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When I mentioned to my daughter that they had been released, she stated, "Thanks to Bill."
I replied that I was fairly certain there had been some serious negotiating behind the scenes before Bill suddenly made his surprise flight to North Korea.
"Oh!" she remarked, "So Hillary set it up and Bill went in to close the deal."
"Well, something like that", I said, as I laughed at her choice of phrasing.
But, it reminds me of my long career in sales. You gotta' be a strong closer to get the deal.
And I think the President chose exactly the right man--a former head of government, a former Rhodes Scholar--a man who articulates his thougts well on his feet--arriving to apologize on behalf of the girls for becoming too jealous in pursuit of a story lent just the right amount of gravity that the government and the state department wished to convey without putting Obama at the forefront in case the mission failed.
Bill, fortunately, did not let down the women or President Obama. He went in, did the final negotiations, which the Press reported were extremely tense at times, gave President Kim Yong 1L(the closest I can get in English) due credit for pardoning the girls and did the obligatory photo op, which was the concession the North Koreans wanted. I personally do not think that was too great a price to pay.
He then got the hell outta' there with the two women, who had previously been sentenced to ten years of hard labor by the North Koreans.
Of course the nutcases will try to put a spin on it, saying that the U.S. made concessions on the nuclear issue. However, the Obama administration Wednesday adopted a wait-and-see stance over whether the humanitarian breakthrough will lead to renewed talks on the more pernicious question of the North's nuclear weapons.
"This can't hurt, but it won't necessarily help," said a senior administration official involved in North Korea policy. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the topic's sensitivity.
The White House and State Department worked aggressively to dispel the notion that U.S. concessions on the nuclear front led to the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who arrived in California early Wednesday after former President Bill Clinton secured their release.
Aides to President Barack Obama said that North Korea must demonstrate that it's ready to abide by past pledges to dismantle its nuclear weapons, and should return to six-nation nuclear talks that it pulled out of this spring. The North has instead been seeking direct talks with the U.S.
"I don't think we know yet" whether there will be an improved atmosphere for talks, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said. "The ball is really in the North's court."
The stern talk was aimed at dispelling any impression in Pyongyang that it had scored an instant improvement in relations with Washington by releasing Ling and Lee. Clinton was the highest-ranking U.S. visitor to North Korea in nine years. Such visits are eagerly sought-after by the image-conscious Koreans, and photographs appeared to show North Korean leader Kim Jong Il elated at the turn of events.
The three hours and 15 minutes that Clinton spent in meetings and a dinner with the normally reclusive Kim also represented a unique opportunity to assess his views on the nuclear question - and the health of the "Dear Leader," who may have suffered a stroke last year.
The White House hasn't yet been able to formally debrief the former president about his talks with Kim. That session is tentatively scheduled to take place Friday, and is likely to involve top White House officials, as well as specialists from the State Department and intelligence agencies.
Clinton was given two U.S. government briefings before leaving for North Korea, the second one Saturday, a second senior U.S. official told reporters in a conference call late Tuesday.
Clinton wasn't the only envoy considered. North Korea also appeared to signal at one point it would accept a visit by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whose office was involved in the behind-the-scenes diplomacy. But a White House official said, "We didn't take the Kerry (invitation from North Korea) to be real" and settled on Clinton as the envoy who could produce the journalists' freedom.
Clinton's delegation included John Podesta, his former chief of staff; David Straub, a former State Department specialist on Korea; Doug Band, another Clinton White House aide; and Roger Band, his brother, who served as Clinton's personal physician.
The presence of Clinton's personal physician not only provided for an early check on Lee's and Ling's health and for any emergency treatment that might be needed, but it also gave an American doctor a rare firsthand, if fleeting, look at North Korea's reclusive leader, whose health has been a subject of debate in the U.S. intelligence community.
Good work and congratulations to all who worked quietly and diligently to resolve this in order to get these women home.
This is the second serious diplomatic issue that the President has diffused successfully and quickly--the first being the captain held by the Somali pirates.
I'm impressed!
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/1173326.html