Comment on Johnson's Russia List on the Talbott-Applebaum correspondence.
Chris Doss the Russia Journal ------------------ From: JBERNSTEIN91 at aol.com (Jonas Bernstein) Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 Subject: Re: JRL 6304 Talbott replies to Anne Applebaum
Strobe Talbott claims the Clinton Administration talked about the need for Russia to have a free press, civil society and non-corrupt judiciary, to protect property and contracts, etc., "at every level" of the Russian government, "including the presidential one," and that, in particular, he and his team did not "look on, smiling" at the loans-for-shares outrage.
The problem is that we'll have to take his word for it: I challenge JRL readers to find a single instance in which a U.S. government official or international lending institution representative publicly criticized loans-for-shares while the blatantly rigged auctions were being carried out, or in their immediate aftermath.
Why were Talbott et al publicly silent about the loans-for-shares scheme if it was, as he now says, "an orgy of government-sanctioned insider trading" in which "the oligarchs made out, literally, like bandits"? In fact, I don't recall them acknowledging at that time that Russia even had oligarchs.