Deep Politics Forum
Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Printable Version

+- Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora)
+-- Forum: Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-1.html)
+--- Forum: War on Workers and Labor Unions and Students (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-30.html)
+--- Thread: Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster (/thread-5605.html)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Paul Rigby - 06-02-2011

Stand by for an increase in the CIA's budget. After all, the spooks have to be "punished" for failing to anticipate the very events they are directing:

Quote:Washington's new myth: "intelligence failure" in Egypt: Regime change has been planned for years

by Larry Chin

Global Research, February 6, 2011

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23101

The Obama administration and prominent members of Congress have begun pushing the idea that an intelligence failure prevented the US government from predicting massive civil unrest in Egypt and the Arab world.

This new "debate" over the gathering of intelligence fills the mainstream media with red herrings, obscuring the fact (leaked by WikiLeaks and the Daily Telegraph) that the US government has secretly backed leading figures behind Arab opposition for at least three years. Strong evidence suggests that an Egyptian regime change has been planned for years. Leading opposition groups, civil society organizations and dissidents---including the Muslim Brotherhood---have been co-opted by front groups backed by the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department, and wooed in earnest by members of both the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations. The US government and its allies already have enduring ties to key figures on all sides of the Arab revolts, with the goal of controlling the process and preserving Anglo-American geostrategy.

It is true that the Arab revolutions are real, and their depth and scope, and the speed at which they have ignited have unprecedented and extensive power does lie in the hands of mobilized peoples (if genuine and untainted dissidents grasp the specifics of the larger dynamic). It is also true that not all of the various political players were "in the loop". But the idea of a general US "intelligence failure" is ludicrous, given years of ongoing US manipulation and intelligence penetration.

What the Obama administration, Washington politicos and the US corporate media wish to create is the same deception as the one resulting from 9/11. That false flag operation was also not an "intelligence failure" but an intelligence "success" resulting from many years of preparation, and unmatched CIA power and penetration worldwide. Now, as then, there is an extensive history (that eliminates the "lack of foreknowledge" argument), specific warnings.

Even if the "intelligence failure" idea, and the myth that both the CIA and Obama administration as a whole have been completely blind, are accepted at face value, what would an "informed" Obama administration have done about Egypt? The same thing it has already done: use whatever means necessary to protect vital US oil and military interests.

The "failure" debate is a new tempest in a familiar old teapot: official scapegoats and cover-your-ass games, and new propaganda excuses to further justify even more covert operations and "improvements".


Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Paul Rigby - 06-02-2011

Much shrewd stuff from Tarpley, as ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVYTSFTdYMM

Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - David Guyatt - 06-02-2011

In other words a "coloured revolution".

Sorry to say I told you so, but I told you so.

Yours in Black and White,

Ibrahim Itold Youso

Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Paul Rigby - 06-02-2011

David Guyatt Wrote:In other words a "coloured revolution".

Sorry to say I told you so, but I told you so.

Yours in Black and White,

Ibrahim Itold Youso

The first five members are:

Mustapha Reich (Coptic Christians against the Bomb*)

Benjamin Netanyahoo (Israelo-Egyptian Electronic Peace Foundation, Twitter League of Friends)

Acenath the bra-burner (Feminists for Freedom)

Sebak the Strangler (aka Tum the Torturer)

Geb Soroshut (Cairo Open Society)



*But not, curiously, the Israeli ones

Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Peter Lemkin - 07-02-2011

Frank Wisner, Son of Nazi-Recruiting CIA Official, Sent to Prod Mubarak
5th February 2011



Also see: "The CIA, an American Pinay Circle & the Muslim Brotherhood"

Frank Wisner, Sr.
" … Here in Washington, news that Mr. Obama had tapped Mr. Wisner revived memories for some of an even more colorful Frank Wisner: Mr. Wisner's father, a freewheeling if mentally unstable cold-war-era spy who helped found the modern C.I.A. and ran its clandestine service. The elder Mr. Wisner's clandestine exploits were said to have included masterminding an anticommunist coup in Guatemala in 1954. He suffered a mental breakdown after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and never quite recovered; in 1965, he committed suicide. … "
Frank Wisner, the Diplomat Sent to Prod Mubarak

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times | February 2, 2011

Frank Wisner, Jr.

WASHINGTON Once a month or so, a coterie of aging diplomats convenes at the elegant Metropolitan Club of New York. Over lunch in a glass-enclosed restaurant overlooking Central Park, they engage in verbal thrust and parry over the foreign policy issues of the day.

