Hunting for Facts: State Department Looking Into Ray Hunt’s Oil Deal

Daniel Rodrigue

Ray Hunt

The New York Times today reveals that earlier this week, Harold W. Geisel, Acting Inspector General for the U.S. Department of State, sent several lawmakers a missive in which Geisel revealed his office is investigating just how Dallas’s Ray Hunt and Hunt Oil Company scored that drilling deal with the regional Kurdistan government. At the beginning of July, The Times detailed several e-mails between George W. Bush’s good, good pal Ray Hunt, State Department officials and others in the Bush administration concerning Hunt’s decision to go into Kurdistan, which infuriated an Iraqi government that has since damned the deal as “illegal.” Chuck Schumer — among the four Democratic senators, including John Kerry, who pushed for the investigation — is particularly giddy: “If, as alleged, the State Department misrepresented U.S. policy to companies like Hunt, that is highly troubling.” –Robert Wilonsky