A Special Assistant to President Bush and Senior Director for Gulf, Southern Asia and Other Regional Issues of the U.S. National Security Council, Zalmay Khalilzad, was employed as a consultant by the transnational oil company, Unocal, which was involved in the proposed Afghan pipeline project until late 1998.

In its December 5, 1998 issue, the New York Times amde the following reference to Unocal's past involvement in the proposed Afghan pipeline project: "When Unocal joined the project in 1995, it was viewed by many analysts as the most audacious gambit of the 1990's oil rush on the Caspian.

"The idea was to pre-empt other companies trying to solve the region's greatest problem--it is landlocked--and transport oil and national gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. Turkmenistan has the world's fourth-largest reserve of natural gas.

"There was to have been a 1,005-mile oil pipeline and a companion 918-mile natural gas pipeline, in addition to a tanker loading terminal in Pakistan's Arabian Sea port of Gwadar...The Company projected annual revenue of $2 billion, or enough to recover the cost of the project in five years.

"...Unocal opened offices in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan. To help it sell the project to the many governments involved, Unocal hired senior United States diplomats like the former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger...Problems began with the Taliban's capture of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in September 1996. Unocal initially took a positive view of the movement's triumph."

Kissinger's current partner at his Kissinger Mclarty Associates influence-peddling firm--former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, also indicated why companies like Unocal might employ U.S. government officials and former U.S. government officials like Khalilzad and Kissinger: "If a particular energy company has a desire to invest in a particular country, they want to be positioned correctly with the decision-making body." (NY Times 5/23/01)

A January 18, 2001 UPI article contained the following reference to Special Assistant to the PResident Khalilzad: "One man who will likely be at the center of the next administration's policy is Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American who served under President Reagan's State Department and President Bush's Pentagon...Khalilzad now finds himself...as the man in charge of staffing the Pentagon for the Bush-Cheney transition team...His close friend and old boss Paul Wolfowitz is likely to be the deputy to Secretary of Defense-designate Donald Rumsfeld...As an anlyst for the Rand Corporation and before that the chief consultant for Unocal, the oil company that sought to build a pipeline through Afghanistan, maybe he has said too much...Charles Santos...worked with Khalilzad on a Unocal advisory group in 1996 and 1997."

In a March 199 interview that appeared on Himal's web site, Eqbal Ahmad noted what economic motives had determined U.S. government policy in Afghanistan in recent years: "Texaco, Amoco, Unocal, Delta Oil--all these are now going into Central Asia to get hold of these oil and gas fields. They don't want to take any pipeline to Iran...So Afghanistan and Pakistan become the places through which you lay pipeline. And you cut the Russians out...In this game, both Pakistan and the U.S. get into the business of saying who will be the most reliable conduit to insure the safety of the pipeline...And they pick...the Taliban, to ensure the safety of the pipeline...The issue is who is more likely to ensure the safety of the oil and gas resources."