The man who sits at the head of the table is Frank G. Wisner, a bald, barrel-chested, martini-drinking (he gave up cigars, friends say) 72-year-old retired ambassador and businessman. Like his lunch mates, he is of a distinct class in Washington: a corps of foreign policy realists who came of age in an era when American power reigned supreme, and who have the heft and experience to troubleshoot the crises of the moment.

When the United States and Iran headed into a stalemate on nuclear issues during the administration of George W. Bush who had branded Iran part of the "axis of evil" Mr. Wisner was among several well-connected former officials pursuing a "track two" process of back-channel communications to find a way out. (The effort fizzled.)

When Mr. Bush was contemplating war in Iraq, Mr. Wisner joined with Edward P. Djerejian, another fellow former ambassador, to publicly warn against it. Yet when Mr. Bush needed help bringing Kosovo to independence, his State Department deployed Mr. Wisner as chief negotiator there. (He was successful.)

"He's one of the supreme American diplomats of the last 30 to 40 years," said R. Nicholas Burns, who oversaw the Kosovo talks as under secretary of state.

This week, Mr. Wisner, whose stints around the globe have included four ambassadorships, one of them to Egypt, was briefly President Obama's man in Cairo, charged with prodding an old friend, President Hosni Mubarak, to make his exit. How much effect he had was unclear. On Wednesday, as Mr. Mubarak resisted Mr. Obama's demand for an immediate peaceful transition and each side dug in its heels, Mr. Wisner left the country.

"He wasn't sent there to flatter him and hold his hand," said Leslie H. Gelb, the longtime diplomat and journalist who co-founded the lunch club with Mr. Wisner. "He was sent there because he has a very close relationship with Mubarak, and because that's the kind of person who can best deliver some hard messages."

An imposing presence with a resonant voice whose last posting was as ambassador to India, Mr. Wisner has spent the years since his retirement in 1997 operating at the nexus of diplomacy and business. For more than a decade, he was vice chairman of the insurance giant A.I.G.; he left in 2009, just as the company was getting bailed out by American taxpayers, and joined the lobbying firm Patton Boggs.

He is well known in foreign policy circles, but not beyond them. Unlike the late Richard C. Holbrooke the Obama administration envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, who was one of Mr. Wisner's best friends he does not crave the limelight. But he is respected enough that his name is being bandied about as a possible Holbrooke replacement, a job friends say he would be unlikely to take.

"He's not a flashy fellow in the sense that Dick was," said Morton I. Abramowitz, another longtime diplomat who knows Mr. Wisner well. "But he's very solid, he studies the issues, he's a very serious guy who works very quietly, very effectively and knows how to deal with people."

Mr. Gelb put it this way: "Dick saw being a public figure as part of the power he needed to do what he wanted. Frank was much more of an inside man."

But as did Mr. Holbrooke, Mr. Wisner relished the frisson of the diplomat's life. He has been married twice to upper-crust French women; Mr. Wisner's current wife, from whom he is separated, was once married to Pal Sarkozy, the father of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

He is accustomed to being dropped into chaotic situations. During the administration of the first President Bush, Mr. Wisner was sent to the Philippines to help stabilize the administration of President Corazon Aquino. She had survived several coup attempts by rogue elements of the Philippine military, and Mr. Wisner's office in the United States Embassy was part of the old American governor-general's suite.

Cigar in hand, he loved to take visitors out on the giant veranda overlooking the bay and describe the sweep of American interactions with the Philippines, back to the days of the Spanish-American War.

Here in Washington, news that Mr. Obama had tapped Mr. Wisner revived memories for some of an even more colorful Frank Wisner: Mr. Wisner's father, a freewheeling if mentally unstable cold-war-era spy who helped found the modern C.I.A. and ran its clandestine service. The elder Mr. Wisner's clandestine exploits were said to have included masterminding an anticommunist coup in Guatemala in 1954. He suffered a mental breakdown after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and never quite recovered; in 1965, he committed suicide.

His son chose a more conventional path, the Foreign Service. He graduated from Princeton University in 1961, learned Arabic and pursued a career that took him from Algeria to Vietnam at the height of the war there, to Zambia, Egypt, the Philippines and India, with tours every so often back in Washington.

"I told Frank, The title of ambassador does not suffice for you, Frank. We need to call you Pasha,' " said Mr. Djerejian, using the honorary title. "He reveled in the role of being an ambassador. He loved the substance and the trappings of the role, and was very enthusiastic about representing the United States abroad."

