Dear Friend and Reader,
The first presidential debates are days away. The schedule has been hashed out, lighting and makeup have been agreed upon and the format has been solidified: The first debate, airing on Friday, will cover foreign policy; the second will be a casual format, responding to audience and emailed-in questions and the third will focus on the economy and other national issues.
Mr. Obama successfully sought to flip the proposed topics for the first and third debates, so foreign policy is now coming first and economic and other domestic issues come last. There is a second debate, in the format of a town hall meeting, in which the candidates will sit on director’s chairs and take questions from the audience and Internet users on any topic.
McCain’s campaign advisers have accepted that the big scar on the senator’s face may be visible, and the Obama camp has accepted the rigid format for the V.P. debates: much more structured, with less chance of ad libbing or addressing the opponent, as Palin has significantly less knowledge of government and less experience debating than Joe Biden, and would surely fall apart outside of a highly controlled environment. (No flash photography, we don’t want to distract her!)
And now, they retire to their separate corners to prepare. Obama’s coach, The New York Times reported, is Greg Craig. My first question, and perhaps yours, was: who is this guy?
Wikipedia tells us Craig is a Piscean lawyer (March 4, 1945) based in Washington, D.C. who has been involved in pretty much every high-profile case in the last twenty years, except for the O.J. Simpson trial (nope, neither the first, nor the most recent). For a more complete list, take a look at his work profile on the Williams & Connelly website, where he is a partner.
In 1981, he represented John Hinckley Jr., the guy that shot, but didn’t quite assassinate, Ronald Reagan, and was responsible for Hinckley Jr.’s successful insanity defense. He also represented Elian Gonzalez’s Cuban father in the 2000 custody battle that obsessed us for months, and symbolized the tensions between Communist Cuba and the free, flag-waving United States. When Kofi Annan needed an attorney when implicated in the oil-for-food program scandal, he went to Craig.
Now, let me pause for a minute on this oil-for-food programme business, and see if I can sum it up in a couple of sentences for you, because it’s a mess — and a guy that can navigate this lawsuit is fit to prep anyone for a debate. Here goes:
In 1995, the UN set up a program to help Iraqi citizens survive amidst Middle East sanctions following the first Gulf War. Iraq was permitted to trade its oil for food and medical supplies instead of money. While there were other initial criticisms, the biggest one of all emerged as corruption. While only 2.2% of profits from selling Iraqi oil were meant to pay employees of the programme, there was a lot of skimming off the top of the oil pool. And the slimy algae trail led straight back to Kofi Annan of Ghana, the Secretary-General of the UN at the time.
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School girl, Taj Ghatz, Iraq. About 150 Iraqi children died daily due to Gulf War sanctions. Photo by James Gordon.
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A leaked internal UN audit, which surfaced on mineweb.com, shows massive discrepancies between Cotecna reports and UN agency reports for the value of the shipments into northern Iraq. The audit found that Cotecna did no “value” inspections on nearly US$1 billion worth of aid shipments for the Inter-Agency Humanitarian Programme into northern Iraq…
On June 14, 2005, two 1998 memos surfaced that appeared to link Kofi Annan to Cotecna Inspection S.A. The first one described a meeting between Annan and Cotecna while the company was bidding on the programme, after which the company raised its bid. A second one mentioned that Cotecna was confident that they would get the bid due to ‘effective but quiet lobbying’ in New York diplomatic circles. The source of the documents was a Cotecna executive.
Then there’s that bit about the rotten food that miraculously made it to Iraq, another agreement with Cotecna giving money to Annan’s son Kojo and the alleged use of funds to finance Al Qaeda. And, thanks to Greg Craig, Annan got off scot-free, due to lack of evidence against him. Now, that’s a good lawyer.
Oh, and in his spare time, Craig was also senior advisor to Madeleine Albright and Assistant to the President and Special Counsel in the White House for President Clinton.
In March 2007, Craig left the Clinton’s side to support Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He serves as Obama’s foreign policy coach and is, as I write, (and imagine) is using his experience from helping John Kerry win the 2004 debates to help the Democrats, you know, win the election this time.
Yours & truly,
