United States :
http://web.archive.org/web/20080121070333/http://www.aigcorporate.com/corpsite/gov_directors.html March 19, 2009 The AP notes that he was on the board, and thus vulnerable to the feeding frenzy. He’s no longer on the board — which is, oddly enough, now offline, though obviously public — but here’s the list from the first quarter of 2008, when those bonsuses were decided. Also on the board at the time were former Defense Secretary William Cohen and economist Martin Feldstein. UPDATE: A colleague points out that Holbrooke also received a “friends of Angelo” mortgage and was a managing director at Lehman, which is quite a trinity. By Ben Smith 09:12 P  --------------------------------------------------------------
Another Holbrooke/Hill Embarassment
According to Richard Holbrooke, Richard Holbrooke is essentially this country’s top diplomat — Hillary Clinton is merely his ”pupil. This despite the fact that Holbrooke has hit the trifecta of shady business dealings over the last few years: a member of AIG’s board with more than $800,000 in compensation, a managing director at Lehman Brothers, and the recipient of a ”Friends of Angelo” loan from Countrywide (that alone was enough to get Jim Johnson thrown under the Obama campaign bus). Now comes another revelation from the New York Times. Despite repeated denials, according to three sources, Holbrooke did offer former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic a promise of immunity from prosecution for war crimes in exchange for his withdrawing from politics in that country. Holbrooke again denied the story to the paper, but there seems little doubt that the rumor is true, and that Holbrooke is lying. (Didn’t the New York Times think to ask Holbrooke’s ”personal archivist”?) More than that, Christopher Hill, who was acting as Holbrooke’s ”principal assistant” in the negotiations, pleaded with Holbrooke, on Karadzic’s behalf, to put the guarantee in writing. To Holbrooke’s credit, he refused. It’s hard to muster much outrage at Holbrooke’s conniving to get Karadzic to step aside, but that he continues to lie about his role in the negotiations is far more troublesome. Hill’s role is less easily defended. The primary objection to his appointment as Ambassador to Iraq was his lies before a Senate Committee seeking assurance that human rights would remain at the fore of his negotiations with the North Koreans. Now we know that Hill was similarly sympathetic to Karadzic, who was responsible for some of the worst atrocities in the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia. He was willing to grant Karadzic immunity for those abuses in writing, even though as Holbrooke later conceded to one source, Karadzic never held up his end of the bargain. This is precisely the complaint against Hill’s work in North Korea — a willingness to offer written guarantees in exchange for the easily broken pledges of men who, like Karadzic, ought to be charged with crimes against humanity. And his reward for this will be a post in Baghdad? PS: Shouldn’t someone (like a senator) ask what Holbrooke did for AIG in exchange for $800k? Hank Greenberg, the former chairman of AIG, went to great lengths to cozy up to China, providing lavish funding to the Council on Foreign Relations and other think tanks (and apparently Holbrooke) to promote a pro-China policy in the United States so as to curry favor with the ChiCom leadership. Is there anything we should know about Holbrooke’s dealings with the Chinese in those years? Posted by Michael Goldfarb on March 23, 2009 04:11 PM | Permalink 
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Study Backs Bosnian Serb’s Claim of Immunity
Article Tools Sponsored By By MARLISE SIMONS Published: March 21, 2009 PARIS — Every time Radovan Karadzic, the onetime Bosnian Serb leader, appears in court on war crimes charges, he has hammered on one recurring claim: a senior American official pledged that he would never be standing there. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Pool photo by Jerry Lampen Radovan Karadzic, the onetime Bosnian Serb leader, right, with a court official at The Hague, where he has been charged with war crimes. Mr. Karadzic’s trial is expected to begin this year. Related Karadzic’s Statement Agreeing to Step Down (pdf) The official, Richard C. Holbrooke, now a special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Obama administration, has repeatedly denied promising Mr. Karadzic immunity from prosecution in exchange for abandoning power after the Bosnian war. But the rumor persists, and different versions have recently emerged that line up with Mr. Karadzic’s assertion, including a new historical study of the Yugoslav wars published by Purdue University in Indiana. Charles W. Ingrao, the study’s co-editor, said that three senior State Department officials, one of them retired, and several other people with knowledge of Mr. Holbrooke’s activities told him that Mr. Holbrooke assured Mr. Karadzic in July 1996 that he would not be pursued by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague if he left politics. Mr. Karadzic had already been charged by the tribunal with genocide and other crimes against civilians. Two of the sources cited anonymously in the new study, a former senior State Department official who spent almost a decade in the Balkans and another American who was involved with international peacekeeping there in the 1990s, provided additional details in interviews with The New York Times, speaking on condition that they not be further identified. The former State Department official said he was told of the offer by people who were close to Mr. Holbrooke’s team at the time. The other source said that Mr. Holbrooke personally and emphatically told him about the deal on two occasions. While the two men agreed, as one of them put it, that “Holbrooke did the right thing and got the job done,” the recurring story of the deal has dogged