And a Wildebeest in Every Pot

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A13

Sometimes even the most altruistic notions come to naught. Take the nifty idea of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) to help the neediest of the needy: the 230,000 refugees in Chad who have fled the slaughter in Darfur and are desperately in need of food.

Hunter's staff contacted the embassy in N'Djamena, Chad, last week to see whether he could distribute food at a camp. Hunter also wanted to put together an outing to hunt wildebeest and distribute the meat to refugees.

The embassy was decidedly lukewarm. It worried about logistics and the need to divert scarce staff to coordinate Hunter's schedule. There also were concerns about coordinating with the World Food Program's distribution schedule. The embassy sought advice from Foggy Bottom as to what to tell Hunter, a former presidential candidate who will leave Congress at the end of this term.

Here's State's response last week: "Talking Points Regarding CODEL Hunter":

· The embassy "welcomes Congressman Hunter's interest in food assistance to Darfur refugees in Chad. Given the significant" U.S. aid in the world program, the embassy "would encourage the congressman to time his visit to coincide with an already scheduled food distribution."

· The embassy will "make the necessary arrangements for" Hunter to watch a food distribution in a camp.

· "Regarding the Congressman's desire to hunt wildebeest and distribute the cured meat to refugees, wildebeest are not present in Chad." (We're told some have been there, mostly in a no-hunting wildlife refuge.)

And, in case Hunter was looking for other game:

· "The Government of Chad does not permit the hunting of large mammals."

Actually, there's not a whole lot of wild game roaming these days near the refugee camps in Chad. It's a desert, and it has been at war for the past few decades. (The wildebeest's annual migration between Kenya and Tanzania is under serious threat from poachers, CNN reported last week.)

Hunter's office called State on Thursday and said that he had decided not to go, and that he was looking instead at commercial hunting expeditions in Kenya, Tanzania and Southern Africa.

But Hunter's office said yesterday that his trip -- the idea was two separate trips, we were told -- was not intended to be an official CODEL. Hunter, his office said, had always intended them to be private trips. "At this point, neither trip has been settled," a spokesman said.

Well, happy hunting. Is wildebeest best when cooked medium-rare?

Speaking of Money

The chatter of late is that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is indeed learning to the private sector -- to the great disappointment of his fans back home in Afghanistan, who were hoping he'd run for president next year. A couple weeks ago, according to the buzz at State, a senior Iraqi official told a State Department official he thinks it is "great" that Khalilzad is "going to be living in the Middle East and working for that Wall Street bank."

That "bank," we're hearing, apparently is Merrill Lynch, and Khalilzad is to have a major job in its Middle East operations. Other sources say he has been meeting and chatting with the Merrill Lynch folks, but no white smoke has been spotted.

Question is, if he's going private, when would he leave? He's headed for vacation in August, and the annual extravaganza known as the U.N. General Assembly is scheduled for the end of September. That is the diplomatic event of the season. Not to be missed. So best bet is a departure after that.

And if Kabul ever needs his services . . .

The CIA's Reasoning

The American Civil Liberties Union has been trying to get unedited transcripts of what the top terrorists (called High-Value Detainees) said to a review tribunal in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, about their treatment in the CIA's secret prisons. Given the agency's response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information lawsuit, it's not going to be easy.

The agency's associate information review officer, Wendy M. Hilton, wrote that she wanted "to acknowledge that certain allegations made by the HVDs . . . in this case may be false or exaggerated. Notwithstanding this, the HVDs are in a position to provide accurate and detailed information about the CIA's detention program. . . . [T]he disclosure of such details reasonably could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to national security."

Sounds about right. If they blabbed about what happened, you might want to cut it, especially if they were telling the truth.

But even if they were lying, that too would be harmful to national security, Hilton said. "False or exaggerated allegations by the HVDs about the classified details of the Program . . . also must be treated as classified information. To do otherwise would have the effect of allowing accurate, highly classified information about the Program to be revealed by the HVDs. If only truthful statements were redacted, a detainee with knowledge of classified facts could easily manipulate the process to reveal those classified facts."

Uh, sure.

The Principal Is Your Pal

Remember when that North Korea nukes deal was announced, and no one in charge so much as mentioned the diplomat who, whatever the pact's flaws, negotiated it? Turns out this was no accident.

The grapevine reports that the decision not to mention Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill's involvement was made at the "principals" level, meaning people such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Vice President Cheney.

What's more, Hill himself was to keep the muzzle on until the dust settled. Even he couldn't mention his name. The feeling was he was too much of a lightning rod for just about everyone. Conservatives furiously derided the agreement as a complete cave to North Korea. The Japanese felt they were shortchanged about concerns over their citizens who were kidnapped years ago by North Korea.

For years, the administration had said North Korea would remain on the terrorist list until it came clean on the abductions. That issue had been linked to any potential nuke deal, but it got decoupled, as they say, by Hill to secure the agreement.

And there are those members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who think Hill has never been straight with them.

Correction

Thanks to everyone for writing. Yes, Santos, Brazil, is not north of Rio, as we said in Friday's column. Most readers, at least initially, said it is south. By afternoon, the sentiment seemed to be that it is really west. In any event, it is not north.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this column.