Viet D. Dinh
http://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/dinh-viet-d.cfm#

During his time at the Department of Justice, Dinh played a key role in developing legal policy initiatives to combat terrorism—namely, the USA PATRIOT Act.

Board of Directors
http://www.newscorp.com/corp_gov/bod.html

Who controls Fox News? A peek at the higher-ups
SFBG
http://www.sfbg.com/PDFs/politics/newscorpchart1009

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Viet Dinh is a News Corp. director and attorney who came to the United States as a boy from Vietnam. In a 2002 interview with the LA Times, Dinh, who then served as an assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, recalled an exchange he’d had with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. “He told me: ‘The art of leadership is the redefinition of the possible,’” Dinh recounted. “‘I want you to be the think tank to help me redefine the possible for the Department of Justice.’”

~snip~

A law professor at Georgetown, Dinh is also listed as the founder and chief of Bancroft Associates PLLC, a consulting firm that specializes in helping Fortune 500 companies “navigate the federal and state criminal or civil investigations, congressional investigations and complex litigation,” according to the firm’s Web site. It also specializes in public relations.

News Corp. Director Leading Phone-Hack Probe Has Personal Ties to Murdoch
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-06/dinh-s-ties-to-murdoch-under-fire-as-point-man-in-hacking-probe.html

News Corp. (NWSA)’s independent directors, obligated to assess Rupert Murdoch and other top executives’ handling of the company’s phone-hacking scandal, are relying for guidance on Viet Dinh, a board member with personal ties to the Murdoch family.

Dinh, 43, is point man between the independent board members and a panel that New York-based News Corp. (NWS) created to cooperate with authorities probing phone hacking by the defunct News of the World tabloid and to evaluate company standards.

A Washington attorney and Georgetown University Law Center professor, Dinh has been a friend of Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch’s oldest son Lachlan since 2003 and is godfather to Lachlan’s second child. In 1992, a decade before they met, the South China Morning Post, then owned by Murdoch, helped Dinh free his sister from a Hong Kong refugee camp.

“Usually it’s required that an investigation like this is undertaken by a committee of independent directors,” said Jay Lorsch, a Harvard Business School professor who has served on the boards of four publicly traded companies. “It’s very hard to be objective if you’re involved in any way -- financially or emotionally -- with the family of the chief executive you are supposed to be supervising.”

Hewlett-Packard spying scandal sheds new light on US corporate “ethics”
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2006/10/hepa-o02.html

The chairman and a half dozen other top officials have resigned or been fired at Hewlett-Packard, the biggest US personal computer and printer manufacturer, amid a scandal over illegal corporate spying that has unfolded over the past month.

The spying campaign, launched by H-P board Chairwoman Patricia Dunn in response to leaks to the press of internal corporate discussions, included surreptitiously obtaining the phone records of H-P board members and employees, surveillance of board members and journalists, and the emailing of spyware to journalists in an effort to learn the identity of their sources within the company.

Private telephone records on hundreds of cell and home telephones were obtained by a method called “pretexting,” in which investigators made repeated calls to telephone companies, pretending to be the individuals targeted, until they were able to convince a phone company employee to release the information.

News Corp. (NWSA)’s independent directors hired the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, according to Mary Jo White, a partner at the firm and the former U.S. attorney in New York.

Michael Mukasey, who served as U.S. attorney general under George W. Bush, will join White in representing directors, Suzanne Elio, a spokeswoman for the firm, said today.

“Debevoise & Plimpton has been retained to advise Viet Dinh in his supervision of the Management and Standards Committee on behalf of the independent members of the board,” Elio said in an e-mail. She declined to comment further.

News Corp. Independent Directors Hire Debevoise Law Firm
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-19/news-corp-independent-directors-hire-debevoise-firm-s-white-mukasey.html

Dinh, who runs a small law firm in Washington that specializes in damage control, and venture capital executive Tom Perkins are leading the efforts of independent directors, who hold nine of 16 board seats. Dinh, also a professor at Georgetown University and the chief architect of the USA Patriot Act, represented Perkins, a former Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) director, during a scandal at that company.

Who controls Fox News? A peek at the higher-ups
SFBG
http://www.sfbg.com/PDFs/politics/newscorpchart1009

Thomas Perkins, a News Corp. director, is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He is a founding partner of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, an investment firm with stakes in Genentech, Google, Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Amazon, and others. He was previously an executive at Hewlett Packard. Perkins was the fifth husband of romance novelist Danielle Steel. He owned the 287-foot Maltese Falcon -- the largest and most expensive private sailboat ever built. A partner at Perkins’ firm, John Gage, also serves as a director of the Markle Foundation, a private nonprofit that provides recommendations for using technology to enhance the federal government’s intelligence-sharing abilities, according to a policy paper published by the foundation. Stanley Shuman, another News Corp. director, is listed as a managing director at the Markle Foundation.

