"recruit another criminal"
ROTFLOL!! That's exactly what I thought when I saw it was Sandy Berger who was going to be making the statement. Do these people actually believe the public is going to accept the word of an impeached former president and a convicted thief ..?? Stunning arrogance .. just stunning.
Ah, the brave, fearless journalists.
Clinton's former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, *Wyche Fowler, whose present job is chairman of The Middle East Institute. This institute is heavily supported by the Saudis, who have secretly donated over $1 million to the Clinton Library.
Ambassador *Wyche Fowler, Jr.,
Chairman, Middle East Institute
Ambassador Fowler, a former U.S. Senator (D-Ga.), was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1996 to 2001. He previously served in the U.S. Senate, 1986-1993, as a member of the Senate Appropriations, Budget, Energy and Agriculture Committees. Fowler was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1977; member of the Ways and Means and Foreign Affairs Committees, the Committee of Intelligence, and the Congressional Arts Caucus. He practiced law in Atlanta for eight years prior to election. Fowler is an expert on Saudi Arabia and Middle East affairs.
Early in spring Fowler interrupted his campaign planning and took his ailing friend Weltner on a trip to Turkey and Iraq, where they explored religious and archaeological sites.
Ambassador Fowler became a forceful proponent of close U.S.-Saudi ties.
Following his stint as ambassador, Fowler joined a number of corporate and academic boards, including those of the Carter Center at Emory University and the Morehouse School of Medicine. He is board chair of the Middle East Institute, a nonprofit research foundation in Washington, D.C., devoted to the mission of increasing knowledge in the United States about the Middle East. He practices law in the nation's capital for the firm of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer, and Murphy and lectures widely around the nation and overseas.
Fowler, who was the kind of appointee the Saudis love, wasted little time after his retirement setting up "consulting contracts with several multinational firms to advise them on business in the Middle East," pulling down fat lecture fees on topics like "Saudi Arabia: America's Strategic Trade Partner in the Middle East," and raising funds for The Middle East Institute, of which he is chairman.
Fowler has been generating headlines such as: "Former Ambassador: Saudis Aren't to Blame" (Charlotte Observer, Nov. 27).
******
Jeff Greenfield, CNN
GREENFIELD: Now Mr. Wyche Fowler, you were there for three or four years. Is Mr. Woolsey [former CIA director James, who had just ripped apart the House of Saud] describing the Saudi Arabia that you knew and lived in?
WYCHE FOWLER, JR., FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SAUDI ARABIA: Well, in all respect to my friend, the former director of the CIA, I think that one of the problems of these discussions is that he painted them with a pretty broad brush. And there were some exaggerations there that I do not think that the facts would substantiate.
GREENFIELD: Such as?
FOWLER: For one thing, well for one thing, the -- whether or not you agree or disagree with the most conservative form of religion, the Wahabism, it does teach tolerance for Jews and Christians. They are people of the book, known as people of the Koran. The Crown Prince Abdullah, who is the titular ruler of the country now, has spoken out against terrorism. He has preached himself tolerance for Christians and Jews, as he believes is the interpretation that he must adhere to.
And though certainly we see that there have been some very bad apples developed in and around Saudi Arabia, in that region, who claim Islam as the reason for their terrorist activities, I won't debate Mr. Woolsey's Nazi example, but I would certainly say that you could not use one or two or even 10 of those and condemn all of Islam or the actions of Saudi Arabia even -- any more than you could condemn all of Christianity for the actions of Timothy McVeigh and some of his fundamentalist characters.
GREENFIELD: But truly, Mr. Ambassador, you saw in your time in Saudi Arabia, some pretty rough stuff on what is after all a state-controlled media. This is not a First Amendment country. I mean, they've done everything from report the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," that notorious czarist forgery about Jews, to some cases blaming the United States for committing some of these terrorist acts on itself. Did you ever raise this with the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, that this was really not helpful?
FOWLER: Well, we had been in discussions, but again, Jeff, and that goes back to your opening piece. There have been, in our urge for them to have a freedom of the press, such as in Qatar now and the famous al Jazeera. You are now having, for the first time, every kind of viewpoint. Well, not every kind in Saudi Arabia, but there is a loosening under what we would call far more freedom of speech.
And many things are said now on television in Arab stations from Egypt to Qatar to Saudi Arabia, that are not checked. And they speak in what we would consider some kind of wild and woolly and non-factual -- do not have the facts to back it up.
GREENFIELD: Ambassador Fowler, in terms of the clout, and I'll be very blunt about that, that the United States has, isn't the royal family situation that namely, that there's a fair amount of discontent among a lot of those folks in Saudi Arabia, doesn't that give the United States, with its military power, a lot more clout to press the Saudis for reform, that might otherwise have thought of, because of the issue of oil?