At the monthly lunch meetings, Mr. Wisner plays the role of enforcer when the discussion gets too rowdy. The high-powered attendees include J. Stapleton Roy, an East Asia specialist and three-time ambassador, and Mr. Holbrooke before his death.

Mr. Gelb says they met for a time at an Albanian restaurant, which everyone liked, until Mr. Wisner insisted they move to the Metropolitan Club. Mr. Gelb decided it was a waste of time to negotiate.

"A Zambian minister once told me it was always easier to agree with Frank than to let the meeting go on for four days," he said. "He has that kind of persistence."

Mark Landler and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/world/middleeast/03wisner.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
======================================================
The CIA, an American Pinay Circle & the Muslim Brotherhood
4th February 2011


" … The CIA funded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1977, and trained Mujahadin to support Hekmatyar of the Brotherhood in Afghanistan. The Muslim Brothers have served the CIA operationally for some 40 years, an arrangement rubber-stamped by Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner and Kermit Roosevelt. Airline hijacker Mohammed Atta was ID'd as a Muslim Brother in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times shortly after the jet attacks on the World Trade Center. So were Khalid Shaik Mohammed, and Ramzi Yousef, reportedly guided to a sacrificial pyre in the sky by Aman Zawahiri, Al Qeada's second-in-command also a co-conspirator, while operating under the aegis of the CIA, in the murder of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the 1993 WTC bomb plot. … "



The CIA, an American Pinay Circle & the Muslim Brotherhood

By Alex Constantine
(Excerpt from Psychic Dictatorship in the USA II)


An American Pinay Circle


"… The sky burns,
A copper roof over the shriveled corn.
Children and camels gasp in the noonday heat.
Enemies sweat in their steel, cry out at night,
And wake up trembling, wet with fright.
We squat and stare
Across the nervous barbs,
tied by our common dreads…"
Aubrey Hodes, "Hating"

Adnan Khashoggi's mercenary army of global corporate criminals lives in Mafia mansions, basks in the political limelight, enjoys privileges of royalty in tyrannical desert dystopias, sips vodka in the shadow of gleaming Moscow spires. They are kings, Pentagon officials, priests, S&L thieves, assassins, prostitutes, nazis, Big Oil executives, metals merchants, New Age cultists, drug barons, boiler-room con artists, mobsters, dictators by the horde. And terrorists, of course.

Khashoggi is a Turkoman, the son of a doctor who tended to Abdul al-Aziz Ibn Saud. The Khashoggi brothers were classmates of the future King Hussein and several sons of the bin Ladens.1 His career as an international "connector" began in the 1950s, while still an undergraduate at Chico State College. His purchase of fifty Kenworth trucks for resale to Saudi Arabia's bin Laden Group demonstrated his business savvy, and provided him the capital to launch his career as world-class death merchant.

Edwin Pauley

In the early 1960s, he could be found languishing in the sun or plotting world domination at Edwin Pauley's Coconut Island estate in Hawaii. Pauley, then Democratic Party chairman, operated an oil company called Zapata with the son of Prescott Bush, the Nazi collaborator.2

Houston attorney Linda Minor sidelines as an investigator into banking and political malfeasance. She discovered that Pauley was a slimy operator years before his alliance with Bush.

"He was a spy within the White House," Minor says, "acting as a funnel for campaign funds to FDR, while at the same time gathering and transmitting information about oil policy and captured Nazi and Japanese assets back to his California business associates."

Pauley's political significance stems from his participation in Gulf of Mexico oil explorations in the 1950′s when, with an oil concession from Mexico, he threw in with Howard Hughes and George H.W. Bush.

"Pauley taught Bush how to launder money through corporate subsidiaries to be used for payoffs and the financing of political campaigns," Minor notes. "Both Pauley and Bush used this system to finance Richard Nixon's presidential campaigns."

The laundering scheme unraveled after the 1972 election, when a check drawn at a Mexican bank the subsidiary of a Houston corporation controlled by associates of Bush the elder surfaced in the Miami bank account of a Watergate plumber.3

Saudi shiekhs and domestic oil barons struck up alliances. Shiekh Kamal Adham and a circle of cohorts founded Arabian Shield Development Co. in Texas. (since re-named the Arabian American Development Company).

