The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group (Hardcover)

by Dan Briody (Author) "Stephen Norris is getting excited now..." (more)
Key Phrases: executive mercenaries, private equity firm, defense division, United States, Saudi Arabia, United Defense (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"...Undoubtedly, the story of the Carlyle Group is fascinating...a book worth reading..." -- Professional Investor, June 2003

"...conspiracy theorists will love this investigation in to the Carlyle Group..." -- EN Magazine, July 2003

"...useful reading for anybody interested in American politics today..." -- Economist, 28 June 2003

“…strongly recommended to anyone who enjoys a good conspiracy theory.” (The Spectator, 21^st January 2006)

A TRUSTED adviser to the Pentagon stands to make $725,000 for advising a company seeking a deal that the government opposes on national security grounds. When the country is at war, no less.
This very recent tale, of Richard N. Perle, who was chairman of the Defense Policy Board, a voluntary citizens advisory body, but thought nothing wrong of his arrangement, shows that few topics could be more timely than the web of government, business and military interests that lobbyists and bureaucrats call the iron triangle.
Now a first-time author, Dan Briody, has come along with "The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group" (Wiley, $24.95), which aspires to tell the ultimate tale of private interests trampling on public trust. Carlyle is the Washington buyout firm that has made the most of its unusual political connections to complete some rarified deals. As the author warns in his preface, "the scandal here is not what's illegal but what's legal."
The firm and the world in which it operates have been the subjects of previous profiles, most memorably a 1993 article by Michael Lewis in The New Republic. He called Carlyle the "neat solut ion f or people who don't have a lot to sell besides their access, but who don't want to appear to be selling their access." Mr. Briody himself wrote about the firm in December 2001 in Red Herring magazine.
And therein lies the problem. The book is one-stop shopping for anyone who wants a laundry list of accusations against Carlyle since its inception in 1987. But in the year or so that the author was researching and writing the book, he did not unearth enough hard proof of self-dealing to sustain 210 pages. It feels padded, even without the 50 pages of addenda.
Clearly, with a Bush back in the White House, Mr. Briody and his publisher must have been expecting that Carlyle's connections to the Bush family would sell the book. But even if Carlyle's deals eventually enrich the current president and his father, the former president, that does not mean that their every action was for that reason.
Readers might also ask if it is surprising that a firm like Carlyle, which has long made its living in the military industry, would be making big money now that the country is obsessed with security. A book of this ambition ought to be able to weed out apparent conflicts of interest from actual ones and coincidences from conspiracies.
The chapters in which the author comes closest to finding conflicts involve instances in which public officials awarded contracts, gave favorable treatment or turned over public money to Carlyle before leaving office. Then, in a blink, they turn up working for the firm or companies associated with it.
Certainly, permissive laws that rely on former politicians' own sense of shame about capitalizing on connections have helped buoy Carlyle's fortunes. As of June 2002, the firm had $13.5 billion "under management," as they say on Wall Street.
What makes Carlyle so utterly different is its pedigree. It was started by Stephen L. Norris, a former tax whiz for Marriott, and David M. Rubenstein, a onetime aide to President Jimmy Carter. What brought them together initially was a tax break that let Eskimos sell their business losses to outsiders for cash. The two teamed up to broker those tax breaks, earning $10 million in fees and costing the government $1 billion in taxes from profitable companies.
In September 1988, Carlyle started hiring a string of other Washington insiders, starting with Frederic V. Malek, a former aide to President Richard M. Nixon who also had undeniable connections to the Bush family, Saudi royals and others worth knowing, the author writes.
The all-star cast grew to include Frank C. Carlucci, a former defense secretary and former deputy director of the C.I.A., and John Major, the former British prime minister.
It even hired a former oil man to serve on the board of one of its companies. That director, George W. Bush, is now president.
CARLYLE'S purchase of a company called Vinnell in 1992 confirms the author's worst suspicions. He argues that it illustrates the perils of the iron triangle "in one neat utterly secretive package." Vinnell trained foreign armies, and the book quotes an unidentified former board member as saying the company was a front for the C.I.A. But much of the intrigue that is recounted here happened before Carlyle bought the company. It sold the unit to TRW in 1997.
Certainly, the stakes grew when James A. Baker III joined Carlyle in 1993. Here was a man — chief of staff for two presidents, Mr. Reagan and the elder Mr. Bush, as well as a former Treasury secretary and a former secretary of state — who could provide influence globally the way Mr. Carlucci, with his 32 corporate board seats, had done at home.
One of Mr. Briody's more fascinating revelations is at the end of the book, and one only wishes he had made more of it. He argues that because state pension funds plow money into Carlyle, bigwigs inside the Beltway aren't the only people who stand to become rich. That also explains, perhaps, why the public does not have much incentive to shut the crony capitalists down. (The New York Times, Sunday, April 13, 2003)