FOWLER: Well, I think again, Jeff, you're overlooking the fact that the Saudis themselves are seeking both economic reform. And the question whether is it will be coupled with what we in the West would identify as political reform.
On CNN, Dec. 10:
BLITZER: Well, Wyche Fowler, you served in Saudi Arabia. You were the U.S. ambassador most recently. How is it going to play in Saudi Arabia, this [Osama bin Laden confession] videotape, if it's as compelling as the administration says it is?
WYCHE FOWLER, CHAIRMAN, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE: Well, I think it would be helpful. I think it would be helpful to the case that ... we are making and that we believe. ... There hadn't been any hatred being spewed out of Saudi Arabia or Egypt for that matter against us. All the hatred has been against bin Laden because he called for the overthrow of the Saudi government.
Dateline MSNBC, Dec. 7:
DATELINE repeatedly asked the Saudi kingdom to discuss its relations with the US, but we received no response. Wyche Fowler, Jr., a former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, says America should be cautious about pushing too hard for democratic reforms.
Mr. WYCHE FOWLER, JR.: I don't think we can dictate to any country who have different cultures and have thousand-year histories of their structure, be it tribal, be it based on the Quran. We can't tell them that American democracy is the only way to govern their land.
Their Men in Riyadh: Ex-U.S. ambassadors who stick with the Saudis
National Review, June 17, 2002 by Rod Dreher
It's good to be the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia -- or, more precisely, it's good to have been Washington's man in Riyadh. No other posting pays such rich dividends once one has left it, provided one is willing to become a public and private advocate of Saudi interests.
The number of ex-U.S. ambassadors to Riyadh who now push a pro-Saudi line is startling. Walter L. Cutler runs the Meridian International Center, which has been heavily supported by the Saudis. Richard Murphy wields influence as a pro-Saudi voice at the Council on Foreign Relations. Chas W. Freeman Jr. now runs the robustly pro-Arab Middle East Policy Council, and heads a firm that sets up joint international business ventures. And lower-level diplomats with Riyadh experience on their resumes can be found throughout U.S. foreign-policy circles.
Prince Bandar, the colorful Saudi ambassador to the United States, makes no bones about how it works. The Washington Post has quoted Bandar as observing, "If the reputation builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office."
Not everyone feels all warm and fuzzy about this. "I think it's a disgrace," says Richard Perle, the former Reagan administration official. "They're the people who appear on television, they write op-ed pieces. The Saudis are a major source of the problem we face with terrorism. That would be far more obvious to people if it weren't for this community of former diplomats effectively working for this foreign government."
snip
An academic passion for sunny Araby hardly accounts for someone like Wyche Fowler, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Georgia who was dispatched as ambassador to Riyadh in President Clinton's second term. Fowler, a wily country boy who used to campaign on his rural background, seems to have had a good ol' time in King Fahd's court. "[The Saudis] are intelligent and quick," Fowler said in a recent interview, "and I enjoyed spending many hours drinking tea in the desert with them late into the night. They want to tell you about their family, and want to hear about yours. They would tell me a story about their father raising camels, and I would tell them one about my father raising cows."
When Fowler returned from Saudi Arabia, he landed several consulting contracts with international firms doing business in the region, and accepted the chairmanship of the Middle East Institute. This is a think- tank funded chiefly by Arab corporations and American corporations with significant business dealings in Arab countries. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah is listed among a handful of "benefactors" on the institute's most recent donor list. And lately, Fowler has emerged as one of the most visible pro-Saudi spokesmen in the media. He has let fly with observations of the sort guaranteed to make Prince Bandar smile.
In an October 3 NewsHour appearance, Fowler was questioned about the Saudis' reluctance to let the U.S. military use its own bases in the kingdom for an attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "Well, I think I can endorse that the cooperation by the Saudis with the United States could not be any closer," responded the ex-ambassador. Yet Fowler arrived in Riyadh immediately after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and he should know as well as anybody how the Saudis stonewalled U.S. investigators trying to figure out who killed all those American servicemen.
snip
The Middle East expert Daniel Pipes confirms that old Riyadh hands can exploit their contacts to make a small fortune as business consultants. "I don't know of any other posting that works so consistently for turning diplomats into middlemen," Pipes says. "It's very corrupting on ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, because they know what they're headed for, and they don't want to spoil it. It's hard to be confident that our diplomats are representing us."
snip
Especially when the ambassador spends his time not keeping an eye on terror links, or trying to help fellow Americans abused by the Saudi system, but luxuriating in the desert drinking tea and talking about kinfolk with fellow livestock-lovin' rustics who happen to be -- gol-lee! -- royalty. "I made friends for life there," Fowler has said of Saudi Arabia. Exactly: That's the problem.
http://tinyurl.com/bmzkn
Little Billy Clinton will never be free of sleazy doings. It's all a part of the nature of the man.
