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On December 19, 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the appointment of Ambassador Frank G. Wisner as the Special Representative of the US Secretary of State to the Kosovo Status Talks.
Who is Frank G. Wisner, Jr.?
If his name sounds familiar that is because he is the son of Frank Gardiner Wisner, Sr., the CIA agent most responsible for the recruitment of Nazis by the US government after World War II. A former member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II precursor to the CIA, Frank G. Wisner, Sr., was one of the most infamous CIA agents, the man behind Operation Bloodstone, the US government program of recruiting Nazis and SS members.
Wisner also organized Operation Mockingbird, the successful CIA program to co-opt the US media in the CIA’s propaganda and information war against the Soviet Union and “global Communism”. Wisner was able to co-opt to the CIA the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and other US national publications, as well as prominent US journalists. Wisner recruited Philip Graham, who owned the Washington Post with his wife Katherine Graham, to run the operation. According to biographer Deborah Davis, in the biography Katharine the Great: “By the early 1950s, Wisner ‘owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles.” Ben Bradlee, Joseph and Stewart Alsop, and James Reston, were among the prominent journalists who were part of Operation Mockingbird. The CIA also controlled foreign media outlets, such as the Rome Daily American, the Manila Times, and the Bangkok Post. In addition, the CIA had its own propaganda dissemination and infowar media outlets, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, RFE/RL. This was a blatant violation of the First Amendment Constitutional right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. This was an example of government control of the media in the US. Wisner’s counter-intelligence and subversion operations undermined and subverted democracy and constitutional freedoms in the US.
Wisner’s subversion operations in the US resulted in conflict with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who dismissed the OPC as “Wisner’s gang of weirdos”. Hoover investigated members of OPC and found that many had been members of “leftist”, i.e., pro-Communist or socialist, organizations in the 1930s. This information was turned over to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s.
During the Cold War, Wisner was responsible for the CIA overthrow of democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953, Operation Ajax. In 1954, Wisner organized the CIA overthrow of democratically-elected President of Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz, Operation PBSUCCESS.
Frank Wisner is really where it all started for Kosovo. In 1948, Wisner headed the Office of Special Projects. Wisner subsequently was put in charge of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). Under its charter, the OPC engaged in “propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.” In 1949, Wisner became the CIA chief in Albania, then considered “ripe” for the CIA’s first major covert proxy operation in Europe, Operation Valuable. Wisner, as a head of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, financed the “Committee for a Free Europe”. The CIA used Committee for a Free Europe funds to bring the Albanian National Committee to the US. The US was recruiting former Albanian Nazi and fascist ultra-nationalists to participate in Operation Valuable, a covert CIA operation to overthrow the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha. Absurdly and ironically, it was US and British intelligence that installed Hoxha as a Communist dictator in the first place in Albania. Similarly in neighboring Yugoslavia, it was US and British intelligence that installed Croat-Slovene Communist dictator Josip Broz Tito in power. The intelligence action in Albania was one of the first “regime change” operations by the CIA in Europe. Former Balli Kombetar (BK, National Front in Shqip) leader Midhat Frasheri and Dzafer Deva, an important Kosovar Muslim Albanian fascist and Nazi leader in the Nazi/fascist created Greater Albania, were important Nazi/fascist recruits. Wisner was one of the organizers of Operation Valuable, known as Operation BG/FIEND by the CIA.
This is actually where the US involvement in the Kosovo conflict begins. Midhat Frasheri and other former Nazi and fascist Albanian leaders, such as Hasan Dosti, the Justice Minister in the fascist/Nazi-created Greater Albania from 1941-1944, which included Kosovo-Metohija, were important CIA recruits or “assets” in the Captive Nations Movement, a movement to undermine the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. The CIA manufactured the “captive nations” scheme to engineer “regime change” in the Eastern bloc, the “denied areas”. The CIA set up front organizations and private-sector groups to conceal the fact that this subversive activity was being done by the US government. Midhat Frasheri, the Nazi/fascist leader of the ultra-nationalist Greater Albania movement, Balli Kombetar, was put in charge of the CIA-created National Committee for a Free Albania. A “free” Albania meant a proxy and satellite of the US. This is where it all began. The CIA perceived Kosovo as part and parcel of the US policy of subversion and control of Eastern Europe under the “captive nations” paradigm. Everything followed from this. The later involvement of Robert Dole, Joseph Biden, Tom Lantos, Joe DioGuardi, and the Albanian American Civic League (AACL) in Kosovo separatism emerged on the foundations of this initial CIA role. Wisner established the modus operandi that is followed by the US government to the present time. It is ironic that the story now comes full circle in Kosovo.
