White House Counsel Greg Craig has again tendered his resignation which was accepted by President Obama.

A high-profile lawyer, Gregory Craig gained renown through a series of notorious cases.
In 1977, he defended former CIA Director Richard Helms, charged with false testimony before the Senate for concealing the Agency’s involvement in the Chilean military coup. Helms was merely handed a suspended prison sentence and a fine of 2,000 dollars.
In 1981, Craig defended John Hinckley, Jr., a friend of the Bush family who had attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan to pave the way for George Bush Sr.’s ascension to the presidency. Craig obtained his acquittal as ’innocent by reason of insanity’, a verdict which shocked the U.S. public.
In 1997, he defended his friend President Bill Clinton, accused of sexual harassment against Paula Jones. The case was closed but ultimately rebounded with Monica Lewinsky.
In 2000, he defended the father of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban child retained by his mother in the USA. He won recognition of the father’s rights and Elian was repatriated to Cuba.
In 2004, it is Craig’s turn to defend Kofi Annan, arraigned by the Paul Volker Commission for the Food for Oil scandal.
In 2008, he shielded from justice former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada and former Defence Minister Carlos Sancez Berzain, both accused of being behind the murder of 67 activists.

In addition to his activities as a lawyer, Greg Craig was Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s Senior Advisor on Defense, Foreign Policy and National Security (1984-88). In 1997-98, he served as Director of Policy Planning in Madeleine Albright’s cabinet, focusing his attention on the Tibet file. In 1998, President Clinton appointed Craig as Special Counsel to head off the impeachment procedure linked to the Monica Lewinsly affair.

Despite his past ties to the Clinton’s, Greg Craig declared early in the game his support of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential ambitions, for which Obama thanked him by appointing Craig to his cabinet.

In charge of the Guantanamo file, he was dismayed to discover the psychological torture experiments carried out by the teams of military doctors to subdue and dehumanize prisoners [1]. He transmitted the telling documents to the competent Senatorial commission, provoking the ire of White House Chief of Cabinet Rahm Emanuel. In the final analysis, it was Emanuel who maneuvered him out, thereby sealing the Guantanamo crimes case in order to conceal those which were perpetrated on September 11.

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[1] « ТАЙНА ГУАНТАНАМО », by Thierry Meyssan, Октябрь, October 19, 2009 (this reference article will be published in English on Voltaire Network as soon as possible).