Rummy's North Korea Connection What

Rummy's North Korea Connection
What did Donald Rumsfeld know about ABB's deal to build nuclear reactors there? And why won't he talk about it?

Wow. I stepped into the twilight zone. I thought this story was dead! Now Forbes picks it up and starts asking some hard questions.

Even so, ABB tried to keep its involvement hush-hush. In a 1995 letter from ABB to the Department of Energy obtained by FORTUNE, the firm requested authorization to release technology to the North Koreans, then asked that the seemingly innocuous one-page letter be withheld from public disclosure. "Everything was held close to the vest for some reason," says Ronald Kurtz, ABB's U.S. spokesman. "It wasn't as public as contracts of this magnitude typically are."

However discreet ABB tried to be about the project, Kurtz and other company insiders say the board had to have known about it. Newman, the former ABB executive, says a written summary of the risk review would probably have gone to Barnevik. Barnevik didn't return FORTUNE's phone calls, but Newman's Zurich-based boss, Howard Pierce, says Rumsfeld "was on the board--so I can only assume he was aware of it."

By all accounts Rumsfeld was a hands-on director. Dick Slember, who once ran ABB's global nuclear business, says Rumsfeld often called to talk about issues involving nuclear proliferation, and that it was difficult to "get him pointed in the right direction." Pierce, who recalls Rumsfeld visiting China to help ABB get nuclear contracts, says, "Once he got an idea, it was tough to change his mind. You really had to work your ass off to turn him around." Shelby Brewer, a former head of ABB's nuclear business in the U.S., recalls meetings with Rumsfeld at the division's headquarters in Connecticut. "I found him enchanting and brilliant," he says. "He would cut through Europeans' bullshit like a hot knife through butter."

My prediction? Syncopated silence from the Great Oz.

But isn't if funny to know that not only was Rumsfeld involved in Iraq (when they were still our friends), but he was also head of the company that sold North Korea the very same reactors that we're now dealing with. It's like a bad song. He makes money going in, and he makes money cleaning up the messes.

Hey, maybe if we just got rid of Rummy and his band of pirates, we could just cut the whole middlemen out of this mess and save a bunch of bucks in the process.