Talking truth to power
The name's Richardson, and when there's trouble afoot, he's often the guy to see
Three weeks ago, with the blessing of the Bush administration, Gov. Bill Richardson was in North Korea to discuss its contentious nuclear weapons program. It was classic Richardson, a Democrat who has crossed party lines when he thought it was the right thing to do and whose public life over three decades has included seven terms in Congress, high-wire negotiations with some of the world's biggest thugs, two cabinet posts under President Clinton, and now the Statehouse of New Mexico, his adopted home state.
Richardson may be America's most prominent Hispanic politician. The son of an American businessman and a Mexican mother, he grew up in Mexico City, attended prep school, college, and graduate school in New England, and flirted with a professional baseball career before choosing the contact sport of politics. In his new book, Between Worlds--The Making of an American Life, Richardson lays out his rough rules for negotiation with some of the world's worst bad guys, like Saddam Hussein, and speaks to his vision for the United States. Excerpt:
William Barloon and David Daliberti were oil mechanics working in Kuwait for U.S. defense contractors when they decided to hook up with some friends manning a United Nations observation station near the Kuwait-Iraq border. They took a wrong turn and soon found themselves in Iraq and under arrest by Saddam Hussein' s border guards. There were hints in Iraq's state-controlled press of spying and potential sabotage. Not true: These guys had had a couple of beers, set off in search of their buddies, and lost their way. For that, they were sentenced to eight years in Abu Ghraib Prison, where Saddam had locked up and tortured enemies real and imagined over the decades. The Clinton administration, not contesting the official charge of entering the country illegally, said it would press for the release of Barloon, 39, and Daliberti, 41, but would make no concessions to Iraq. There would be no quid pro quo.
About a month later, I got a call from Peter Bourne, who had worked for former President Jimmy Carter as his drug czar and who was then active in international relief efforts. The Iraqis had called Bourne, apparently to express their unhappiness with the negotiations over the fate of Barloon and Daliberti. As he told it, both Carter and the Rev. Jesse Jackson had talked to Iraq's representatives, but there was no movement and no prospect of it in the foreseeable future.
The Iraqis clearly were seeking a way out of what was an embarrassing episode at a particularly sensitive time. Saddam's people wanted to talk to someone they thought they could trust. That someone, Bourne insisted, was me. The Iraqis knew of my connections to the Clinton White House and the work I had done in North Korea and other trouble spots, Bourne said, and they considered me an honest broker. This was something of a backhanded compliment, considering the source. I was leery about getting involved with the Iraqis on any level, not least as a freelance diplomat. But in the end, I figured, there was nothing to be lost in taking a first step. I contacted Clinton's national security adviser, Tony Lake, to let him know about the overture and seek guidance.
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