"...Undoubtedly, the story of the Carlyle Group is fascinating...a book worth reading..." (Professional Investor, June 2003)

"...useful reading for anybody interested in American politics today..." (Economist, 28 June 2003)

"...conspiracy theorists will love this investigation in to the Carlyle Group..." (EN Magazine, July 2003)

Product Description
"The Carlyle Group is a distressing example of the way Washington, DC works. The Iron Triangle gives you an insiders’ perspective on this ‘creature’ of the Beltway."
–Thomas Fitton, President, Judicial Watch, Inc.

from The Iron Triangle:

Dwight D. Eisenhower, upon leaving the office of president in 1961, warned future generations against the dangers of a "military-industrial complex," and the "grave implications" of the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry." The wisdom of these comments has clearly been lost in the forty years since Ike left office. And the first step towards turning things around is understanding how we got here. No single company can illustrate that progression better than the Carlyle Group, a business founded on a tax scheme in 1987 that has grown up to be what its own marketing literature once called "a vast interlocking global network." The company does business at the confluence of the war on terrorism and corporate responsibility. It is a world that few of us can even imagine, full of clandestine meetings, quid pro quo deals, bitter ironies, and petty jealousies. And the cast of characters includes some of the most famous and powerful men in the world. This is today’s America. This is the Carlyle Group.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1st edition (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471281085
• ISBN-13: 978-0471281085
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #555,804 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captains and the Kings, November 28, 2004

By	Seachranaiche (USA) - See all my reviews

Taylor Caldwell described this kind of thing fictionally in her novel, Captains and the Kings, but her story deals with Gilded Era robber barons whose machinations, though plenty effective in their time, seem juvenile when compared to what is going on at Carlyle today.

Those of us who cling to a belief in America as our faith suffer most, I believe, from the documentation of this level of corruption in our midst. Those who are not politically active, or who will not see the evidence before their eyes, might simply state that Washington is corrupt, always has been, and there's nothing we can do about it. Well, all of these presumptions are untrue: when this level of corruption arose within the Grant, Garfield, and Nixon administrations, action was taken to correct the problem. Of course, the first two events occurred prior to the 17th Amendment, the beginning of our demise. When Theodore Roosevelt came along he socked it to these kinds of guys, but good, and bought us 50 or 60 years of relatively effective government.

Dan Briody has written a well-researched, well-documented account of incalculable greed and corruption run amok. In an earlier time, the publication of a book like this would have set off a maelstrom of investigations and indictments. Why is it that our current administration and the Carlyle Group feel immune from censure or prosecution? Repeat after me:

Repeal the 17th Amendment
Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine
Enforce Sherman Anti-trust

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A facinating look at a scary direction in American business, April 29, 2003

By	"jwendroff2" (Los Angeles, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

The intersection of politics and business is quite apparent with the current Bush administration, but this book takes us deep into the dangers inherent in such a close alignment of the public and private sectors. The scariest part of this book is not that fact that the type of political favors and influence peddling described occur, but that there is little oversight in the government or media to prevent or expose it.

I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about the influence of business on government policy, especially with the current global political climate.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courageous must-read book!, April 27, 2003

By A Customer

If a Ludlum novel had a CIA hitman, the father of the president and the world's biggest terrorist's brother sitting down together at a company meeting while the Trade Center was being bombed; and then went on to disclose that the company had invested in companies that specialize in anthrax clean-up, airport security devices, and defense equiptment - it would be considered far fetched. This brave book says it is real. It is Bush, Baker, Carlucci, Levitt and bin-Laden in the scariest book in print.