Bibi's Legacy; Who's to Blame?; The Kremlin Corrupted; The Real Face of the ACLU

Kremlin Corrupted Boris Berezovsky, the Kremlin-corrupter and Rasputin of our day, anschlussed into town a few weeks ago. He held several public meetings: in Brighton Beach, at the Council on Foreign Relations, at the Russian consulate. He kept whining on about a new book that portrayed him negatively. He accused the writer of being a KGB plant, the book of being all lies. Here's the truth: The book is by Paul Klebnikov, a superb Forbes journalist and dogged investigator of Russia's post-Soviet decline. His past articles on Berezovsky earned him death threats and a libel suit. Things got so hot for my friend Paul that he went to ground with his family in Paris for a while, only to find strange men videotaping his movements in the parks there. He came back to New York and wrote the book Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. He should get the Taki prize for sheer bloody-minded courage in the face of acute adversity.

Just how great was the risk? Buy the book and you'll get the idea?by reading between the lines. Klebnikov doesn't dwell on it. Unlike, say, the Sebastian Junger school of histrionics, Paul is too straight and focused on the task, and the task is too chilling, for him to wink toward Hollywood as he chases the story. He tells it with the unrelenting force and clarity of an oncoming train. It's the kind of book that evokes audible reactions from the reader. As in, "Of course, that explains all?why haven't I heard this before?" and the inevitable, "What the hell was Clinton thinking?" Very important, that last question, in light of Yeltsin's recently published Diaries accusing Republicans of planting Monica in the White House.

Klebnikov claims that Berezovsky virtually ran Russia for some years, and ran it to the ground. He started with a vast auto production plant and ended with Aeroflot, top tv channels, banks, metals and oil and gas companies. Along the way, he routinely supplants his mysteriously assassinated business rivals. Klebnikov says Berezovsky would start by "privatizing the profits" of a giant state-subsidized factory. That is, he'd wrest the right to sell the product as a middle man. He'd buy the subsidized product at below cost?car, oil, aluminum?and sell at market price. He'd park the profit abroad. So the Russian state paid his profits. The company lost money. The state, inevitably, went bankrupt.

He'd stack the company board with his cronies. If they played along, they got kickbacks. If they opposed, they might disappear. So, long before he bought company shares, he hijacked profits. Next he'd arrange for the company's privatization of ownership. For this he'd allegedly bribe or threaten the Kremlin minister in charge. Then he'd make sure nobody bid against him effectively at the public offering, which often took place in a remote spot. That way he'd buy the company shares for a song. All along, he'd allegedly siphon funds to cover up mysterious deaths, to remove ministers, to get close to Yeltsin's daughter, then to Yeltsin. As in King Lear, "The worst is not/So long as we can say, 'this is the worst.'"

Perhaps Berezovsky's vilest hour, according to Klebnikov, occurred during his collaboration with Chechen warlords. During one of my own reporting trips to Russia, I heard rumors implicating the Russians in the kidnapping of their own soldiers by Chechens. The soldiers often sensed that certain patrols were fated. They suspected their superiors of sharing in the payoff to kidnappers.

Klebnikov doesn't report that, but shows plenty of other evidence linking Berezovsky to the Chechen warlord kidnappings. He quotes the Chechen President Maskhadov as saying that money going from the Kremlin to such gangs made it impossible to pacify or govern his country. Result: Russia's second Chechen campaign, which helped elect Vladimir Putin, the pro-Yeltsin candidate. The candidate who wouldn't investigate Yeltsin's corruption.

The scariest revelation for Americans concerns the Clinton administration's aid for Yeltsin, especially for his reelection with slush money and bigtime media consultants. Vice President Gore rejects a solid CIA report warning about runaway Kremlin corruption. He scrawls "a barnyard epithet" on the report's cover. In the end, Klebnikov writes, Berezovsky stole billions of dollars with his variegated ruses. That allegedly included theft from the election slush money: American taxpayer contributions.

I asked Klebnikov why he knew all this but our leaders didn't seem to. "Of course they do," he said, "they just don't want us to know that they know." So a murderous mafia chief hijacks the Kremlin, destroys the Russian economy, alienates Russians from capitalism and American ideas, and our president abets him. And covers it up. Why? Perhaps Bill Clinton was happy enough to weaken Russia and leave it dependent on U.S. aid. That's almost a coherent policy, however Machiavellian. More likely the Clintons feared a scandal about their Russia policy, and once in bed with Yeltsin and Berezovsky, cover-ups followed inevitably.