Sandy Burgler? Is this the same guy who smuggled high class security documents out in his pants and socks. Then said when asked what he took'' He doesn't remember cause they flew out the window of his car?! Yeah right, he's a reliable source!
The Clinton "knee pad" team will saturate the TV networks. Not only Burglur, Davis, Paul By-golly, but I expect to see Susan Ostrich, Eleanor Rodham Clift, James Carnival, Senator Dickhead Turbin (D-IL), Reverend Charleton, Jessie Jettison, and Dingy Harry Reid (D-NV)!
Yes, Clinton was a regular ball of fire in going after terrorism in 1996. First his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, ordered the US Embassy in Khartoum closed, as of February 7, 1996, denying the CIA any chance to observe and report on Bin Laden,
Then on March 3, 1996, Timothy Carney, US Ambassador to Sudan, David Shinn, Director of East African Affairs for the US State Department, and an unnamed CIA asset from the Directorate of Operations, Africa Division, met with Elfatih Erwa, Sudan's Minister of Defense, to discuss ways the Sudan could improve their relations with the US. The US position was presented, and five days later, Sudan's Defense Minister offered the CIA official Bin Laden on a platter, however and where-ever we wanted him. The CIA official replied, "We have nothing we can hold him on."
Sudan's Minister of Defense then offered to share Sudan's intelligence on Bin Laden with the US and this offer was again refused.
In June, Khobar Towers was bombed, killing 19 US Servicemen.
In July, Clinton campaign contributor with "Friend of Bill Clinton" status Mansoor Ijaz, told Steve Schwartz, Sudan Desk Officer of the US State Department that he was meeting with Hassan al Turabi, then Speaker of Sudan's Parliament. Instead of discussing the sharing of intelligence information, he was told to carry a threat to the Speaker, specifically, "We're watching every move he makes. He moves one step out of line, just one step out of line, we're going to have his ass."
Later on in September, al Turabi had faxed a personal letter to the State Department, the CIA, and The National Security Council at the White House, asking for warmer realtions with the US, and Ijaz was called in to speak with Sandy Berger.
Instead of discussing the proposition, Berger was hostile, asking Ijaz why he had been in Sudan and why he had helped get this letter written. Ijaz explained, and then asked Berger why the US was threatening Sudan, to which Berger say he didn't believe that event had ever happened.
Ijaz offered to get proof, did so, and was then told by Sandy Berger, "Let's talk about all this after the election."
Bin Laden left Sudan for Afghanistan on May 18, 1996
At least two other Sudanese efforts to share intelligence with the US on Bin Laden's operations in Sudan after the 2006 election were refused, one through Indiana Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, and another face to face between Ijaz and Clinton.
In 1997, Madeline Albright announced a plan to cooperate with Sudanese Intelligence on September 24, but in mid October, Clinton National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Clinton Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke went around Albright to nix the plan.
American Intelligence did not see the trove of information possessed by the Sudanese Intelligence branch, passports, records of visits to Bin Laden, photographs, visas, movement reports and character assessments for top and mid level Al Qaeda affiliates, all offered and on the table, no strings attached, all while Clinton was supposedly eager to fight terrorism, until July, 2001.
-"Losing Bin Laden", Richard Miniter, Regnery Publishing, reporter for, among others, the Washington Post, The New York Times, The W#all Street Journal, and the The Sunday Times of London.
I want to see the books that come out when this guy is dead, I will bet anything there are people who have even better stories but are still scared of this pos.
Of all the people the Clintons could get to defend them Sandy has got to be one of the worst. At least they could let some time pass for his conviction to cool off in the public mind They must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Oh wait, scraping the bottom of the barrel is what the Clintons are all about. I guess it is just more of the same. Never mind.
A few years ago, Berger, Albright and Roger Cresson all said that they were in on the conference call with Sudan, and that Clinton did not refuse to take Bin Laden when they offered him up. Yet Clinton then gave his famous speech at the LIA in which he himself admitted that he did just that.
And here is a link to the FR thread about that article.
Also, here is a link to the FR thread about the CBSnews.com story about the upcoming 60 Minutes piece
60 Minutes should have held out for Victoria Gotti just for the ratings.
Classic CBS whimp-out. Done at the insistence of Dan Rather, no doubt.
Will Sandy Burglar be reading this statement from a note he pulled out of his shorts?
What's sauce for the goose....
Rats turning on rats, I love it!
I'm sure berger has the proof hidden in his socks..........
Bwaaaaaa ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
You sure this isn't from Scrappleface.com???
