by Steve Coll
ExxonMobil’s headquarters and residential compound in Malabo stood beneath a towering dormant volcano. A large population of monkeys inhabited the mountain’s rain forests; they were shy because humans had long hunted them as food. In the evenings heavy tropical clouds often skirted the volcano, which had two peaks, like a double-humped camel. Lightning flashes and quiet rumbles of thunder added to an air of ominous majesty. The ExxonMobil refuge contained stucco buildings with Spanish red tile roofs—residences, offices, and recreation facilities, including a swimming pool. It was not particularly luxurious—certainly not as comfortable as the burgeoning Marathon Oil waterfront compound across the bay, which housed more workers than ExxonMobil’s did and had been laid out for tennis courts, basketball courts, squash and racquetball courts, a clubhouse, and a restaurant. At night, Marathon’s gas flares and the white safety lights at its liquefied natural gas and methanol plants illuminated the dark water that spread out beneath ExxonMobil’s smaller facility.
The second-generation dictator who oversaw ExxonMobil’s inherited contract was Teodoro Obiang Nguema, a nephew of Macías’s and a brigadier general trained at a military academy in Spain. In 1979, Obiang had led an uprising against his uncle and seized power. He arrested Macías and assigned mercenary bodyguards to execute his uncle by firing squad.5
“When I came to power, the place was completely destroyed,” Obiang remembered. “No electricity, no roads. The schools were closed.”6 Few reliable statistics were kept for the country by its government or international agencies, but per capita income was perhaps one hundred dollars per year. Hunger stalked the forest villages, less than a third of the population had access to safe drinking water, mothers and babies commonly died in childbirth, and life expectancy was less than fifity years. Because of the depredations of the Macías years, the country’s cocoa economy, once modestly successful, no longer existed. Obiang settled into power in a less wanton but no less ruthless manner than his predecessor. He turned ministries, businesses, and land over to his family members and through them constructed layers of internal security, strengthened at the inner core by his palace guard of salaried Moroccan soldiers. Black Beach prison remained open, and the torture techniques of its jailers and political prosecutors did not much change, according to one human rights investigation after another.
Still, Obiang kept the United States satisfied about his foreign alliances. Unlike Macías, he sought to work as a professional authoritarian, in the manner of those who led neighboring nations in West Africa. At business meetings Obiang usually turned up in a dark, tailored suit with a pocket kerchief; he could be coherent, direct, and even sophisticated, if also persistently obtuse about the precepts of good government. To interact more successfully with his French-speaking neighbors, Obiang took on a French tutor at his palace. He played tennis regularly and jogged along the rutted, red clay road between the airport and Malabo’s elegant but water-streaked colonial plazas. He danced through the night at parties and drank copiously.7 He developed cancer and eventually traveled to the United States about four times a year for treatment. The scope and seriousness of the disease was a closely guarded secret, but Obiang, as rugged as a crocodile, seemed to overcome it. His regular medical travel to the United States and a deep antipathy toward France and Spain turned him gradually into an unrequited friend of America’s. Oil, he hoped, might persuade Washington to embrace him.
