Posted on 08/12/2002 10:08:56 PM PDT by tgslTakoma
EXCERPT:
Consider the State Department's decision to hire former Clinton Counsel Gregory B. Craig, of Williams & Connolly, LLP, to represent itself against a whistle-blower lawsuit filed by former employee Linda Shenwick. She alleges that she was transferred and fired for exposing mismanagement and abuse at the United Nations.
The contract calls for Williams & Connolly to be paid as much as $1.46 million, with senior partners such as Craig to be paid upwards of $500 an hour...
Conservatives despise Craig for his work defending Clinton during impeachment and representing Elian Gonzalez's father...
...Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said the State Department lawyers are simply no match for Shenwick's lawyers -- Larry Klayman and his watchdog group Judicial Watch, "a talented public interest law firm with extensive litigation experience."
"The department decided that its interests were best served if it was assisted by outside counsel in defending these suits," Armitage said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This is sick. A breach of fidcuiciary duty, not that they even have any idea what that means.
Excellent point! I am really getting disgusted with Bush and company. Bush seems to me to be more liberal than clintoon. Why is he picking up where clintoon left off? The way I see it we will have to endure 4 years of the socialist hilliary beast as president in order to shock the nation back to its conservative roots.
Not so! My congressman Ralph Hall is a democrat that is more conservative than most republicans especially the right and left coast kind.
Leftist and socialist are the bad people; unfortunately most democrat party leaders tend to be that way.
When I read this I had to check the source again. I thought I was reading The Onion.
Check YaYa's post #16... She's not a Clintonista, she blew the whistle during the Clintons' reign of terror. The current administration is defending the Clinton State Department with Greg Craig and team instead of using its own State Department lawyers; because they know their own lawyers can't compare to the talents of those at JW.
Yeah, that Klayman sure is an incompetent, Democrat-loving opportunist. This suit on behalf of a woman whose career was destroyed by the corruption of the State Department during a Democrat administration just proves it.
(sarcasm off)
That’s Sen. Charles Grassley, a normally even-keeled Iowa Republican, thundering in a recent speech about the treatment of Linda Shenwick. A veteran civil servant at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, Shenwick has been the target of a ruthless campaign spearheaded by Madeleine Albright.
Bears repeating...
I guess we shouldn't be surprised at who JW is defending.
Good move by the State Dept.: Let the liberals eat each other.
Yep, they have an unblemished record of never winning a case. Unless getting an FOIA past a Judge is considered a "victory". Boy, you guys never give up. Klayman was a rat terrier, now relegated to a gnat. Bwahahahaha!
For instance?
I kind of think that blowing the whistle on the waste, etc. at the UN is a fairly worthwhile endeavor for a State Department employee... however, Madelyn Albright and the other Clinton thugs seem to agree with you, as does, apparently, the current State Department (and administration)leadership.
We may need extra-big and hefty barf bags for this one, folks.
Excellent point! I am really getting disgusted with Bush and company. Bush seems to me to be more liberal than clintoon. Why is he picking up where clintoon left off? The way I see it we will have to endure 4 years of the socialist hilliary beast as president in order to shock the nation back to its conservative roots.
You're a little more optimistic than I am right now.
Anyway, I still object to this devolving into a Craig/Klayman issue. We need to keep our eye on the ball, and in this instance, I'm with Senator Grassley. Madeleine Albright sicced her dogs on this woman because she dared to do her job, even when it exposed UN corruption, and now it looks like Colin Powell is following Albright's lead. Remember folks, the UN is a sacred cow, under assault, inefffectual, and suspect.
For background information, please read the following two articles. There are many more available online, but these two are the best I've found for educating myself on this issue. (I'm still looking for one on the Richardson-Shenwick relationship. That may be the most interesting aspect.)
Here's snippets on Linda Shenwick, from a writer for THE NATION, as the article appeared in SALON.
URL: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/06/28/holbrooke
"Can Richard Holbrooke save American diplomacy?
