Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (52 page)

Indeed, the trip would be depicted as a “private humanitarian mission,” with the State Department and the White House maintaining a largely fictional distance from it for diplomatic reasons. In reality, Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, and Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s chief of staff at State, oversaw the process in detail, including the preparation of talking points for Clinton, guidance for press contacts, and draft statements from Clinton and his office, to be released once the mission was complete.

Besides Clinton, the “head of delegation,” those on the plane would include Band, Cooper, John Podesta, Dr. Roger Band, Korean interpreter Min-ji Kwon, and a Stanford University professor of Korean studies named David Straub—accompanied by a squad of seven Secret Service agents. They all received a fat “Mission Briefing Book,” a binder filled with briefing papers on topics that would arise while Clinton was in Pyongyang.

Keeping the mission secret for as long as possible was vital, but that was only the first imperative.

In pre-departure briefings, State and NSC officials clarified what must not be done in Pyongyang: The members of the delegation should avoid smiling, clinking of glasses, or any displays of sociability. Such overly warm behavior toward the North Koreans would surely be captured on video and then replayed over and over again, to the embarrassment of Clinton and Obama. They should not appear at any public events with the North Koreans, nor tour around the capital with them. They should spend no money and accept no gifts. They should not get separated from each other and, whenever they spoke, had to be careful not to comment on any political or diplomatic issues, nor to criticize Kim or his country in any way.

But a few events could not be avoided, such as a meeting with Kim Jong-il and a state dinner.

On August 1, two days before he departed, Clinton spoke with Gore and members of Ling’s and Lee’s families on a conference call. They all thanked Clinton, as did Gore, who was genuinely grateful after working for months to secure his employees’ release. “You know, Al, this means you have to go to Port-au-Prince with me,” Clinton joked. “Yes, Mr. President!” replied Gore.

Late on Sunday, August 2, the Clinton group left Westchester Airport heading west. In Burbank, Straub and Kwon joined the Clinton group long after midnight. Steve Bing’s white aircraft departed a few minutes before 3 a.m. on Monday, August 3, for a roughly four-hour flight to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, where they stopped to refuel.

At this point, the White House notified South Korean and Japanese authorities of the mission, letting them know that a plane carrying the former president would be passing through their airspace—and landing in Japan both inbound and outbound to ensure they had enough fuel to leave North Korea without refueling there.

One hour later, they were in the air again, landing at Misawa Air Force Base in Japan just before dawn, and then flew on to arrive in Pyongyang at around 10 a.m. (Band would later discover to his surprise
that the U.S. government had declined to pay about $62,000 in aviation fuel costs, which the Clinton Foundation picked up.) Not long after their plane left Japan, news of the mission broke in the South Korean media: “President Bill Clinton Is on a Secret Mission to North Korea to Negotiate the Release of the Two American Journalists.” The story was out.

During the entire flight, Band and Cooper had been in touch with the United States, including Lisa Ling, via email. She later wrote that when she lost contact with them, she knew they must have landed in North Korea. From that point forward, Band’s only method of communication with Washington would be a satellite phone that he would only use with caution.

At Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport, Kim Kye-gwan—the country’s chief nuclear negotiator—greeted the Clinton party as they deplaned. Photographs of them shaking hands showed a stone-faced Clinton, suppressing his usual broad smile.

A convoy of limousines took the delegation to an immense guest palace, where the North Koreans presented a busy itinerary of tours to various sites and monuments. Band begged off, explaining that they needed rest after the long flight.

Instead, after lunch at the guesthouse, their hosts brought them to a meeting with the Speaker of the Supreme People’s Assembly, who launched into a loud, long tirade about the crimes of the United States against his country. They listened politely to his monologue and said nothing. Podesta, Band, and Straub would later endure a similar ceremonial tongue-lashing at an “apology ceremony,” where another official berated Lee and Ling as well as the United States.

