Billionaire Boychiks Battle for Media Empire

‘Committed Zionist’ To Buy Papers With Troubled Ties to Community

Nathaniel Popper | Fri. Apr 13, 2007

When Sam Zell, a Chicago real estate mogul and soon-to-be media magnate, was a junior counselor at a Jewish summer camp, he regularly transfixed his campers with tales of his family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Poland.

The Zell family traveled through Russia and Japan, pretending to be tourists at the Bolshoi Ballet so as not to stand out. Fred Margulies, a camper in Zell’s bunk, said that the tale — told after lights out — was the most memorable part of the summer, and a prototypical display of Zell’s preternaturally magnetic personality.

“He was a great storyteller, and he captivated us,” said Margulies, today a rabbi and businessman in Chicago.

Zell’s storytelling skills may be put to a new use when he becomes the owner and CEO of one of America’s most powerful media companies, Tribune Company, which owns 23 televisions stations, a baseball team and many major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. His winning bid for the $8.2 billion company comes after a career in which he has made himself rich — to the tune of $4.5 billion — by turning around flailing companies with his brash, unconventional style. His skill at reviving the near-dead has given him the nickname in which he’s said to revel: “the grave-dancer.”

The irony of Zell’s latest success is that it will likely make him the owner of a company that has been the very antithesis of the Jewish summer camp culture in which Zell was molded. The Chicago Tribune, the company’s flagship publication, has had a famously antagonistic relationship with the Jewish community in Chicago — historically because of its right-wing, isolationist stance during World War II, and more recently because of its critical coverage of Israel. Newspaper watchers say that Zell and the Tribune will be an interesting mix.

“The paper has a reputation for having a thick glass ceiling for Jews,” said Michael Siegel, who for 25 years has been the rabbi at Chicago’s Anshe Emet Synagogue, where Zell is a member. “For someone like Sam Zell, who is noted as a grave dancer, here is he is more of a grave spinner. There are probably some past owners and executives who are spinning in their graves right now.”

Even before the Tribune went with Zell’s bid to take the company private, it was clear that the white, Anglo-Saxon culture of the Tribune would be challenged by a Jewish businessman. The major bidder besides Zell was Los Angeles Jewish businessman Eli Broad and his business partner, Ronald Burkle, (who has widely but wrongly been described as Jewish). The deal for the Tribune is not closed, and Broad and Burkle still could be able to best Zell’s offer of $34 a share.

Another Jewish businessman, Hollywood supermogul David Geffen, is said to be in talks now with Zell to buy control of the Los Angeles Times. The Times is the largest single property owned by the Tribune and has a contentious history with the Los Angeles Jewish community, strikingly similar to the Tribune’s in Chicago.

Despite being co-religionists, the bidders for the Tribune properties represent a wide spectrum of American Jewish experiences, and their ownership would mean very different things for the papers. Both Broad and Geffen give generously to Jewish causes in Los Angeles and in Israel, but Broad, a Detroit native, is best known for his work as a civic booster in Los Angeles. Geffen fits more into the classic mold of the liberal New Yorker who has dedicated much of his wealth to gay rights, liberal causes and national Democratic politics. Zell, by contrast, has a reputation for conservative politics and a more intimate involvement with Jewish and Israeli causes.

Given that Zell appears to be close to closing the deal for the Tribune, much media scrutiny has shifted toward how his background might shape the papers. One question that is asked frequently is whether Zell will follow the model of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, who has pressed his political views on his media properties, or whether he will concentrate only on the business side.

In an interview with the Tribune last week, Zell suggested that he would not be involved editorially. “Do I look naive enough to think I have any influence about what people write?” Zell asked in his blunt fashion.

Still, Zell has made it clear that he does have an interest in the things his new media properties cover. In the interview last week, he said that his favorite newspaper columnists are Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, all of whom are Jewish and two of whom write frequently and sympathetically about Israel.

Zell himself is a major donor to causes in the Middle East. His donations include a $3.1 million donation to the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and separate donations to the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, a right-wing Israeli think tank. In the United States, he has given major gifts to such Jewish causes as the American Jewish Committee and a Chicago Jewish day school named after his father. All this is on top of his political donations, which have gone mostly to Republican candidates.

Siegel, the rabbi at Zell’s synagogue, said that Zell is a “committed Zionist” and a “generous supporter of Israel,” along with “a member in good standing” of the synagogue who “comes on the holidays often.”

