Qaddafi Coddled by U.S. Oil Companies Whose Hearts Are Where The Money Is

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-14/qaddafi-coddled-by-u-s-oil-companies-whose-hearts-are-where-the-money-is.html

The week after U.S. oil executives in Libya received tongue-lashings from Muammar Qaddafi and one of his lieutenants in February 2008, Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY) hired an additional lobbyist.

Hogan & Hartson, one of Washington’s oldest law firms, had one mission, according to documents filed by Occidental: To get Libya exempted from a law signed the previous month by President George W. Bush letting American terrorism victims seize assets of countries found liable.

The dictatorship was an explicit target of the legislation. Qaddafi had taken responsibility for the 1988 crash of a Pan Am flight in Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans. Courts in France, Germany and the U.S. also had linked his regime to a 1989 blast that downed a Paris-bound flight in the Sahara, killing 171, and a 1986 attack at a Berlin disco that killed two American soldiers and a Turkish woman.

U.S. oil producers nonetheless rallied on behalf of Qaddafi, according to formerly secret State Department cables published this year by WikiLeaks and lobbying records. The six U.S. oil companies, including Occidental, and two U.S. units of foreign companies doing business in Libya, boosted lobbying expenditures 63 percent to $75.8 million in 2008, when they were pursuing the waiver for Libya, filings show.