Mr. Holbrooke. Last summer, after more than a decade on the run, Mr. Karadzic was found living disguised in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital. He was arrested and sent to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for his trial, which is expected to start this year. Asked for comment for this article, Mr. Holbrooke repeated his denial in a written statement. “No one in the U.S. government ever promised anything, nor made a deal of any sort with Karadzic,” he said, noting that Mr. Karadzic stepped down in the summer of 1996 under intense American pressure. “In subsequent meetings, as a private citizen, I repeatedly urged officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations to capture Karadzic,” Mr. Holbrooke said. “I am glad he has finally been brought to justice, even though he uses his public platform to disseminate these fabrications.” Mr. Holbrooke declined to accept further questions and did not address the specifics of the new accounts. Mr. Karadzic, by insisting that he is exempt from legal proceedings, has now forced the war crimes tribunal to deal with his allegations, illustrating the difficulty of both administering international justice and conducting diplomacy. In December, tribunal judges ruled that even if a deal had been made, it would have no bearing on a trial. They said no immunity agreement would be valid before an international tribunal in a case of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. Mr. Karadzic is charged with all three. But Mr. Karadzic has appealed and filed motions demanding that prosecutors disclose every scrap of confidential evidence about negotiations with Mr. Holbrooke. He has asked his lawyers to seek meetings with American diplomats. His demands have led the court to write to the United States government for clarification. Peter Robinson, a lawyer for Mr. Karadzic, said that he had received a promise from Washington that he could interview Philip S. Goldberg, who was on the Holbrooke team meeting in Belgrade the night the resignation was negotiated. “Goldberg took the notes at that meeting,” Mr. Robinson said. “The U.S. government has agreed to search for the notes and provide them if they find them.” A State Department spokesman said that the government was cooperating with the tribunal, but would provide no further details. Mr. Holbrooke, who brokered the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war in 1995, returned to Belgrade in 1996 to press Mr. Karadzic to resign as president of the Bosnian Serb republic. Mr. Holbrooke’s memoirs recount a night of fierce negotiation on July 18, 1996, but make no mention of any pledge of immunity. The Purdue University study, “Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative,” says that Mr. Holbrooke “instructed his principal assistant, Christopher Hill, to draft the memorandum to be signed by Karadzic,” committing him to give up power. Mr. Ingrao said Mr. Holbrooke used Slobodan Milosevic, then the Serbian leader, and other Serbian officials as intermediaries to convey the promise of immunity and to reach the deal with Mr. Karadzic.
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http://web.archive.org/web/20080121070333/http://www.aigcorporate.com/corpsite/gov_directors.html
Bill & Hillary Clinton, Ricahrd Holbrook and entire Obama administration caught together in an incestuous relationship of corrupt politics only 100 days after Obama’s election (!) By Jill Starr in NJ USA
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Another Holbrooke/Hill Embarassment
According to Richard Holbrooke, Richard Holbrooke is essentially this country’s top diplomat — Hillary Clinton is merely his ”pupil. This despite the fact that Holbrooke has hit the trifecta of shady business dealings over the last few years: a member of AIG’s board with more than $800,000 in compensation, a managing director at Lehman Brothers, and the recipient of a ”Friends of Angelo” loan from Countrywide (that alone was enough to get Jim Johnson thrown under the Obama campaign bus). Now comes another revelation from the New York Times. Despite repeated denials, according to three sources, Holbrooke did offer former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic a promise of immunity from prosecution for war crimes in exchange for his withdrawing from politics in that country. Holbrooke again denied the story to the paper, but there seems little doubt that the rumor is true, and that Holbrooke is lying. (Didn’t the New York Times think to ask Holbrooke’s ”personal archivist”?) More than that, Christopher Hill, who was acting as Holbrooke’s ”principal assistant” in the negotiations, pleaded with Holbrooke, on Karadzic’s behalf, to put the guarantee in writing. To Holbrooke’s credit, he refused. It’s hard to muster much outrage at Holbrooke’s conniving to get Karadzic to step aside, but that he continues to lie about his role in the negotiations is far more troublesome. Hill’s role is less easily defended. The primary objection to his appointment as Ambassador to Iraq was his lies before a Senate Committee seeking assurance that human rights would remain at the fore of his negotiations with the North Koreans. Now we know that Hill was similarly sympathetic to Karadzic, who was responsible for some of the worst atrocities in the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia. He was willing to grant Karadzic immunity for those abuses in writing, even though as Holbrooke later conceded to one source, Karadzic never held up his end of the bargain. This is precisely the complaint against Hill’s work in North Korea — a willingness to offer written guarantees in exchange for the easily broken pledges of men who, like Karadzic, ought to be charged with crimes against humanity. And his reward for this will be a post in Baghdad? PS: Shouldn’t someone (like a senator) ask what Holbrooke did for AIG in exchange for $800k? Hank Greenberg, the former chairman of AIG, went to great lengths to cozy up to China, providing lavish funding to the Council on Foreign Relations and other think tanks (and apparently Holbrooke) to promote a pro-China policy in the United States so as to curry favor with the ChiCom leadership. Is there anything we should know about Holbrooke’s dealings with the Chinese in those years? Posted by Michael Goldfarb on March 23, 2009 04:11 PM | Permalink
