• The Wall Street Journal: The Journal’s editorial board writes that the Obama administration needs a “new freedom agenda,” and should take notes from George W. Bush’s second inaugural address. They accuse Obama of “[O]ffer[ing] no support for Iranian demonstrators after [the June 2009] fraudulent elections” and calls on him to “meet publicly with dissidents from places like Libya, Syria and Iran, as Mr. Bush did in Prague in 2007, to lend a Presidential seal of approval to their struggle.” (See Jim Lobe’s blog post on the 2007 Prague conference.) The administration could be more supportive of the Green movement by authorizing the CIA to “provide Iranian workers with a strike fund—hard cash smuggled into the country to allow Iran’s workers to sustain a strike—thereby replicating the conditions that brought down the Shah.” The editorial endorses the administration publicly backing the Green movement’s leaders and suggests, “The Administration could also assemble prominent exiled leaders of the Green movement to sign a declaration of principles against the regime.”

• Commentary: American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Rubin opines on Iranian claims over Bahrain and warns that Iranian authorities have “repeatedly spoken of Bahrain in the same manner in which Saddam Hussein once spoke about Kuwait,” and, “When Iranian officials talk about their desire to transform the Persian Gulf into a Persian lake, they envision sending Bahrain’s Sunni ruling elite packing and returning Iranian dominance to Bahrain in order to rid the region of American influence.” Rubin says that Iran will never gain the upper-hand in Bahrain because “Whenever the Iranians have supported Shiite insurrection and riots, Saudi troops have quietly crossed the causeway to help Bahrain authorities put down the uprising.” He concludes that the U.S. should back constitutional reforms in Bahrain but preserve the monarchy.

• The New York Times: Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, asks, “will Egypt be a partner in peace?” and warns, “We have seen what democracy without tolerance and openness can yield — in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.” Oren reminds readers of the Iranian threat, writing, “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran hailed the Egyptian revolution as a step toward creating a Middle East ‘without America and the Zionist regime,’ and celebrated by dispatching warships to the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, Iran continues to spin out enriched uranium — ‘producing it steadily, constantly,’ according to Yukiya Amano, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency — to achieve nuclear military capacities.”

• National Post: Former George W. Bush administration speech writer David Frum opines, “The obvious thing to worry about in Bahrain is that the current unrest could invite meddling by fellow Shiites across the Gulf in Iran. (And in fact Iran has meddled in Bahrain since the days of the shah.)” He observes, “Always and ever: Iran is the big play in the Middle East. A democratic Iran may not be an entirely congenial presence,” and advocates for democratic reforms in both Iran and Bahrain. “But a more democratic Iran would be a less dangerous place for everyone, including its own people, than today’s theocratic, terrorism-supporting Iran. Every regional decision has to be measured against the test: Is this moving us closer to — or further from — a positive change in the Iranian political system?”

That year, the Senate published a money laundering investigation (PDF) into Riggs Bank which showed that the bank, one of the biggest in Washington, D.C., had received most of the oil revenues from Equatorial Guinea. At least $35 million of these revenues were siphoned off by Equatorial Guinean president and notorious human rights abuser Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, his family and other top officials.

As part of this investigation, it was revealed that Bruce McColm’s International Decision Strategies, at 911 Duke St. in Alexandria, VA, was partnered with Teodoro Obiang in Nusiteles, an Equatorial Guinean company planning to bring telephone and computer services to the oil rich, but infamously corrupt, West African country.

But that wasn’t the totality of McColm’s involvement with Obiang.

The Senate report also reveals that McColm had a lucrative side job monitoring elections in Equatorial Guinea. Between 2000 and 2002, McColm’s Institute for Democratic Strategies received $525,000 from the government of Equatorial Guinea for its election monitoring services.  While McColm’s Institute for Democratic Strategies lists its mission as, “to promote good governance and democracy in emerging economies,” Obiang’s strategies were anything but democratic.

It’s unclear what exactly McColm and his team monitored in the 2002 election in which all opposition candidates for president mysteriously dropped out before the election and where Obiang was reelected with nearly 100-percent of the vote.

The BBC wrote:

But an observer monitoring the election for a US-based NGO, Ahmed Rajab, has said that Mr Obiang’s entourage is embarrassed by what has already been described as a “Saddam scenario”.

Interior Minister Clemente Engonga described as “unlawful” the last-minute decision by the four opposition candidates to withdraw from the poll.

The four said the poll was marred by irregularities.

During Senate hearings on the Riggs Bank money laundering investigation, the bank’s president, Lawrence I. Herbert, told the Senate subcommittee that when he realized his bank was doing business with the corrupt but oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, he sought “independent verification of what was going on in the country.” Herbert arranged for McColm to brief the banks top executives.

The Washington Post‘s Kathleen Day wrote:

McColm, in a 45-minute talk at Riggs’s executive downtown offices in Washington, painted a favorable picture of Obiang and his regime, McColm said in interviews. Riggs executives told Senate staff members during a year-long subcommittee investigation of Riggs that they relied on McColm’s portrait to justify doing business with Equatorial Guinea.

Herbert said he was unaware of McColm’s business and non-profit ties to Equatorial Guinea, which created a considerable conflict of interest when he briefed Riggs Bank executives. Riggs Bank, it turns out, was also setting up financing for McColm and Obiang’s joint business venture, Nusiteles.

The sheer number of organizations, both non-profit and for-profit which have been run out of Bruce McColm’s 911 Duke St. offices is impressive. What’s even more striking is McColm’s apparent willingness to do business with individuals, such as Ahmed Chalabi and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo who have little regard for good governance of the western style democratic values that McColm claims to promote through the IPC or the Institute for Democratic Strategies.