>> i orchestrate or organize a reading by writers events once a month at the university club in st. paul. writer to write their own books or writers who are new writers and so on. we have this reading once a month and we're getting great big audiences of over 100 which is a lot for a poetry reading. i do this serious which i consider my sort of gift to the poets in minnesota really. >> can you talk about the literary community in st. paul? what type of community isn't? >> i think wit we have a very vibrant literary community in st. paul and in minneapolis to st. paul, literary is respected and revered and tons of people are writing poetry and many people are getting published and then we have the stars like garrison keillor. just the guy down the street who decided to write a few poems and the turn out to be really good.

that's the way people get to have a book. it's a very supported art in st. paul i would say, and in minneapolis. very respected and supported. i didn't start writing until i was 40. it was like your accident. i think both poets don't decide, i suppose some do, don't decide when their little kid, i will be a poet. i've been keeping a journal when i was raising a family. i decided i would go to the loft which is our literary center and take a class about how to write a novel our how to put all the stuff in the book. someone recommended that i see a writer who she knew who had a big family just like mine. she had three children. i had seven. or situation, as long as i'm there i'll take a class in poetry and that's how it all started. >> what were you doing before you got into all this? >> i lived in new york for a

while and work for wonder magazine. then i was writing for the newspaper, for the st. paul pioneer press. but also all that i was writing poetry. but when that ended us able to give a lot more time to the art of poetry and the art of other people. >> what type of poetry do you most like to right? >> revenge poetry. >> what is that? >> that is you can get even with all sorts of people. are all sorts of things that bother you. that sort of a joke but anyway it's kind of true. i try to write about everyday things and daily occurrences and what's good and what's bad that's going on. so my poetry i think is quite political because i spent a lot of time in politics through my whole life. >> what was your driving force in politics? women's rights issues of? >> yes. i was very active in the women's movement. i was active in eugene

mccarthy's campaign for president when we're trying to end, that we're going to end the vietnam war. he's a good friend. he is a fine poet actually. in many ways he was an inspiration for me and addicted to all it. he was doing and still writing poems. >> how have the politics changed since eugene mccarthy's time of? >> i think they have sort of gone in pyramids. i think would go a long and we have a nice liberal governor, willing to do things for the people, and all sorts of good things happen and then the previous guy, so all kinds of things shut down. he's also the one who said we should have a poet laureate because it will cost the state money. he had never read the bill. it wouldn't cost anything. so there's that sort of up and down. i suppose that's true with any kind of political lives. >> tell us about some of your revenge. i want to hear a little bit of it. >> a gentleman's invitation.

meet me at 6:00 at the new french café. we will share him a sissy, a couple of consummate. handsome as he and governor, his smile is as white as the english channel. but a hungry woman searching for substance could drown in a cup of consummate at 6:00 at the french café. >> you mentioned the budget the did the mayor ask you to write that? >> i've forgotten what the first poem is i wrote for the mayor and then that was part of my laureate ship. the second one h yes if i writea poem for the budget. insulated. >> can wish her a little bit of? >> yes. poem for the budget address, august 14 for mayor chris coleman. the sun rises and the drama of

that is our daily life begins. we ride bicycles and buses, drive gas guzzlers and hybrid cars, trucks with coca-cola logos. we worry for our daughters the cat to their ankles. we worry for our sons who pierce their ears. we work hard, try to their medical bills, play the roles we have chosen or have chosen us. what can we say that has not been said? the notion of no new taxes continues to stifle progress and strangle compassion. the endless war hawks are stage. we spent $200,000 every minute to sustain a government in iraq, while iraqi officials disappear from month-long vacations. there is no vacation for us. the bridge has collapsed. it is a catastrophe. we are shocked. we pull ourselves together, learn new lines on the run. racraised to help. we become the hometown heroes we will for ever revered. later back in the old neighborhood no matter how far

up the hill we move, the old neighborhood is a lifeboat. a thunderstorm has uprooted an ancient tree. nothing stays the same. the old tree barricades the block. we pull over to the curb, stop, weep, and then see against all odds backyard gardens safe and flourishing. we are lucky to be alive. the sun begins to set. soon the moonlights the seven hills of our city, and we find that we possess the resolve we need to do what must be done to stabilize the neighborhoods of our beloved city. they are the foundation of freedom. >> now when i listen to that, i seem to be learning something about saint paul and this area. and you talk about what you're trying to impart? >> i was trying to impart that in spite of the budget deficit which is pretty huge at the time, we still of great city and a great future in this city. and this was written in 2007.