Among media watchers, this has been fodder for conversation. Ken Reich, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who operates a blog about the paper, said he assumes that Zell will shape the policy of his papers to some degree.

“If he cares about the State of Israel, he won’t want his newspaper to be out there chipping away at Israeli interests,” said Reich, who reported mostly on politics during his 39 years at the Times.

Reich said that at the Times, shifting the editorial policy would require only that Zell be consulted in the hiring of the new editorial page editor — a position that was recently vacated.

“It would not take very much tweaking by him to sharply alter the Times editorial policy on the Middle East,” Reich said. “I tend to expect this to happen.”

Other media critics have taken Zell at his word that he will stick to the business side. Siegel said he was interested to see which direction Zell would take, but he does know that Zell is a “very astute reader of world affairs — an avid newspaper reader — so you’re going to have to keep his interest.”

Siegel himself has been one of the leading critics of the Chicago Tribune’s Middle East coverage. He has organized multiple protest rallies outside the Tribune, most recently in 2003, when the Tribune published a cartoon showing a hook-nosed caricature of the Israeli prime minister following a trail of money laid down by President Bush.

The Tribune eventually apologized to the Jewish community, and Siegel said that the paper has been responsive to the concerns of the Jewish community since then.

Media watchers in Chicago say that Zell’s more immediate effect at the Tribune will likely be on the corporate culture.

“It’s a traditionally corporate environment,” said Abe Peck, a journalism professor at Northwestern University. “They’re the dominant paper in town, and they act like it and dress like it. Here comes this guy who never wears a tie — who comes on his motorcycle — and who brings a whole different style.”

The Tribune’s button-down culture today is an extension of the paper’s historical ownership by Colonel Robert McCormick, who earned the ire of Chicago Jews with his isolationist, right-wing posture during the Nazi era. A similar family of owners, the Chandlers, prevailed at the Los Angeles Times until the 1960s, when Dorothy Chandler began reaching out to the Jewish community to fundraise for local civic causes.

Since the Tribune purchased the Times from the Chandlers, the company has instituted a series of cost-cutting measures that have not gone down well in Los Angeles. Many civic leaders in the city were eagerly hoping that either Geffen or Broad and Burkle would buy the paper from the Tribune, not least because Los Angeles is a liberal city and Geffen and Broad are known for their liberal leanings, both in their secular and Jewish giving. Both men, for instance, are donors to Bet Tzedek, a Jewish legal aid organization. But both men have also tended to put non-Jewish civic causes ahead of their Jewish giving.

“They are both Jewish and very proud of it, but for both of them their primary involvement is not the Jewish community,” said Donna Bojarsky, a consultant in the Los Angeles political and Jewish worlds. “There are not many places to have influence in this city, and the paper would really be it.”

Zell’s arrival at the Tribune has been met with some disappointment in Los Angeles. That has included newspaper staffers who have expressed anxiety over the financial deal structured by Zell whereby he uses employee pensions to finance most of the deal, putting in only $315 million himself and pushing much of the risk onto the employees.

It may yet turn out that Geffen will take control of the Los Angeles property. Zell flew into Los Angeles for dinner with Geffen last Friday night in Malibu, where both men own beachfront houses. Despite their differences, the two men have spoken respectfully about each other, referencing the straight-shooting, unconventional style that inevitably comes from being an outsider.

As Siegel put it about Zell, “He has a great sense of humor — a real love of life — and no patience for baloney or arrogance.”

Fri. Apr 13, 2007

A response to Time magazine's "Why they hate each other"

Iraq

Sunday, March 11, 2007

"Sunnis vs. Shi'ites, Why they Hate each other. What's really driving the civil war that's tearing the Middle East apart."

So proclaims the cover of the March 5th, 2007, issue of Time magazine, U.S and Pacific editions. Presumably, they know better than to put it on the cover of the European edition.

It reminds me of the "Iraq at war with itself" cover of The Economist, May 2006, which featured the face of a bawling Iraqi man. I commented on it here.

Then it was the face of grief. Now it's the face of hate.

In both cases, Iraqis are portrayed as unfortunately emotional before the typical reader of Time, whose "person of 2006", let us recall, was You, the face of which is rationality itself, a computer.

