Bill Clinton Brings Jailed Journalists Back to U.S. from N. Korea

August 5, 2009

Former President Bill Clinton made a publicly unannounced visit to the capital of North Korea Pyongyang yesterday, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pardoned and released the two jailed U.S. journalists held captive in the country.

Elvis Presley fan Kim Jong Il pardoned the two journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, after releasing them from prison. They were arrested in March and later sentenced to 12-years of hard-labor after crossing into North Korea from China while reporting for former Vice President Al Gore’s TV network Current TV. They were collecting information for a news report about trafficking North Korean women into China.

Clinton and his team engaged in a 75-minute meeting with President Kim Jong Il and then had a dinner which lasted a little over two hours. The White House will not say if the North Korean nuclear weapons program was discussed, but do you really think they were playing poker and watching assorted-gendered strippers? Well, they might have been multi-tasking.

A senior White House official told the Associated Press that Bill Clinton flew to the meeting only after they were guaranteed the two journalists would be released and allowed to return to the U.S. with Clinton.

The White House official spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity and said North Korean officials rejected having Al Gore meet to collect his imprisoned employees. Then, the Obama Administration, Gore and the journalists reached out to Clinton to be the emissary. The mission was the end of weeks of negotiations between Hillary Clinton, the State Department and North Korea with Bill Clinton being able to toot his big horn as the hero.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday the U.S. was not counting on complete agreement on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. However, by giving Jong Il the meeting with former President Clinton, he and his administration might return to six-party talks about its nuclear program with the U.S., Russia, South Korea, Japan and China.

North Korea has been demanding to discuss its nuclear program only with the U.S. and not with the other five nations the U.S. government wants to involve in the negotiations. Recently in defiance to the international criticism and the U.N. Security Council, Kim Jong Il’s regime restarted its atomic weapons program, fired a long-range nuclear missile, conducted a second nuclear test, fired numerous ballistic missiles and threatened to send nuclear weapons to bomb Hawaii.

Kim Jong Il is noticeably much thinner and allegedly has recently had a stroke that was followed by announcing his 27-year-old son would be his successor.

Jong Il used the hand-over as a state affair and had publicity photographs taken to distribute to his country's people since Clinton is supposedly highly regarded there.

Since it was considered a private humanitarian mission, Laura Ling, Euna Lee and Clinton flew home to Burbank, CA on a private jet provided by the wealthy Beowulf movie producer Stephen Bing and arrived last night. Another plane owned by Dow Chemical Company was used in different parts of the mission as well. The jet fuel for the trip alone costs more the $100,000. It sounds like a TV commercial. When they arrived in the Los Angeles area last night, they were greeted by Ling’s famous journalist sister, Lisa Ling, their husbands, Lee’s daughter and their parents.