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Revision as of 04:16, 15 July 2004 by 63.231.226.163 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)William Ramsey Clark (born December 18, 1927) served as the 66th United States Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson. He is the son of Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark. He is a recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award.
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 in 1949, an M.A. and a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1950. He was admitted to the Texas bar in 1951, 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. He served in the United States Department of Justice as Assistant Attorney General of the Lands Division from 1961 to 1965, and as Deputy Attorney General from 1965 to 1967. Clark was director of the American Judicature Society in 1963. From 1964 to 1965 he was national president of the Federal Bar Association. On March 2, 1967, President Johnson appointed him Attorney General of the United States. He served in that capacity until January 20, 1969.
Clark is well-known for having unconventional political views and for providing legal counsel to numerous controversial figures, including former Nazis Karl Linnas and Jack Riemer, Liberian political figure Charles Taylor during his 1985 fight against extradition from the United States to Liberia, and in 1989 to Lyndon LaRouche, who faced charges of conspiracy and mail fraud. Clark also represented Slobodan Milosevic in the International Criminal Court. Clark has also represented Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, a leader of the Rwandan genocide. He also represented PLO leaders in a lawsuit brought by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the wheelchair bound elderly tourist who was shot and tossed overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1986. Prior to the start of the second Gulf War, Clark was retained by the state of Iraq, serving as legal counsel for the Hussein regime.
Clark is affiliated with VoteToImpeach, an organization advocating the impeachment of President George W. Bush. He has been an opponent of both Gulf Wars. It is also widely claimed that his association with Lyndon LaRouche in the early 1990s went beyond legal counsel to advocacy. He is the founder of the International Action Center, which has much overlapping membership with the Workers' World Party. Clark and the IAC helped found the anti-war group ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).
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| Preceded by: Nicholas Katzenbach |
Attorney General of the United States | Succeeded by: John N. Mitchell |