Equatorial Guinea’s territorial ocean waters encompassed some of the same geology that had much earlier enriched Nigeria and Gabon with oil dollars. Obiang provided exploration leases to Spanish oil companies during the late 1980s. It was relatively early in the development of offshore oil technology, and the Spaniards reported they could find nothing. “Thanks to the American embassy” in Cameroon, Obiang recalled, Joe Walter, an irrepressible Houston wildcatter, agreed to take a second look. In 1991, tiny Walter International discovered Equatorial Guinea’s first oil, in the Alba field. Obiang interpreted the news as evidence that Spain had deliberately suppressed his country’s economic potential, while the Americans seemed prepared to back him. Walter sold out its holdings as Mobil, Marathon, and Amerada Hess arrived to explore farther. Equatorial Guinea hired no outside lawyers or investment bankers to negotiate; Obiang’s first-ever oil minister, Juan Olo, worked out the terms. Mobil acquired rights to the offshore Zafiro field, which, as it turned out, contained at least a billion barrels, or at least three times Mobil’s entire annual worldwide production of oil and gas liquids in 1995.8
Mobil embedded itself in financial partnership with the Obiang government; it paid for land, office leases, and security services. The local companies it worked with had many ties to the president and his family. Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, it can be illegal for American companies to make sidebar payments to businesses controlled by foreign government officials who are at the same time handing out lucrative contracts for oil. In later years, the Department of Justice questioned Mobil’s deals with local firms, but ExxonMobil warded off the investigations by arguing that it had no alternative but to invest with the ruling family because there was no market for land or services that was not controlled by the Obiang clan. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as interpreted by Justice, did not hold that some countries should be avoided altogether, only that American corporations should not act corruptly if they had a choice in the matter. Some of Mobil’s and later ExxonMobil’s payments to Obiang’s regime covered scholarships for students and relatives selected by the president to study in the United States. The corporation also held a joint investment in a fuel services company; Obiang controlled the venture’s minority partner, a company called Abayak, according to the findings of a U.S. Senate staff investigation.9
“The private American (especially oil) companies would not wish to be pulled into U.S.G. [United States government] efforts to combat human rights violations in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea,” reported a U.S. embassy cable written just after Equatorial Guinea’s oil began to flow in earnest. “U.S. companies are aware of human rights violations . . . [but they] present themselves as ‘ahead of the curve.’”10 That seemed mainly a euphemism for corporate strategies of hunkering down, avoiding publicity about human rights and other controversial aspects of Obiang’s reign, and staying as far away as possible from recurring State Department campaigns to reform Equatorial Guinea.
There were foreign policy episodes, such as in the Aceh war, when ExxonMobil leaned on State to intervene on the corporation’s behalf. Equatorial Guinea provided a different imperative: The Bush administration’s human rights campaigning in Africa was more likely to taint ExxonMobil in Obiang’s eyes than to help the corporation’s position as an oil contractor. ExxonMobil therefore adopted a low-profile posture of strict noninterference in Equato-Guinean politics, coupled with quiet advice to Obiang aimed at helping him improve his international reputation, which would redound to their mutual benefit.
Lee Raymond regarded the State Department as not particularly helpful to ExxonMobil, notwithstanding the example of the administration’s intervention to stop G.A.M.’s targeting of the corporation. America’s career diplomats did not understand international business very well, and some of them were outright hostile to large oil firms, Raymond believed. Where they did try to intervene in a commercial or contract matter, they often did not know enough detail to be constructive, and they did not appreciate the need for strict confidentiality, he concluded. Raymond could talk from time to time with his friend Vice President Cheney, who understood his issues, but the ExxonMobil chief executive had come to the view that as for the American foreign policy and government bureaucracy in general the best approach was, as he told his colleagues, “Don’t talk to them.” That did not mean ExxonMobil never asked State for favors; it meant only that the corporation’s demands for Bush administration intervention were erratic, inconsistent, and influenced by Raymond’s access to back channels with Cheney and other officials he regarded as sophisticated and reliable, such as
Samuel Bodman, who would become secretary of energy during President Bush’s second term. ExxonMobil and its handful of international American peers in the international oil industry “blow hot and cold,” the veteran American diplomat John Campbell wrote in one cable to Washington from West Africa. “For the most part [they] prefer to try to address industry-specific issues themselves. They may turn to the [State Department], only to back away from requests on further consideration. If their efforts fail to achieve a resolution or problems become more acute, they can quickly return demanding action.”11
During the late 1990s, after Equatorial Guinea’s big contracts were signed but before oil and cash flowed, Obiang traveled to Washington, D.C., for annual World Bank meetings. His country’s decades-old struggles against poverty were about to end—he needed to think about how to manage the great sums that would soon come his way. Obiang was in some respects naive about global affairs, but it did not require an advanced degree in political science to notice that small, weak countries with huge amounts of oil tended, as Kuwait had done, to ally themselves protectively with the United States, a superpower with a thirst for hydrocarbons and a military large enough to deter any power that might bully its oil-supplying friends. By opening Equatorial Guinea’s fields exclusively to American companies, Obiang hoped in time to coax Washington into strategic partnership. The president and his companions walked one afternoon past the grandiose main branch of Riggs Bank, at 1503 Pennsylvania Avenue, across from the Treasury Building and diagonally opposite the White House. The bank’s gray ionic columns stood several stories tall and created the impression that this might be the American president’s own financial institution—or, at a minimum, that it was deeply connected to the corridors of American power. “We should put our money here,” Obiang told his companions. At the time, they still did not have much of a check to write. They opened a Riggs account with a $5,000 deposit.12
Two years later, in 1997, with Zafiro in production, $1.2 million a month began to flow into the Washington, D.C., bank. Riggs’s executives woke up to the gusher they had struck. It kept growing.