Probably not, but Madeleine Albright has reason to worry:
When the right wing gives up and confirms the telegenic diplomat as U.N. ambassador, his next job could be secretary of state.
By Ian Williams
"Diplomats are people who are sent abroad to lie for their country. The joy of being U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is that instead of lying in some far-off foreign field, you can lie at home, and make the TV chat shows as well.
We can be sure that Richard Holbrooke will take full advantage of any such opportunity if the Senate confirms his position this week after a year-long holdup by Sen. Jesse Helms, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee.We can also be sure that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright knows it too, since that is how she got her present position.
The U.N. ambassadorship is a cabinet post with a highly visible domestic presence. Secretaries of state often have problems with U.N. ambassadors cleverer and more telegenic than themselves. James Baker ditched the highly effective and admired Tom Pickering for that reason, and he was not even in the cabinet.
Albright consistently tried to dampen Bill Richardson's enthusiasm for television appearances while he was U.N. ambassador, officially to make sure that the message was coherent -- but mostly for fear of being overshadowed.
In the case of Holbrooke, Albright's fears are soundly based. He is simply several leagues above her -- and a publicity hound to boot. Leaving a well-compensated job with Credit Suisse to become a civil servant implies some considerable degree of ambition: Albright will be lucky to see out the rest of the Clinton term. There is every expectation that Holbrooke will follow in her footsteps, especially if Gore is elected.
It has been embarrassing for Washington not to have had an ambassador for such an eventful year. It's likely that Kosovo rescued Holbrooke's nomination from the jaws of Jesse Helms' opposition. There is, of course, absolutely no evidence that just because Madeleine Albright has a very chummy relationship with Helms, she was in any way involved in the long delay in Holbrooke's nomination. But one cannot help suspecting that the old lines "Thou shalt not kill But needst not strive Officiously to keep alive," may have run through her mind occasionally about his nomination and confirmation....."
".....So Holbrooke could find himself in the embarrassing position of having a veto in the Security Council, but no vote in the General Assembly -- and no money to pay for the U.N. role in Kosovo that is essential to boost Al Gore's candidacy which may hinge on his ability to play vice-victorious warlord.
While Helms has been converted to support Holbrooke, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa has been threatening to hold up his appointment unless the State Department lifts the suspension of Linda Shenwick. You might ask, Linda who?
She is a perfect symbol of why even America's best friends roll their eyes when Congress gets involved in foreign policy. Shenwick for many years has been the eyes, ears, and oh-so-loud mouth, of Jesse Helms at the United Nations. She is less a whistleblower, as Grassley thinks, and more a stoolie for the senatorial right.
Whatever policy the White House, the State Department or the ambassador had, Shenwick only took instructions from Helms and his chum, former Sen. Larry Pressler.
They let it be known that anyone who interfered with her tenure in any way would find it very difficult to take up an ambassadorship (or, by implication, secretary of stateship).Her injection of congressional ignorance and arrogance into diplomacy had even America's best friends complaining about her tirades, and left her with no friends in the U.S. mission either.
Flushed with the success of Kosovo, someone in State finally had the courage to suspend her June 18 for "insubordination," apparently a reference to her continual contacts with congressional aides behind the back of the mission.
So will tough-guy Holbrooke stand up to Congress, get the money for the United Nations and rescue American diplomacy from its present mess? Not if the grovel-fest of his confirmation hearings is any indication. Tamed and tutored by the year-long wait to get this far, he repeated and affirmed every fatuous prejudice of his know-nothing senatorial inquisitors. ...."
salon.com | June 28, 1999
- - - - - - - - - - - -About the writer Ian Williams is the United Nations correspondent for the Nation and a frequent contributor to Salon News."
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"Senate Confirms Holbrooke to UN
New York Times/Associated Press, August 4, 1999
"Washington -- The Senate today confirmed veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke as U.N. ambassador, filling a post that has stood vacant through military conflicts in the Balkans and the Persian Gulf. The 81-16 vote ended a 14-month odyssey for Holbrooke, 58, the Clinton administrator's top international troubleshooter and the architect of the 1995 agreement that brought peace to Bosnia.