As Clinton recalled, before he would meet with Kim, “we insisted on seeing [the two women], and they took us to a hotel in downtown Pyongyang to see them.” There, guards brought the journalists to meet with Clinton—a moment that Laura Ling later described as surreal, the former president surrounded in what she saw as a celestial halo of light. Bursting into tears, they embraced him. Telling them he was sure they’d be leaving together the next day, he asked Roger Band to make sure they were well enough to fly home.

Finally, their escorts brought Clinton and his party back to meet with Kim himself, an encounter that he later described as “really good.”
Greeting Clinton effusively, Kim cried, “I’ve always wanted to meet you!” He reminded Clinton that when his father, Kim Il-sung, died in 1994, “you were the first [world leader] to send a letter of condolence, even before my allies.” That gesture made a powerful impression on Kim, who recalled that relations had improved under Clinton and then worsened under Bush “and the neoconservatives.”

Clinton expressed gratitude for the amnesty and assured Kim that their apology was heartfelt. For the next hour or so, they talked about past and present relations between the two countries and the history of nuclear disarmament talks. Sticking closely to his talking points, Clinton urged Kim to permit Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, to again visit Pyongyang, and to revive the “six-party talks” on the nuclear issue. He also tried to persuade Kim to release several South Korean prisoners and resume his “investigation” of Japanese citizens abducted into North Korea.

The moment that Lee and Ling stepped off the plane in the United States, said Clinton, public opinion would surge in favor of dialogue with North Korea. If Kim followed his advice, the same would occur in South Korea and Japan.

“You see what happens when these girls go home and how the international community reacts,” he said. “You’ll get a similar reaction if you release the South Koreans.” That was the way forward, he said. “You don’t need nuclear weapons to be a great nation,” he said. “You should return to the path we were on, toward a Korean peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons.”

When the meeting concluded, the entire party posed with Kim for the official photo. Clinton sat next to the dear leader, holding the expressionless gaze they had all practiced at home and on the plane; behind them in a row stood Roger Band, Cooper, Podesta, Doug Band, Straub, and Kwon with the same blank stare. Released by the state news service, that photo appeared on the front pages of most major newspapers the next day, provoking much laughter.

Clinton was impressed by Kim’s mental acumen, energy, and commanding presence, as were his aides. But Roger Band observed that while the dictator looked in decent health, one of his arms appeared to be immobile, presumably the result of a stroke.

That evening, Kim hosted them for what Clinton described as an
embarrassingly lavish state dinner, with steak, lamb, chicken, various local delicacies, an entire fish for each guest, and a selection of French wines. Kim and his minions repeatedly importuned them to attend a celebration in their honor at a stadium, featuring ten thousand child gymnasts performing for a crowd of forty thousand North Koreans. Band and Podesta yawned and made excuses, as Clinton turned away, pretending not to know what was going on. Sometime during the dinner, Band left the table and went outside to call Cheryl Mills on the satellite phone, letting her know they were all fine, had spent time with the two journalists, and expected to bring them home the next day.

They went back to Clinton’s suite in the guesthouse and played Oh Hell, his favorite card game, for hours.

Shortly after dawn on Wednesday morning, Podesta and Band went to observe a brief “court hearing” where a military general delivered the message that Kim had pardoned the women. They were returned to their rooms and instructed to write a thank-you note to Kim. Then they were free.

On the drive to the airport, the two Americans were in a limousine just ahead of the car carrying Ling and Lee, and a worried Band kept glancing back to make sure they were still behind him. Clinton, Cooper, and the rest of the party were already on the plane. When the wheels went up on takeoff, Band emailed Lisa Ling: “We have them. We’re on our way to Japan. They’re both doing well.”

On the way home, Band received an irritating message from Denis McDonough in the White House. Before Bing’s jet pulled into the hangar in Burbank, Clinton and his aides should deplane and depart the airport on their own plane. Then the hangar doors would open, and the jet would proceed to bring Ling and Lee in to meet their families and the press. He wanted no photos or video of Clinton on the ground with the women and their families. The reason for this guidance, as stated by McDonough, was to avoid any undue emphasis on the former president’s role as a reward to the North Koreans—but Band could only suspect that the real motive was petty and political. That suspicion intensified when he learned that the White House had also planned to keep Gore away from the hangar arrival.