Note the shades of "Why do they hate us?" which followed the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Beyond this (staged and unconvincing) image of these two hate-ful Iraqis, we find the now familiar American explanation of these 'hateful warring sects', in Behind the Sunni-Shi'ite Divide.

The lead-in from the contents page gives the gist:

The war between the two Islamic sects has left the U.S.'s hopes of building a stable Iraq in ruins. A look at the roots of the struggle —and whether anything can stop it.

This must be such a comfort to American readers. The guerrilla war against their soldiers, which is intensifying even during the present security crackdown, is not mentioned in this Time article.

Thus, in the space of a year the "narrative" has been transformed from the Iraq which America has ruined to the ruins of the "U.S.'s hopes". So it's Americans we should empathize with. If it wasn't for these over-emotional Iraqis, they'd have rebuilt the country, packed up and gone home by now.

No wonder they didn't run this cover in the European edition. They think little enough of America as it is.

Rather slap a declaration on its cover, and then presuming to clear up any lingering misunderstanding in the actual news story, Time would do better to form the words into a question: Why do they hate each other?

It's a good question, because until recently, whether Iraqis were Sunni or Shi'ite was not the defining feature of their identity.

To be sure, the common view that Sunnis, though a minority, controlled Iraq and discriminated against Shi'ites, who deeply resented their treatment, is amply supported by the historical record.

But it wasn't the doing of Saddam Hussein. It goes back to the days of the Ottoman empire (1534-1918), when Sunni Arabs from around Baghdad were placed in positions of power to ward off the threat of Iran connected Shia clerics.

The British continued this practice during the first half of the last century when they took control of the region. Integration of Sunnis and Shi'ias began as soon as the British left (although their monarch remained) and it continued under the Baathists.

More recently:

The real tension in Iraq in the latter 1980s was between the majority of the population, Sunnis as well as Shias, for whom religious belief and practice were significant values, and the secular Baathists, rather than between Sunnis and Shias. Although the Shias had been underrepresented in government posts in the period of the monarchy, they made substantial progress in the educational, business, and legal fields. Their advancement in other areas, such as the opposition parties, was such that in the years from 1952 to 1963, before the Baath Party came to power, Shias held the majority of party leadership posts. Observers believed that in the late 1980s Shias were represented at all levels of the party roughly in proportion to government estimates of their numbers in the population. For example, of the eight top Iraqi leaders who in early 1988 sat with Husayn on the Revolutionary Command Council--Iraq's highest governing body-- three were Arab Shias (of whom one had served as Minister of Interior), three were Arab Sunnis, one was an Arab Christian, and one a Kurd. On the Regional Command Council--the ruling body of the party--Shias actually predominated. During the war, a number of highly competent Shia officers have been promoted to corps commanders. The general who turned back the initial Iranian invasions of Iraq in 1982 was a Shia. [Helen Chapin Metz. ed. Iraq: A Country Study, 1988]

During the Presidency of Saddam Hussein, integration of Sunnis and Shi'ites continued. Most of his government were Shi'ia. As I recall, the majority of those "most wanted" depicted on playing cards by the U.S. Department of Defense, are Shi-ites, not Sunnis.

They married each other and lived together as Muslims and Iraqis. A little over a year ago they were fighting together side-by-side in the resistance to the occupation.[Link]

So well might we ask, Why all the sectarian killing now?

Most basically, if someone tries to kill you and yours, the emotions of anger and hate are a normal response. When there is no State justice system and given Iraqis tribal sense of honour, that those who are attacked will retaliate should surprise no one—least of all those inciting this civil war.

There is now a rat's nest of attacks and retaliation, causes and effects. But let's start with the event which seems to have transformed a united Iraqi resistance to the occupation into a civil war, the bombing of the al-Askari mosque, a little over a year ago.

My own thoughts on this at the time are in The al-Askari mosque: who were those masked gunmen?

Is it true that the mood on the street following the destruction of the dome was anti-Sunni? Not according to Sami Ramadani, writing in The Guardian: The word on the street was (and is) that this was the work of the U.S. and its allies—U.S. and Israeli flags were burned in protest—not Sunni extremists. The mood was anti-occupation, not sectarian.

So who were those masked gunmen who took around 12 hours to plant the explosives under that dome, in the then U.S. controlled Samarra?

It's a question many Iraqis are asking even now. It underlies Akram Abdulrazzaq's Iraq's Car Bombers—Who are They? Why is it that of the thousands of car bombs, not a single owner of these cars has been identified?