so we have done all right. >> you mentioned the bridge that we all saw. >> yes, yes speak what was that like to live there? >> you know, it was in minneapolis so it's like a different world. but for the people who were involved it was terrific. >> what's been the best part about being poet laureate? >> it's a wonderful on the right thing. that's a lovely thing and i'm grateful to have this. for the lifetime appointment which is probably a safe bet on the mayor's part. since i'm and old girl by now. >> carol connolly, thank you very much for taking time with us. >> thank you. it was a pleasure. a pleasure meeting you. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to st. paul, minnesota, and the many other cities visited by local content vehicles, joe dear c-span.org/localcontent -- go to

c-span.org/localcontent. up next, "after words" with guest host megan mcardle. this week ken silverstein and his latest book "the secret world of oil." and if the former washington editor of harper's magazine takes a behind the scenes look at the key figures and the crunch and international oil industry. this program is about one hour. >> host: here we are with "the secret world of oil," your new book on the underside of the oil business. i'm going to ask you the first question every author gets asked. why? why did you decide to write this book? >> guest: i've worked about, i've written about the oil industry for a long time, for over a decade. and i've written about the crushing of the international oil industry and the way the united states maintains close relationships with various, pretty unattractive regimes, and

the basis of the relationship is oil. when i was at the "los angeles times" back in 2002 i think, when i first tried writing about this topic and wrote about the family of ecuadorian gene which is a small african country, half-million people, nobody knew about or cared about it. it was a pariah state. terrible dictatorship. and dirt-poor. then in the mid 1990s axon found a lot of oil off the coast the equatorial guinea, and other american companies poured in. and suddenly the relationship change. suddenly it was no longer a pariah because of his close, still, it's too embarrassing, but there was a reapproachment on the now president comes to washington from time to time and

bad, it was purely a coincidence that i was looking at another story entirely. i was anything a former general who served on a private contract to a equatorial guinea develop a coast guard. he started to me about this place and i thought how interesting. i should write about that and probably spent i don't know, a lot of the past decade writing about similar topics from equatorial guinea and kazakhstan and angola, cambodia, all of the world looking at this topic. like a lot of journalism stories, you get ont onto a topc producer writing about it if people start bring you tips and you keep writing on it. is. >> host: there's a lot of talk and develop an economics about the curve, we saw that firsthand with president obiang salmon and other people have discovered oil or natural gas. can you talk about what does it

do to a country? doesn't make the people in the country better off or does it make them worse off? >> guest: in general it is made countries worse off. a key thing is if you suddenly find oil in the country where there is no form of democracy and history of democracy, like equatorial guinea, gained independence from spain, a colony of spain and to the '60s. 1968 they gain independence, and this literally be the i mean type character -- idi amin, completely to takes power, terrorize the country and 11 years later his nephew executes him, over those them and then executes them. and he is help out ever since. there's no tradition of democracy so in that environment when the government gets its hands on that sort of oil well it's almost inevitable that leads to corruption and very

very little of it for people. so in nigeria for example, nigeria you know, oral firms have been pumping oil there for nearly half a century now. and the country is certainly worse off not better off if i'm never talking to former cia officials who i traveled to nigeria. he wasn't stationed there but he worked for the office. he was, still called the office of transnational threat and he went to niger he went to niger in the city conclude on the basis of the conversation with people that country would've been better off if they never have discovered oil. so in a lot of places, as i note in the book, former vice president cheney once noted, god didn't see fit to put oil only in democratic countries friendly to the united states. and when oil is that in kazakhstan or equatorial guinea

or chad or cameroon, audits are it's not going to be the people -- is not going to do the people of good. a lot of countries, norway, which has a longish of democracy. nobody has done pretty well on oil but it's not automatic but it depends on the context and environment. >> host: the united states address or i guess the united states is a mixed bag in some ways. certainly, again, let me refer to a conversation i had as part of the book with a former chevron executive, and shall, and is now directing these of these said for strategic international studies and he talked about the difference between development of oil resources and who's talking i think specifically about central asia, kazakhstan where chevron has enormous concessions there and they obtained them when he was at chevron.