In contrast to the long delay, the Senate debated the nomination for only 35 minutes. The Cabinet-level post at the U.N. headquarters in New York has been vacant since Bill Richardson left in September to become energy secretary.
Holbrooke, 58, currently an investment banker, is a former Peace Corps director, ambassador to Germany and assistant secretary of state. Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told colleagues that in his on 27 years in the chamber, no foreign policy nominee ``is more qualified for the job for which he was nominated.''
And Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., called Holbrooke ``one of America's great natural resources. He is a person of ... enormous energy and talent.''
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the only senator to speak against the nomination, called him a ``principled man ... I admire his dedication, his tenacity.'' But she blamed him for helping to frame a Balkans policy that she said ``is to force factions to live together in an American model. ... I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who has taken our country in the wrong direction.''
Clinton first announced his choice of Holbrooke in June 1998. But the selection remained bogged down for eight months in internal State and Justice Department ethics investigations into Holbrooke's business contacts. More recently, the nomination was delayed by individual senators for unrelated reasons.
Today's confirmation vote was all but assured on Wednesday when Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the final senator blocking the nomination, lifted his objections. Grassley is in a standoff with the State Department over its treatment of a career employee he claims was punished for sharing information on U.N. financial irregularities with Congress. But Grassley's tactics created new problems for other diplomatic nominees. Grassley said that to make his point he would block three other pending nominations, including that of Peter Burleigh as ambassador to the Philippines. Burleigh has been filling in for Holbrooke at the United Nations since September. In New York, Burleigh said he would have no comment on Grassley's ``hold'' on him. Grassley said he was also putting ``holds'' on Carl Spielvogel to be ambassador to the Slovak Republic and Richard Fredericks to be ambassador to Switzerland. Three other senators had also sought to block the Holbrooke nomination -- Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio -- but they earlier abandoned the tactics. Under Senate tradition, any member without explanation may block action on legislation or a nomination for as long as the majority leader permits. Several Democrats today criticized the tradition of holds. ``We have lost our sense of proportion,'' Biden said. ``We held up the single most important foreign policy decision to be made by this administration.''
Grassley used the technique [holding up a nominee] to protest the State Department's treatment of a whistle-blower, Linda Shenwick.
Grassley contends that Shenwick, who worked at the U.N. mission in New York, was demoted and transferred to a lesser job in Washington in retaliation for telling members of Congress about waste and inefficiency at the United Nations.
The State Department has said Shenwick was reassigned because of unsatisfactory job performance. Since Richardson left the U.N. post in September, the United States launched airstrikes against both Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Burleigh, the assistant U.N. ambassador, served a stint as presiding officer of the Security Council and had to deal with the issue of delinquent U.S. payments to the international body. Holbrooke had been confirmed by the Senate three times previously: in 1977 as assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration, again in 1993 as ambassador to Germany, and later as assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs.
He also was a contender for secretary of state in Clinton's second term before the president chose Madeleine Albright. But Holbrooke, ambitious and with a forceful personality, has produced detractors as well as fans, both in Congress and within the State Department. He has been at odds at times with Albright. And he is a favorite target for Republicans since he's widely viewed as a likely secretary of state if Vice President Al Gore wins the presidency."
My contention is, we shouldn't let argumentative Klayman/Craig brain farts clutter the discussion of UN corruption/State Department cover up. If we argue over which lawyers are the biggest sleazebags, which are more dangerous to our democracy, who has the least scruples, and the biggest egos, our discussion becomes irrelevant. at least to me.
Sorry, I'm not gonna play your little insult game. I have to get out and actually DO something productive. Have a fine day.
That's odd. Your post #51 to me was, I am sure, not an insult. But you consider that a reply to my #36? Who is spinning? Maybe you should get out and do something productive.
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