He goes on:

Before Baghdad fell to U.S. troops, the country had a sophisticated car registration system, and the authorities were able to identify the owner of any wrecked vehicle in a matter of minutes.

So why not now?

Don't these cars have registrations and serial numbers? We have yet to hear of the authorities identifying the owner of a single vehicle used in a car bombing or even where it came from.

Iraqis, he argues, are not persuaded by the authorities' "naive excuses".

They need the Americans and the Iraqi authorities they support to tell them where in the world all these car bombs are coming from. How is it that they manage to sneak through so many American and Iraqi checkpoints and road blocks, especially in Baghdad?

With more than 80,000 American troops now in Baghdad, and every modern means of technology available to them, how indeed.

Amin al-Hashmee, in Hiding Iraq’s Death Squads is No Game, asks:

How can one ignore the fact that with all of their capabilities, the occupiers and the government failed to prevent a vehicle carrying hundreds of kilos of explosives from freely crossing the border, traveling the streets and passing through check point after check point? On top of that, the authorities have been unable to identify even a single car bomb or person who prepares them; and they have failed to inhibit their passage through government checkpoints on their way to park amid shops and innocent people.

Wouldn't you think that the "security services" would make a special effort at the February 12 ceremony at the Shorja market to mark the one year anniversary of the bombing of the al-Askari mosque? Two car bombs. At least 80 people killed. [Link]

Where did these cars come from? Who owned them? How is it that the perpetrators of these car bombings are always "unknown"?

A lot of the cars used as car bombs, you may be surprised to learn, come from the United States. So argues Debbie Hamilton of Right Truth. She believes that they are supplied by "Muslim/Arab used car dealers", in support of the "terrorists", but a rather more obvious conclusion is possible.

Consider also Are the 70,000 Pentagon Mercs in Iraq killing Shias, Sunnis? published in Aljazeera, a review of Robert Pelton's book Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror:

Could some of the Pentagon’s hired Mercenaries be the real perpetrators of the daily bombings and assassinations of Sunnis and Shias in Iraq?

Is the current disaster taking place in the war-torn country part of a wider plot to provoke a U.S./Israeli planned civil war that will dismember Iraq?

Just who is accountable for this privatized war machine?

And while we're on this topic, whatever became of those two British SAS soldiers, disguised as Arabs, caught about to plant a bomb near a religious festival in Basra? John Pilger's account is here. My own is here. See also Steve Watson's Who are the Real Terrorists in Iraq?

Why isn't Time magazine asking questions such as these? Americans (and the British, come to that) have such an exaggerated opinion of themselves that they don't believe "they" could have a hand in inciting this civil war.

If the recent BBC World Service poll, which evaluates the USA alongside Iran, Israel and North Korea, is any guide, the rest of the world appears not to have this problem.

Links
Ali Al-Hamdani, An "Open Letter" to the Iraqi Resistance; Call for "Joint Action"

Fred Halliday, Sunni, Shi'a and the "Trotskyists of Islam" Open Democracy, 9-2-2007

Jessica Long Analyzing the pandemic of global American hatred.

Jan Morris Once the most beloved country in the world, the US is now the most hated.

01:18 PM in Iraq | Permalink | Comments (0)

IRAQ: Blacklisted Russian Tied to Multimillion Dollar Deals with U.S. Contractors: LA Times Sikes Story

IRAQ: Blacklisted Russian Tied to Multimillion Dollar Deals with U.S. Contractors Russian arms trafficker Victor Bout, an alleged arms broker, is behind four air cargo firms used by U.S. contractors, officials say. by Stephen Braun, Judy Pasternak and T. Christian Miller, The Los Angeles Times December 14th, 2004