and he said, look, the difference between kazakhstan and the united states, or central asia and the united states, is in the u.s., the oil resources are not owned by the state. the individual land owner in texas or louisiana gets royalties. the companies pump the oil. the land owner gets some money. sometimes there's not a huge environmental footprint. the companies are making money. they create jobs and they create some well. now, certainly you can look at texas and louisiana, which is a state of look at very closely in the book, and you can see in louisiana there certain elements of the traditional third world resource curse where the country has a lot of oil wells but it hasn't been shared very well. in terms of social indicators, louisiana ranks pretty low on just about everything in terms of health and education and per

capita income. >> host: this has been a problem with louisiana government, right? just broadly there's a lot of corruption. it's very different on the rest that you i don't want to say there's no corruption anywhere else but it's the political culture in louisiana doesn't be very different from basically any other state in the u.s. so is it broadly when you look at texas and those places, do you see the same level of problems? >> guest: no, definitely. that's what i'm getting at is it's a political context it is true, louisiana has been known for corruption for a long time. the united states is not, we'll all sorts of political problems but we are not kazakhstan just yet. so yes, the well generated by oil has been better for people in the united states certainly than it's been for residents of west africa, oil-rich west african country. so that context is very important which is not just oil has not created problems as well. from environmental problems, i

guess would be the main one that people think about, and also other, i guess that would be the main one in the united states, a keyboard about the most. >> host: you don't talk much about fracking, which surprised me a little bit. i suppose because that's the big political issue in the u.s. right now. did you think about doing more on it or did you decide that really the focus was on conventional oil? >> guest: the focus of the book really is looking at the middleman -- the book is called "the secret world of oil," i'm trying to shine a light on a part of the oil industry, really the natural resource industry, that doesn't receive a lot of attention, which is the role of traders and intermediaries, fixers, but if you want to call them, these are people, the stratum between the companies and the government in some of

these more crud countries where you don't, if you want oil concession in kazakhstan, it's not like you submit a bid and the government needs in closed door and says let's it's going to be the best deal. you have to grease the wheels. goes to a way of putting it. you don't get it will do in house extend that making government officials wealthy. the old model was we'll just transfers my interest was bank account and that was a lot more complicated. the companies, not saying every oil deal is legally corrupt. though in spirit they're probably all corrupt. you know, you can't do business in many places in the world, and especially oil is such a sensitive commodity. oil and weapons are the two most important commodities to any government.

you can't run your economy without oil and you can't defend your borders without weapons. partly because of that, there is very centralized decision-maki decision-making. only a few people are in on that and especially again his country i keep referring to in central asia of west africa where you have either dictatorships or authoritarian governments come out of the want to put. you have very few people making decisions. and so they key to getting a deal in these places is often having the right exit, the right middleman. you can't do business in some countries without a door opener. at the door opener is particularly a person who has over the years built up trust and confidence that access to senior government officials or the president often. and engage in the door. as i said, the old model was you just, okay, what's your swiss bank account.

we wire the money. now it may be for example, and equatorial guinea, exxon and chevron and various other oil companies got deals over there and they were investigated by the u.s. government, never charged for reasons that i find surprising because they enriched the cover. they enriched the president. now, they didn't as far as i know simply wire cash, but they, for example, bought land from the president. we want to build our compound. really? you own the land? is that right? we will just buy from you. or they had a security firm in equatorial guinea, several of the companies hired a secretive from jakarta their compound and their installations as the security firm was owned by the brother of the president, who was identified in state department reports as a

torturer. you know, there's several other companies that president obiang a partner in business deals what he missed usually didn't have to put any money down. pages it will give you a cat. i think exxon gave him 20% cut of an oil distribution business. it wasn't the oil concession itself, but it wasn't oil destitution company. i think they gave him 20% for nothing down. we'll just take it out of your royalty checks, and then after you pay for your share out a profit, then it all just goes to you. >> host: i want to ask you about this because these deals are being structured that way precisely because of the foreign act. some people would say this is the price that we're going to pay, the kind of definitionally, oil is being discovered in more developing countries because it was exploited 100 years ago in

the u.s., and other places, although now with fracking less true. but because of that you've got countries whose borders were drawn by colonial powers, no institutional history before the european powers pulled out. often with cross-cultural borders not dissect ethnic groups and so forth. in the sweet institutional stage of corruption. you would get corruption, and the price getting the oil is being willing to pay. why should we hold u.s. companies accountable to a higher standard and let the french companies go in and brought anyone they want and get all the oil concessions? what would you say to that track referrers i do want because i realize i also didn't -- let me quickly, i didn't and your previous question why didn't write about fracking. fracking is now developing and it's a newer form of development and it's an international business as well, but i was looking at fixers arrange deals

