Obama advisors demand more UN Blue Helmets

U.S. Prepares to Go to War for the United Nations, Obama Asked to Order U.S. Troops to Serve U.N. and Join the International Criminal Court

by Cliff Kincaid 

The Obama-Biden Transition Project has been secretly meeting with special interest groups demanding that more U.S. military personnel be assigned to “Blue Helmet” or U.N.-controlled military operations. But the Obama operation has not disclosed any information about the nature of the meetings. The only reason we know anything about them is because one of the special interest groups has boasted about its involvement in them on its website.

The group, Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), the new name of the old pro-world government World  Federalist Association, reveals that in meetings held on December 6, 2008, with Eric Schwartz, identified as being in charge of the Obama-Biden US/UN Transition Team, a group called the “Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping” (PEP) asked that the U.S. increase its participation in U.N. military activities “by putting more blue helmets on US troops.”

Such a policy could spark a revolt in the U.S. Armed Forces as well as Congress. In the words of former Army Specialist Michael New, who resisted his deployment to a U.N.-run military operation under the Clinton Administration, Eric P. Schwartz, an associate of convicted document thief Sandy Berger, is chief of the Obama-Biden US/UN Transition Team. “I signed up for the green [Army] team, not the blue [U.N.] team.” The case became a major legal battle.

Schwartz, executive director of the George Soros-funded US Connect Fund, worked under Clinton’s disgraced National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, and brags that he “initiated and managed the White House review that resulted in U.S. signature of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” an entity that could prosecute American soldiers and citizens for “war crimes.”

Berger pleaded guilty in 2005 to stealing highly classified documents from the National Archives. Two years after this, however, Berger and Schwartz teamed up to write an article advocating “global engagement” by the U.S.

Another organization participating in the Obama-Biden meetings was the Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court (WICC) which wants Senate ratification of the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty.

Both the PEP and the WICC are largely creations of the World Federalist Association (WFA), which supports world government financed by global taxes, as well as a U.N. world army. The WFA became the Citizens for Global Solutions as part of an extreme “New World Order” makeover designed to make the organization’s world government solutions palatable to more people.

While top officers of CGS, including Don Kraus, were meeting with Schwartz, CGS was represented on Schwartz’s side of the table by Heather B. Hamilton, an assistant to Schwartz who serves as Senior Policy Advocate for the US Connect Fund and “most recently served as Executive Vice President of Citizens for Global Solutions.”

Hamilton claims to have “reinvigorated and co-chaired [the] Washington Working Group on the ICC which coordinated activities of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and more than a dozen other prominent U.S. NGOs.” She helped Peter Gantz, formerly of the Carter Center, lead “a reconfiguration effort that in late 2001 resulted in a wider mandate for the PEP [Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping].” What’s more, Hamilton says that she developed, launched and led a non-governmental organization (NGO) coalition in support of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty, which is a top priority of the Obama Administration.

Hamilton boasts that she “Launched and managed [the] successful campaign to defeat the nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the UN” and “Led [the] coalition effort that achieved the U.S. signature of the ICC treaty…” (Bolton later received a recess appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.) Hence, Schwartz “managed” the White House effort to sign the ICC treaty while Hamilton supplied the appearance of a “grass roots” effort to have it signed.

This seems to be the modus operandi for the US Connect Fund, which promotes “a network in support of responsible U.S. global engagement” through making grants to dozens of pro-U.N. groups around the country. The group claims to have made:

• Direct grants totaling more than $1.3 million to 26 projects in 2004.
• Grants worth $1.75 million to over 11 projects in 2005.
• Almost $450,000 in grants to 17 projects in 2006.
• Direct grants totaling around $2.7 million to 27 projects in 2007-2008.

These grants were to such groups as the Aspen Institute’s Global Interdependence Initiative, Citizens for Global Solutions, the New America Foundation, and the Institute for Policy Studies.

The Obama-Biden Transition website and the CGS identify the following as being involved in “US/UN” issues:

• Eric Schwartz, Samantha Power, Michael Pan, Jennifer Simon, Elizabeth Cousens, Grant Harris, and Victoria Holt.