WASHINGTON — Air cargo companies allegedly tied to reputed Russian arms trafficker Victor Bout have received millions of dollars in federal funds from U.S. contractors in Iraq, even though the Bush administration has worked for three years to rein in his enterprises. Planes linked to Bout's shadowy network continued to fly into Iraq, according to government records and interviews with officials, despite the Treasury Department freezing his assets in July and placing him on a blacklist for allegedly violating international arms sanctions. Largely under the auspices of the Pentagon, U.S. agencies including the Army Corps of Engineers and the Air Force, and the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq until last summer, have allowed their private contractors to do business with the Bout network. Four firms linked to the network by the CIA and international investigators have flown into Iraq nearly 200 times on U.S. business, government flight and fuel documents show. One such flight landed in Baghdad last week. The list of the Bout network's suspected clients over the years includes the Taliban, which allegedly bought airplanes for a secret airlift of arms to Afghanistan. The Taliban is known to have shared weapons with Al Qaeda. CIA officials expressed concern more than a year ago that air cargo firms linked to Bout were cashing in on U.S.-funded reconstruction efforts, but the warning did not reach the Coalition Provisional Authority until May. After conducting its own inquiry, the Coalition Provisional Authority allowed the companies to keep flying, insisting military officials who signed the contracts should deal with the problem. In other cases, officials said it was difficult to know if Bout was behind a particular air cargo firm because he continually changed company names and aircraft registrations. Other federal officials said they had not known about the ban on dealing with Bout or about the Bush administration's effort to target Bout's network until relatively recently. In a letter to Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) in June, Paul V. Kelly, an assistant secretary of State for legislative affairs, acknowledged that the department had "inadvertently" allowed contractors to deal with "air charter services believed to be connected with … Bout." Feingold, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has taken a lead role in investigating Bout's activities. "It befuddles the mind that the Pentagon would continue to work" with suspected Bout firms, said Lee Wolosky, a former White House official who tracked Bout for the Clinton and current Bush administrations. Feingold said Monday, "What's obviously wrong is that U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to fatten the wallet of someone associated with the Taliban and with atrocities in places like Liberia and Sierra Leone." An unreleased report prepared for the British Parliament, a copy of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, accused one cargo firm reputedly tied to Bout of flying weapons to war-wracked eastern Congo this year. The company is not involved in Iraq. Reached by phone in Moscow, Bout responded angrily. "You are not dealing with facts. You are dealing with allegations," he snapped before hanging up. His Moscow lawyer refused to answer questions. During the chaotic period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bout was among the Russian entrepreneurs who seized opportunities to make a fortune. He built a global air cargo network by obtaining old Russian planes and using them to deliver, among other things, munitions to world trouble spots in defiance of U.N. arms embargoes. A confidant of dictators, warlords and guerrilla leaders, Bout juggled a murky group of companies for much of the 1990s, transferring his planes' registrations from country to country. His fleet, which grew to nearly 60 aircraft by 2000, often carried legitimate wares such as flowers and fish. But U.N., American and British officials who tracked his activities say his empire's stock in trade was weapons, ammunition and helicopter gunships. "He had his name on some companies but he has been removing himself from the scene, at least in name. He is finding more people to work for him that have no apparent connection to him," a U.S. official said. Although Bout is wanted for money laundering by Interpol and Belgian authorities and various agencies raised red flags during the last year, his network continued to do business with some U.S. agencies and their contractors, officials said. U.N. investigations and American officials have linked Air Bas, incorporated in Texas but based in the United Arab Emirates, and Irbis, a company registered in Kazakhstan, to Bout's aviation empire. The same officials have also scrutinized two other airlines that flew into Iraq, British Gulf International and Jetline, for possible ties to Bout. Among the firms holding U.S. government contracts that officials said were using the network's services: FedEx and KBR. The latter, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, is a subsidiary of Halliburton , the Houston conglomerate formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney and holder of a massive no-bid contract for reconstruction projects in Iraq. Under pressure to move quickly on the crisis in Iraq, officials have paid little attention to the welter of subcontractors and sub-subcontractors involved in the massive reconstruction effort. "We have a saying in the Marine Corps: 'If you want it bad, you get it bad,' " said former Marine Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Oster, who was among the first to raise an alarm about the Bout-linked firms in May, when he worked as the Coalition Provisional Authority's deputy administrator and chief operating officer. CIA officials expressed concern about