Lisa Ling would have none of that, as she recalled later. Intensely grateful for the strenuous efforts of Gore and both Clintons to ensure the return of her beloved sister, she insisted in frantic emails to the White House and State Department that the families wanted Gore and Clinton to be present.

Her final message to her government contacts, sent after midnight, warned them bluntly that “as someone who works in the media, I would be remiss if I didn’t say one more time that keeping President Clinton [out of sight] may very well invite a whole shit-storm of speculation and chatter that you may not want.” Under pressure from a professional journalist with easy access to television, they ultimately relented. Nobody would have to pretend that Clinton and Gore weren’t there.

When the plane rolled into Bing’s hangar at 5 a.m. Pacific Time, scores of reporters and television crews were waiting to transmit the emotional scene around the world. Descending from the plane, Lee and Ling embraced their families at the bottom of the stairs, followed discreetly a few minutes later by Clinton and his aides. Gore hugged Clinton fervently, and then did the same to Podesta.

Reading a statement she had written on the plane, sometimes holding back tears, Laura Ling said: “Thirty hours ago, Euna Lee and I were prisoners in North Korea. We feared that at any moment we could be prisoners in a hard labor camp. Then suddenly we were told that we were going to a meeting.

“We were taken to a location and when we walked through the doors, we saw standing before us President Bill Clinton.” She looked over at him and put a hand to her chest, half-sobbing and half-laughing. “We were shocked, but we knew instantly in our hearts that the nightmare of our lives was finally coming to an end. And now we stand here home and free.

“Euna and I would just like to express our deepest gratitude to President Clinton and his wonderful, amazing, not to mention super-cool team,” she continued, “including John Podesta, Doug Band, Justin Cooper, Dr. Roger Band, David Straub, Min-ji Kwon, and the United States Secret Service.” She thanked Bing, Liveris, Gore, Hillary, Obama, and the government officials who had overseen the rescue mission. Gore stepped to the microphone to express gratitude to “my friend and partner, President Bill Clinton,” who offered no comments. Then the
women and their families went home. And the super-cool team flew back to New York.

On the White House lawn, President Obama delivered a short statement praising Clinton and Gore, noting that he had spoken with Clinton when the plane landed. Broad public reaction to the successful mission was strongly positive, marking a recovery from Clinton’s decline during the Democratic primaries. As Obama said, “the reunion that we’ve all seen on television I think is a source of happiness not only for the families but for the entire country.”

It was, as former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger observed, an effort that exemplified the best of America—a society that values the lives of its citizens enough to send a former head of state to the aid of two women in distress; a happy reunion, bringing wives home to their husbands and a mother back to her little girl; a moment of national pride and joy.

Not quite the entire country embraced the joy, however. On the Republican right, politicians and analysts inveighed against the “propaganda victory” supposedly gained by Kim. And the credit redounding to Clinton and his “super-cool team” predictably enraged certain commentators.

On AM radio, Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy, the demented Watergate felon, cackled about the two women with Clinton “on that long flight home.” A paranoid
New York Post
columnist insisted that “the whole shebang was nakedly scripted and staged as a device to help rehabilitate” Clinton’s image. But even Maureen Dowd could not deny that he had emerged once more as “a dazzling statesman”—and put South Carolina behind him.

Within six months, Kim Jong-il implemented Clinton’s advice by inviting Bosworth to return to Pyongyang and releasing the South Korean prisoners. He died two years later, to be succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-un.

In the weeks that followed Clinton’s return from North Korea, he and his staff spent several hours briefing NSC, State Department, and intelligence officials about the trip’s details. Whatever tensions may have lingered from the trip dissipated quickly, because on August 18, Obama
invited Clinton to brief him personally at the White House. They spent twenty minutes talking in the Situation Room—attended by other officials, including Cheryl Mills—and then the president invited Clinton up to the Oval Office to continue their conversation for another half hour.