“Equatorial Guinea has gone from being a very small, insignificant relationship to the largest single deposit relationship at Riggs,” a manager named Ray Lund wrote to senior colleagues in 2001. With ExxonMobil now operating and profiting from Zafiro, Equatorial Guinea had $200 million on deposit and expected additional cash flow at a rate of about $20 million a month for the foreseeable future. “Where is the money coming from? Oil—black gold—Texas tea.”13
Obiang had been denied high-level meetings with Clinton administration officials. Equatorial Guinea’s human rights performance, he was told, was the obstacle to such access. Africa Global, a small Washington lobbying firm, advised Obiang that the election of George W. Bush as president of the United States presented an opportunity to rehabilitate Equatorial Guinea’s reputation and to establish a deeper partnership in Washington based on oil interests. Obiang agreed to pay Africa Global hundreds of thousands of dollars to help him navigate the American capital and secure meetings at the highest levels of the new administration. One of his lobbyists secured an appointment at the State Department’s Africa bureau on February 22, 2001, a few weeks after Bush’s inaugural.
“Obiang has been waiting eight years” for the Democrats to leave office, said the dictator’s representative. “He hopes he can now meet with senior levels of the new administration.” After a State cable about the lobbyist’s meeting circulated in West Africa, the American ambassador in Cameroon wrote to Washington to say that “we would be delighted if he [Obiang] were received at a higher level,” although it would be better if “we [the American government] can get the credit instead of a lobbying firm.”14
Henry Hand, a desk officer in the Africa bureau at Foggy Bottom, took a call a few days later from a Halliburton executive. The executive said his company “was being hounded by Africa Global to intercede with the Vice President’s office” to obtain an audience with Cheney for Equatorial Guinea’s president. “They declined to do so,” Hand reported. On March 2, the desk officer rode over to Equatorial Guinea’s threadbare embassy on 16th Street. Obiang’s ambassador to the United States explained to him that Africa Global has “a very ambitious agenda” for the leader’s upcoming private trip to Washington—the lobbying firm would be seeking meetings with Bush, Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
“As I left the embassy, oil company representatives were arriving for a meeting, having been convoked by the ambassador” to advocate for Obiang’s access, Hand reported. Nor was Africa Global confining itself to the federal government: The desk officer reported two weeks later that Obiang had apparently secured a meeting with Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams “who may declare March E.G. month!”15
The main practical item on Obiang’s agenda was “the establishment of an [American] embassy in Malabo.” But no meetings with Bush, Cheney, or Powell actually materialized in the days ahead. “He is reportedly irked,” Hand recorded. “The energy companies are increasingly unhappy with Africa Global, which they feel is doing a poor job of getting across Equatorial Guinea’s message. The lobbying firm has been very heavy-handed in leaning on these firms [ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess] in an attempt to get high-level meetings, after raising Obiang’s expectations for such meetings to unrealistic levels.”16
The best Africa Global could do, it turned out, was an under secretary of state—hardly an insult, but not a cabinet officer, either. Alan Larson, Bush’s under secretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs, who oversaw energy issues at the State Department, rode to the Equatorial Guinea embassy on March 19 to hear what Obiang had to say.
