Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (88 page)

17.
Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz: Interviews with former Bush administration officials, and
Michigan Daily,
March 30, 2011;
Sunday Times
(London)
,
March 4, 2011.

18.
Doubled to $18.5 billion: “China, Africa, and Oil,” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, June 6, 2008. $44 billion: Presentation by Bo Kong, at “The Politics of Development and Security in Africa’s Oil States,” Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, April 2, 2009.

19.
Interview with a former intelligence official involved in the review.

20.
Interview with David Gordon.

21.
“Some Historical Lessons from the World Oil Market,” op. cit.

22.
Interview with Aaron Friedberg. Interview with David Gordon.

23.
Interview with Aaron Friedberg.

24.
Interview with a Bush administration official.

25.
Interview with a former National Security Council official.

26.
ExxonMobil’s scenario planning, “an element of surge . . . really happen”: Rex Tillerson remarks, “A Conversation on Energy Security,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 9, 2007.

27.
Ibid.

28.
All quotations, “A Conversation with Lee Raymond,”
Charlie Rose
, PBS, May 6, 2004.

29.
“A Conversation on Energy Security,” op. cit.

CHAPTER TWELVE: “HOW HIGH CAN WE FLY?”

1.
“Was fortunate at this critical time” and “transform the relationship”: BBC News, November 15, 2001. “looked the man . . . soul”: BBC News, June 16, 2001.

2.
Don Evans and Vladimir Putin, all quotations: Interviews with former Bush administration officials.

3.
Moscow to Washington, June 3, 2002. The State Department cables relied on for this chapter were obtained by the author through a Freedom of Information Act request.

4.
Early thinking about Russia strategy: Interviews with former Bush administration officials involved. “I think all of us at the senior level”: Interview with Spencer Abraham.

5.
U.S. Energy Information Administration: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/oil_market_basics/sup_image_worldprod.htm#Former%20Soviet%20Union. The E.I.A.’s historical estimates of Soviet production do not break out separate figures for Russia, but assuming that non-Russian production was similar in 1988 to what it was immediately after the Soviet breakup, Russia’s peak production would have been about 10 million barrels a day.

6.
Moscow to Washington, June 3, 2002.

7.
Don Evans’s conversations with Russian counterparts: Interviews with former Bush administration officials familiar with the energy dialogue.

8.
All quotations from an interview with Leonard Coburn.

9.
All quotations from an interview with a former ExxonMobil executive involved in the Sakhalin negotiations.

10.
April flight, rehearsing for negotiations with Vladimir Putin: Interviews with ExxonMobil employees. Bush visit timed to coincide with deal announcements with ExxonMobil and Chevron: Moscow to Washington, June 3, 2002, op. cit.

11.
ExxonMobil’s $140 million contract:
International Oil Daily
, May 23, 2002. Joint Statement: Office of the Press Secretary, White House, May 24, 2002.

12.
Moscow to Washington, June 3, 2002.

13.
The summary of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s rise is drawn from Goldman,
Petrostate,
op. cit.; Hoffman,
The Oligarchs;
and Baker and Glasser,
Kremlin Rising.

14.
Interview with Vladimir Milov conducted by Miriam Elder.

15.
Interview with Bruce Misamore.

16.
Ibid.

17.
Ibid.

18.
All quotations, Browne,
Beyond Business
, p. 145.

19.
Interview with Bruce Misamore.

20.
Washington Post
, November 3, 2003.

21.
Library of Congress: Ambassador Alexander Vershbow to Washington, November 7, 2002. Table one at the prayer breakfast: Interviews with former Bush administration officials.

22.
The PowerPoint and a video of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s presentation are available on the Web site of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/2003-02-07-khodorkovsky-presentation.pdf.

23.
Moscow to Washington, November 7, 2002.

24.
Interview with Bruce Misamore.

25.
Interview with former Bush administration officials involved in the dialogue.

26.
Interview with Bruce Misamore.

27.
Interviews with executives familiar with the negotiations.

28.
All quotations from Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s presentation at the Carnegie Moscow Center seminar on global energy, June 17, 2003, from author’s files.

29.
Interviews with executives familiar with the negotiations.

30.
The author David Hoffman conducted an interview with a Yukos executive in Moscow on July 1, 2003, as the Kremlin began to ratchet up pressure on Mikhail Khodorkovsky; Hoffman generously shared his notes.

31.
Moscow to Washington, July 14, 2003.

32.
All quotations from interviews with an executive familiar with the detailed account of the conversation briefed to ExxonMobil afterward.

