18. “More original, brand new”: See “Archives of the DINOSAUR Mailing List,” hosted at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, http://dml.cmnh.org/about.html.
19. “Dinosaurs are the one thing”: See Ann Marie Gardner, “Digging for Dinos in the Land of Genghis Khan,” Discover, August 16, 2007.
20. “Smugglers have gotten so bold”: Ibid.
21. “There’s no control”: Ibid.
22. “You have to take ‘dinosaur’ out of your name”: Interviews with Bolor Minjin.
23. “She married an American”: From Bolor and others in Mongolia and the United States.
24. “If we leave”: Interviews with Bolor Minjin.
25. “like a service company” and related: Ibid.
26. nationalistic: Mongolia’s politics appeared to be increasingly nationalistic. “Media reports and observer reports suggest a rising anti-foreigner sentiment among the public, mostly based on the idea of wanting Mongolian resources developed by Mongolians for the benefit of Mongolians,” read one State Department report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
27. Oyungerel Tsedevdamba: Oyuna’s books include the Mongolian bestsellers Nomadic Dialogues and Notes on My Study in America. In March 2008, she published an award-winning historical novel, The Green-Eyed Lama, coauthored with her husband, Jeffrey L. Falt, about the Mongolian purges of the 1930s. “The book lists the names of 614 victims from Khuvsgul province who were sentenced to death or 10-years imprisonment on just two days on the same burial location where the main characters of The Green Eyed Lama were purged,” Oyuna writes on her website. “During the book tour...buyers of the book opened its last few pages first and searched the names of their own relatives. Often they found one. In Renchinlkhumbe soum, a reader found three family members killed on the same day.” In a blurb, former President Elbegdorj said, “I hope that the world will see this book some day. Maybe then, the people will understand Mongolia’s pains and struggles, and the Mongolians will be better understood by the world community.”
28. “her well-earned success”: See Georgia de Chamberet, “Dreaming of Outer Mongolia (1), An Editor’s Odyssey,” BookBlast Diary (blog), bookblast.com.
29. “Sister Oyuna”: Interviews with Oyuna Tsedevdamba and Bolor Minjin.
30. “We are losing our heritage”: Ibid.
31. “Give me something to read”: Ibid. Oyuna later supplemented her reading by studying at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.
32. “preaching”: Interviews with Oyuna Tsedevdamba.
33. “Dinosaur’s Dream”: The story ran in Mongolian in Ardchilal. Oyuna kindly provided me with an English translation.
34. “Dinosaurs!”: Interviews with Oyuna Tsedevdamba and Jeff Falt.
35. “You’re talking to me about dinosaurs?”: This account comes from Oyuna.
36. “urgent appeal”: “President of Mongolia Is Concerned That T-Rex Skeleton May Belong to Mongolia,” Office of the President of Mongolia, Public Relations & Communications Division, May 18, 2012.
37. “held the title”: See Wynne Parry, “Tyrannosaur Skeleton for Sale, but Ownership Is Questioned,” Live Science, May 18, 2012.
38. “No one knows”: Ibid.
39. “That’s like saying”: Interviews with Jeff Falt.
CHAPTER 16: THE PRESIDENT’S PREDICAMENT
1. “proudly”: See James Brooke, “The Saturday Profile; a Mongolian and His Nation, Evolving Together,” New York Times, December 25, 2004.
2. Lviv, Ukraine: The city lay on the far west side of Ukraine, at the Polish border. The former Mongol conquest was now a “Little Paris.” Historians were only just discovering the activities of the secret police in Lviv during World War II, when scores of Jews and Poles were deported, and worse. After the war, Lviv remained a part of the Soviet Union and became a sister city of Winnipeg, Canada, the immigration destination of the family Prokopi.
3. “Mr. Gorbachev”: See the nine-second YouTube clip of Ronald Reagan saying the famous line at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NjNL4Nsa4Q.
4. “this incredible clicking”: See “Opening an Embassy in the Land of Genghis Khan,” an oral history with Ambassador Joseph Lake, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, adst.org.
5. “truly progressed”: Ibid.
6. “My perspective”: Ibid.
7. “third neighbor”: For more on what Baasanjav Ganbold, Mongolia’s ambassador to the Republic of Korea, called an initial “rhetorical gesture to support Mongolia’s first move toward democracy,” see http://asiasociety.org/korea/mongolias -third-neighbor-foreign-policy.
