Part 3 of 4 parts (Please read Part 2 first)
Barrack had known nothing about nuclear power in the Middle East until he was briefed by Bud McFarlane in late 2016, one of the ex-government officials recruited by IP3. McFarlane had been a member of the Reagan administration. He pleaded guilty to withholding information about the Iran-Contra scandal from Congress but was pardoned by George H W Bush.
In January of this year, Mike Flynn who had been an advisor to the Trump campaign, was appointed as National Security Advisor. McFarland followed up his meeting with Barrack with an email to Flynn with two attached documents. One laid out IP3’s plan in a way that was consistent with Trump’s expressed philosophy. The other document was a memo for Trump to sign that endorsed the project and instructed the members of Trump’s administration to implement it. In the two documents, Barrack was designated as the interagency coordinator for the project. Flynn told his staff to put together a formal proposal based on the IP3 plan to be presented to Trump.
Members of the National Security Council were upset by this attempt to circumvent the normal process for such major projects. Normally projects would be reviewed by representatives from a number of government agencies about practical and legal aspect of the plan. It was feared that eliminating such multiagency reviews could result in private parties taking advantage of the President for their own benefit. One former official said, “Circumventing that process has the ability not only to invite decisions that aren’t fully vetted but that are potentially unwise and have the potential to put our interests and our people at risk.”
Derek Harvey, who was the NSC’s senior director for the Middle East, continued to discuss the IP3 plan with Barrack and Rick Gates, Barrack’s representative. Gates was an associate of Paul Manafort and he worked for Barrack’s investment company. Barrack and Gates were seeking investment ideas for the Middle East. Barrack had considered buying a share of Westinghouse, the U.S. nuclear company which had recently declared bankruptcy. This October, Robert Mueller charged Manafort and Gates with twelve counts. These included conspiracies against the U.S., unregistered foreign lobbying, and money laundering.
In the end, it was not the concerns of the NSC staff that derailed the IP3 plan. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the President was charged with developing a Middle East peace plan between Arab countries and Israel. He decided that it would be a better idea to shelve the IP3 plan and proceed with simpler alliance-building measures with Saudi Arabia.
Recently, the IP3 plan has resurfaced as Saudi Arabia requested bids for the construction of their first nuclear power reactor. This October, Saudi Arabia requested information about reactor purchase from U.S., France, South Korea, Russia and China. The IP3 plan was quickly revised to narrow it to focus on putting together a consortium of companies to respond to the Saudi Arabian request. It appears that IP3 is trying to carve out a portion of such a response to handle cyber and physical site security for a Saudi Arabian nuclear power plant. A representative said, “IP3 has communicated its strategy to multiple government entities and policy makers in both the Obama and Trump administrations.” “We view these meetings and any documents relating to them as private, and we won’t discuss them.”
Please read Part 4