The Obama US/UN Transition organization does not disclose the full names, affiliations, or even basic biographical data about these members. ASI has so far been unsuccessful in getting detailed information about them from the Obama-Biden office. We cannot vouch for the complete accuracy of the information that follows, since it is derived from a variety of Internet sources on the “US/UN” names on the Obama-Biden Transition website. Only the Obama-Biden Transition office can verify whether we have completely accurate information about the right names and individuals:

Eric. P. Schwartz:

• Executive director of the Connect US Fund,16 which “seeks to promote a vision of responsible U.S. global engagement in an increasingly interdependent world.”
• Served as the UN Secretary-General’s deputy special envoy for tsunami recovery, 2005-2007.
• Lead expert for the congressionally mandated Mitchell-Gingrich Task Force on United Nations Reform.
• Second-ranking official at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2003-2004.
• U.S. National Security Council, under National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. Schwartz was senior director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs at the National Security Council when Berger was National Security Adviser.
• Held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Center, the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Council on Foreign Relations.
• While affiliated with the United Nations, was a member of a Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.N. and U.S. military operations co-chaired by former National Security Advisers Samuel R. Berger and Brent Scowcroft.

Samantha Power:

• Born in Ireland. Moved to U.S. at the age of nine.
• Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, based at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, where she was the founding executive director.
• Her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New Republic Books) was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
• Self-proclaimed “humanitarian hawk” on foreign policy.
• Columnist for Time magazine (named one of Time’s top thinkers in 2004).
• Close associate of Clinton’s former national security adviser, Anthony Lake, who also supported Obama for president.
• A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.
• Spent 2005 to 2006 working in the office of Senator Barack Obama and was described as his “senior foreign policy adviser.” The position was an international affairs fellowship financed by the Council on Foreign Relations. She had said that she hoped to work closely with Obama and his advisors on “three or four issues” of foreign policy, including United Nations reform, Darfur, and the detainment camp in Guantanamo.
• Contributed $2300 to Obama for President campaign in 2007.
• Brought back on the Obama-Biden Transition after being forced from the Obama presidential campaign for calling Hillary Clinton a “monster.”
• Wrote Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World, a biography of the U.N. official killed in Baghdad in a 2003 terrorist bombing.
• Married to Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law Professor.

Michael Pan:

• Graduate of Swarthmore College, 1997, with a concentration in Peace and Conflict Studies.
• Wrote his Swarthmore senior thesis on the ICC and says, “The world needs an International Criminal Court. Now, more than ever, the International Criminal Court needs the United States.”
• Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
• Served in the State Department’s Office of War Crimes for two years.
• Did consulting for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations while finishing a master’s degree at the University of Michigan.
• Contributed $500 to “Obama Victory Fund” while an employee of the U.N.
• Served as a Senior Analyst for National Security at the Center for American Progress.
• Said about U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Iraq oil-for-food corruption scandal:  "There is no proof that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has done anything wrong.”

Jennifer Simon:

• A staffer for Senator Joseph Biden, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Vice President in the Obama Administration, records show that she went on a 2005 trip to New York to meet with United Nations officials sponsored and financed by the Humpty Dumpty Institute.
• Participant in a 2005 CSIS conference, 25 which produced a “Making Peacebuilding Work” report offering “recommendations on the creation of a United Nations Peacebuilding Commission and Peacebuilding Support Office.”
• Identified as one of many government officials consulted in preparation of a December 2008 report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force of the U.S. Institute of Peace and other groups. 26 The Task Force was chaired by Madeleine K. Albright, former Secretary of State, and William S. Cohen, former Secretary of Defense. 
   
   

Elizabeth Cousens:

• Chief of Staff, U.N. Mission in Nepal.
• Vice president of the International Peace Academy, “working closely with the United Nations and other diplomatic agencies to defuse conflict and build peace in regions throughout the world.”
• Serves on the boards of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum and the Peace Dividend Trust.
• M.Phil, D.Phil in International Relations, University of Oxford.
• She “served with the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, based in Gaza, where she headed the Office’s Donor Co-ordination Unit.” Her research was said to have focused on comparative peace processes and international implementation of peace agreements in civil wars, resulting in several publications including Ending Civil Wars with Stephen John Stedman and Donald Rothchild.

