Word: gasior
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After years of lonely spadework, Gasior is finally getting some respect. Two powerful Democratic Congressmen, Jack Brooks of Texas and Charlie Rose of North Carolina, took her findings to the White House and Attorney General Janet Reno last month. Their goal: to press for a re-examination of U.S. business ties to Iraq and the role of the Justice Department in a possible cover-up. Last week at a Washington reception, the Cavallo Foundation honored Gasior with a $10,000 award for her "moral courage" and for her efforts to ! expose wrongdoing. Said Rose at the ceremony: "She is remarkable...
...Gasior's evidence, which she claims shows a concerted government effort to suppress information about just how much U.S.-made war materiel ended up illegally in Saddam Hussein's hands, could help crack the murky scandal known as Iraqgate that dogged George Bush's final months in office. Questions still swirl around the role that Washington and a number of U.S. companies played in supplying Saddam's $100 billion worldwide military shopping spree that led up to his invasion of Kuwait...
...Gasior, 31, stumbled into the hothouse world of Iraqi trade after joining Kennametal, a Fortune 500 company, at its Latrobe, Pennsylvania, headquarters near Pittsburgh in 1989. Gasior became alarmed when she discovered that a shipment of carbide metal-working tools to Baghdad -- tools that could be used to cut uranium -- might be illegal. She also learned of Kennametal sales to Matrix Churchill, Iraq's main U.S. purchasing agent, which was gathering materiel for projects like the infamous Supergun. She says she warned company officers that Kennametal was not following export regulations, and questioned other company practices. Within nine months...
...time Iraq stunned the world with its invasion of Kuwait, Gasior was about ready to blow the whistle on her former employer. She had read about the BNL scandal and remembered a transaction at Kennametal that involved carbide tools and a BNL letter of credit. Appalled at the thought that U.S. companies had helped provide Saddam with the equipment to wage war, Gasior and another Kennametal employee took their suspicions to Justice officials in Philadelphia % in December 1990. "They listened carefully until we got to the part about the BNL letter of credit," Gasior says. "Then they stood up, thanked...
While the authorities seemingly ignored Gasior, she was not forgotten. She says a few days after her Justice Department interview, cars mysteriously started following her. One night a car that had been shadowing her forced her off the road. The same vehicle pursued her in a wheel-screeching, hilltop chase until she got away by shutting off her lights. Then there were the constant phone calls to her home from someone who only breathed over the line, and a false newspaper report that an arrest warrant had been issued in her name. She began to fear for her life...