Soros ‘Advised Clinton on Handling Albania Unrest’

Hillary Clinton at Democratic National Convention. Photo: Clinton's Facebook account

Pro-Republican US websites have published an email that the founder of the Open Society Foundations, the business magnate and philanthropist George Soros, sent Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, over the unrest in Albania caused by an opposition protest on January 11, 2011.

They quote a WikiLeaks cable, which is part of a mass of emails to and from Clinton released this year, some of which were previously declassified by the US State Department.

The email dated January 24, 2011 date, passed to Clinton by her aides on behalf of Soros, deals with his concerns about the unrest in Albania.

In the email, Soros advised the US to pay attention to the issue, asking the international community to put pressure on former Prime Minister Sali Berisha and on the then opposition leader Edi Rama – now the Prime Minister - to stall further public demonstrations and tone down their public pronouncements.

Soros also called for the appointment of a senior European official as a mediator.

The email was sent three days after the Republican Guard, a body in charge of protecting Albanian state institutions and senior officials, shot at an opposition crowd protesting in front of Prime Minister’s office, killing four people and wounding several others.

Thousands of protesters pelted Berisha's office and the police with stones and eggs, while police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades in response.

According to the leaked email, Soros said: “The demonstration resulted from opposition protests over the conduct of parliamentary elections in 2009. The political environment has deteriorated ever since and is now approaching levels of 1997, when similar issues caused the country to slide into anarchy and violence.

“The US and the EU must work in complete harmony over this, but given Albania's European aspirations the EU must take the lead. That is why I suggest appointing a mediator such as Carl Bildt, Martti Ahtisaari or Miroslav Lajcak, all of whom have strong connections to the Balkans,” Soros allegedly wrote.

US media have emphasized that, following the email, scheduled demonstration of Berisha was indeed canceled while Lajcak one of the names proposed by Soros, duly arrived in Albania as a mediator. 

According to the Open Society Foundation, the letter was one more attempt of George Soros to support democratic reform in Albania.

“George Soros and his foundation, the Open Society Foundations, have long been engaged in Albania, first establishing a national foundation there in 1992. As part of this long term commitment to Albania and in response to escalating violence in the capital in 2011, Mr. Soros advocated, in a communication to then Secretary of State Clinton, for the US and EU to work together to support the country,” Open Society Foundation spokesperson told BIRN.

According to the spokesperson, both Soros and the Open Society Foundation for Albania “continue to support democratic reform in Albania today. “

The email about the unrest forms part of Wikileaks’ Clinton email archive, released by the website this March.

In March 2015, it became known that Clinton, during her tenure as Secretary of State, used her family's private email server for official communications, rather than the official State Department email accounts maintained on federal servers. Those official communications included thousands of emails that would later be marked classified by the State Department retroactively.

The controversy has unfolded against the backdrop of Clinton's 2016 presidential election campaign.

Some experts, officials, and members of the US Congress have contended that her use of private messaging system software and a private server violated State Department protocols and procedures, as well as federal laws and regulations governing recordkeeping.

In response, Clinton has said that her use of personal email complied with US laws and State Department regulations, and that former secretaries of state had also maintained personal email accounts.

Of the 30,332 emails and attachments in the WikiLeaks Hillary Clinton folder, only 17 related to Albania while Clinton was in the charge of US diplomacy.

Others tell about detainees from the Guantanamo Bay camp relocating to Albania, among them five Chinese Uighurs who came in 2006.

Still others note routine diplomatic issues between the two countries, like high-level visits, ambassadorial appointments and plans to shrink the USAID office in Tirana.

Correction: This text was updated on August 15, after BIRN received the answer from Open Society Foundation.