“South Koreans are becoming increasingly frustrated over what they perceive as US intransigeance in not facilitating the release of 19 Korean hostages held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. For them, the US pledge of “not negotiating with terrorists” rings hollow. Richard P Lawless Jr, who is the new former US deputy under secretary of defense for Asia and Pacific affairs, could perhaps shed some light – by some accounts, he has wide experience in deals over hostages.”
What kind of experience in hostage negotiations does the former Deputy Undersecretary have? Allegedly quite a bit. It appears that he was involved in the negotiations of at least two hostages and probably more in Lebanon during the 1980s – when, I might add, he was no longer officially working for the United States government.
“Kidnappings in Lebanon were described as “epidemic”. Since the start of the civil war in 1975, an estimated 2,300 people had been kidnapped and most likely killed. Do was the 39th foreigner kidnapped in West Beirut in the two years since Muslim militias had seized control of the region.”
“On January 31, 1986, Do Chae-seung, the second secretary of the South Korean Embassy in Beirut, was abducted from his chauffeur-driven car while on his way to work. According to the Lebanese police, five men in an olive-green Mercedes-Benz and armed with AK-47 assault rifles and revolvers shot out the front tire of the embassy vehicle and forced it to stop. The gunmen forced Do into the Mercedes’ trunk and then sped off, leaving the chauffeur and first secretary, Kim Wu-chul, who was also a passenger in the car, unharmed.”
Do’s case appears to be the first for Richard Lawless, who established his company, US Asia Development Corp., with an office in Seoul, just about nine months before the ransom was allegedly paid to the kidnappers through his company.
There was at least one other – but you will have to read the rest of the story to see how this might all tie in with the Iran-Contra affair and Lawless and his company’s denials of his alleged involvement.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Lawless is the OLD DAS for East Asia, replaced in July. And that is not the only factual error in this AToL piece.
Lawless was, I meant.
Slim,
Actually, from what I have gathered from other pieces, it was in June he resigned but BBC was still listing him as Undersecretary in their article on August 14, 2007.
As for the other “factual errors” – I am always interested in learning more about my own mistakes
Respectfully
Robert
Sounds like a pretty Korean sort of excuse to me. Why check the facts when you can simply regurgitate some hearsay?
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=46674
Ha ha….
You guys are literally animals. I mentioned the BBC story only to show that I was not the only one to make the mistake. I fully surrender to you all and have requested Asia Times to make the correction.
Sure is a hostile crowd out here tonight. But it’s good – it keeps people honest
As for being the “James Bond” of hostage negotiations… he certainly has the name for it.
It’s not like much digging was needed:
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=10694
Thanks Sperwer for being there for me. Ha ha. Where should I send the check?
Somewhere there has to be something in Murphy’s Law that an article – no matter how many times it is checked by others prior to its publication – will always have a glaring error that is apparent to all of the readers?
literally, huh? Well I do live on Lion’s Den Street – at least that’s one of the recent City changed names for the street to replace the old dong designation.
–MarLin Fitzwater. AToL piece has Martin Fitzwater
–The stated U.S. policy on hostage takers is that it does not “make concessions”. It says nothing about not negotiating. This can be looked up on the State Dept website and has been refreshed by recent officials who have pointed out that distinction in the context of the Korean abductees.
It’s not my style to be a pendantic nag and I frankly do not hold the Asia Times to very high standards (despite the fact that among a largely crackpot line-up, they publish reputable people like Don Kirk, Aidan Foster-Carter and Dr Lankov) and I enjoy Robert Neff’s historical work here and elsewhere.
But Journ 101 classes in many if not most J-schools will give failing grades for simple factual errors in student articles, under the reasoning that if readers see you getting little stuff wrong, they have ample cause to doubt you on big stuff.
Thanks Slim -
Trust me – no hard feelings on my part. Appreciate you catching the errors – I am just surprised that some other people did not catch them.
Thanks again
Lawless never did anything with hostages.
In the first example his role was only to get the korean government to pay the ransom. I know, I was. Working with him.
He never set a foot in Lebenon to get the hostage released. An Armenian guy did the whole thing. The Armenian guy even paid the ransom. Lawless even failed to get the money from the government. I have watched Lawless. He always takes credit for other peoples work. Nobody in the Agency trusts him.
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