{UAH} Debunking the Uranium one Conspiracy

 

 

To recap, in 2015, Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer claimed that donations to the Clinton Foundation were behind the Obama Administration's controversial 2010 deal that gave Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium interests.

And by large, we mean really, really small.

But any money going to the Clinton Foundation occurred years before this deal surfaced, and came from a fellow philanthropist, Canadian Frank Guistra, who had divested himself from uranium years before this Uranium One deal.

The concern was that the FBI knew that Russian nuclear industry officials had engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to help Russian President, and world's richest man, Vladimir Putin, increase his commercial nuclear ambitions inside the United States, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The State Department and several government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States first unanimously approved the 2010 partial sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, supposedly giving Moscow control of more than 20% of America's uranium supply.

And by 20%, we really mean almost zero.

Those U.S. facilities obtained by Russia produced almost nothing for years before this sale. Uranium One couldn't give these facilities away. But they do have good milling capacity to

Process or, if anyone gives it to them, which hadn't happened in years. Theoretically, they could process 20% of our ore, but that has never happened.

Besides, Russia can't export any uranium they produce in the U.S. anyway. They do not possess a Nuclear Regulatory Commission export license. And never should. Any export would have to be approved on a case-by-case basis by the U.S. Government, as sometimes occurs.

That is not to say Uranium One has been idle since that time. They have been buying up mines and companies as fast as they can, especially outside the U.S., and their U.S. production has increased to about 5% of our total (see Campbell et al., 2017).

The real reason Russia wanted this deal was to give Rosatom's subsidiary the Uranium One's very profitable uranium mines in Kazakhstan - the single largest producer of commercial uranium in the world. Russia wanted this control over their former Soviet republic, like they are trying with all former satellites and now they have it.

Then, in 2011 the Administration approved a Rosatom subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants in partnership with the U.S. Enrichment Corporation. Up until then, Russia had been limited to selling our nuclear power plants uranium reprocessed from old Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program. Nothing strange here either.

In 2013, Russia obtained 100% interest in Uranium One and really started messing with Kazakhstan.

Rather than take action against this deal, the Department of Justice just continued investigating the matter for years, essentially leaving the American public, Congress, the Secretary of State and the Administration in the dark about more Russian meddling in the United States, this time involving nuclear.

Candidate Trump jumped on this issue during the 2016 campaign trail, but as Secretary, Clinton was not involved in the committee review, never intervened on the matter and there were so many other agencies involved in the recommendation that there was no there there.

It is still not clear why no one at the FBI alerted the Obama Administration to the Russian kickbacks, extortion threats and money laundering before these decisions were made. One theory is that the United States was still seeking to reset its relationship with Russia and was also trying to get Putin on board with our Iran Nuclear Deal.

As Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute, described it, Russia's purchase of the company "had as much of an impact on national security as it would have if they set the money on fire."

The key to this issue's resurgence is that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time, Bill Clinton got a substantial speaking fee in Russia that year, and Russian money may have found its way to the Clinton Foundation, although the latter turns out to be pretty small and through a convoluted route that may not have involved Russia at all.

 

However, even though there was no wrongdoing on the part of the Administration or the Clintons, and no national security reason for anyone to oppose this deal, some still want to make it another Bengazhi.

As a scandal, this issue lacks relevance since Clinton is now a private citizen and Russian meddling in our 2016 election has become a bigger issue. In fact, this uranium deal now seems to have more to do with Mueller's present investigation than with Clinton.

In the end, this Russian deal just wasn't that important and had no national security ramifications.

    Dr. James Conca is an expert on energy, nuclear and dirty bombs, a planetary geologist, and a professional speaker. Follow him on Twitter @jimconca and see his book at Amazon.com

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*A positive mind is a courageous mind, without doubts and fears, using the experience and wisdom to give the best of him/herself.

 

 We must dare invent the future!
The only way of limiting the usurpation of power by
 individuals, the military or otherwise, is to put the people in charge  - Capt. Thomas. Sankara {RIP} '1949-1987

 *"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent

revolution inevitable"**…  *J.F Kennedy

 

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