between -- the old established pattern that has never -- >> host: not develop its own -- >> guest: exactly. the fracking industry now is expanding but a lot of the business is domestic, and you don't have middleman here, or at least not in the same way. in terms of the other question you asked though about why shouldn't we -- okay, you just have to tolerate corruption because it's part of the environment, and to a certain extent that's true. there's no way, unless you're going to say, we just won't get oil anymore, we will survive without it, which is going to happen, you have to be practical and realistic to a certain extent. i'm not saying, i don't think anyone serious can argue that, let's just not good business any more with saudi arabia.

>> host: even if we didn't, right, the french would buy the oil and we would buy the oil from the french. >> guest: right. we wouldn't accomplish much in the way. but i do think that you, you know, it's not just that we're getting the oil, and that's it. it's not just a passive relationship. we go in and develop the fields and take the oil. it's much, much more complicated and entrenched than that. i do think it's wrong when american oil companies can insight equatorial guinea we go in a country like this which is dirt-poor, and where you can say well, you can do business over there without somehow making the government officials have a. they made him very, very happy. i mean, obiang is one of the richest men in the world. one of the richest rulers in the world at this point.

and his son who has had a $39 home in malibu seized, or doesn't asset forfeiture complete by this government, a decommissioned at one point a $359 law -- yacht. his father installed, had the department of i think the department of art at people dzhokhar for just the department of chopping down trees, so is making money on the timber trade and and clearly appropriating money from the oil wells. so you can say, well, we have to tolerate a little bit of corruption, but they're not just tolerated but they are facility mass corruption. beyond that they've been, in order to secure their hold of there, their interests, they then lobby for these governments. so you have the american oil companies are actively promoting obiang as he is a reformer, which is preposterous. they are trying to develop and

entrenched a relationship on the basis of a front. this guy has held power since 1979. he has been reelected, in quotes, three times, the last time i believe was 99% of the vote. >> host: you wonder why the 1%? why not just go all the way? >> guest: it just wouldn't be credible with 100%. so you build a relationship and you become a partner. it's not a passive relationship. that's part of the. i also think you see repeatedly time and time again, you know, i don't reduce american foreign policy to oil. i think that's too simplistic. at the same time anyone who looks at american foreign policy and ignores oil, that's equally for posture as. and you look at your is history and you look at the relationships we develop, it's not like there hasn't been

blowback in some of these cases. we have a deep and long relationship with the saudis that is pretty controversial and hasn't been, it has caused something. it's not just an ethical issue there is the practical issues s well. post-9/11, in fact one of the reasons, there was an argument we've got to move with the middle east oil. look at all the trouble it's caused us. so we'll move into asked africa, central asia, those are stable, good governments. so i do think there's an ethical argument but honestly, there's no way one can simply say we have to have a perfectly ethical energy policy because, i mean, other governments don't play that way. but there are also practical considerations. it's definitely been costly in many ways to the united states and the public to maintain these relationships with some of these

countries. >> host: to talk about some of those costs about how it is caused the american public to keep in with the corrupt dictator. >> guest: well, i mean, if you look at, look at the middle east. what is the basis of our relationship with these various middle eastern countries? it's pretty much oil. i cannot don't want to reduce it strictly to that, but there's a former -- >> host: israel, also big. >> guest: that's true, that's true. absolutely. part of the relationship with israel in fact is because it is our closest ally in the region that is oil rich. there's an energy related issue there, too. but yes. no, it's not strictly oil. definitely not. however, it's important. it's very, very significant. you have former, i think it was a deputy assistant secretary of defense under reagan, who is now at the center for american

progress, he once said if the saudis exported artichokes we wouldn't have a close relationship with them. look at the war in iraq. once again, yes, it's not purely about oil but is there anyway that the architects of the war in iraq were sitting around the room thinking about whether to invade or not, not thinking about, well, it is a major, they do have huge oil reserves but it has to be on the table. if it wasn't companies people are simply -- >> host: it would almost have to be because the ritual invasion of kuwait was about arguments over that reserve, who was a drain too much from the reserve that straddles the kuwait and iraq border. i agree. it does come down to oil and much of the middle east. what should we be doing differently? >> guest: well, certainly, my book is really, that's not a

grand theoretical argument. i have worked as an investigative reporter and i am not, i have no, i do want to promote myself as a huge -- post a poll of the rock and see what's underneath? >> guest: yes. that's what i like to do. there's not a grand theory. i just tried to write about things i think are interesting and hope other people do, too. but in terms of what we should be doing differently, you know, obviously i don't think anyone would say, even the oil companies wouldn't say, i'm not sure whether they truly are dedicated to the idea, but to the extent that we are reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, it's better. you have all sorts of reasons, environmental, global warming, there are all sorts of negativities from our dependence on oil.

