy, Armitage, presented the
evidence against Blackwill to Rice. "Condi only
dismissed him after Powell and Armitage threatened
to go public," a State Department source told a
newsperson.
Blackwill disputes this
version of the story. But barring a full
investigation, this is what will be remembered.
Indian goodwill
It is unlikely
that the Kuwait airport incident will make it
difficult for Blackwill to garner contracts for
BG&R from the Indian Embassy or New Delhi.
Though his pro-India stance allegedly comes from
the depth of his heart, it is worth noting that
Blackwill was also an open and enthusiastic
advocate of Enron Inc, which turned out to be a
massive fraud built in chrome and steel.
On November 21, 2001, in answer to a
question at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in
Delhi about the dispute between Enron and the
Maharashtra State Electricity Board, Blackwill
said, "The problem Enron has had in India will
continue to cast a very dark shadow on foreign
investments in India." Because the government of
the state of Maharashtra had come to realize that
it was being conned and ripped off by Enron
(helped by a host of Indian politicians), it had
suspended the grossly unfair payment arrangement
and sent the matter to the courts. But long after
Enron had bit the dust and top officials were
hauled in on charges of fraud, Blackwill was still
referring to the necessity for India to abide by
the "sanctity of contract".
But if he
antagonized some Indians with his
pay-up-Enron-or-face-the-consequences rhetoric, he
won the hearts of many more with his rhetoric
about what India means to him. In one of his last
speeches in New Delhi, Blackwill said: "... and
more than any of this, the remembrances of the
character of the people of India, which I will
take back to America with me - of countless
individuals over these two years who have taught
me, counseled me, guided me, and protected me -
who were generous to me beyond imagination. I
could not repay their kindnesses to Wera [his
wife, Wera Hilderbrand] and me no matter how many
times I was reincarnated ... Mother India has
changed my life - forever."
Goodbye
Clintonites
The appointment of lobbying
firms had always been associated with political
exigencies. The Bush election victory in 2000 led
to the hiring of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and
Field by the Indian Embassy in April 2003, dumping
the Clinton administration-favored Verner,
Lipfert, Bernhard and Hand.
Akin, Gump has
a very important friend of the Bush family on its
roster: James C Langdon, a lawyer. And, according
to Ken Silverstein, an investigative reporter
based in Washington, the Akin firm is well
connected to the Republican Party. Nine officials
from the lobbying shop served as members of the
Bush administration's 2000 Transition Advisory
Teams, including Bill Paxon, the former
congressman from New York, who remains close to
the House Republican leadership. Akin, Gump is
also close to Saudi Arabia. But after September
11, that may not be a strong selling point.
Interestingly, Akin, Gump had as strong a
link with Enron, Inc as Blackwill had. In fact,
Enron was represented by the group. It is widely
known that Clinton's commerce secretary, the late
Ron Brown, accompanied Enron chairman Kenneth Lay
to India. Clinton treasury secretary Robert Rubin
listed Enron as one of the firms with which he had
had significant contact while at Goldman Sachs.
Clinton advisors Bob Strauss and Vernon Jordan
also worked at Akin, Gump.
But with Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Field now out of the
picture, the field is open for Blackwill to make
BRG the next lobbying firm of India in Washington.
Blackwill has already made the requisite noises,
suggesting that he strongly resents the Bush
administration's decision to sell the
aforementioned F-16s to Pakistan.
Note [1] According to their
website, "Barbour Griffith & Rogers, LLC,
founded in 1991, is a company of lawyers, policy
specialists and other professionals based in
Washington, DC. Our firm is actively involved in
the shaping of public policy issues that dominate
the American political and corporate agenda. We
serve as advocates in federal government
relations, a vital link to state governments, and
an ally in business development anywhere in the US
and in markets around the world."
Ramtanu Maitra writes for a
number of international journals and is a regular
contributor to the Washington-based EIR and the
New Delhi-based Indian Defence Review. He also
writes for Aakrosh, India's defense-tied quarterly
journal.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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