Sheikh Mohammad Salem Bin Mahfouz at National Commercial Bank was an Arabian Shield investor.4 "During the 1980′s," reports Martin J. Rivers of the Center for Research on Globalization, "Sheikh Mahfouz's syndicate performed major CIA-inspired banking operations for such former CIA assets as Osama bin Laden … Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega and other drug dealing generals. George W. Bush, for his part, had important business relationships … with a total of nine prominent individuals central to Mahfouz's financial empire."5

The early 1970s also brought Saudis recruited by the CIA to train at American military bases, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan.6

After September 11, 2001, Bandar drew the attention of the press when it was discovered that two of the terrorists involved were found to have received financing from the Prince's wife. Bandar trained at Ellington AFB near Houston.7

In the early 1970s, the prince fell in with James A. Baker's social circle, struck up an alliance with Joanne Herring, who was instrumental in luring Texas Democrat Charlie Wilson to support Gul Hekmatyar of the Muslim Brotherhood chaptger in Afghanstan by the late '70s.

The Big Oil-CIA-Saudi alliance was consummated with the establishment of the Safari Club of elite cut-throats, founded with covert Agency support on Sept. 1, 1976. George Herbert Walker Bush was then director of the Agency,. Nelson Rockefeller was vice president under Ford.

The Safari Club was a CIA cut-out: This clutch of intelligence agents, politicians and businessmen from three countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran) was founded with the express purpose of engaging in covert operations in Africa and the Middle East without leaving a CIA footprint.

Chicago Tribune book reviewer Padam Ahlawa neatly summarized the tensions that gave rise to the Safari Club: "The origins of world terrorism go back to the cold war era. Moscow's monumental blunder in invading Afghanistan in 1979 set off a sequence of intrigue-laden events in Afghanistan…. High-profile military operations were out. Carter wanted a covert CIA operation like the one it had carried out in Laos, with no US personnel directly involved. The Agency, it was decided, would co-opt specialized American military personnel with the support of the Pakistan military to train an army of Muslim zealots."

Anwar Sadat entered into an agreement to assist in the training and equipping of recruits for the coming Anti-Communist jihad. "Russian weapons were flown to Afghanistan. Encouraging fundamentalism to grow in Egypt had its fallout when these Mujahadins turned hostile to Sadat for signing the peace treaty with Israel. It led to Sadat's assassination and terrorist acts of killing 58 tourists. Zia ul Haq of Pakistan made the best of this opportunity, created the ISI to train Pakistanis and Afghans. By doing this, Pakistan's economic and social instability increased and terrorist acts in Sindh grew."8

The Safari Club's cover was blown when the Ayatollah Khomeini allowed an Egyptian reporter to peek into the archives of the exiled Shah of Iran a Club member.9 The CIA/Safari Club left footprints in the destabilization campaign at Mengistu in Ethiopia, the unrest in Costa Rica, and there were treadmarks all over Iran-Contra, not to mention the funding of UNITA in Angola and the Afghan "freedom fighters,' including bin-Laden.10

The CIA funded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1977, and trained Mujahadin to support Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Brotherhood in Afghanistan. The Muslim Brothers have served the CIA operationally for some 40 years, an arrangement rubber-stamped by Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner and Kermit Roosevelt.

Airline hijacker Mohammed Atta was ID'd as a Muslim Brother in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times shortly after the jet attacks on the World Trade Center. So were Khalid Shaik Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, reportedly guided to a sacrificial pyre in the sky by Aman Zawahiri, Al Qeada's second-in-command also a co-conspirator, while operating under the aegis of the CIA, in the murder of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and the 1993 WTC bomb plot.

NOTES

1) Roland Jacquard, In the Name of Osama Bin Laden, Duke University Press, 2002, http://print.google.com/print/doc?isbn=0822329913

2) Bruce Campbell Adamson, letter to Congressman Sam Farr, September 15, 2001, http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg96515.htm

33) Linda Minor, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road: From Harvard to Enron," http://www.newsmakingnews.com/lm4,30,02,harvardtoenronpt4.htm

4) LB, e-mail exchange with author, October 2, 2004.

5) Martin J. Rivers, "A Wolf in Sheikh's Clothing: Bush Business Deals with Nine Partners of bin Laden's Banker," geocities.com, March 15, 2004, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAR403A.html.

6) Anonymous, "Bandar bin Sultan, a CIA Agent," House of Saud web site, http://www.geocities.com/saudhouse_p/irancont.htm.

7) LB.

Padam Ahlawat, "Journalists' account of terrorism," Chicago Tribune, May 5, 2002 review of Unholy Wars. Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, by John K. Cooley, Penguin.

9) Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, review of Unholy Wars, Journal of Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations, Minaret of Freedom Institute, http://www.minaret.org/cooley.htm.