The president opened by stating that he would like to return to Washington on an official visit, so he could “convey his concern over the lack of a U.S. embassy in Malabo to the highest level of the U.S. government.” His country, he continued, “had received much assistance from private American companies” and it was “unreasonable” that there was no embassy. He understood that there were budget issues vexing the United States, but federal tax revenues received from the American oil companies making profits in Equatorial Guinea were “more than sufficient to pay for a new mission.” The decision to close the embassy in 1995, after the witch doctor incident involving Ambassador Bennett, was “based on erroneous human rights reports.” State Department public reporting on human rights violations in Equatorial Guinea—which continued to highlight torture and detention of Obiang’s political opponents, as well as the abysmal conditions at Black Beach—was misguided; it was the product of a temporary American diplomat in Malabo who had “no conception of the real situation. . . . Only officials posted in [Equatorial Guinea] would be able to understand the true situation.”
Larson replied that the Bush administration was “very interested” in working with Obiang “on encouraging the growing bilateral business relationship.” President Bush and Secretary Powell “had made it clear that promoting respect for human rights and democracy would be a continuing theme of our foreign policy,” but the administration was nonetheless “prepared to work” with Equatorial Guinea’s government. On the question of a U.S. embassy in Malabo, the State Department would be “reviewing the issue,” Larson said.17
On Capitol Hill, among human rights activists, Republican-leaning global Christian groups concerned with governance and development in Africa, and the democracy-promoting enthusiasts of the neoconservative school, Equatorial Guinea was “the kiss of death,” recalled a senior Bush administration official involved. But the oil companies joined Africa Global in pressing Obiang’s cause. ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess worked through the Corporate Council on Africa, an industry trade and lobby group, to campaign at the White House and State for approval for a new U.S. embassy in Malabo. The oil companies argued through their Washington lobbyists that the American embassy in Malabo had been shuttered before the discovery of oil,
when virtually no U.S. citizens resided in the country, whereas now there were upward of six hundred Americans living in Equatorial Guinea, shuttling in and out on rotation. Passport and visa paperwork had to be handled in Cameroon, and there was no permanent diplomatic liaison to address even routine business issues. Still, the Africa hands on the National Security Council, where the decision would ultimately be made, hesitated. They knew George W. Bush would be accused of selling out human rights for oil profits if the administration reopened the embassy.
Obiang wanted military training, too. His government had received a State Department license to hire Military Professional Resources International (M.P.R.I.), a government-connected security contractor based in northern Virginia, to improve the virtually nonexistent capabilities of Equatorial Guinea’s tiny coast guard and navy. It was unusual for State to approve any license for military training for a regime with a human rights record as bad as Equatorial Guinea’s, but maritime defense work had been rationalized as necessary to protect huge American oil investments offshore. Now Obiang wanted to expand M.P.R.I.’s training to include his military and internal security forces and to contribute to regional campaigns against maritime piracy and illegal fishing. Obiang had told Larson that he needed additional military assistance to “protect [Equatorial Guinea’s] sovereignty and the U.S. investment.”
He sent his foreign minister and energy adviser to Washington to explain that his request reflected Equatorial Guinea’s “concern over security issues, particularly the safety of offshore oil installations, but also stems from the president’s desire to emulate the United States in areas such as democratization and respect for human rights.” The Bush administration stalled some more.18
The administration did allow Obiang a steady stream of official meetings when he visited America for cancer treatment or other private reasons. On September 7, 2001, Obiang again met Under Secretary of State Alan Larson. United States investment in Equatorial Guinea, all in the oil and gas sector, “is having a great impact on the country,” Obiang pleaded. But he needed help. His country had been called the “Kuwait of Africa,” he said, but with a mere 10 percent royalty rate on oil production in the early phase, “this does not accurately reflect the revenues that the government receives.” The country was still waiting for ExxonMobil to cross the break-even point in the recovery of its investments, after which Equatorial Guinea’s take would rise; the country was not yet as wealthy as it would be.