33.
All quotations, interview with Bruce Misamore.

34.
Goldman,
Petrostate
, pp. 111–12, and an interview with a former ExxonMobil executive involved in the negotiations.

35.
Interview with Bruce Misamore.

36.
Interview with Leonard Coburn.

37.
“Absurd . . . enforcement system”: U.S. embassy in Moscow to Washington, October 29, 2003.

38.
Moscow to Washington, October 23, 2003.

39.
Interview with Vladimir Milov conducted by Miriam Elder.

40.
“Everyone ought . . . long-term industry”:
Petroleum Intelligence Weekly
, November 10, 2003. “There are some things there”:
Charlie Rose
, PBS, May 6, 2004.

41.
Moscow to Washington, May 14, 2004.

42.
Vladimir Putin’s job offer to Don Evans, the Russian president’s conversation with John Snow, and all quotations from interviews with former Bush administration officials.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: “ASSISTED REGIME CHANGE”

1.
Theresa Whelan’s biography, all quotations: Interview with Theresa Whelan. Deborah Avant, a political science professor at George Washington University, reported a brief summary of some of Whelan’s remarks at the November 19 dinner in written testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, April 25, 2007.

2.
Roberts,
The Wonga Coup
, p. 79. Roberts’s superb book provides the definitive account of Greg Wales, Simon Mann, and their activities in Equatorial Guinea, and is a foundation of the narrative in this chapter. Wales provided some of the contracts and other documents to Roberts, who was helpful to the author.

3.
Interview with Theresa Whelan.

4.
All quotations, ibid.

5.
Roberts,
The Wonga Coup
, p. 83. The author’s efforts to locate Greg Wales for comment in Britain and South Africa were unsuccessful.

6.
Reuters,
July 8, 2008, from coverage of Simon Mann’s trial in Malabo. Restless in 2003: Roberts,
The Wonga Coup
, p. 15.

7.
Text of joint appearance: The
Guardian
, March 17, 2003.

8.
Roberts,
The Wonga Coup
, pp. 140–41.

9.
“The advance group . . . government”: From a State Department cable declassified in response to the author’s request under the Freedom of Information Act, Yaounde to Washington, March 11, 2004. That cable attributes to Du Toit the assertion, during his appearance before diplomats, that he would “receive $5 million” for his assistance in this plot. Other sources such as Roberts’s
The Wonga Coup
(p. 76) put the figure at $1 million. Du Toit had been imprisoned for several days in the notorious Black Beach prison at the time he made his statement, but the March 11 cable, approved by U.S. ambassador George Staples, reported that “Du Toit showed no signs of abuse or coercion when relating his story.”

10.
Meetings and quotations from memos and minutes in the Riggs documents (see chapter six, note 9).

11.
Interview with J. R. Dodson.

12.
Ibid.

13.
Roberts,
The Wonga Coup
, p. 184.

14.
“Problems had arisen”: Yaounde to Washington, September 3, 2004. The cable is based on reporting of Nick du Toit’s trial in Malabo.

15.
Yaounde to Washington, March 11, 2004.

16.
Roberts,
The Wonga Coup
, pp. 195–99.

17.
Riggs documents, op. cit.

18.
Interview with Teodoro Obiang Nguema, op. cit.

19.
All quotations from interviews with advisers to Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

20.
Interview with Theresa Whelan.

21.
These and all other quotations from the Colin Powell meeting are from SecState to Yaounde, June 26, 2004.

22.
The road map, meetings: Interviews with former Bush administration officials and advisers to Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Talking point quotations: SecState to Yaounde, October 5, 2004.

23.
All quotations from interviews with former Bush administration officials and advisers to Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

24.
Ibid.

25.
Malabo to Washington, March 12, 2009.

26.
“Money Laundering and Foreign Corruption: Enforcement and Effectiveness of the Patriot Act,” hearing of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, United States Senate, July 15, 2004.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: “INFORMED INFLUENTIALS”

1.
Interviews with four former Bush administration officials who worked on energy policy during this period.

2.
Bloom to Hutto, e-mail released under F.O.I.A., April 14, 2005.

3.
All quotations from “ExxonMobil 2005 Media Brief,” Universal/McCann, as referenced in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2007 report: “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Change.”

4.
“A Conversation with Lee Raymond,”
Charlie Rose
, PBS, November 8, 2005.

5.
“We cannot forecast the price . . . fundamentals are right”: Interview with Peter Townsend, former chief of investor relations at ExxonMobil. Also, interviews with other ExxonMobil executives. Rex Tillerson continued this forecasting practice; he told
Fortune
in 2007, “We tell the organization, ‘Folks, we really don’t have a clue what the price of oil is going to be, and so given that, how should we run this business?’”