June 21 (LPAC)--During a November 2006 trip to the Middle East and South Asia, including collusion with Saudi officials on perpetuating the Iraq War, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney determined to shut down the British Fraud Office's investigation of the scandal of the century. This is the BAE Systems/Prince Bandar arms-for-oil deal, which created huge slush funds for political operations, and bribed Prince Bandar with $2 billion.

According to a Jan. 27, 2007 article posted on Truthout.com by their UK correspondent Chris Floyd, the Saudis were tired of the embarrassing revelations around the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) inquiry into the BAE bribery scandal, and chose to play hardball. Floyd writes that Vice-President Cheney told Prime Minister Blair, that Blair needed to ditch the "enforcement of the law" malarkey from the SFO, and keep the Saudi actions secret.

The SFO investigation into the BAE bribery scandal was shutdown on Dec. 15, 2006 by Lord Goldsmith, Blair's Attorney General.

The background to Cheney's intervention is his visit to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 25, 2006. This trip has been described in a Dec. 17, 2006 Huffington Post blog written by Raymond Learsy. It has Cheney being summoned to visit King Abdullah, and told that the Saudis would end all cooperation in the war on terror, if the investigation was not quashed.