Petra Dickenson Feature Taking Liberties Speaking of the ACLU's defense of the pedophilic NAMBLA he considers responsible for the murder of his son, a boy's father said recently: "I really do have a lot of respect for them. They are very consistent in who they defend." With all due respect, the only things consistent about the American Civil Liberties Union are its public image as a nonpartisan defender of the Bill of Rights and its private commitment to the political agenda of its most vocal members. "Civil liberties, like democracy," noted the ACLU's founder and long-time director Roger Baldwin, "are useful only as tools for social change... If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working-class liberties."

Fair enough. The ACLU has monopolized the debate on individual rights, but its goal has always been the redistribution of power. In the 1920s and 30s, Baldwin might have overegged the pudding when he celebrated Stalin's little victories over the forces of darkness, but what's a few million dead when the "struggle in a transition period to socialism" is at stake? According to the general secretary of the Communist Party USA, the ACLU at that time functioned as a "transmission belt" for the Communists. Decades later, its board endorsed quotas: equal results, not equal rights. In 1976, the executive director of the organization, Aryeh Neier, declared that the ACLU, which had undergone a belated but torrid conversion to feminism, was "the legal branch of the women's movement." Today, its national advisory council includes Georgetown law professor Mari Matsuda, an enthusiastic proponent of campus speech codes, and the ACLU endorses the view that the tender feelings of a select group of victims should override the First Amendment.

Critics have claimed that the ACLU has hurt the cause of liberty by making an atomistic interpretation of the Bill of Rights, divorcing each freedom from all social or moral context. Of some rights, for some people, yes. The ACLU's implacable opposition to any public displays of menorahs, crucifixes not immersed in urine, the words "In God We Trust" and school prayers is well known. Less well known is that even its view of the strict separation of church and state can be modified under proper circumstances. Nuns teaching in public schools mustn't frighten the children by appearing in their habits, but Islamic teachers may wear turbans as symbols of their (less seductive?) faith. A state has no business proclaiming a Bible Week, but official celebrations of a Buddha Week are acceptable on the theory, presumably, that they promote the good Gospel of Diversity. Native American religion, being a "religion of natural order" according to the ACLU, is also entitled to special treatment.

Even the Union's principled commitment to the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination can be set aside when political passions demand it. When in 1974 it looked as if the Senate was going to hold an impeachment trial of President Nixon, the fastidious moralists on the ACLU board of directors voted that Richard Nixon was not entitled to the constitutional protections of the Fifth Amendment.

The ACLU has worked zealously to enforce some of the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, insisting that only an absolute license will ensure each freedom's survival. Yet its reading of the Second Amendment is more restrictive. Its position is that individuals do not have the right to own arms because the "setting in which the Second Amendment was proposed and adopted demonstrates that the right to bear arms is a collective one, existing only in the collective population of each state for the purpose of maintaining an effective state militia." One may point out, as others have, that "when the Constitution was written, creches were permitted on public property and blasphemy was punishable by death," yet the ACLU has not troubled itself with the historical context of the First, Eighth or any other amendment. Still, the Union's take on gun control is consistent with its selective approach to individual rights and its overall mission.

Any organization that labors to enforce the Bill of Rights, even one that has used it as a tool to rid us of the "kooks" and "zealots," to borrow the present ACLU head's description of the majority party in Congress, has done good things in the cause of liberty. The problem is not that the Union defends the free speech of NAMBLA, but that most of the time, and despite its cant, it is unwilling to grant similar rights to those it abhors. Seeing danger only on the right, it moved to deny accreditation to Liberty Baptist College, founded by Jerry Falwell, not because of anything anyone did but because the beliefs of its graduates might lead them to violate state law and not teach evolution.

By wrapping itself in the Constitution, the ACLU has managed to obscure the fact that it is a partisan organization, dedicated to group rights and economic statism. But like Lillian Hellman, a former member of its national advisory council, the ACLU will forever insist that it "cannot and will not cut [its] conscience to fit this year's fashion." Sadly, Ms. Hellman's leadership position, given her reverence for the Stalinist brotherhood of man, tells us much we need to know about the conscience of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Taki LE MAÎTRE Bibi's Legacy This is perhaps an insensitive thing in view of what is happening in the Middle East, but I am about to quote Leah Rabin, Yitzhak Rabin's widow. I first met her in Gstaad; she was sitting at the Rialto, having a drink with a mutual friend. When she was told that I was a journalist, she asked me not to mention the fact she was in Gstaad. Her husband was somewhere in Switzerland negotiating with the enemy?an Arab head of state?and Leah had come up for some fresh alpine air. I was then writing the "Atticus" column for the London Sunday Times, but kept her presence in the resort to myself. Two years after the assassination of Rabin, his widow was back in Gstaad and I was seated next to her at a party. She remembered that I had not betrayed her and thanked me. Then we spoke politics?Middle East politics, to be exact. "My brother is Arafat," she told me, "and my enemy is Bibi Netanyahu, the moral instigator of my husband's death."