Grant Harris:

• Associate, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. The international law firm has “helped shape the globalization of the legal profession for more than 60 years” and “was among the first international law firms to hire and promote non-U.S. lawyers as equal partners around the world.” Clients include “multinational corporations, international financial institutions, sovereign governments and their agencies.” Alumni include a former President of the U.N. General Assembly.
• Prior to 2005, served as Associate Director, African Affairs, at the National Security Council at the White House, and as Special Assistant in the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
• At Yale, won the Ambrose Gherini Prize for best paper in the field of international law or conflict of laws.
• J.D. degree from Yale Law School, where he served on the Journal of International Law and volunteered for the Temporary Restraining Order Project.
• Master’s in Public Affairs degree, with Distinction, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
• B.A. degree, with Highest Honors, from the University of California at Berkeley.
• Major in Political Science, Women Studies minor.
• Wrote “The Era of Multilateral Occupation” for the Berkeley Journal of International Law.
• John Gardner Fellow in the Office of Richard Holbrooke, United States Ambassador to the United Nations (1999).

Victoria Holt:

• Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center.
• Headed the expert group on military options of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. 
• Prior to 2001, served as Senior Policy Advisor at the State Department (Legislative Affairs), focusing on peacekeeping and UN issues.
• Executive Director of the Emergency Coalition for US Financial Support of the United Nations.
• A graduate of the Naval War College who holds a BA (with honors) from Wesleyan University.

Based on publicly available information, it appears that several of these individuals – Schwartz, Pan, Cousens and Harris — have worked for or at the United Nations. They all seem to share enthusiasm for the U.N., especially its military activities. However, the blockbuster book, Comrade J, based on interviews with a prominent Russian defector from the U.N., says the world body is a corrupt global institution that is infested with spies for foreign and hostile interests.

Eric P. Schwartz and Michael Pan were members of a 2005 Council on Foreign Relations Task Force, along with Susan Rice, Obama’s nominee as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., which argued that the United States should put nation-building on a par with war-fighting because the “demand for United Nations involvement in stabilization and reconstruction missions is straining the organization.” The report argued that the United States should "Push to create a standing multilateral reconstruction Trust Fund, managed under the auspices of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations." The fund “would be capitalized at approximately $1 billion and managed by a donor board consisting of representatives from the G8 member states, the UN, the World Bank, and other contributing countries."

In addition to demanding “More Blue Helmets on U.S. Troops,” the Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS) website blog discloses that the Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping, during a meeting with Schwartz, made several other requests. It urged Obama to:

• Pay $1.6 billion to the U.N. for U.S. “arrears” to the U.N.
• Lift the cap on payments to the U.N. for U.N. military operations.
• Ensure “adequate resources” for and increase U.S. participation in U.N. military activities.
• Restrict the use of the U.S. veto at the U.N. so U.N. involvement in international conflicts and situations can be increased.
• Support expansion of U.N. departments and offices, including the U.N. Department of Political Affairs.

Citizens for Global Solutions said that the Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court wanted the Obama Administration to:

• Reinstate the U.S. signature to the U.N. International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty.
• Authorize U.S. participation in the ICC’s governing body.
• Expand, deepen and further “formalize” the official channel of U.S. cooperation with the ICC, so that the court can get further involved in global conflicts such as those in Darfur, the Congo, Uganda and other areas.

These recommendations are what the Citizens for Global Solutions has admitted were discussed in these meetings. Following up, ASI has sent letters to John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Project, and Eric. P. Schwartz, asking for the names of all participants in these meetings, copies of any documents discussed or exchanged, and copies of any notes that were taken.

ASI is not alone in expressing concern about secret meetings. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times says that Obama deserves a grade of “F” when it comes to revealing transition meetings with groups. She explains, “Contrary to its own ‘’seat at the table transparency policy’ 37 and Obama’s own public promise, 38 meetings are not posted on a website. Sweet observes that, “There is no list of meetings on the site, with a meeting defined in the policy as having three or more participants.” Hence, it cannot be said with certainly what meetings are being held, what policies are being agreed to, and whether any conflicts of interest surround these deliberations.

This report is published and distributed by America’s Survival, Inc. Tel: 443-964-8208.  Cliff Kincaid, President www.usasurvival.org Kincaid@comcast.net.  You can read the full report and it’s sources by clicking to REPORT.  http://usasurvival.org/docs/ASI_Rprt_Obama_n_UN.pdf