Chiquita and Chertoff: That Other “Cooperate or [Throat-Slashing Gesture]” Case?

Arming paramilitaries and guerrillas: “Perfect for life”

“For our friends; anything; for our enemies, the law.”

You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. — Vice President Dick Cheney, Sept. 16, 2001

In Terrorism-Law Case, Chiquita Points to U.S. (Washington Post).

To USDOJ and Homeland Security, specifically.

Compare, “In meth-manufacture case, Unimed owner points to Mexican government.”

The common allegation in both defense strategies: the claim that the conduct in question was coerced because the firm was subject to extortion.

According to the “Chinese tale,’ Ye Gon says he was told that his businesses would need political cover, for which reason he should give something back to his country. On which the competing theories can summarized as follows, I think:

1. Unimed was a legal business and was coerced into money-laundering other people’s dirty money
2. Unimed was a front for illegal dealings, and was coerced into money-laundering other people’s dirty money
3. Unimed was a legal business and was not coerced into money-laundering other people’s dirty money
4. Unimed was a front for illegal dealings, and was not coerced into money-laundering other people’s dirty money

Ye Gon’s Mexican defense attorney, meanwhile — and the Mexican government, oddly — seem to be arguing that no money-laundering of other people’s dirty money occurred. To speak of.

On April 24, 2003, a board member of Chiquita International Brands disclosed to a top official at the Justice Department that the king of the banana trade was evidently breaking the nation’s anti-terrorism laws.

Background:

• Yes, Nos Temos Bananas
• Convivir: Government-NGO Regulatory Arbitrage in Colombia
• Did Drummond Do Its Duty Against “Dictatorship of the Labor Unions”?
• Colombia: “World Capital of Trade-Unionist Murders”

This “conduct under duress” did not only involve the moving of mountains of money, by the way. It included the loan of company banana boats to bring in industrial quantities of AK-47s.

Later used in massacres, it is charged.

Of union organizers. Of fruit-industry workers.

What transpired at the Justice Department meeting is now a central issue in a criminal probe. According to these sources’ account, the Bush administration was pulled in competing directions, perhaps because its desire to avoid undermining a newly elected, friendly Colombian government conflicted with its frequent public assertions that supporting a terrorist group anywhere constitutes a criminal offense and a foreign policy mistake.

The Post reports cites five persons who attended the meeting in question.

“Technically, they may be drug-smuggling terrorists. But by golly, at least they are our drug-smuggling terrorists.”

That is the possibility that bothers me. As a Brooklyn taxpayer who used to work in the North Tower of the WTC, I am extremely annoyed with possibility that mass graves are filling up with union organizers in Colombia while Osama reportedly has a damned good chance of dying in his pyjamas.

I would be happy to pay a little more for bananas — within reason — in a world without Osama.

Under the Ivy League legacy-admision MBA president, the old boy network looms large:

Roderick M. Hills, who had sought the meeting with former law firm colleague Michael Chertoff, explained that Chiquita was paying “protection money” to a Colombian paramilitary group on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations. Hills said he knew that such payments were illegal, according to sources and court records, but said that he needed Chertoff’s advice.

Pull out or pay off:

Chiquita, Hills said, would have to pull out of the country if it could not continue to pay the violent right-wing group to secure its Colombian banana plantations. Chertoff, then assistant attorney general and now secretary of homeland security, affirmed that the payments were illegal but said to wait for more feedback, according to five sources familiar with the meeting.

It is my understanding that Chiquita allocuted to paying off both sides.

Justice officials have acknowledged in court papers that an official at the meeting said they understood Chiquita’s situation was “complicated,” and three of the sources identified that official as Chertoff. They said he promised to get back to the company after conferring with national security advisers and the State Department about the larger ramifications for U.S. interests if the corporate giant pulled out overnight.

Failure to fix:

Sources close to Chiquita say that Chertoff never did get back to the company or its lawyers. Neither did Larry D. Thompson, the deputy attorney general, whom Chiquita officials sought out after Chertoff left his job for a federal judgeship in June 2003. And Chiquita kept making payments for nearly another year.

If you cannot rely on an ostensively “pro-business” government to help you resolve what is — let’s be fair, having to pay off two warring terrorists organizations (both reportedly funded by the Bolivian marching powder business) in order to continue doing business really would constitute — a business ethics dilemma from hell, then how “pro-business” is that government, really?

The WaPo-Technorati “who is blogging this” link leads us to the Alberto Gonzalez Watch law blog (”blawg”), which has this analysis:

That kind of official government conduct has serious implications for Chiquita officials who are now reportedly targets of a federal criminal probe by (guess who!) the Justice Department. The Chiquita officials include Robert Olson, the company’s former general counsel, former CEO Cyrus Friedheim, and other officials allegedly accused of making illegal payments. But look who are apparently not targets of the DOJ’s criminal probe: Chertoff and Thompson, the very Justice Department officials who had knowledge of the transactions after their advice was sought, and did nothing.

Again with the parallel with the “man behind the Mexican meth” case: Proceso on Medina Mora: “Complicit Omissions” and Quaint Customs.

Current Mexican attorney general Medina Mora — the federal Secretary of Public Security under Fox — had been apprised of Ye Gon’s activities in 2005, Proceso reports, and regularly updated thereafter. But did diddly about it.

The blawger — the domain is registered anonymously through GoDaddy, but you can write to the author at nylawyer@gmail.com — speculates:

Did Gonzales or other DOJ officials make a decision not to probe the agency’s own former executives? If so, that would surely lead to another investigation by Congress, and a call for Gonzales to step down.

I am all for Gonzales stepping down, mind you, but that seems like an awful lot of “ifs” at this point. Why don’t we start with Judge Chertoff, work back, and see what we turn up?