To say I was taken aback would be a gross understatement. This was no Israeli dissident or peacenik talking, but a sober lady who knew Israeli politics inside out and obviously was told things by her husband the rest of us would give the proverbial arm and a leg to know. To me it meant one thing, however: When one speaks about the Middle East, there is good reason not to be categorical.

As I write, things are looking very grim. American public opinion is obviously against the Palestinians and Arafat, especially after the USS Cole disaster. But Arafat had nothing to do with that particular terrorist act. Nobody knows who did it.

Terrorism and Osama bin Laden helped save Bill Clinton's presidency a couple of years ago when he ordered the launch of cruise missiles that blew up an aspirin factory in Sudan. It looks as if Osama bin Laden will yet again come to the Draft Dodger's aid. My, how banal the pundits and the television morons are. No sooner does a bomb go off than pictures of Osama bin Laden are flashed around the world with captions describing him as the world's most dangerous man. My, how original. The problem is nobody knows from nuttin', as they used to say in Brooklyn. At least for the moment. It could be bin Laden, and it could be one of a thousand other groups, mostly financed by Iranian and Libyan oil money. Because what Americans do not understand, especially American Jews, is that there are hundreds if not millions of young men and women out there in the Arab sands ready to fight and die for what they perceive to be a great historical injustice against the Palestinian people.

Personally, I believe that Rabin and Arafat could have achieved peace, however unsatisfactory to extremists on either side. Just as I believe that Ehud Barak is a good man who did bend over backwards to accommodate the Palestinians. The trouble is Bibi and Sharon. And Clinton.

The jingoist press in New York failed to mention the fact that no sooner had Bibi been found innocent of corruption charges, Sharon decided to visit Temple Mount. Sharon is the head of Likud and fears a comeback by Bibi. So to hell with the peace process, and 100 (mostly Palestinian) dead, and a few Israeli soldiers lynched. Politics is politics.

And Clinton? Well, world-class players like Arafat know the Draft Dodger is an emperor with no clothes. Clinton only thinks about himself and his legacy. One only needs to read Joe Klein's recent New Yorker piece (based on a series of interviews with the President) to see that Clinton makes Narcissus seem like Mother Teresa by comparison. Arafat pushed because he knew Clinton wanted a peace treaty and the Nobel prize and would do anything to get the credit.

So what else is new? Tony Blankley writing in The Washington Times got Klein's Draft Dodger piece spot on. Point after point, swallowed hook, line and sinker by the gullible Klein, is refuted by Blankley with proof of Clinton's mendacity. For example: Clinton claims that Hillarycare did not pass because the Republicans blocked it fearing the Democrats would get credit for it. But the Democrats controlled both houses when Hillarycare failed, and Republicans couldn't block anything. (I wonder what happened to Klein when Clinton came up with that whopper? Was he suffering from amnesia, or hadn't he heard of the 1994 midterm election?) Then Clinton goes on about how the Republicans failed to reform Medicare because they were caught up in his personal life. Again, he's lying. The Republicans offered to reform Medicare, but Clinton refused. He wanted to demagogue the issue and the hell with Medicare. See what I mean about Clinton, and Arafat seeing through him?

Middle East politics is no child's game. Arafat and the Israelis have been at it a very long time. Clinton is an expert in blowing smoke, in taking credit for others' accomplishments, in shifting blame and in schmoozing the media and a naive American public. Playing the Middle East game, the most combustible in the world, needs people like Rabin and Barak, not flimflam men like Clinton or hotheads like Sharon and Bibi.

I firmly believe that if Barak remains in power and does not bring in Sharon, Arafat will come back to the table. And that an unsatisfactory peace is better than none at all. Clinton should shut up, forget about an October surprise to help Hillary and?most important of all?try to restrain himself from launching cruise missiles against some innocents to get the numbers back up in the polls.

