Former United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson has died

Bill Richardson, a former U.S. diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who specialized in prisoner release, died Saturday at the age of 75, Mickey Bergman, vice president of his foundation, said in a press release. Former Governor of New Mexico and former Secretary of Energy under former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Richardson “Died in his sleep at night”Mr. Bergman said.

“The world has lost a defender of those wrongfully detained abroad”, he added. Specializes in negotiating the release of Americans detained by deemed countries “hostility” The U.S. contributed to basketball player Brittney Griner in 2022 while the former ambassador was detained in Russia.

In 1995 he was instrumental in negotiating the release of two Americans who crossed the border with Saddam Hussein. Born in California in 1947, Phil Richardson grew up in Mexico before moving to the (northeast) suburbs of Boston as a teenager for the United States.

“The Indiana Jones of American Diplomacy”

He was one of the first representatives of the Hispanic community to achieve high political office and declared himself the Democratic Party’s candidate for the 2008 presidential election, again the first candidate from a Latin American minority. He eventually quit to support Barack Obama and was slated to join his administration after his election, but a campaign finance scandal forced him to step down as his Commerce Secretary.

Bill Richardson, a congressman and ambassador to the UN who was Bill Clinton’s energy secretary in the late 90s, had the nickname of an adventurer. “The Indiana Jones of American Diplomacy” For his unofficial work for the Black Beasts of America.

Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Kim Jong Il in North Korea, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela… For nearly thirty years, the number of private mediations with Washington’s worst enemies has increased.