everyone talks about it every time there's a presidential election, both presidents, or both candidates talk about how we have to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. and even in general, there's a consensus that we probably should be used even less fossil fuel. is not a cure-all? of course not. but if you think as i write about in the book, oil is certainly by almost any measure of the most corrupt industry in the world. the energy industry. there are a variety of reasons for that. one of them is, as dick cheney pointed out, there's a lot of oil that's in corrupt countries. that's just the way things happen, or you know, but if you believe that god planted, i don't know. but that's where a lot of the oil tradition has been found. but also because oil is, when you're looking, and if you're an

oil company, american, chinese, french, whatever, and you're looking at a deal in kazakhstan, if you're trying to obtain a concession in gaza stand, i mean, it's going to matter to your corporate bottom line for a long time and is significant when you get the idea or not. it's not like, we sell socks and we lost this deal to provide 10,000 pair of socks. you know, an oil concession, talking about tens, hundreds of billions of dollars, and so the incentive to get the deal is huge. and the incentive to maybe cut corners a little bit is also huge. so you see if you look at a number of foreign corrupt practices, foreign corrupt practices act cases, prosecutions, by any measure the two industries, most often are weapons and oil. and partly because the deals are

so huge and partly it's because as i referred to earlier, you typically have very, very few decision-makers. you don't need to gain wide public support. you need to get the attention of the president of the country or the oil minister, and the way to do that typically -- >> host: it's so fungible and easy to steal. i was fascinated, i did a lot of work on the economy of iraq at the invasion, and the ways in which like the pipelines were running at half normal capacity could people just drill holes in the pipelines and were stealing it. the oil would disappear and it would get? >> guest: somewhere else. it's theoretically impossible to get where it came from but in practice one should make it out of the country and got into the market, it's a valuable commodity that is pretty much untraceable. you're always going to have quite a lot of incentive i would think to bribe.

i'll ask one more question and then we have to go to our break. what was the most surprising thing that you, or the most outrageous thing or the most interesting thing you came across in your research? >> guest: well, i guess the most surprising thing in some ways was when, in talking to oil company officials or the middlemen who are the focus of the book, when talking to industry insiders, and a lot of them would only talk off the record, but not all. there are a number of people in the book who did agree to talk on the record. the sort of casual acceptance of corruption was sort of surprising to me. i guess i didn't expect people to be so forthright about it. publicly of course nobody ever says what they say in private. and in this case, in private, that companies would never say, yes, of course, we can't work in

equatorial guinea without paying off senior government officials. give me a break. but in private that was the attitude was, i had a swiss oil trader who said, he did speak off the record but said something along the lines of, you can call it corruption but it's part of the system. so there was and openness about it that in some ways was surprising. people talked about, i was intrigued and interested about the new forms of corruption where people said, yeah, we can't just pass a bag of cash under the table anymore, or wire the money. so now it's got to be much more sophisticated. so you have the oil ministers nephew opened a company in the british virgin islands which can be traced to them normally anyway, and the company is hired to do some consulting service

which, of course, they're not doing anything. they are just the recipient of month also find its way to the minister. i guess i was shocked but i was surprised in some ways with the openness and intrigue and interested. >> host: there is concerns your lot in the developing world of corruption. on the grounds, there was a joke that went around about hillary clinton talking to some foreign minister somewhere who said you call it corruption, we call it family values. but that, in fact, in clan-based societies that this sort of thing is actually, you would be shirking your moral obligations and also in some ways if you don't have the ability to raise taxes but you end up with his corruption to pay people off, that's how police work in new york in the 19th century. is not at all fair? states in the taxing power and traction is what they have instead? >> guest: i think it's a bit self-serving and an apology for

