Stacking Fault

Undersea Cables, Scowcroft, VSNL?

So I was listening to Radio Open Source on the drive home from work and heard a discussion that kind of shocked me. The topic for the evening was An Obsession with Secrecy. One of the guests was a reporter for Knight-Ridder (sorry... forgot his name and can't find it in the show notes...) The discussion is pretty straight forward stuff mostly... There used to be some data that the government published as a matter of course, but then 9/11 came along and the Fed's reaction was to start reclassifying stuff. At some point in the future I'll try to fuel a conversation by adding my comments to this argument.

But the thing that really surprised me was the revelation that the Scowcroft Group was simultaneously representing Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd in their bid to purchase undersea cables from Tyco last year and acting as an advisor to the Bush administration. There was a minor row over this sale last year, with a handful of US Senators asking about the deal (more info at Fed Panel Approves Tyco's Sale of Undersea Cable To India's Tata.) Or at least there was a row over the deal until the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) gave the deal a green-light. The controversy here is likely to stem from the fact that CFIUS is an inter-agency committee chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury who "serves at the pleasure of the president."

Anyway.. I can't find a reference to this anywhere in the blogosphere. Anyone out there know anything about this? Sounds pretty underhanded if true? If it's false, then it's really not helping anyone's arguments.

posted by Matthew S. Hamrick @ 2:02 AM