Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.
Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton. …
Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.
Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.
The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.
Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.
After Mining Deal, Financier Donated to Clinton - NYTimes.com
First of all make note that that was the NY times, and the year was 2008
Hmmmm….
Current TV is an independent media company led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt. The cable television network went on the air at midnight EDT (4:00 UTC) on the morning of August 1, 2005.
After the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Gore and Hyatt wanted to start a conventional cable news network. They were disenchanted with the existing networks, especially CNN. The plan evolved into making a viewer-generated channel aimed at an audience demographic age 18–34.
So…
On March 17, 2009, the North Korean military detained two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, (sister to Lisa Ling, CNN correspondent) who were working for the U.S. independent cable television network Current TV, after they allegedly crossed into North Korea from the People's Republic of China without a visa. They were found guilty of illegal entry and sentenced to twelve years hard labor in June 2009. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il pardoned the two on August 5, 2009, the day after former U.S. President Bill Clinton arrived in the country on a surprise visit.
Wasn’t there some connection between Slick Willie and Algore? What was that again?
I just have a few comments.
1. Does anyone really think that Billy Boy would have went had the deal not already been struck? Him being there was the part of the PRICE, not part of the negotiation.
2. What in the Sam Hell were these two info-babes doing sneaking into NorKor in the first place? From Current Tv? Current TV? Isn’t that the channel that does the “pants off dance off”?
3. What else could Bill Clinton have influence over that NORKOR really really really …really wants? Hmmmm I am just saying.
