Ramsey Clark
| William Ramsey Clark | |
 Ramsey Clark in 1968 |
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| In office March 10, 1967 – January 20, 1969 |
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| President | Lyndon B. Johnson |
| Preceded by | Nicholas Katzenbach |
| Succeeded by | John N. Mitchell |
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| In office 1965–1967 |
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| President | Lyndon B. Johnson |
| Preceded by | Nicholas Katzenbach |
| Succeeded by | Warren Christopher |
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| Born | December 18, 1927 Dallas, Texas, United States |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Georgia Welch[1] |
| Alma mater | University of Texas-Austin (B.A.) University of Chicago (M.A., J.D.) |
| Military service | |
| Service/branch | United States Marine Corps |
| Years of service | 1945-1946 |
William Ramsey Clark (born December 18, 1927) is an American lawyer and former United States Attorney General. He worked for the U.S. Department of Justice, which included service as United States Attorney General from 1967 to 1969, under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Decades later, he was a defense attorney for Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.
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[edit] Early life and career
Clark was born in Dallas, Texas to Mary Jane Ramsey, the daughter of a prominent Texas judge and lawyer Wiliam F. Ramsey[2] and Tom C. Clark,[3] who was also a United States Attorney General and a justice of the Supreme Court. Clark served in the United States Marine Corps in 1945 and 1946, then earned a B.A. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1949, and an M.A. and a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1950.
He was admitted to the Texas bar in 1950, and to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1956. From 1951 to 1961, Clark was an associate and partner in the law firm of Clark, Reed and Clark.
[edit] Kennedy and Johnson administrations
Clark served in the Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General of the Lands Division from 1961 to 1965, and as Deputy Attorney General from 1965 to 1967.
In 1967, President Johnson nominated him to be Attorney General of the United States, he was confirmed by congress and took the oath of office on March 2. There is speculation within Washington that Johnson made the appointment on the expectation that Clark’s father, Associate Justice Tom C. Clark, would resign from the Supreme Court to avoid a conflict of interest.[4] Johnson wanted a vacancy to be created on the Court so he could appoint Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice. The elder Clark resigned from the Supreme Court on June 12, 1967, creating the vacancy Johnson apparently desired.
Clark served as Attorney General until Johnson’s term as President ended on January 20, 1969.
Clark played an important role in the history of the American Civil Rights movement. During his years at the Justice Department, he
- supervised the federal presence at Ole Miss during the week following the admission of James Meredith;
- surveyed all school districts in the South desegregating under court order (1963);
- supervised federal enforcement of the court order protecting the march from Selma to Montgomery; and
- headed the Presidential task force to Watts following the riots.
- supervised the drafting and executive role in passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968.
As Attorney General during part of the Vietnam War, Clark oversaw the prosecution of the Boston Five for “conspiracy to aid and abet draft resistance.” Four of the five were convicted, including pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr.
In addition to his government work, during this period Clark was also director of the American Judicature Society (in 1963) and national president of the Federal Bar Association in 1964–65.
[edit] International activism
Following his term as Attorney General he worked as a law professor and was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. He visited North Vietnam in 1972 as a protest against the bombing of Hanoi. He was also associated with the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison before resigning to run for political office.
In 1974, he was nominated in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senator from New York defeating the party’s designee Lee Alexander, but losing the election to the incumbent Jacob K. Javits. In 1976, Clark again sought the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, but was a distant third in the primary behind Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Congresswoman Bella Abzug.
More recently, Clark has become controversial for his political views and publications and has described the War on Terrorism as a war against Islam.[11]
In 1991, Clark accused the administration of President George H. W. Bush, J. Danforth Quayle, James Baker, Richard Cheney, William Webster, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and “others to be named” of “crimes against peace, war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for its conduct of the Gulf War against Iraq and the ensuing sanctions;[5] in 1996, he added the charges of genocide and the “use of a weapon of mass destruction”.[6] Similarly, after the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Ramsey charged and “tried” NATO on 19 counts and issued calls for its dissolution.[7]
Ramsey Clark has been criticized by both opponents and supporters for some of the people he agreed to defend; this criticism has been exacerbated by some statements Clark has made in defense of his clients.[8]
In 2004 Clark joined a panel of about 20 prominent Arab and one other non-Arab lawyers to defend Saddam Hussein in his trial before the Iraqi Special Tribunal.[9] Clark appeared before the Iraqi Special Tribunal in late November 2005 arguing “that it failed to respect basic human rights and was illegal because it was formed as a consequence of the United States’ illegal war of aggression against the people of Iraq.”[10] Clark said that unless the trial was seen as “absolutely fair”, it would “divide rather than reconcile Iraq”.[11] Christopher Hitchens claimed that Clark was admitting Hussein’s guilt when Clark reportedly stated in a 2005 BBC interview: “He [Saddam] had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt”.[12]
Clark was not alone in criticizing the Iraqi Special Tribunal‘s trial of Saddam Hussein, which drew intense criticism from international human rights organizations. Human Rights Watch called Saddam’s trial a “missed opportunity” and a “deeply flawed trial”[13],[14] and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found the trial to be unfair and to violate basic international human rights law.[15] Among the irregularities cited by HRW, were that proceedings were marked by frequent outbursts by both judges and defendants, that three defense lawyers were murdered, that the original chief judge was replaced, that important documents were not given to defense lawyers in advance, that paperwork was lost, and that the judges made asides that pre-judged Saddam Hussein.[16] One of those outburst occurred when Clark was ejected from the trial after passing the judge a memorandum stating that the trial was making “a mockery of justice”. The Chief Judge Raouf Abdul Rahman shouted at Clark, “No, you are the mockery… get him out, out”.[17]
On March 18, 2006, Clark attended the funeral of Slobodan Milošević. He declared: “History will prove Milošević was right. Charges are just that: charges. The trial did not have facts.” He compared the trials of Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein by stating: “both trials are marred with injustice, both are flawed.” He characterized Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein as “both commanders who were courageous enough to fight more powerful countries.”[18]
Ramsey Clark speaks to the March 20, 2010 anti-war protest in Washington, DC
In June, 2006, Clark wrote an article criticizing US foreign policy in general, containing a list of 17 US “major aggressions” introduced by “Both branches of our One Party system, Democrat and Republican, favor the use of force to have their way.” (the list includes the Clinton years) and followed by “The United States government may have been able to outspend the Soviet Union into economic collapse in the Cold War arms race, injuring the entire planet in the process. Now Bush has entered a new arms race and is provoking a Second Cold War…”[19]
| [show]Clark’s List of “Major Aggressions” by the United States of America |
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On September 1, 2007, in New York, Clark, age 79, called for detained Filipino Jose Maria Sison’s release and pledged assistance by joining the latter’s legal defense team headed by Jan Fermon. Clark doubted Dutch authorities’ validity and competency, since the murder charges originated in the Philippines and had already been dismissed by the country’s Supreme Court.[20]
In November 2007, Clark visited Nandigram in India[21][22] where conflict between state government forces and villagers resulted in the death of at least 14 villagers.[23][24]
In April 2009, Clark spoke at a session of the Durban Review Conference where he accused Israel of genocide.[25]
In September 2010, Clark’s essay was published in a three-part paperback entitled The Torturer in the Mirror (Seven Stories Press). [26]
He was a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award and the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.