8. “Mongolians seem remarkably free”: Shapiro, “Starting from Scratch.”
9. “teach Christianity”: The South Dakotans were following the mandate of Matthew 28:19 (New International Version): “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
10. “Well, do you think this Jesus”: Tom Terry, Like an Eagle: 10 Years in Mongolia (self- pub., 2014).
11. “lifted verbatim”: Shapiro, “Starting from Scratch.” As they worked to draft the constitution there “wasn’t a single computer” to be found, one participant later said. Tsagaan, the future chief of staff for President Elbegdorj, had to use a typewriter for drafts and edits, later saying, “I think I read the draft constitution more than any other person in the country.” Tsagaan went on to serve in various ministry posts including finance and education. Before becoming the president’s chief of staff he worked in the private sector on renewable energy options for Mongolian nomads. See Meloney Lindberg, “A Conversation with Tsagaan Puntsag, Chief of Staff of the President of Mongolia,” Asia Foundation, May 21, 2014, https://asiafoundation.org/2014/05/21/a-conversation-with-tsagaan-puntsag -chief-of-staff-of-the-president-of-mongolia/.
12. “We, the people”: See The Constitutions of Mongolia: 1924, 1940, 1960, 1992. You can find this online at Stanford Libraries. And 1992 is the one you want. Also consti tutionproject.org.
13. “His motive”: Terry, Like an Eagle.
14. “further a better understanding”: For more information on the AMONG Foundation, see the organization’s website at amongfoundation.org.
15. “guaranteeing religious freedom”: Terry, Like an Eagle. The result was a shaky facsimile of the U.S. Constitution, which reads, with unwavering clarity, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
16. Scourge: Christians had been trying to convert Mongolians for ages. As Rossabi wrote in The Mongols, in 1245, Pope Innocent the IV sent an emissary, John of Plano Carpini, to ask the Mongols to stop attacking Christians, and to convert. “John’s mission did not produce the desired results,” Rossabi wrote. John wrote a “condescending” report saying the Mongols didn’t use tablecloths or napkins, “and did not wash their dishes, which he found uncouth and barbaric. He wrote that his Mongol hosts were quick to execute their own people or foreigners who poured out or wasted milk or food, or who killed young birds.”
17. Details of the South Dakotans’ activities in Mongolia come from Tom Terry’s book Like an Eagle, but I also drew from English-language newspapers of the time.
18. “epidemic”: Terry, Like an Eagle.
19. IRI: For an overview of the International Republican Institute’s work in Mongolia see iri.org.
20. “Contract with America”: By signing the “Contract,” candidates promised, among other things, to build more prisons and deny welfare benefits to minors. The New York Times advised caution, calling the overall plan “not only reckless but deceptive” because the wealthy would win, the poor lose. Manifested, the “Contract” amounted to a “throwback” that “promised tax cuts and a balanced budget but led to huge deficits and financial scandals.” The policies were “likely
to usher in an era of greater political turbulence characterized by empty sloganeering, mean-spirited campaigning and the growth of local and national third parties.” See John B. Judis, “The New Era of Instability,” New York Times, November 10, 1994.
21. “conservative revolution”: “The changes being debated in America now can provide useful lessons and insights to democratic societies throughout the world...,” the conservative Heritage Foundation declared at the time.
22. “Contract with the Mongolian Voter”: See Nate Thayer, “In Mongolia, a GOP-Style Revolutionary Movement,” Washington Post, April 6, 1997.
23. “I read the Contract”: Ibid.
24. “The merger, illegal and corrupt”: See Michael Kohn, Dateline Mongolia: An American Journalist in Nomad’s Land (Bandon, OR: RDR Books, 2006).
25. “probably the most important economist”: See Peter Passell, “Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Shock Therapist,” New York Times, June 27, 1993.
26. “mess of every kind” and “one could go”: PBS interviewed Sachs about Russia in the early 1990s on June 15, 2000. You can find the transcript at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/int_jeffreysachs.html.
27. “waiting for a major crisis”: Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein saw this happening around the world, in places like Sri Lanka and New Orleans, where the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina attracted a “nexus of Republican politicians, think tanks, and land developers” talking about “clean sheets and exciting opportunities.”
28. “powerful ruling alliance”: Ibid.
29. “Communists turned capitalists”: Ibid.
30. “unfettered free markets”: Ibid.