behavior that really isn't -- most people wouldn't find acceptable. i wouldn't say that it's entirely false but i certainly heard another oil trader i talk to in switzerland said, he made this argument. he said, look, in the united states uk, goldman sachs makes political contributions. in the third world it's just based on money. same thing. i don't think one can dismiss that argument. we have a different way of doing things but it's legalized corruption in a sense. but the argument that its client base and it just doesn't hold up when you travel to these countries. i've been to equatorial guinea. i've been to a number of countries in west africa and yes, it's true, you know, the money is disputed by the end of

the tribe or the clan, but in these places you can see with your own eyes. angola, the president of the country is living in this mansion overlooking this sprawling slums. >> host: we have to take a short break and we'll be back in a few minutes. >> host: we have been talking about the countries and the corruption there. now i want to move on to the people in the middle. you have some very theatrical characters who are facilitating all of these contracts. you talk about the traders and the gatekeepers. what is the difference between a

fixer and the gatekeeper? >> guest: does not huge difference actually. they do similar things. basically you have the fixers, it's traditionally been a relatively small group of people, maybe a dozen or a few dozen people, who have in various parts of the world, have sufficient access to the president's or the top of government officials, but you pretty much have to do business through them. and if you want to get a dl -- ideal in nigeria, for example, for a long time there were a few people you could go to pick one of them was a guy who is a longtime friend of bill clinton, major, major donor to the

clinton foundation and that pretty close ties to the democratic party back during the clinton years. he was a guy who, nobody knows exactly quite how he did it, but he had access to the senior senior government officials in nigeria. so it wasn't just oil because it also to relationships. he would broker a lot of deals but you go to and you hired him as a consultant. and you miraculously end up with big contracts over there. but there's another guy, an interesting story, an american who was very, very well-connected in the former soviet union from the very beginning, from the very earliest post-communist period. and so he was actually indicted by the u.s. justice department

and charged with, i don't know if the word bribe was used -- >> host: when was this country this was back in, it was like 10 years ago when he was charged. and he had move money. even high by u.s. oil companies as a consultant in kazakhstan and he was charged with funneling i think $80 million into -- this was the old model, into accounts controlled by the prime minister and president of kazakhstan. and he was a guy who had a very close personal relationship with the president. he had a house in the fancies of neighborhood of the capital of kazakhstan. when the president came to washington, jim giffen would show him around, taking to meet washington officials. you really couldn't hope to do

business over there without hiring him on as a consultant. he was indicted and charged. and the case dragged on for years and years and years. and he basically used a great meal defense. i don't want to say he acknowledged that he had made a mr. president, although it was clear he thought the president and his wife a matching snowmobile, julie for the wife and believe he paid the tuition of a dog who attended college here in the washington area. buddy and he basically said if i knew what i was doing. this was not a mystery. i was talking to state department and i think he said the cia and every knew what i was to immediately knew what my relationship was. and so why are you bothering me? and in the end he basically got

off, and the judge in the case said, you've been persecuted. you were really, i think even use the term american hero. you are helping u.s. oil companies get concessions that were important to the united states. and so it became known as every, it was known here as kazakhstan gate. in the end he was never charged. it was one of them he's one of the interesting characters i think of the book. >> host: it's not clear exactly how one becomes a fixer. is there an application process? a swimsuit competition? how do these guys get the connection -- i suppose it's a shadowy process we don't understand is how do they get the connections that enable them to be trustworthy conduit's? >> guest: certainly sort of

ironic because the international oil industry is generally pretty corrupt, but one way that he will become fixers i think is being trustworthy, in the sense that you know that they do have access host the author among thieves, right transfer you can arrange deals and you can work -- and you're good to your work. one of the people who i write about, the focus of chapter one, he had a lot of contacts and influence in nigeria. i talk to them extensively and i acknowledge in the book, i came to like it and became friends with them. he's a fascinating character. very hard not to like. one of the things, there's a job application but one of the things i think is part of, you have to be relatively charming

and he's a very charming. hard not to like. it's. >> host: is set up stairs in the oil world. >> guest: you know, his father pashtun the family has lebanese origin but grew up in nigeria. he told me that he had come initially i got into the middleman business he said was that his family was wealthy in nigeria. they had come it was like a business or something. he said at some point someone from, it was a friend of his, or maybe related to his sister, from a middle eastern airline said, we are looking for business in nigeria and we need an introduction. and he knew everybody.

