Besides the two young American journalists released by the North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-il, the biggest winner in Bill Clinton's mission to Pyongyang was the weird and reclusive dictator, who just days ago called Bill's wife, Hillary, "a pensioner going shopping" and "by no means intelligent."
The former president's humanitarian visit did what it needed to do for the 67-year-old dictator, who has defied the US and much of the world, including China, with missile launches and two nuclear tests. It buffed up his image at home, burnished his legacy with a photo taken with Bill Clinton that landed on the front pages of newspapers around the world. In that photo, Kim Jong-il radiates victory and Clinton grimness because, in a sense, Clinton knows he's being used. To his people at home, Kim Jong-il is seen seated across a table appearing to negotiate with Clinton; he is seen sharing a meal with Clinton; and, the North Korean state news agency reported that Kim Jong-il had received an apology from the US and a message from the current President Obama. (The US government denies both.)
Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, supposedly confessed to the crime of wandering over the border of China into North Korean territory while reporting for Al Gore's Current TV on the trafficking of North Korean women into China as part of a sex trade. They had been detained in a guest house since last June, when they were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. While in the guest house they were allowed to call their families in the U.S. During one or more of those calls they they delivered the message from their captors that if Bill Clinton were to personally come to North Korea and seek their release, the deal would be done. (News reports make clear that the former president did not board the private plane that took him to Pyongyang before officials in the Obama administration received assurances that if Bill Clinton came the women would be released.)
The North Koreans rejected other offered envoys including Al Gore (as the co-founder of Current TV he would be seen merely as their boss pleading on behalf of his employees, and besides he was only Clinton's vice president and a failed presidential candidate) and John Kerry (also a failed presidential candidate and merely the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).
So the North Koreans in charge got what they wanted -- all that video, stills, pumped-up domestic "news," propaganda -- their leader engaging with the former president of the United States.
The North Koreans also sent the message out that they could deal with the man in the Clinton family. Who knows? They might believe that they had weakened Hillary in the eyes of the world and punished her for, last month, likening North Korean leaders to spoiled children.
Bill Clinton also had a very good day. He emerged the hero, watched the extremely moving scene as the women, one a mother of a young girl, were reunited with their ecstatic families. The publicity is a wonderful buildup for the former president's Clinton Global Initiative in New York next month; and it will undoubtedly help him raise more millions for the good work he does around the world.
He also got material for his next book which is sure to come, given his unwieldy 957-page doorstop of a memoir (My Life, 2004). Leon Panetta, now the head of the CIA, formerly Clinton's chief of staff, told me when I interviewed him for my book on Clinton's post presidency, Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House, that he found the book's first half excellent, but the second half, on his presidency, a failure. He "just kind of ran through his schedules."
One of the people who accompanied President Clinton to North Korea was Justin Cooper, the young aide who camped out at Bill Clinton's house in Chappaqua when Clinton was struggling to write his memoir during George W. Bush's first term. Clinton himself says he wouldn't have completed it without Cooper, whom he credits in the book's acknowledgments with pulling all-nighters during the final six months of work. Presumably, Cooper was taking notes this time, for what is sure to be a chapter in Bill's next post presidency book.
When Bill was president, he sent Jimmy Carter on a mission to Pyongyang that no one, including Bill, considered a success. (Clinton, as president, considered Carter to be an annoying meddler.) Still Carter's post presidency missions around the world yielded him a Nobel Peace Prize. Bill Clinton, still in a way reforming his image damaged by Monica Lewinsky and Marc Rich, would love to have one of those.
As a postscript, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson -- whom Bill Clinton has not yet forgiven for throwing his support to Obama, not Hillary, even though Clinton, as president, had appointed Richardson to two cabinet posts -- yearned to fly to North Korea to seek the release of the women, a role he has played previously and successfully. It would not be surprising if Bill Clinton feels such sweet revenge that today he, not Richardson, basks in worldwide acclaim.