possible dealings with Bout in October 2003 and the CPA investigated. The authority allowed the suspect companies to keep flying, saying that only military officials could terminate their contracts. The Air Force did not act until September, when it pressed FedEx to stop using Air Bas. Even then, some suspect companies continued to use flight facilities in Iraq under U.S. control, records show. In the United Arab Emirates, for instance, a Sharjah International Airport official confirmed that on Oct. 28, an Irbis flight returned from Balad, the Iraqi central depot for military and reconstruction supplies. Military officials reported that an Irbis Ilyushin Il-18 freighter flew into Iraq in late November. Military and former CPA officials who oversaw flights in Baghdad say there appeared to be little oversight in the hiring and contract monitoring when it came to cargo firms that flew into Baghdad. Concern over the Bout dealings has prompted several U.S. agencies to tighten regulations, officials said. Some Pentagon logistics officials say they have begun demanding more disclosure from contract firms using U.S. fuel facilities. And the State Department has warned its diplomatic posts to use caution in contracting decisions. Air Bas officials denied any connection to Bout, but U.N. and U.S. officials said the firm had ties to the entrepreneur. Victor Lebedev, Air Bas' general manager, was identified two years ago by U.S. officials as a Bout operative. He confirmed in an interview that his firm's planes had flown into Balad four times in October, carrying supplies for KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary. Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said KBR had hired Falcon Express Cargo, a Dubai-based freight company. Falcon, in turn, subcontracted with Air Bas to haul the KBR cargo, Hall said. She said KBR is no longer using Falcon. "KBR had no knowledge of a relationship between Falcon and Air Bas, and if we had known, we would have terminated the contract," she said. FedEx spokeswoman Sandra Munoz said the company expected Falcon to "stick to the same standards we do," investigating subcontractors' safety records and operating authority. "We believe our procedures are still very solid procedures." Defense Logistics Agency records show that Irbis planes bought fuel 142 times from military stocks in Baghdad — at a cost of $534,383. A FedEx official in the Emirates said Irbis was paid $22,000 for each of its round-trip flights. Baghdad flight records obtained by The Times show that British Gulf also flew for KBR. Like the Air Bas executives, British Gulf officials denied any connection to Bout's network. But intelligence agencies have linked Bout to some of the firm's planes. U.N. investigators examining bank records in the United Arab Emirates in 2001 found frequent money transfers between British Gulf and another Bout-linked air company, San Air General Trading. "These were clearly suspicious money flows," said Johan Peleman, an Antwerp, Belgium-based investigator and weapons-trafficking expert who has worked for the U.N. Igor Zhuravylov, British Gulf's flight manager, confirmed in an interview that his firm frequently flew supplies into Baghdad and other Iraqi locations. He said transport firms like his and Air Bas flew military materiel and other supplies into Baghdad with little supervision from U.S. contracting officials. "We fly to Iraq and Afghanistan all the time, mostly for the U.S. government. But we never had a direct contract with them. We can't even approach them. All the contracts are made for us by other contractors." A 2003 U.N. Security Council report on violations of the arms embargo in Somalia implicated both Air Bas and Irbis in Bout's aviation network. Jetline also flew into Iraq twice for the British government, said Shavia Ejav, a spokeswoman for the British Department for International Development. Jetline has been identified by U.S. intelligence officials as tied to Bout. Company officials did not respond to requests for comment. The propeller-driven Antonov and Ilyushin freighters flown by Irbis pilots "were coming in full speed all winter," said Air Force Reserve Maj. Christopher Walker, who worked from August 2003 until August 2004 as the CPA's supervisor of all aircraft flying into Iraq. Walker and other officials who oversaw flight clearance at the Baghdad airport said they were not warned about Bout's suspected ties to the aviation companies until May, when an account in the French newspaper Le Monde revealed that British Gulf was flying to Iraq. The CPA's Oster said he promptly ordered an investigation. Bush administration officials said the Treasury Department had circulated a compilation of blacklisted individuals to military planners. But the list never reached the CPA, Walker said. Bout's name, but not his firms or planes, was not added to it until July 22. A U.S. official confirmed that now, "Air Bas is being considered for designation" by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. British Gulf's Zhuravylov recently recounted a story illustrating the agencies' lax procedures. In December 2003, he said, he struck up a conversation with a U.S. military fuel truck operator at the Balad airfield. Zhuravylov said the soldier gave him a blank government form, urging him to fill it out and mail it to military officials. In April, "to my big surprise, I received a plastic card for each of our planes which allowed us to get military fuel," Zhuravylov said. British Gulf's business boomed. "It was really so good," Zhuravylov said. "All by the mail. No inspectors, nothing like that. Write a letter, fill a form, get a card." Braun, Pasternak and Miller reported from Washington. Times staff writers Sergei L. Loiko in Moscow and Bob Drogin in Washington and researcher John Beckham in Chicago contributed to this report.