10) Dr Samir Rihan, "Arms or democracy, but not both," http://www.globalcomplexity.org/Arms%20or%20Democracy.htm

11) Debbie Schlussel, "Bush's Favorite Terrorist Buddy," WorldNetDaily, October 1, 2001.

Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Peter Lemkin - 07-02-2011

Frank Wisner, Son of Nazi-Recruiting CIA Official, Sent to Prod Mubarak
5th February 2011



Also see: "The CIA, an American Pinay Circle & the Muslim Brotherhood"

Frank Wisner, Sr.
" … Here in Washington, news that Mr. Obama had tapped Mr. Wisner revived memories for some of an even more colorful Frank Wisner: Mr. Wisner's father, a freewheeling if mentally unstable cold-war-era spy who helped found the modern C.I.A. and ran its clandestine service. The elder Mr. Wisner's clandestine exploits were said to have included masterminding an anticommunist coup in Guatemala in 1954. He suffered a mental breakdown after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and never quite recovered; in 1965, he committed suicide. … "
Frank Wisner, the Diplomat Sent to Prod Mubarak

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times | February 2, 2011

Frank Wisner, Jr.

WASHINGTON Once a month or so, a coterie of aging diplomats convenes at the elegant Metropolitan Club of New York. Over lunch in a glass-enclosed restaurant overlooking Central Park, they engage in verbal thrust and parry over the foreign policy issues of the day.

The man who sits at the head of the table is Frank G. Wisner, a bald, barrel-chested, martini-drinking (he gave up cigars, friends say) 72-year-old retired ambassador and businessman. Like his lunch mates, he is of a distinct class in Washington: a corps of foreign policy realists who came of age in an era when American power reigned supreme, and who have the heft and experience to troubleshoot the crises of the moment.

When the United States and Iran headed into a stalemate on nuclear issues during the administration of George W. Bush who had branded Iran part of the "axis of evil" Mr. Wisner was among several well-connected former officials pursuing a "track two" process of back-channel communications to find a way out. (The effort fizzled.)

When Mr. Bush was contemplating war in Iraq, Mr. Wisner joined with Edward P. Djerejian, another fellow former ambassador, to publicly warn against it. Yet when Mr. Bush needed help bringing Kosovo to independence, his State Department deployed Mr. Wisner as chief negotiator there. (He was successful.)

"He's one of the supreme American diplomats of the last 30 to 40 years," said R. Nicholas Burns, who oversaw the Kosovo talks as under secretary of state.

This week, Mr. Wisner, whose stints around the globe have included four ambassadorships, one of them to Egypt, was briefly President Obama's man in Cairo, charged with prodding an old friend, President Hosni Mubarak, to make his exit. How much effect he had was unclear. On Wednesday, as Mr. Mubarak resisted Mr. Obama's demand for an immediate peaceful transition and each side dug in its heels, Mr. Wisner left the country.

"He wasn't sent there to flatter him and hold his hand," said Leslie H. Gelb, the longtime diplomat and journalist who co-founded the lunch club with Mr. Wisner. "He was sent there because he has a very close relationship with Mubarak, and because that's the kind of person who can best deliver some hard messages."

An imposing presence with a resonant voice whose last posting was as ambassador to India, Mr. Wisner has spent the years since his retirement in 1997 operating at the nexus of diplomacy and business. For more than a decade, he was vice chairman of the insurance giant A.I.G.; he left in 2009, just as the company was getting bailed out by American taxpayers, and joined the lobbying firm Patton Boggs.

He is well known in foreign policy circles, but not beyond them. Unlike the late Richard C. Holbrooke the Obama administration envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, who was one of Mr. Wisner's best friends he does not crave the limelight. But he is respected enough that his name is being bandied about as a possible Holbrooke replacement, a job friends say he would be unlikely to take.

"He's not a flashy fellow in the sense that Dick was," said Morton I. Abramowitz, another longtime diplomat who knows Mr. Wisner well. "But he's very solid, he studies the issues, he's a very serious guy who works very quietly, very effectively and knows how to deal with people."

Mr. Gelb put it this way: "Dick saw being a public figure as part of the power he needed to do what he wanted. Frank was much more of an inside man."

But as did Mr. Holbrooke, Mr. Wisner relished the frisson of the diplomat's life. He has been married twice to upper-crust French women; Mr. Wisner's current wife, from whom he is separated, was once married to Pal Sarkozy, the father of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

He is accustomed to being dropped into chaotic situations. During the administration of the first President Bush, Mr. Wisner was sent to the Philippines to help stabilize the administration of President Corazon Aquino. She had survived several coup attempts by rogue elements of the Philippine military, and Mr. Wisner's office in the United States Embassy was part of the old American governor-general's suite.

