Via the AP: Documents Reveal White House Deal on Ports
Under a secretive agreement with the Bush administration, a company in the United Arab Emirates promised to cooperate with U.S. investigations as a condition of its takeover of operations at six major American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
My first question is: “secretive” in the sense that negotiations weren’t held live on tv, or “secretive” in the sense that it wasn’t common knowledge? This all sounds quite ominous, however, the details don’t sound especially dastardly, although it is unclear what the exact significance of the agreement would be.
The agreement details:
In approving the $6.8 billion purchase, the administration chose not to require state-owned Dubai Ports World to keep copies of its business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to orders by American courts. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate requests by the government.Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.
This is one of those deals were the lede sets the tone and one wonders the degree to which the author of the piece was seeking a particular tone. Starting with “Under a secretive agreement…” makes the whole thing sound especially dark and dramatic.
Regardless of all of that, I expect that this will toss substantial fuel on the fire.
However, we are talking here about whether the liaison between the company and US government is an American or not, and the issue of document storage (which, granted, could affect lawsuits and such, I suppose):
The administration required Dubai Ports to designate an executive to handle requests from the U.S. government, but it did not specify this person’s citizenship.It said Dubai Ports must retain paperwork “in the normal course of business” but did not specify a time period or require corporate records to be housed in the United States. Outside experts said stricter provisions are routine in other industries.
Foreign communications companies with American customers are commonly required to store business records in the United States. A senior U.S. official said the Bush administration considers shipping manifests less sensitive. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the agreement.
I suppose that the document issue could be of issue in the case of an attack and in any investigation of that attack.
February 23rd, 2024 at 10:03 am
On the other hand, having papers of a company that helps it’s government actually fight terrorism available for civil discovery in the USA may be a very rational thing to avoid. That would particularly be the case in a situation where the political stink began to waft after complaints by the attorney for the firm that just lost the management contract.
That said, I am a trial lawyer, so I like having documents where the can be seized. I simply expect that if the cost of comliance were too high, the shipping company would simply allow every adverse inference to be drawn against it rather than reveal really secretive information.