[edit] Advocating the impeachment of George W. Bush
| Type | Political advocacy |
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| Founded | 2002 |
| Location | Washington, D.C. |
| Key people | Ramsey Clark (founder) |
| Area served | United States |
| Focus | Impeachment of Bush Administration members |
| Members | reported over 1,000,000 signatories[citation needed] |
| Website | http://www.votetoimpeach.org |
| Dissolved | Jan. 20, 2009, converted to IndictBushNow.org |
In 2002, Clark founded “VoteToImpeach”, an organization advocating the impeachment of George W. Bush and several members of his administration. For the duration of Bush’s terms in office, Clark sought, unsuccessfully, to bring Bush to stand trial for impeachment. Clark was an opponent of both the 1991 and 2003 Persian Gulf War conflicts. he is the founder of the International Action Center, which holds significant overlapping membership with the Workers’ World Party.[27] Clark and the IAC helped found the protest organization A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).[28]
As early as March 19, 2003, the New Jersey newspaper and website The Independent took note of Clark’s efforts to impeach Bush and others, prior to the start of the Iraq War. The paper noted that “Clark said there is a Web site, http://www.votetoimpeach.org, dedicated to collecting signatures of U.S. citizens who want President George W. Bush impeached, and that approximately 150,000 have signed to impeach, he said.”[29] A conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, stated in an article dated February 27, 2004, “…Ramsey Clark’s VoteToImpeach.org is a serious operation”, and noted the group had run full-sized newspaper advertising on both coasts of the U.S. though the Standard also went on to describe them as also being a “angry petition stage.”[30]
Clark’s speech to a counter-inauguration protest on January 20, 2005 at John Marshall Park in Washington D.C. was broadcast on the radio/TV program Democracy Now hosted by Amy Goodman, with Clark stating that “We’ve had more than 500,000 people sign on “Vote to Impeach.”[31] The San Francisco Bay Guardian listed the website as one of three “Impeachment links”, alongside afterdowningstreet.org and impeachpac.org [32] and The Bangor Daily News took note of the organization’s website on March 17, 2006.[33]
The organization, under Clark’s guidance, drafted its own articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The document argues that the four have committed, “…violations and subversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rights of the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperial executive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States.” Votetoimpeach.org (as of 8 February 2007) claimed to have collected over 852,780 signatures in favor of impeachment.
After the Bush Administration left office in January, 2009, the website was redirected to IndictBushNow.org. That website asks for “the prosecution of Bush, Cheney and others for their criminal acts” and solicits donations for this purpose. IndictBushNow.org is listed on the MySpace page of former Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) in which he asks for signatories to a petition for this cause.[34]
[edit] Notable clients
As a lawyer, he has also provided legal counsel and advice to several notable figures, including:
- Nazi concentration camp commandant Karl Linnas
- Nazi War criminal Jack Reimer, charged in the killings of Jews in Warsaw.
- The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Advisory Board during late 1970s and early 1980s
- Branch Davidian leader David Koresh
- FMLN activist Jennifer Casolo
- Antiwar activist Father Philip Berrigan and the Harrisburg Seven
- Political figure Lyndon LaRouche
- American Indian prisoner and convicted murderer Leonard Peltier
- Attended the Crimes of America conference in Tehran in 1980
- Liberian political figure Charles G. Taylor during his 1985 fight against extradition from the United States to Liberia
- Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a leader in the Rwandan genocide
- Palestine Liberation Organization leaders in a lawsuit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the vacationer murdered during the hijacking of the Achille Lauro.
- Camilo Mejía, a US soldier who deserted his post in March 2004 in protest against the US war against Iraq.
- Defense attorney for three killers of Officer Bruce Prothero, Baltimore County (Maryland) Police Department.
- Radovan Karadžić, former Bosnian Serb politician, accused war criminal
- Slobodan Milošević, former President of Serbia and of FR Yugoslavia, accused war criminal
- Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq and convicted of crimes against humanity
- Lori Berenson, an American convicted of support of the MRTA guerrilla in Peru
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