Who, Oh Who, Is Rexon Ryu? - Comments (1)

Category: Behind the Lines,Venture in Africa
Author: John Malone
Date: 18th February, 2007 @ 12:28:35 AM

Enter Rexon Ryu, a well-placed fellow who worked at the highest levels of the State Department, and who was added from there to Senator Chuck Hagel’s staff after his superior John Bolton accused him of insubordination.

Subesequently, John Bolton was named Ambassador to the UN over the objections of the Democratic party leadership, and Nebraska’s Chuck Hagel. Here is what Senator Hagel said to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about Rexon Ryu:

“Well, first, Rexon is a fellow over in my office from the State Department. He is a highly regarded State Department official. He worked closely with Secretary Powell, Deputy Secretary Armitage and others when he was there.
He never mentioned this to me, to his credit. He’s a professional. He never once tried to influence my sense of where Bolton was or anything about Bolton.
This came out independent of any allegation that Rexon made to me or any information he gave me about this. So, there’s no question about how well thought of this young man is.”


So apparently, when Dr. Andrew Parasiliti – now a Vice-President of the most influential lobbying firm in a America, the husband of world famous photographer Alexdra Avakian (who is the only American citizen to get inside Hezbollah leadership), and perhaps the foremost US expert on Iraq – left Hagels’s staff, and my matters went to Rexon Ryu, I actually took a step up in expertise.

Or maybe not.

Whatever Ryu’s IQ may be – and I think it is overrated – he is less than average on the integrity scale. His arrogance in the State Department is nearly legendary. And he’s a liar, perhaps one of those pathological types. And yet he runs loose on Hagel’s staff as a highly regarded someone.

Now all of these problems Ryu carries around wouldn’t bother me except he injected them into my affairs. In the summer of 2005, we were still messing around trying to get William Bellamy, the US Ambassador to make some kind of protest to the Kenyans for the expropriation. Ryu came in with this suggestion: “Will you give Bellamy one more chance to get this to the kenyans for a high-level political intervention? If that doesn’t work, Senator Hagel will take the matter up With Secretary Rice.”

He made this statement on a telephone conference call with three witnesses: Ambassador Don Yamamoto, the Kenya desk officer Susie Pratt, and me. I agreed to allow the extra opportunity for Bellamy, providing he received a demarche from the State Department directing him to do it. Once again I suggested that Bellamy go to Minister John Michuki in the Kenyan government, but Yamamoto said he would be free to take it up where he thought best, and that turned out to be the very corrupt minister of Education, former Vice president of kenya George Saitoti, who is persona non grata in the USA and the UK for his corrupt practices.

As predicted, Bellamy’s initiative with Saitoti went nowhere. Yamamoto had seen to the demarche. As I understand it, Bellamy actually spoke with the Permanent Secretary who operates the Ministry of Education on a day to day baasis, instead of Saitoti.

In any case, that is where we were referred when we were told Saitoti had agreed to personally help settle the matter politically, and we would be contacted by his office. We never were. After it was verbally reported to me that Saitoti so offered, I directed my management in Nairobi to make the contact when they had not been contacted.

In short, there was nothing written to me or my company or representatove in nairobi, no meeting would be scheduled with my representatives, and that was that.

So, I judged the attempts by Bellamy – no doubt half-hearted – to have failed. I contact Ryu, and told him we now should proceed along the line he stated: it was time for Senator Hagel to speak with Secretary Rice. To my amazement, Ryu simply said “I never said that.” I told him there were three of us who remembered him saying exactly that. He denied it. I said, “Look, I’m not going to talk with a liar.”

We disengaged.

I called Ambassador Yamamoto to see if he recalled the conversation exactly as I did. He did. I asked him if he would tell that to any interested party who asked him. He said he would. So then, I called Lou Anne Linehan, Senator Hagel’s Chief of Staff, and the former Chief of Staff for former US Secretary of State Colin Powell. I had spoken to Linehan before, and knew her to be as autocratic as necessary in running Hagel’s office. Linehan seemed to listen as I recounted the matter of Ryu’s duplicity. She said she would get back to me about it.

She didn’t, but I got back to her.

You will not predict and may not believed what happened next.

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