1 Stars
Study Backs Bosnian Serb’s Claim of Immunity
Article Tools Sponsored By By MARLISE SIMONS Published: March 21, 2009 PARIS — Every time Radovan Karadzic, the onetime Bosnian Serb leader, appears in court on war crimes charges, he has hammered on one recurring claim: a senior American official pledged that he would never be standing there. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Pool photo by Jerry Lampen Radovan Karadzic, the onetime Bosnian Serb leader, right, with a court official at The Hague, where he has been charged with war crimes. Mr. Karadzic’s trial is expected to begin this year. Related Karadzic’s Statement Agreeing to Step Down (pdf) The official, Richard C. Holbrooke, now a special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Obama administration, has repeatedly denied promising Mr. Karadzic immunity from prosecution in exchange for abandoning power after the Bosnian war. But the rumor persists, and different versions have recently emerged that line up with Mr. Karadzic’s assertion, including a new historical study of the Yugoslav wars published by Purdue University in Indiana. Charles W. Ingrao, the study’s co-editor, said that three senior State Department officials, one of them retired, and several other people with knowledge of Mr. Holbrooke’s activities told him that Mr. Holbrooke assured Mr. Karadzic in July 1996 that he would not be pursued by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague if he left politics. Mr. Karadzic had already been charged by the tribunal with genocide and other crimes against civilians. Two of the sources cited anonymously in the new study, a former senior State Department official who spent almost a decade in the Balkans and another American who was involved with international peacekeeping there in the 1990s, provided additional details in interviews with The New York Times, speaking on condition that they not be further identified. The former State Department official said he was told of the offer by people who were close to Mr. Holbrooke’s team at the time. The other source said that Mr. Holbrooke personally and emphatically told him about the deal on two occasions. While the two men agreed, as one of them put it, that “Holbrooke did the right thing and got the job done,” the recurring story of the deal has dogged Mr. Holbrooke. Last summer, after more than a decade on the run, Mr. Karadzic was found living disguised in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital. He was arrested and sent to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for his trial, which is expected to start this year. Asked for comment for this article, Mr. Holbrooke repeated his denial in a written statement. “No one in the U.S. government ever promised anything, nor made a deal of any sort with Karadzic,” he said, noting that Mr. Karadzic stepped down in the summer of 1996 under intense American pressure. “In subsequent meetings, as a private citizen, I repeatedly urged officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations to capture Karadzic,” Mr. Holbrooke said. “I am glad he has finally been brought to justice, even though he uses his public platform to disseminate these fabrications.” Mr. Holbrooke declined to accept further questions and did not address the specifics of the new accounts. Mr. Karadzic, by insisting that he is exempt from legal proceedings, has now forced the war crimes tribunal to deal with his allegations, illustrating the difficulty of both administering international justice and conducting diplomacy. In December, tribunal judges ruled that even if a deal had been made, it would have no bearing on a trial. They said no immunity agreement would be valid before an international tribunal in a case of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. Mr. Karadzic is charged with all three. But Mr. Karadzic has appealed and filed motions demanding that prosecutors disclose every scrap of confidential evidence about negotiations with Mr. Holbrooke. He has asked his lawyers to seek meetings with American diplomats. His demands have led the court to write to the United States government for clarification. Peter Robinson, a lawyer for Mr. Karadzic, said that he had received a promise from Washington that he could interview Philip S. Goldberg, who was on the Holbrooke team meeting in Belgrade the night the resignation was negotiated. “Goldberg took the notes at that meeting,” Mr. Robinson said. “The U.S. government has agreed to search for the notes and provide them if they find them.” A State Department spokesman said that the government was cooperating with the tribunal, but would provide no further details. Mr. Holbrooke, who brokered the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war in 1995, returned to Belgrade in 1996 to press Mr. Karadzic to resign as president of the Bosnian Serb republic. Mr. Holbrooke’s memoirs recount a night of fierce negotiation on July 18, 1996, but make no mention of any pledge of immunity. The Purdue University study, “Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative,” says that Mr. Holbrooke “instructed his principal assistant, Christopher Hill, to draft the memorandum to be signed by Karadzic,” committing him to give up power. Mr. Ingrao said Mr. Holbrooke used Slobodan Milosevic, then the Serbian leader, and other Serbian officials as intermediaries to convey the promise of immunity and to reach the deal with Mr. Karadzic. Add your Comment |
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