Who controls Fox News? A peek at the higher-ups
SFBG
http://www.sfbg.com/PDFs/politics/newscorpchart1009

Stanley Shuman, a News Corp. director, is listed on Forbes as a managing director of New York investment firm Allen & Co., which employs former CIA Director George Tenet, according to BusinessWeek. Allen & Co. is also known for hosting a lavish annual retreat that attracts the ranks of the superrich. Shuman is also listed as a director of the Markle Foundation, a group of big business leaders and intelligence experts from past administrations, which advocates more efficient intelligence sharing at the highest levels of federal government to fight terrorism. The Markle Foundation’s past recommendations influenced some of the legislation passed in the wake of 9/11, according to one of its policy papers, which greatly expanded government powers for information gathering. Shuman’s online bio also names him as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and notes that he served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Clinton. He is also listed as the chair of an intellectual property-rights outfit called SESAC.

Uribe meets with Bill Clinton
http://colombiareports.com/uribe-meets-with-ex-us-president-bill-clinton/

Bill Clinton, ex-president of the United States and husband of the current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, met with Colombian president Alvaro Uribe on Wednesday in search of resources for the reconstruction of Haiti.

~snip~

While his wife is on a diplomatic tour of various Latin American countries, ex-president Clinton is using the opportunity to raise money for Haiti’s reconstruction following the devastating earthquake that happened there in January of this year. The money is being raised through Clinton’s own charity, the Clinton Foundation.

Clinton will also be taking a look at various projects in Colombia that the Clinton Foundation has helped fund while visiting the country.

News Corp. Nominates Chao, Uribe to Board as Directors Step Down
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-09-04/news-corp-nominates-chao-uribe-to-board-as-directors-step-down.html

News Corp. (NWSA), the media company run by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, nominated ex-Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao as directors, bolstering the board’s government experience.

Uribe and Chao will replace Andrew Knight and John Thornton, who plan to step down as directors following the annual meeting, News Corp. said today in a statement.

The changes presage a broader shakeup in News Corp.’s organization over the next year. Murdoch announced a plan in June to break up News Corp.’s publishing and entertainment divisions into separate companies. Murdoch will remain chairman of both businesses and CEO of the entertainment division.

Chao served as labor secretary under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. After that, she became a distinguished fellow of the Heritage Foundation in Washington. The Harvard-educated Uribe was president of Colombia from 2002 to 2010 and more recently served on an advisory council for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), News Corp. said.

Uribe was ‘the head of Colombia’s paramilitaries’: former AUC ringleader
http://colombiareports.com/head-colombias-paramilitaries-former-auc-leader-ex-president-uribe/

Former President Alvaro Uribe was the “head of Colombia’s paramilitary groups,” according to a former paramilitary commander and witness in the case against a presidential candidate loyal to the former head of state.

The accusations were made by Pablo Hernan Sierra, alias “Alberto Guerrero”, former commander of the Cacique Pipinta bloc of the paramilitary group AUC, during an interview with Venezuelan network TeleSur.

“He was our commander,” claimed Sierra. “He never fired a gun; but he led, he contributed, he was our man at the top.”

“The massacres, the disappearances, the creation of an {AUC} group: he is responsible,” said Sierra.

The ex-paramilitary is a key witness in an investigation into Uribe’s alleged ties with paramilitary groups, especially his role in the formation of an AUC bloc while governor of Antioquia department from 1995-97, and his use of the AUC to win votes in the 2002 Presidential election.

Details of testimony that involves Uribe in a massacre
http://colombiasupport.net/2008/06/details-of-testimony-that-involves-uribe-in-a-massacre/

The ex-paramilitary Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández declared to the Colombian Attorney General’s
office this past February that President Alvaro Uribe and his brother Santiago participated in planning a
massacre in the north of the department of Antioquia, according to a copy of the testimony obtained by
the Nuevo Herald. Part of the confession of Villalba, whose credibility Uribe attacked this week, was
utilized by the Interamerican Human Rights Court (CIDH) to condemn Colombia for that massacre,
which occurred in the village of El Aro in 1997, according to an extensive decision of that tribunal two
years ago. Villalba did not involve the ruler or his brother in his testimony before the CIDH, but his
narrative was part of the proofs that served the tribunal to conclude that in the slaughter of El Aro
agents of the public security forces collaborated with groups of the United Self-defenses of Colombia
(Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia—AUC) to murder in cold blood at least fifteen campesinos “in a
defenseless position, taking their goods away from others and generating terror and displacement,”
according to the 160-page decision. This same decision cites a testimony to the effect that the
government of the department of Antioquia, at that time led by the currently president, refused to
extend protection to the inhabitants of El Aro, when they learned that the paramilitary attack was
imminent. “In the face of this situation, about two months before the occupation, the Community
Action Board (Junta de Acción Comunal) asked the government for protection, which was
not offered,” says the decision of the CIDH.

