Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the Inner City to Wall Street to the United Nations

As Kissinger Protested, AIG's Greenberg Feted at CFR: Some Crimes Forgotten

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 7, updated with video -- Some crimes can never be forgotten, while others escape even articulation. Monday in Manhattan an old man chanted "Kissinger, mass murderer" in front of the Waldorf Astoria.

   To the side of the entrance another protester with Occupy Wall Street on his jacket called "shame" to men in tuxedos, "love your botox" to companions on their arms.

  Inside the New York Historical Society was giving an award to Henry Kissinger. Outside protesters held signs ranging from Vietnam to Cyprus and Angola, Cambodia to Bangladesh. "There's blood on your bow tie," an older women shouted. Soon the police would come.  Inner City Press was told to move, but didn't.

  While the protest was announced at a General Assembly at Zuccotti Park / Liberty Square, it was small by Occupy Wall Street standards. Many of the protesters had been on this beat for some time, with weathered signs about East Timor and apartheid, also Salvador Allende.

(c) MRLee
At Waldorf, Devil's sign says "We are waiting for you, Kissinger"

  It was a street meeting, in a sense, of the new and old worlds of protest. When the police tried to move an ornery older man off "their" sidewalk, call went up for cameras. The man was scarcely moved.  Inner City Press filmed it - video here and below.

   A mere twenty blocks north on Park Avenue, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg of AIG infamy was similarly honored at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he introduced and questioned the chief executive of Hong Kong, Donald Tsang.

(c) MRLee
Hank Greenberg of C.V. Starr & Donald Tsang, no protesters

  An oil painting of Greenberg hung on CFR's wood paneled walls: he is honorary vice chairman of the organization. He let his politics hang out, asking David Tsang how fast construction can be done in Hong Kong, without all the local protests.

  But how has Greenberg escaped Occupy Wall Street's protests? On a recent traipse through midtown, the names of Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America were chanted.

  Even Citigroup's founder and former CEO Sandy Weill appeared on a sign, albeit with a pig nose. But nary a mention of Greenberg or of AIG.

  When the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision Friday announced its list of 29 global systemically important institutions -- read, Too Big To Fail -- eight were based in the US, but AIG was not among them.

  There were the Big Four -- Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo --  and Goldman Sach, Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York Mellon and even Boston-based State Street.

  But AIG, so central in the crisis and such on a conduit for the bailouts, was not on the list. And while Occupy Wall Street marchs have targets Goldman and Chase, and the Bank of America across Broadway on Liberty, AIG on Pine Street has escaped.

   So Greenberg smirks in CRF's paneled walls -- Inner City Press was not allowed a question -- and may have been present, at least in spirit, at the ceremony for Henry Kissinger downtown. And so it goes in New York, even amid Occupy Wall Street.