Cigar in hand, he loved to take visitors out on the giant veranda overlooking the bay and describe the sweep of American interactions with the Philippines, back to the days of the Spanish-American War.

Here in Washington, news that Mr. Obama had tapped Mr. Wisner revived memories for some of an even more colorful Frank Wisner: Mr. Wisner's father, a freewheeling if mentally unstable cold-war-era spy who helped found the modern C.I.A. and ran its clandestine service. The elder Mr. Wisner's clandestine exploits were said to have included masterminding an anticommunist coup in Guatemala in 1954. He suffered a mental breakdown after the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956 and never quite recovered; in 1965, he committed suicide.

His son chose a more conventional path, the Foreign Service. He graduated from Princeton University in 1961, learned Arabic and pursued a career that took him from Algeria to Vietnam at the height of the war there, to Zambia, Egypt, the Philippines and India, with tours every so often back in Washington.

"I told Frank, The title of ambassador does not suffice for you, Frank. We need to call you Pasha,' " said Mr. Djerejian, using the honorary title. "He reveled in the role of being an ambassador. He loved the substance and the trappings of the role, and was very enthusiastic about representing the United States abroad."

At the monthly lunch meetings, Mr. Wisner plays the role of enforcer when the discussion gets too rowdy. The high-powered attendees include J. Stapleton Roy, an East Asia specialist and three-time ambassador, and Mr. Holbrooke before his death.

Mr. Gelb says they met for a time at an Albanian restaurant, which everyone liked, until Mr. Wisner insisted they move to the Metropolitan Club. Mr. Gelb decided it was a waste of time to negotiate.

"A Zambian minister once told me it was always easier to agree with Frank than to let the meeting go on for four days," he said. "He has that kind of persistence."

Mark Landler and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/world/middleeast/03wisner.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Paul Rigby - 07-02-2011

Frank Wisner, Jr. Change you can believe in, in action.

Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Ed Jewett - 07-02-2011

Paul Rigby Wrote:Frank Wisner, Jr. Change you can believe in, in action.

Obama Special Envoy To Cairo Calling For Mubarak To Stay, Uncovered To Be On Mubarak Payroll


Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Feb 7, 2011
It is a Monday, and like any day ending in "y" we get another Obama administration foreign relations screw up. Today's edition comes from President Obama's special envoy to Cairo, Frank Wisner, who over the weekend made waves with his call urging for Hosni Mubarak to remain president. The glitch, however, is that supposedly unbeknownst to the administration and to the journalist cadre, Mr. Wisner works for litigation firm Patton Boggs, which according to the Independent: "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". Wisner's words, now making the rounds, and which appear to have infuriated Egypt's opposition just as things were going back to normal: "President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical: it's his opportunity to write his own legacy." In other words, yet another huge conflict of interest by a man paid by none other than the president of Egypt, which has "called into question Mr Obama's judgement, as well as that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton", and puts Obama's (in)ability to handle foreign conflicts, in an even more questionable light.
From The Independent:
Mr 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 company that works for the very dictator which Mr 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 Mr 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.
Mr 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. The New York Times ran a glowing profile of Mr Wisner in its pages two weeks ago but mysteriously did not mention his ties to Egypt.
Nicholas Noe, an American political researcher now based in Beirut, has spent weeks investigating Mr Wisner's links to Patton Boggs. Mr 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," Mr 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.
The Independent is understandably scratching its head over this most recent diplomatic faux pas:
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" Mrs Clinton knew of Mr 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. A spokesman for Patton Boggs could not be reached yesterday.
On the other hand, if Egyptian protesters managed to forgive the "Made in America" signs on teargas canisters used against demonstrators in recent riots, they surely will find nothing wrong with this foreign relations snafu from an administration which is becoming known for nothing but.


http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-special-envoy-to-cairo-calling-for-mubarak-to-stay-uncovered-to-be-on-mubarak-payroll.html



Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Jan Klimkowski - 07-02-2011

There's also a DPF thread specifically about Wisner, the Empire's Bagman, here.

Thousands March in Egyptian Capital Calling for President’s Ouster - Bernice Moore - 08-02-2011

Mubarak family fortune could reach $70bn, say experts | World news | guardian.co.uk:gossip:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/04/hosni-mubarak-family-fortune