31. “conservative think tank school”: See Jason DeParle, “Right-of-Center Guru Goes Wide with the Gospel of Small Government,” New York Times, November 17, 2006. Elbegdorj befriended the Mackinac Center president Lawrence Reed, once called the “Johnny Appleseed” behind an extensive network of a “jagged, creative-destructive” brand of capitalism. Reed ran “a national back office of sorts, that allows even policy novices to produce abundant, salable fare,” the Times reported. Mackinac had fostered the creation of countless state policy groups; Kentucky’s largest newspaper called one such group a “conservative propaganda mill,” saying its founder had attended Mackinac as a “sales executive with no public-policy background” and “left with access to everything from off-the-shelf speeches and papers to management software.” At one point when Elbegdorj won a new seat in government, the Mackinac organization declared its former pupil’s political success “another great victory for all of us who believe in limited government and a free society.”
32. Robert Painter: Some of the early biographical information comes from interviews with Robert Painter.
33. “sweeping college campuses”: See Rush to Us: Americans Hail Rush Limbaugh, by D. Howard King and Geoffrey Morris. (New York: Pinnacle, 1994).
34. “Best Western College” and “most bigoted school”: See “Editorial: Princeton Says Baylor Is Bigoted,” Baylor Lariat, February 1, 1996.
35. “There is seemingly”: Ibid.
36. “Communist-sympathizer” and “AIDS Quilt”: These pieces ran in January 1999, in vol. 1, no. 4, of the paper, archived in the Baylor library.
37. “Libertas looks like a newspaper”: See “‘Libertas’ a newspaper in form, not function,” unsigned editorial, Baylor Lariat, September 16, 1998. Baylor library archive.
38. “something admirable”: See Alyson Ward, “‘Libertas’ abuses journalistic standards, rules,” Baylor Lariat, February 2, 1999. Baylor library archive.
39. “conservative donors across the nation”: Brittney Partridge, “‘Libertas’ expands distribution,” Baylor Lariat, January 29, 1999. Painter told the Lariat that another group underwriting Libertas was the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a Delaware nonprofit whose founders included William F. Buckley Jr., the conservative author and founder of National Review magazine. It was around that time that Baylor’s College Republicans chapter held an officers election. Painter, who chaired the voting-credentials committee, angered about forty would-be voters by turning them away at the polls, saying they failed to meet membership requirements because they hadn’t filled out the proper forms or paid their one-dollar dues. The students were so upset that campus security and two administrators had to come out and monitor the election. One of the rebuffed students complained that “the people guarding the entrance believe we won’t vote for the people they want.” A freshman who observed the chaos said, “I am seriously concerned that a student organization whose basis is the political system cannot hold organized and fair elections.”
40. Fulbright & Jaworski: The firm is now called Norton Rose Fulbright.
41. “selling politics to the average person”: As the Bellwether members discussed what to teach, Jay Weimer, the future assistant U.S. attorney, said, “Your next question is ‘how do we make sure we don’t train the next Geraldine Ferraro?’...Same way we wound up with all conservatives in our Politics class—we advertise to conservatives, our speakers are all Republicans, word of mouth is that we are a conservative organization.” Bellwether Forum’s new website is bellwetherforum.com, and while the original site, bellwetherforum.org, is defunct, many of the old posts have been available via https://web.archive.org.
42. “What’s your story?”: Interviews with Robert Painter.
43. “You know, even though Mongolia is seven thousand miles away”: This comes from a reprint of Elbegdorj’s speech, preserved via the Internet Archive on an early iteration of the Bellwether Forum website. See Tsakhia Elbegdorj, “Mongolian Prime Minister’s Remarks: The Power of Ideas and the Power of Hope,” September 4, 2004. The speech was reprinted just after Elbegdorj became prime minister.
44. “could not be achieved in Asia”: Ibid.
45. “Mongolians’ continuing commitment”: See U.S. Senate, “Mongolia and Burma,” Congressional Record 150, 124 (Tuesday, October 5, 2014). McConnell read Elbegdorj’s letter aloud, first saying, “While some may not pay much attention to Mongolia—it is literally half a world away—it deserves America’s thanks and praise. That country serves to remind us that the fundamental pillars upon which our democracy is constructed—individual rights, freedom of the press, and religious tolerance—are not Western ideals but universal rights.”