Until now, some of aspects of the declaration of Villalba to the Colombian prosecutors were only known
in an indirect and fragmentary way which where revealed surprisingly by Uribe during a radio interview
this week in order to reject what the ex-paramilitary pointed out. But the Nuevo Herald obtained a
complete copy of the declearation that, in fact, contains repeated testimonies of Villalba that Uribe,
when he was Governor of the department of Antioquia, hobnobbed with the highest leaders of the AUC
and gave them carte blanche to carry out the massacre. “{Alvaro Uribe told us} that what had to be
done, that we would do it,” declared Villalba in describing a meting in which AUC leaders, military
personnel and the brothers Alvaro and Santiago Uribe. Villalba’s 19-page declaration describes, using
names and details a close relationship of complicity and camaraderie between military and police
authorities with the heads of the death squads.

Wiretapping scandal increasingly reveals political persecution under Uribe
http://colombiareports.co/wiretapping-scandal-increasingly-reveals-political-persecution-under-uribe/

As Colombia’s Supreme Court investigates illegal spying by the country’s former intelligence agency, an increasing amount of details are revealed about the alleged political persecution of leftist opponents of former President Alvaro Uribe.

A former director of Colombian intelligence agency DAS, Jorge Noguera, is currently on trial for various charges surrounding the wiretapping scandal that has already seen multiple convictions of Uribe’s former chief of staff and a second intelligence chief.

Colombia’s now-defunct intelligence agency, the DAS, did not report to anyone but the president and had been spying on the Supreme Court, journalists, human rights defenders and politicians in a scandal that was uncovered in 2008.

SECRETARY CLINTON: President Uribe, let me begin by telling you how pleased I am to be here in Colombia for the first time. You have been so gracious in entertaining my husband and my daughter in the past. And now, I finally have completed the family visits to your beautiful country.

This is a trip I have looked forward to making for quite some time, and it is a real pleasure to see how far Colombia has come and how much Colombia is contributing not only to its own people but to those who face similar struggles beyond your borders. So thank you for your hospitality, thank you for the very comprehensive discussion that we have had together today, and for the opportunity to reaffirm the friendship and strong partnership between the United States and Colombia.

In the last decade, Colombia has confronted immense challenges. And by any fair measure, Colombia has made great progress. That is thanks to the leadership of your government and to the resilience and dedication of the Colombian people. And even with continuing challenges in your own struggle, Colombia is playing a positive and increasingly important regional role, whether it be on promoting clean energy or on relief and recovery efforts in Haiti. The United States has been proud to stand with Colombia, and we will continue to stand with you in the future.

President Uribe and I discussed Colombia’s continuing efforts in the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime. And I expressed the commitment of the Obama Administration to continuing to partner with Colombia as it works to consolidate the security gains of recent years.

We also discussed Colombia’s efforts to enhance human rights, the strides made, the challenges that remain, the ongoing need for vigilance and commitment. And I also want to publicly express our admiration for President Uribe providing a remarkable example of strong democratic leadership in respecting the constitutional court’s decision regarding another term.

Colombia is such a valued partner and a leader that we look forward to expanding and deepening our partnership. Colombia has helped to lead the way as an active member of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas. Just a few examples that we look to and encourage others to do so as well: developing cutting-edge mass transit systems, exploiting the potential of biofuels, becoming a leader in the use of ethanol, spearheading an initiative to help build the infrastructure for long-distance electrical transmissions from Panama, through the Andean states, to Chile.

Colombia has also worked hard to address the historic lack of opportunity for many of its people, and in doing so has provided important models for other countries in our hemisphere. Recently, the United States and Colombia concluded the first steering committee meeting for our action plan on racial and ethnic equality, which will work to improve access to education, employment, and other opportunities for Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities.

We signed a new science and technology agreement today that will facilitate the exchange of ideas and technology to help both our countries compete in the global economy. All these and many other efforts speak to the enduring bonds of friendship and the stronger partnership for the future that we have, not just between our governments but between our peoples.

Mr. President, I speak for President Obama and myself when I say that you, personally, have been an essential partner to the United States. And because of your commitment to building strong democratic institutions here in Colombia and to nurturing the bonds of friendship between our two countries, you leave a legacy of great progress that will be viewed in historic terms. I know, though, as you said yourself in your remarks here today, you realize how much more is yet to be done.

This morning, I met with the two remaining presidential candidates. This is a choice for the Colombian people to make, but I have to say that the first round of voting was a testament to the vibrancy and strength of Colombia’s democracy. And the United States will work closely and constructively with whomever the Colombian people choose in this second round.

So thank you once again, Mr. President. And you’re right; we had a wonderful dinner last night here in Bogota among friends, some Colombian, some American. And we talked about how remarkable it was that such a common event could take place. And as I drove here to the presidential palace and had the chance to look out the window at this absolutely magnificent city, my heart was filled with the hope that I know fills the hearts of so many Colombians, that what has been accomplished will only go from strength to strength. We will stand with the people of Colombia to make that so.

Thank you so much, Mr. President. (Applause.)