George Szamuely The Bunker Who's to Blame? It is, of course, an unshakable axiom of U.S. policy toward Israel that none of the standards normal for every other state apply to it. Night after night people see on their tv screens Israeli soldiers shooting at people throwing stones. Yet, during last week's presidential debate, Al Gore announced: "Israel should feel absolutely secure about one thing: Our bonds with Israel are larger than agreements or disagreements on some details of diplomatic initiatives. They are historic, they are strong, and they are enduring." George W. Bush echoed him: "I want everybody to know, should I be the president, Israel's going to be our friend. I'm going to stand by Israel." No criticism, not even the mildest reproof, for Israel. Neither man was in any doubt about whom to blame for the violence. "We need to insist that Arafat send out instructions to halt some of the provocative acts of violence that have been going on," Gore warned. Bush again echoed him: "Like the Vice President, I call on Chairman Arafat to have his people pull back to make the peace." Israeli violence is invariably taken to be a response to "provocative acts." Israel's reasonableness and readiness to compromise are beyond question. In that same debate, Bush and Gore both defended last year's bombing of Yugoslavia, carried out, allegedly, to halt the excessive use of force by Serbs in Kosovo. Yet Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia. Israel, on the other hand, uses guns, helicopter gunships and missiles on lands it conquered in the 1967 war and occupied ever since in defiance of innumerable UN Security Council resolutions demanding that they be surrendered. The Israelis are an occupying army suppressing a rebellion by an indigenous population that does not want them there. Yet the U.S. could not even bring itself to support the Oct. 7 UN Security Council Resolution 1322, which imposes no sanctions and exacts no penalties on Israel. It merely "condemns acts of violence, especially the excessive use of force against Palestinians, resulting in injury and loss of human life." And?horror!?the resolution stresses the importance of "establishing a mechanism for a speedy and objective inquiry into the tragic events of the last few days."

Israel recalled its ambassador to Austria when its voters had the temerity to vote in large numbers for the party of Jorg Haider. But it is outrageous that Israel should have to endure the indignity of anyone other than its noisy American champions having any say in how it conducts itself in occupied lands. America's refusal to veto the UN's extremely mild rebuke, needless to say, provoked fulminations in all the predictable quarters. The "one-side condemnation of Israel is shameful and ignores the reality of what's happening in the Mideast," Hillary Clinton fraudulently fumed. Clinton, according to Marty Peretz, "wouldn't shoulder the burden of a truthful veto. Clinton's much-vaunted love for Israel, it turns out, was just another piece of theater, and in this real-life drama he now declares himself neutral. Well, shalom, chaver? Ours, then, is the most spineless of great powers."

Israel has made it a policy to ignore United Nations resolutions. The most famous one, UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed just after the Six Day War, talked of the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security." It demanded the "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." Israel had to withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Thirty-three years have passed and Israel has yet to comply. Subsequent UN resolutions urged Israel to cease building Jewish settlements on conquered lands. Israel consistently ignored them, without suffering any adverse consequences in the United States. It was easy to pull this off during the Cold War. The UN could be dismissed as a hotbed of totalitarians. That 242 had been sponsored by that notorious Soviet client-state, Great Britain, was safely ignored.

Nearly 100 Palestinian and Israeli Arabs are dead as I write. Clearly, they are to blame for their sorry plight. The Israelis had gone the extra mile for the sake of peace, while the Palestinians refused to compromise. At Camp David in July, Ehud Barak was hailed for his courage. He offered "peace terms of breathtaking generosity," in the words of Charles Krauthammer. This "generosity" amounted to allowing the Palestinians to run 90 percent of their own land on the West Bank. In addition, he offered to transfer some of Jerusalem's Arab residential areas to Palestinian control. He rejected Palestinian sovereignty over the Old City and its religious sites. Israel would continue to exercise sovereignty over Temple Mount, and hence over the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third holiest site. The illegal Jewish settlements on Arab lands would stay. There would be no return of refugees. And Jewish expansion into Arab East Jerusalem would continue. And in return for these concessions, what would the Palestinians get? Israeli recognition of a Palestinian "state"?one that would in fact be nothing more than an Israeli protectorate and a source of cheap labor.

This was the staggeringly generous offer that Arafat has been widely attacked in the U.S. media for rejecting. Yet it is Arafat whose stance is in accordance with international law. The strength of Palestinian feeling would suggest that Arafat could not accept the miserable deal on offer at Camp David even if he had wanted to. The absurdity of the U.S. pretense of being the "honest broker" became apparent after the breakdown of Camp David. Clinton blamed the failure on Arafat and threatened to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The bombing of the USS Cole is the inevitable consequence of Clinton's recklessness.