46. Eagle TV/Donald Rumsfeld: The Department of Defense by now contributed $18 million a year to Mongolia, most of it earmarked for upgrades to the army’s equipment. Six U.S. Marines were advising the military, which had shrunk from 70,000 Soviet-era troops to roughly 11,000. Rumsfeld was there to rally support for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, to which Mongolia had sent troops. When a journalist asked whether the United States planned to establish a military base or a listening post in Mongolia, Rumsfeld said, “We’ve had no discussions along that line, and I know of no intention to do that.” The U.S. ambassador at the time, Pamela Slutz, later said Eagle TV was “a good partner of the U.S. embassy and its programs and policies in Mongolia. This was particularly true of its coverage of the global war against terrorism.”
47. “poster child for democracy in Eurasia”: “Mongolia’s Democratic Identity,” by John Tkacik, first appeared in the now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review, and was reprinted by the Heritage Foundation on June 21, 2005.
48. “never dared think of themselves as anything but real estate”: Ibid.
49. “Americans and Mongolians”: For the full speech, see “Remarks in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia,” November 21, 2005. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=73752. News coverage included David E. Sanger, “In Mongolia, Bush Grateful for Iraq Help,” New York Times, November 21, 2005. While the ongoing financial commitment confirmed close U.S.–Mongolian ties and underscored America’s decades-long investment in nurturing democracy in the region, it was clear that Mongolia’s national security primarily depended
on “achieving a sustainable socioeconomic development with guarantee of human rights and freedom to civilians,” one Mongolian scholar, R. Bold, wrote for the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a British think tank. “Security” was no longer defined by a country’s military but rather by “its capacity to survive and compete.”
50. “the godfathers of corruption” and “Mongolia’s Thomas Jefferson”: See “Mongolia’s Former Communist Party MPRP Pulled the Rug under Elbegdorj’s Government,” prweb.com, January 13, 2006.
51. “It’s kind of a coup d’état”: Lulu Zhou, “Mongolian PM Out of Office,” Harvard Crimson, January 20, 2006.
52. Bellwether training: Robert Painter used to tweet about Mongolian politics and Elbegdorj, though those tweets have since been deleted. His archived feed shows that deleted tweets include “Organizing a Bellwether Forum group of election observers for the Mongolian presidential election next month” (April 22, 2009) and “Congratulations to Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj on his reelection today” (June 27, 2013).
53. “voter ID laws”: See “Embarrassed by Bad Laws,” editorial, New York Times, April 16, 2012.
54. Koch brothers: The definitive source on the political activities of Charles and David Koch is Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, by Jane Mayer.
55. Suspected assassination attempt: Bellwether’s Mongolian training was offered in May 2007, in the run-up to the next year’s parliamentary election, wherein Elbegdorj was expected to regain a seat and reassume the prime ministership. By now he was an English-speaking, Harvard-trained politician, heavily connected in the United States, with clear ambitions for the presidency. After the training, Elbegdorj treated the Americans to a trip to the Gobi. Not long after that, he was being driven to Kharkhorin, some two hundred miles west of Ulaanbaatar. Mongolian laws were always changing, depending on who was in power, and parliament recently had shortened the amount of time that a former prime minister could retain a government-paid security detail. That night in July, Elbegdorj was traveling with only his driver. A motorcycle appeared out of the darkness, forcing his SUV to swerve. The vehicle flipped, fatally ejecting Elbegdorj’s driver and leaving Elbegdorj dangling upside down by his seatbelt, with a head injury. Elbegdorj had instructed his staff to call two people if anything ever happened to him. One was Robert Painter. When Painter’s phone rang in Houston, his first thought upon hearing the news about Elbegdorj was of the day Reagan had been shot; the president had wisecracked to his surgical team, “Please tell me you’re all Republicans.” (Reagan has been quoted as saying, “Please tell me you’re a Republican,” and “I hope you’re a Republican,” and “I hope you’re all Republicans.” I’m quoting the version used in the widely acclaimed biography President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1991). Cannon was quoting The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace, by Strobe Talbott (New York: Knopf, September 1988).) Painter’s second thought was that Elbegdorj was in danger of being poisoned or killed in the MPRP-controlled hospital. Working the phones, he arranged for a medical evacuation to Seoul, where Elbegdorj quickly recovered and was soon en route to Virginia to keynote a libertarian conference. Painter met him in Washington, DC, and they spent a few days together, eating at the Four Seasons and watching rented hotel movies, Painter marveling at the intensity with which Elbegdorj watched The Bourne Supremacy. Painter told me they also discussed Elbegdorj running for president.
The Dinosaur Artist Page 46