[News] Kissinger on Egypt - Frank Wisner's Two Hats

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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http://www.counterpunch.org/lando02072011.html

February 7, 2011


Give Us a Break, Henry!


Kissinger on Egypt

By BARRY LANDO

Always comforting to have Henry Kissinger around 
to advise the current U.S. administration what to 
do. His latest advice to Obama re Egypt: slow 
down, take things easier, don't rush Egypt's sensitive leaders.

"We should be looking at a democratic evolution," 
said Kissinger. But he warned the U.S. should 
cultivate key democratic reformists and military 
leaders in a low-key fashion during the process. 
"It should not look like an American project. The 
Egyptians are a proud people. They threw out the 
British and they threw out the Russians."

On the other hand, when thin-skinned right wing 
dictators in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were 
disappearing "democratic reformists" by the 
thousands in 1976, Henry Kissinger, then 
Secretary of State­not having to worry about 
lurid accounts of torture on Twitter and Facebook 
and Al Jazeera-- advised South American generals 
to get on with their grisly task so as not to 
provoke censure from a U.S. Congress beginning to 
waken to the on-going slaughter. Or, as Kissinger 
put it to Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral 
Cesar August Guzzetti, in June 1976, "If there 
are things that have to be done, you should do 
them quickly. But you should get back quickly to normal procedures."

The things to be done were no secret: human 
rights organizations and State Department 
memorandum supplied all necessary details. In 
Argentina alone more than 10,000 people had been 
"disappeared" by the end of 1976. But, in the 
name of fighting the Cold War, those messy kinds 
of things had to be done said the Generals and 
their apologists­Kissinger included.

Ironically, for the past thirty years, Hosni 
Mubarak and his apologists have justified his 
brutal repression in similar terms. Some are 
still doing it. It's just the name of the 
bogeyman that's changed: from Communism to 
Radical Islam aka the Moslem Brotherhood­from 
Fidel Castro's revolutionary virus to Osama Bin 
Laden's Al Qaeda. The fact that Al Qaeda's 
leaders have condemned the Moslem Brotherhood for 
its willingness to participate in Egyptian politics is a detail.

The parallels between Egypt and the trio of South 
American military dictators is striking. 
According to the State Department memo on the 
June 10 meeting between Kissinger and Admiral 
Guzzetti, obtained by the National Security 
Archives, the Argentine told Kissinger,

"Our main problem in Argentina is terrorism. It 
is the first priority of the current government 
that took office on March 24. There are two 
aspects to the solution. The first is to ensure 
the internal security of the country; the second 
is to solve the most urgent economic problems 
over the coming 6 to 12 months. Argentina needs 
United States understanding and support
."

The NSA analysis of that memo continued,

"This at a time when the international community, 
the U.S. media, universities, and scientific 
institutions, the U.S. Congress, and even the 
U.S. Embassy in Argentina were clamoring about 
the indiscriminate human rights violations 
against scientists, labor leaders, students, and 
politicians by the Argentine military, Secretary 
Kissinger told Guzzetti: "We are aware you are in 
a difficult period. It is a curious time, when 
political, criminal, and terrorist activities 
tend to merge without any clear separation. We 
understand you must establish authority."

The U.S. Ambassador had earlier protested to the 
Argentina government about the disappearance and 
torture of human rights workers, including 
American citizens. Kissinger, however, told 
Guzzetti, "In the United States we have strong 
domestic pressures to do something on human 
rights
 We want you to succeed. We do not want to 
harrass [sic] you. I will do what I can
."

One could almost hear an American official 
today­sotto voce­giving similar advice to Egypt's 
new Vice-President General Omar Suleiman, the 
man, let's not forget, who for the past eight 
years headed up the feared Intelligence 
Directorate ­infamous for systematic brutality, 
torture and disappearances; so skilled at their 
work that it was Suleiman and his uniformed thugs 
who were frequently used by the CIA's rendition program.

All of a sudden though, Suleiman with his 
impeccable dark suit and tie and unflappable 
demeanor­is now not only the go-to man for 
torture but also, the go-to man to engineer "a transition to democracy."

Not too fast a transition though, and certainly not too democratic.

Just as Henry the K. would advise.

Barry M. Lando, a graduate of Harvard and 
Columbia University, spent 25 years as an 
award-winning investigative producer with 60 
Minutes. The author of numerous articles about 
Iraq, he produced a documentary about Saddam 
Hussein that has been shown around the world. He 
lives in Paris. His latest book is 
“<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590512383/counterpunchmaga>Web 
of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in 
Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. 
Bush.” Lando is currently completing a novel, 
"The Fisherman's File", concerning Israel's most 
closely guarded secret (it's not the bomb.) He 
can be reached through his <http://barrylando.blogspot.com/>blog.
**********************************************************************
http://www.counterpunch.org/wisner02072011.html
February 7, 2011


Which One is He Wearing Today?


Frank Wisner's Two Hats

By ROBERT FISK

Cairo

Frank Wisner, President Barack Obama's envoy to 
Cairo who infuriated the White House this weekend 
by urging Hosni Mubarak to remain President of 
Egypt, works for a Washington law firm, Patton 
Boggs, which works for the dictator's own Egyptian government.

