From: Dr. James Lyon [mailto:jlyon@crisisgroup.org]
Sent: 17 February 2006 17:50
To: Nicholas Whyte; Andrew Stroehlein; Nick Grono
Cc: Gareth Evans
Subject: The Lyonization of Serbia
Importance: High

Nicholas, Andrew, Nick,

During the last ten days of January and the first eleven days of February I experienced the most intensive and sweeping media attacks in the entire seven+ years I have been with ICG. The attacks reflected a well-orchestrated media campaign aimed at making me persona non grata. During this period there were on average two to three attacks on me in the print media per day, all of which were highly personal in nature, not to mention entirely false. Ooops, that isn’t quite accurate: one article did list my place of birth correctly. In addition to attacks on me personally, the articles also carried allegations that ICG was racketeering Balkan tycoons (Nicholas, exactly how did we get that donation from Trifun Kostovski anyway? J)

Some of the things the local media accused me of include but are not limited to the following:

1. that I ran a car smuggling ring;
2. that I am a drunkard;
3. that I regularly racketeer Serbia‘s oligarchs;
4. that I am a frequent guest of Dobrica Cosic;
5. that I have been fired by ICG;
6. that I own a glass factory;
7. that I smuggled cigarettes;
8. that I own three cafes;
9. that I photocopied the entire secret General Staff archive from the Military History Archive and put it on CD;
10. that I am a paid lobbyist for the Albanians;
11. that I tried to sell PINK television to Paramount studios;
12. that my wealth is counted in the millions;
13. that I privatized the following factories:

·         the Matroz paper factory in Serbia

·         the Oil refinery in Modrica (Bosnia

·         the tobacco factory in Sarajevo

Golly gee, you’d think that with my enormous wealth and influence someone from ICG would hit me up for a donation and put me on the board….

The attacks were instigated by the news weekly Evropa, which was recently purchased by Filip Zepter. Beginning with its 26 January edition, Evropa has had at least one negative article on me in each edition. All the stories essentially repeated the lie — first floated in Evropa — that ICG had fired me and that this was due to Zepter’s lawsuit. All the attacks were extremely libelous. In speaking with reporters and editors from other newspapers that also took part in the attack, several indicated to me that they had been put up to the mischief by Zepter in return for advertising.

Never being one to take things lying down, I fought back as best I could, and in the end it seems that Zepter ended up giving both me and ICG lots of free publicity. On Sunday, 5 February I was invited to be a guest on Serbia‘s most widely watched political talk show, B92’s Utisak Nedelje, opposite the deputy of the Radical Party, Aleksandar Vucic. On 8 February I was a guest on the widely watched BKTV talk show Klopka, along with Kosovo Serb leader Momcilo Trajkovic and former Kosovo Coordination Centre chief and current SDP party leader Nebojsa Covic. I heard later from the hosts that both Klopka and Utisak Nedelje had unusually high viewership for those programs. The Serbian government was so distressed by the uncensored and open discussion of Kosovo future status on Klopka that Slobodan Samardzic, one of Kostunica’s advisors on Kosovo, called the host and asked that the government be permitted to rebut my statements about Kosovo. (Should I mention that the tall leggy blond who hosts Klopka appeared au natural in the first issue of Serbian Playboy and that two days after the show she sent me her mobile phone number via SMS?).

In spite of the sudden deluge of negative print media, two articles stand out. At the end of the media campaign against me we got a very positive mention in the print media, when the daily tabloid PRESS carried a very flattering article about me and ICG’s activities. And the photo was even decent. Following this Serbia‘s highest circulation daily Blic ran a grumpy Op/Ed piece entitled “Lyonization” and in which the author called for a halt to the media campaign, claiming that Serbia had been “Lyonized,” and saying that “Lyonization” was worse than colonization. I suppose that if this were New York City I could probably make some money off of all this publicity, but here in Serbia…..

In any event the media frenzy about my alleged dismissal seems to have died down and my image and that of ICG have both been strengthened by the entire ordeal. I should mention that the proverbial guilty dog did bark, when Zepter gave a newspaper interview attacking me and claimed that I had been fired because of him.

One problem with politics in this part of the world is that if you take unpopular positions, then they attack you not on the strength of issues and arguments, but rather ad hominem. Given that all ICG’s positions are unpopular in Belgrade, from our stance on Kosovo to the Hague Tribunal to Montenegro‘s future status to Bosnia, it is a wonder they have let us remain here. The one testimony to our effectiveness is the fact that the international community has adopted nearly all our positions on these issues, which makes us even more unpopular.

Thanks for all your support in this latest media nonsense. The press release helped. It was greatly appreciated.

James