>> host: he went to school with them or it grown up with them? >> guest: right. it was the peanut processing business or something but he was a significant this is still, so he knew there is government officials we made the necessary introductions and the deal was struck. he said, you know, screw it, why am i getting with when i can be paid to use my contacts? so it's really, you know, it's hard enough exactly, and less people are willing to talk about it, the origins of relationships. when you do business in a country like equatorial guinea or cameroon, or even nigeria which is larger, if you are a prosperous businessman you tend to know government officials and you can make use of that. >> host: i was surprised by how many were not local, that

you didn't have a lot of people who are the fixers who are cambodian or are -- why is that? is that because the oil companies did someone international for some sort of communication or trust? do you have a sense why some of these guys are american or french or what have you? >> guest: partly i think because you're talking about middlemen who are, they play this role to broker introductions between the companies and the governments. and in part certainly american companies, because of foreign corrupt practices act, have wanted to have a certain distance. you want to be able to deny, plausible deniability about your relationship with somebody. you hire somebody also was not accountable to the foreign corrupt practices act, so you hire a european or middle

eastern or who wouldn't necessarily be -- >> host: i had no idea why this i'm a substance about the guy told me this is the land that is best place for headquarters so that's what we bought. >> guest: right. but there's certainly our locals. especially as industries have grown up in nigeria, for example. there are now a lot of local middlemen who've gotten very, very wealthy brokering deals with the government. initially, and a lot of these countries when you go into a place where you're not familiar, you're looking for somebody who can give you the lay of the land and i'm sure they have their local contacts but often, within angola, bp at one point got into that of trouble because hired someone to be their spokesman who was a senior government official or related to a senior government official.

but often you want somebody who is probably a bit of common there, an outsider but who knows the country and can point you to the right people. >> host: what about the traitors? we haven't talked about them yet and that's a big part, a big chapter and to be part of the oil market. you talk about blink or, huge commodity operation. what role do they play in all this? >> guest: link or is this enormous company that a lot of americans haven't heard of. >> host: they've heard of march -- marc rich, the founder of the company. >> guest: that's why because marc rich was famously, charged trade and -- trading with the enemy with iran i believe, was the enemy. and he fled the united states, ahead of an indictment and

oakland's last day in office he was pardoned for reasons that have been fully explained by that is alleged -- >> host: very cozy with the clintons. >> guest: their extensive campaign contributions that she made. survey i think it would be naïve to think that that didn't have something to do with the pardon. i do up to be writing another story about that there are other interesting reasons as well. >> host: i can't wait to do that. are you going to dish on c. span? >> guest: it's a really good story but i don't want to outcome hope to be telling it sometime in the next few months. it's ironic because it's an old story but i just learned part of it at the very, very end which is interesting but i will only say it does involve favorites marc rich did for the us government overseas. >> host: you are killing me here. >> guest: it's a good story,

really good story post but we will watch out for that. so you've got these big oil companies and one of the things that you suggest is that they could be manipulating oil prices. you have a passage actually. but for the past seven years the price of oil has been swinging wildly in the face of contradiction. after floating in the 10 to $20 a barrel range it started to decline sharply when the cost of the gulf after falling back a bit it's spiked to 140 in the middle of 2008. and the price fell off a cliff of $30 in just six much. within two years of tripled again. you think that's the role? an oil economist might say this responsibility the production frontier where we seem to have, with backing we're expanding a little bit but we're expanding a little bit the chinese didn't seem to collide with the amount of oil the world can produce.

how much role do you think that oil traders play in that? >> guest: it's hard to measure, and certainly as with oil's role in foreign policy, you know, to say it's good a function of manipulation of the market is just wrong. there are all sorts of things that impact prices of oil. a war in iraq, for example, or chaos. there's all sorts of things that are impacting the price of oil. there have been periods where traders certainly have accelerated trends, either upward or downward. people do make money on this basis and to making money at the margin. if the price per barrel changes by a small amount, if you own enough barrels, or trading enough barrels, it's very

profitable to be on the right side of the curve. >> host: also potentially unprofitable to be on the wrong side of the current. >> guest: sometimes they are. someone told me in talking about blink or, they said when the link or is betting on the price of oil to go up, you don't want to be betting on it to go down. >> host: the goldman sachs of the industry. >> guest: yeah. so i think there's a contributing factor and there've been times when traders have certainly influenced price. i did talk, i know this was a traitor who said look, when i start in this business, the paper trade versus the fiscal trade meaning a real barrel of oil versus to say the paper,. >> host: the right to buy a barrel of oil at some point in future. >> guest: he said in its his firm, the ratio was one to war that you wonder what andrew is like 40 or 50 to one. he said there's a huge, huge