Wisner's astonishing remarks – "President 
Mubarak's continued leadership is critical: it's 
his opportunity to write his own legacy" – 
shocked the democratic opposition in Egypt and 
called into question  Obama's judgment, as well 
as that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The US State Department and Wisner himself have 
now both claimed that his remarks were made in a 
"personal capacity". But there is nothing 
"personal" about  Wisner's connections with the 
powerful Washington law firm and lobby shop 
Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises 
"the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic 
Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations 
and litigation on the [Mubarak] government's 
behalf in Europe and the US". Oddly, not a single 
journalist raised this extraordinary connection 
with US government officials – nor the blatant 
conflict of interest it appears to represent.

Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year 
career diplomat – he served as US ambassador to 
Egypt, Zambia, the Philippines and India under 
eight American presidents. In other words, he was 
not a political appointee. But it is 
inconceivable Hillary Clinton did not know of his 
employment by a law firm that works for the very 
dictator which  Wisner now defends in the face of 
a massive democratic opposition in Egypt.

So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, 
who is in effect a client of Wisner's current employers?

Patton Boggs states that its attorneys "represent 
some of the leading Egyptian commercial families 
and their companies" and "have been involved in 
oil and gas and telecommunications infrastructure 
projects on their behalf". One of its partners 
served as chairman of the US-Egyptian Chamber of 
Commerce promoting foreign investment in the 
Egyptian economy. The company has also managed 
contractor disputes in military-sales agreements 
arising under the US Foreign Military Sales Act. 
Washington gives around $1.3bn (£800m) a year to the Egyptian military.

Wisner joined Patton Boggs almost two years ago – 
more than enough time for both the White House 
and the State Department to learn of his 
company's intimate connections with the Mubarak regime.

Nicholas Noe, an American political researcher 
now based in Beirut, has spent weeks 
investigating  Wisner's links to Patton 
Boggs.  Noe is also a former researcher for 
Hillary Clinton and questions the implications of his discoveries.
"The key problem with Wisner being sent to Cairo 
at the behest of Hillary," he says, "is the 
conflict-of-interest aspect... More than this, 
the idea that the US is now subcontracting or 
'privatising' crisis management is another problem. Do the US lack diplomats?

"Even in past examples where presidents have sent 
someone 'respected' or 'close' to a foreign 
leader in order to lubricate an exit,"  Noe adds, 
"the envoys in question were not actually paid by 
the leader they were supposed to squeeze out!"

Patton Boggs maintains an "affiliate 
relationship" with Zaki Hashem, one of Egypt's 
most prominent legal firms. It was founded in 
1953 and Zaki Hashem himself was a cabinet 
minister under Mubarak's predecessor, President 
Anwar Sadat, and later became head of the 
Egyptian Society for International Law.
By a further remarkable irony, one of Zaki 
Hashem's senior advisers was Nabil al-Araby, one 
of the 25 leading Egyptian personalities just 
chosen by the protesters in Tahrir Square to 
demand the overthrow of Mubarak. Nabil al-Araby, 
a former member of the UN's International Law 
Commission, told me yesterday that he ended his 
connection with Zaki Hashem three years ago and 
had "no idea" why  Wisner had come out in support 
of Mubarak's continued rule. He himself believed 
it was essential Mubarak make a dignified but 
immediate exit. "The head must go," he said.

When Frank Wisner joined Patton Boggs in March 
2009  the company described him as "one of the 
nation's most respected diplomats" who would 
provide clients with "strategic global advice 
concerning business, politics and international 
law". The firm stated specifically that "it looks 
to Ambassador Wisner to use his expertise in the 
Middle East and India to assist its American and international clients."

Stuart Pape, managing partner at Patton Boggs, 
said at the time that "it is a real coup for the 
firm to have Ambassador Wisner – one of the most 
experienced and highly regarded diplomats – join 
our ranks... His in-depth knowledge of global 
politics and the international financial world is 
a huge asset for our clients."

We still do not know exactly what kind of 
"expertise" he has bestowed upon the dictator of 
Egypt. But his remarks at the weekend leave no 
room to doubt he advised the old man to cling on 
to power for a few more months. The vast network 
of companies with family connections to Mubarak's 
regime is, of course, one of the targets of the 
pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt.

A spokesman for the State Department said he 
"presumed"  Clinton knew of  Wisner's employment 
by Patton Boggs and the firm's links with the 
Mubarak government, but refused to comment on any 
conflict of interest for the envoy.

Editors’ note: The 72-year old Wisner has secure 
footholds in government and corporate 
America.  Until recently he was vice chairman of 
AIG, which he left to become a foreign policy 
adviser at Patton Boggs where  his brother Graham 
has long been ensconced. We’re talking the 
Permanent Government here. Wisner’s father, Frank 
Sr., ran the CIA’s covert arm at the height of 
the Cold War, had a nervous breakdown after the 
failure of the Hungarian rising of 1956 and 
committed suicide in questionable circumstances 
in a CIA secure facility outside Washington DC in 1967. AC/JSC

Robert Fisk is a reporter for the London 
Independent where this story was first published.







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