Meet Wesley Clark Jr./Nato Leader's Son in Sarajevo Film Cash Row

""Who tried to negotiate a pipeline deal with the Taliban AFTER they blew up the buddhas and forced jews to wear stars of David? Who goes and works for Halliburton and the Carlyle Group when they leave office (or continue working for them while in office)? …Who has blocked and prevented any After Action Review as to what happened on 9/11? Who tried to block the creation of a Department of Homeland Security? Who has not fired or brought to accountability a SINGLE PERSON for the intelligence failure that led to 9/11? But the most important question of all - WHO WAS THE PRESIDENT FOR NINE MONTHS PRIOR TO SEPTEMBER 11TH? … George W. Bush.

Who posted the above accusations? None other than Wesley Clark Jr., the general’s kid. The candidate-of-the-moment’s son is a 33-year-old screenwriter, lives in L.A., handsome guy like his dad, shuns the media.

"I just don’t want to be that guy in the press," Mr. Clark said, his voice a mix of Arkansas and gravel. "I’m married, I’m having a baby in January, and we just want a quiet, simple life. I’m a writer because I don’t like being all that public."

But if you search the bloggy ether, you’ll find some of his musings on Dailykos.com, a salon for liberal wonks. Like many news junkies, he’s got some strong opinions. "I don’t even know where to go on that," Mr. Clark said when asked about Iraq. "I don’t think the country should have gone in there. They weren’t a threat to us!"

Mr. Clark was himself a soldier once and doesn’t consider himself a radical. He said he’s worried that "Bushco"—his shorthand for the Bush administration and its allies at Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, etc.—has led the U.S. astray. "This country is heading off a cliff. And there’s lot of people who can see we’re heading off a cliff, and there’s everybody else who’s just in complete denial," he said.

"I honestly think, if anyone’s going to solve the country’s problems, he’s going to do it," Wes Jr. said. "I was pushing him to run stronger than anyone. I said, ‘Look, I served in the Army for four years, you served in the Army for 32 years, how can you not step forward and do this?’ And, you know, maybe I guilt-tripped him into it."

Which is not to say that Wes Jr.’s views have always fallen into neat formation behind his father’s. "I lean farther left than my dad," he said, adding that he voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election.

Life in L.A. has been pretty good. He said he has four projects in development right now with Warner Brothers, Radiant Pictures, Robert Cort Productions and Three Arts Entertainment. One of them, called Cold Shelter, is about a patriotic C.I.A. agent who heads to Cold War Germany to infiltrate a gang of bad guys, only to question the values of the government he had always fought to uphold.

Wes Jr. was born in Jacksonville, Fla., while his dad was in Vietnam. He was raised on military bases throughout the U.S. and Europe during the Cold War. Back then, he said, he was "somewhat of a conservative, because when you grow up in the military, you grow up with all the other kids, and it’s a very conservative kind of world." He did four years at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, four years in the U.S. Army. It was only after he retired his fatigues that his views began to thaw. "When I was 22 years old, I thought I knew everything that the world was about, and I really didn’t," he said. "Conservatism is all about emotion, because it just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense that you’d want to live in a society that’s Darwinian—especially when you don’t believe in evolution.

"But these are just my opinions; they’re not my dad’s," he added. "It’s like giving ammunition to Karl Rove if I open my mouth and say the wrong thing! I mean, you’ve got to understand—I didn’t think my dad was going to run, even the day before the announcement. So I never really thought I’d be in a situation where my words would be parsed."

Which might explain why he felt free during the summer to post on Dailykos.com. In these postings, he offered tangy observations on the Bush Presidency, along with insider insights into his father’s policy positions. "He won’t be running as a Republican. He IS NOT campaigning for a VP slot," he wrote in a July 9 post. "He’s stated that … he’s pro-choice, that he’s pro-affirmative action, that he’s pro-union, that the tax code should remain progressive, that multilateral solutions should be found for the world’s security concerns, that he was against the decision to go to war in Iraq and that we need stronger social safety nets. I don’t know what other positions people need to find out which direction he leans but it seems fairly clear to me."

Before long, Web crawlers began posing as "Wesley Clark Jr." and serving up some outlandish morsels on Dailykos.com, including a petulant exchange with someone claiming to be "Howard Dean IV." "Okay, if your dad is so tough, why did he spend his Vietnam years skiing in Aspen while my father took four bullets in Vietnam?" sniffed the "Wes Jr." impostor.

Until now, Wes Jr.’s name has raised few eyebrows in L.A.. "People out here, they really don’t know anything about the military unless they were in it," he said. "Before, if someone thought, ‘Hey, isn’t that guy’s dad the head of NATO?’, they’d think it was the North American Theaters Association."

