The New York Times today reports that in the wake of the sudden collapse of the Ukranian government and the hasty departure of its President, Viktor F. Yanukovych, apparently to Russia, a cache of over 20,000 documents have been found in the Presidential compound and retrieved from bags thrown into a nearby river.
The documents, many of them soaking wet, have been dried out and are being posted page by page on a website for all to see. The contents are damning, both for the former leadership, the Russians who have clearly had a hand in trying to manage and direct actions against the protesters who ultimately overthrew Yanukovych and a U.S. Law firm - Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. It offers what clearly seems to be a guiding principle among some powerful firms: Pay us and we'll tell you what you want and prepare what you need.
More below the orange turmoil.
...the government paid American legal advisers for opinions that would justify to the West the prosecution of Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and the president’s chief political opponent.
It had been known that the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom had compiled a largely sympathetic report in 2012 on the government’s prosecution of Ms. Tymoshenko, even though most impartial observers say it was politically motivated.
Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of the Ukraine had been defeated by Mr. Yanukovych in the last Ukranian elections and soon thereafter found herself being prosecuted and then jailed on charges that independent observers and many Ukranians have found highly suspect. She was only freed from prison when the present government was overthrown. She had been the president’s chief political opponent.
Among the more curious documents to turn up here was a letter translated into Russian from Gregory B. Craig, President Obama’s former White House counsel and a lawyer at Skadden working on the report on the Tymoshenko case, to Paul J. Manafort, a Republican political operative who had advised Mr. Yanukovych going back to 2007. It was found in a box of papers in the sauna. In the letter dated Aug. 24, 2012, Mr. Craig was asking for Mr. Manafort’s assistance in obtaining from the Ukrainian government documents for the report Skadden was preparing on the prosecution of Ms. Tymoshenko. The report concluded that the prosecution was procedurally flawed but not politically motivated, as it is widely believed to have been.
The Times article said an early draft of the firm's report had been marked up by Ukranian officials who "appeared to be pushing the Americans for a more sympathetic interpretation of the case."
The papers also document how heavily involved senior members of Russia's government and security forces were in planning opposition to the forces trying to oust Yanukovych.
With Russia now sabre rattling on Ukraine's doorstep, this will only add to the tensions.
Skadden officials said they had agreed to write the report....."on the express condition that the law firm would be totally independent.”
Yeah right!!!!
Of course Skadden Apps merely continues a long and sordid tradition of powerful US law and PR firms serving the needs of foreign dictators and powerful politicians....largely because the price is right and void of any questions about the morality of what they do.
US Congressman Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana -- a conservative Democrat who supported the Gulf War -- later estimated that the government of Kuwait funded as many as 20 PR, law and lobby firms in its campaign to mobilize US opinion and force against Hussein. Participating firms included the Rendon Group, which received a retainer of $100,000 per month for media work, and Neill & Co., which received $50,000 per month for lobbying Congress.
Sam Zakhem, a former US ambassador to the oil-rich gulf state of Bahrain, funneled $7.7 million in advertising and lobbying dollars through two front groups, the "Coalition for Americans at Risk" and the "Freedom Task Force." The Coalition, which began in the 1980s as a front for the contras in Nicaragua, prepared and placed TV and newspaper ads, and kept a stable of fifty speakers available for pro-war rallies and publicity events.
Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion