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Date Posted: 11:26:18 08/02/06 Wed
William Ramsey Clark (born December
18, 1927) is a
lawyer and political activist . He worked for the U.S.
Department of Justice, which included service as the 66th United
States Attorney General under President Lyndon
B. Johnson. He later became better known for his continuing advocacy on
behalf of left leaning political causes, and his role as defense attorney in the
trials of controversial figures. Clark currently serves on the defense team for
former Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein, who is facing trial in Iraq
for war
crimes. He was a recipient of the Gandhi
Peace Award and is the son of another Attorney General and Justice of the Supreme
Court, Tom
C. Clark.
Early life and career
Born in Dallas,
Texas, Clark served in the United
States Marine Corps in 1945
and 1946, then
earned a B.A.
degree from the University
of Texas at Austin in 1949,
an M.A.
and a J.D.
from the University
of Chicago in 1950.
He was admitted to the Texas bar in 1950,
and to practice before the Supreme
Court of the United States in 1956.
From 1951 to 1961,
Clark was an associate and partner in the law firm of Clark, Reed and Clark.
Kennedy and Johnson Administrations
Clark served in the Department of Justice as the Assistant
Attorney General of the Lands Division from 1961
to 1965, and as
Deputy Attorney General from 1965
to 1967.
On March 2,
1967, President
Johnson appointed him to be Attorney General of the United States, an
appointment probably influenced by Johnson's expectation that Clark's father,
Associate Justice Tom
C. Clark, would resign from the Supreme Court to avoid a conflict of
interest. Johnson wanted a vacancy to be created on the Court so he could
appoint Thurgood
Marshall, the first African American justice. The elder Clark resigned from
the supreme court on June 12, 1967.
Clark served as Attorney General until Johnson's term as President ended on January
20, 1969.
Clark played an important role in the history of the American
Civil Rights movement. During his years at the Justice Department, he
As Attorney General during part of the Vietnam
War, Clark oversaw the prosecution of the Boston Five for
“conspiracy to aid and abet draft
resistance.” Four of the five were convicted, including pediatrician
Dr. Benjamin
Spock and Yale chaplain William
Sloane Coffin Jr.
In addition to his government work, during this period Clark was also
director of the American
Judicature Society (in 1963)
and national president of the Federal
Bar Association in 1964–65.
Controversial Activism
Following his term he worked as a law professor and was active in the
anti–Vietnam War movement. He visited North
Vietnam in 1972.
In 1974 he was the Democratic
Party's candidate for the United
States Senate from New
York, losing to Jacob
Javits.
More recently, Clark has become controversial for his political views and
publications.
Clark is affiliated with VoteToImpeach,
an organization
advocating the impeachment
of President
George W. Bush. He has been an opponent of both Gulf
War conflicts. "Impeachment is the most important issue facing
Constitutional government in the United States. Impeachment will determine
whether the American people will hold the Bush administration accountable for
its High Crimes and Misdemeanors" [1].
Clark is the founder of the International
Action Center, an organization claiming North
Korea is not a violator of human rights [2].
It holds significant overlapping membership with the Workers'
World Party. Clark and the IAC helped found the protest organization A.N.S.W.E.R.
(Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).
Like other lawyers defending unpopular figures, such as French lawyer Jacques
Vergčs — who defended, among other figures, Slobodan
Milošević and Tarek
Aziz —, Ramsey Clark has been criticized for some of the people he agreed
to defend and for his controversial statements concerning these clients. Hence,
in 2004, Clark joined the defense team in Saddam
Hussein's trial before the Iraqi
Special Tribunal. Clark returned to Iraq in late November 2005 to appear
before the Iraqi
Special Tribunal arguing "that it failed to respect basic human rights
and was illegal because it was formed as a consequence of the United States'
illegal war of aggression against the people of Iraq." On November 28, 2005
in a BBC interview while defending Saddam, Clark claimed that some of the acts
of which the former Iraqi President was accused were done out of necessity,
saying: "He [Saddam] had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly
when you have an assassination attempt" [3].
On 18 March
2006, Clark
attended the funeral of Slobodan
Milošević. He has declared: "History will prove Milošević
was right. Charges are just that, charges. The trial did not have facts."
He also described Slobodan
Milošević and Saddam
Hussein as "[b]oth commanders" who "were courageous enough to
fight more powerful countries."
Judicial activities
Clark has been criticized for his work by a number of organizations and
individuals, while at the same time receiving praise from other groups (Amnesty
International, the ACLU,
the NAACP, etc)
for his defense of the human rights of Palestinians
and American
Indians. As a lawyer,
he has also provided legal counsel and advice to controversial figures,
including:
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