paper trade. it is subject, glencore, which be clear, i'm not accusing glencore specific of the many putting markets but glencore trades, boost 3% of the daily oil, did oil trade. that's and even the biggest oil trade. there are other firms that are bigger. there's an ability to manipulate markets which i think has happened at times. >> host: how do you see that? doesn't show up in swift movements of the price is what does it show any movement in one drunken or the other? >> guest: i think as i said, i believe it's not ever going to be the one factor -- you're not going to see that because of manipulation of the market. but if you see the market going like this, naturally, you might

see it go little sharper because of an ablation of oil prices. >> host: so basically accelerates which -- >> guest: i wouldn't say it is all the time but there have been times clearly where traders -- where it appears that traders have been treated to downward and upward movements. >> host: did you get to go inside of these operations and see how they looked? talk about what happens, what does an oil trader do all day? >> guest: it's not like, the actual greater -- back to oil trader is like going to wall street for but it's not that exciting. i went a couple of these firms. they're hyper corporate. very, very fancy, and one of the firms i went to in geneva was commuted, a little bit more polished here and our c-span studio host that i don't know what you are saying. >> guest: they had the furniture was polished to a sheen, let's say.

i believe when we opened the conference to work, it was an electronic door. but you're looking at a computer screen, and you're looking at the price of oil. so that the daily, i think it's probably a lot like being a wall street trader. >> host: i've been on national is to work on trading force before it became a journalist, as a tech, not trading anything. they are now for quite. they weren't when i worked there in the '90s but now i want to pimco, the world's largest bond fund. it's like a libra, totally quiet. >> guest: that's pretty much what i saw at the firms i was at. it wasn't hugely exciting. it was interesting because i did talk to traders about what they did that night, which tends to be more interesting which is when your wining and dining. i talked to one trader who said that, and he is working on the upstream side can say was

selling refined products, like the buyers in asia. who need large quantities. >> host: a lot of karaoke. >> guest: exactly, exactly. a lot of entertaining in the evening. again, that's part of the way the business is done. we take these guys out, more than just karaoke frequently, and again access to information. and discover what, that's how they get there contracts. >> host: right. you read the history of sales in the 1960s and the sounds are similar. >> guest: probably not similar. >> host: girls and get some drinks. >> guest: that's a central part of the business i think. >> host: why has the paper trade increased so out of whack? why is everything happening on paper instead of in real barrels? >> guest: i confess i really can't give you a detailed answer

to that. i wrote a little bit about speculation in the book. it was a central part of the book. maybe it should've been because it is a topic that's one of interesting, but i think it's in the same way that wall street trading, so much of the trade now is these highly sophisticated products that nobody really understands, and i think it's probably just followed, you know, it's a similar trend. but i can't give you a good answer of. >> host: lobbying. we are now racing, but brought in your. how is it, how different is this from of the kinds of lobbying? is it special or is it basically the same old dance that is done in every state capital and every country in the world? >> guest: well, i wrote in the book a little bit about federal lobbying and then i wrote extensively about louisiana and

the situation there. to a certain extent, yes, it's the same old deal. you've got the oil industry is very powerful and influential. it's not a stand-alone industry in that regard obviously. i would say it's one of the more powerful lobbying forces because it's a huge industry. and so they do with other industries do. they just do more of it. they hire more obvious. they pay more money. they get more meetings. they do have an advantage in that because oil and gas are central to running the economy and to frequently plays a role in foreign policy, people in government are very open to arguments about the need to help out the industry. so over the years, the industry has done quite well in washington. in louisiana, i think because

louisiana, the industry has always been so influential their, at the state level, and because, if you include the offshore, louisiana's offshore component of the federal offshore holding, i think it's still the biggest offshore per capita producer, and as we discussed earlier, louisiana really does have a particular culture, and it's an interesting place and a fun place to report from. ..

during which he was extraordinarily forced about the influence of the industry and how they were able to get the port of lawmakers in sort of layout to me the details of how they had pushed the bill through the legislature in the previous session and i kept thinking, why are you being so forthright with a? >> i told you i was a reporter. i'm going to write this down. >> guest: exactly. that i