But with Dad emerging as the Democratic front-runner, pushed into the limelight by ClintonCo, Wes Jr. may be in for some trying times. For most of his life, he was fairly insulated from his father’s public persona, though he did date a Serbian woman while General Clark was dropping bombs on Belgrade, and that was complicated. "I still can’t quite get a handle on it," he said.

Nato leader's son in Sarajevo film cash row Nerma Jelacic

http://www.tao.ca/writing/archives/nettime/1008.html

The son of General Wesley Clark, the Nato supreme commander who led allied forces in the air raids against Serbia and Kosovo, is caught up in an embarrassing financial row involving the Bosnian government's attempts to make an epic film of the siege of Sarajevo.

Wesley Clark Junior and Mohammed Sacirbey, Bosnia's ambassador to the United Nations, are among a number of those involved in the production being asked to explain how Bosnian government money provided to fund the troubled film was spent.

At the centre of the row is Veljko Bulajic - the former Yugoslavia's most famous film director - who is demanding a government inquiry into the expenditure of money provided to produce the film, entitled Sarajevo .

Wesley Clark's name emerged amid inquiries by the Bosnian media last week into claims that the production was unable to account for 500,000 deutschmarks. While there is no suggestion that Clark or Sacirbey had misappropriated the funds, they have come under the spotlight following claims that both men exaggerated Clark's Hollywood experience and that he was overpaid for his work.

The difficulties with the film appear to have come to a head when director and screenwriter Bulajic was fired and Wesley Clark Junior appointed executive co-producer. Bulajic responded by questioning Clark's Hollywood credentials and the fate of seed money for the production.

According to Bulajic, Clark was originally appointed on the recommendation of Sacirbey to supply the names and addresses of US casting agents, for which he was supposed to receive a nominal fee.

Sacirbey had brought Clark into the production on the basis of claims that he was an already established movie-maker 'with a working relationship with Danny DeVito's production company Jersey Films'.

According to Bulajic, Clark was supposed to receive 'just a few thousand dollars' for providing contacts. However, the Bosnian magazine Dani claims to be in possession of a bank transfer printout from Vakuf Bank into Clark's private account, for $10,000 amid claims he received at least $60,000.

The Observer has been told that Wesley Clark Junior is not listed in the Directors and Producers Guild of America and Danny DeVito's company had only worked with him once when he had the role of a creative executive.

'I did not know whether to put him in the directing or producing department as he did not tell me that he worked in the movies before,' claims Bulajic. 'In the end I authorised him to make contacts on our behalf with some international actors and casting agencies. He made just a few contacts but did not work very hard.'

The controversy over the payments is at the centre of a wider scandal over the alleged disappearance of large sums of the pre-production budget.

The film had already spent Dm1.5m of its budget when Bulajic requested that an independent commission of inquiry into its expenditure was formed. 'The film team had spent around Dm830,000 for the pre-production purposes, and nobody seemed to know where the rest of the money had gone,' said Bulajic.

When Bulajic received no response from the production company, Bosna Film, he repeated his demand for full accounts in public.

Nedzad Hadzimusic, Bosnian ambassador at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - who is also the president of the executive board on Sarajevo - insists, despite Bulajic's complaints: 'Wesley Clark Junior has done a lot for this project.'

Mohammed Sacirbey also fiercely defends his introduction of Clark Junior to the film project. 'Wesley Clark Junior is a person of high capacity and good connections.'

However, Hadzimusic admits that the question of where the half million missing deutschmarks have gone remains unanswered.

'We will wait for the report [of Bosna film] which we will analyse and then, if necessary, we will open an independent enquiry,' he said.

Mabel was cozy with another nice guy too, Klaas Bruinsma (a big time criminal murdered a while back).

Mabel and Sacerbey lobbied for money and Sacerbey and his dad (Nezhib Sacerbegovic) went to Sudan to do some lobbying. According to 'Vrij Nederland' (a magazine dating from the resistance in WWII) the men were brought in contact with Osama bin Laden by the Sudanese president Hassan Al-Turabi. Osama gave them 50 million dollar and 4.000 trained fighters from Afghanistan. Also this is were Egyptian terrorist Al Zawahari joins in.

Also rumored is Mabel had indirectly worked on weapons trading with Bosnian leaders.

She also know exactly what the AIVD (Dutch intelligence service) knew about here. A person can aquire this info from the AIVD legaly, but only information that is (over) 5 years old, and she knew thing the AIVD gathered about her during the last 5 years. Although the Bosnian media knew about her dirty dealings, the AIVD reports seem not to mention anything about her dealings in Bosnia.

A coverup? Seems like it. The CDA (biggest governing party) refused to discuss that matter.

Also it was reported her dossier from the ministry of internal affairs seems to be missing...

To be continued.

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