Frank G. Wisner, Jr., and Richard C. Holbrooke, were both board members of the American International Group (AIG). AIG is a US corporation that provides insurance and financial services and products in 130 countries. AIG common stock is listed in the US on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as on the stock exchanges in Paris, Tokyo, London, and Switzerland. This demonstrates the constantly changing or revolving roles that Wisner assumes in government, diplomacy, and business, intertwining and enmeshing corporate, political, and diplomatic functions, “the revolving door”. It is more like a symbiotic relationship between all three sectors.
AIG, like Enron, was involved in a corruption and fraud scandal itself, but Wisner escaped unscathed. In September 2003, the US Securities and Exchange Commission imposed one of the largest penalties in its history, $10 million, against AIG. The Commission accused AIG of engaging in a conspiracy in an accounting fraud scheme that sought to conceal its losses at a cell phone company. The fraud scheme consisted of giving a $12 million asset in exchange for a clandestine $100,000 fee. The Commission also determined that AIG staff had given false answers during the investigation, lying to federal SEC investigators.
Richard C. Holbrooke is the foremost advocate of Albanian separatism and secession and supports fully a Greater Albania. In 2006, both Wisner and Holbrooke met with members of the Albanian lobby in the US to ensure them that they would support Albanian separatism. This raises potential issues of conflict of interest and bias. Wisner is not a detached, uninterested, and neutral negotiator.
In 1965, Frank G. Wisner, Sr., committed suicide using a shotgun on the family farm in Maryland. The shotgun belonged to one of his sons. His son, Frank Gardiner Wisner, Jr., joined the US State Department as a Foreign Service Officer in December, 1961, and after receiving Western Arabic Language training in Morocco, was subsequently assigned to Algiers. In 1964, he was sent to Vietnam. He was assigned to the US Agency for International Development in Vietnam. In Vietnam, he was the Staff Aide to the Deputy Chief of Mission, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Civil Operation, and Senior Advisor to the Vietnamese province of Tuyen Duc.
In 1968, Wisner returned to the US when he was assigned to Tunisia in the US State Department. Wisner was subsequently the US Ambassador to India, Egypt, Zambia, and the Philippines.
On October 28, 1997, Wisner joined the board of directors of the Enron Corporation. Enron became the subject of a major corruption investigation and trial and scandal. Wisner was no stranger to allegations of corruption and conflicts of interest. When Wisner was the US Ambassador to India from 1994 until 1997, he was involved in the Dabhol corruption scandal. Wisner lobbied the Indian government to accept the Enron power plant project which overcharged India for power. The Indian government later rejected the deal alleging influence peddling and bribery. US Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice pressured the Indian government to accept the Enron deal.
US corporations like Enron use their connections to the US government to advance their economic and corporate interests. The best example of this is Halliburton, of which Vice President Dick Cheney was the former CEO, which constructed Camp Bondsteel and Camp Montieth in NATO/US occupied Kosovo in a contract for $829.2 million, Brown and Root, Schlumberger, and Baker-Hughes. US corporations have unlimited associations, connections, and ties to the US government. This is known as “the revolving door”. There is a corporate and government nexus that emerges. It becomes difficult to separate the interests of the US government and corporate interests which are inextricably intertwined and interlinked. Frank G. Wisner, Sr., for example, overthrew the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran in 1953 to protect US and British oil interests, particularly those of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), which became British Petroleum (BP) in 1954. In 1954, he overthrew the democratically-elected President of Guatemala to protect the economic interests and investments of the United Fruit Company. Frank G. Wisner, Sr., recruited many of the “spooks” for his CIA operations from his Wall Street law firm Carter Ledyard, which in turn benefited from government policies which its former employees initiated. Wisner legally represented wealthy right-wing ultra-nationalist Albanian emigres who would benefit financially from a “regime change” in Albania. There was a symbiotic relationship between the private business sector and the US government.
Wisner worked under Kenneth L. Lay, the Chief Executive Officer of Enron Corporation. Lay, like Wisner, was also a veteran of the Vietnam conflict. In 2006, Lay was convicted of securities fraud in a major corruption case.
Wisner also worked as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs.
Wisner is a veteran of “economic espionage” and is believed to have used his diplomatic cover to advance US governmental and corporate economic interests while he served as a diplomat to Asia. A member of Wisner’s staff told InterPress Services in 1997 that “if anybody asked the CIA to help promote US business in India, it was probably Frank”.
Wisner advanced the economic and corporate interests of Enron when he was the US Ambassador to the Phili