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Turner un { November 20 2001 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/today/news_b3af207c27006245003b.htmlhttp://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/today/news_b3af207c27006245003b.html
Turner looks past tough time: 'I try to
get by'
Don Melvin - Staff
Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Once again, Ted Turner's wackiness doesn't look quite so wacky anymore. As
when he started the world's first 24-hour news network, some of Turner's recent
initiatives have begun to look more farsighted than foolish.
When Turner announced in 1997 that he was giving $1 billion to the United
Nations, critics said he was wasting his money on a bureaucratic and irrelevant
organization. When he said last year that he was spending $250 million to
create an organization to fight the spread of nuclear, biological and other
weapons of mass destruction, some wondered whether he might have missed
the end of the Cold War.
But this year the United Nations and its secretary-general, Kofi Annan, shared
the Nobel Peace Prize. News reports have suggested Osama bid Laden may
have tried to take advantage of lax security in Russia to obtain nuclear arms.
And the threat of biological weapons could hardly seem any more immediate.
Once again, Turner's endeavors have proved more relevant than anyone could
have imagined.
Sitting in his office on the 14th floor of the CNN Center in Atlanta, surrounded by
mementos --- photos of himself on a fishing trip with Cuban leader Fidel Castro,
or posing with oceanographer Jacques Cousteau --- Turner said in an interview
Monday, his 63rd birthday, that he has battled through tough times emotionally.
"I try to get by," he said. "I've had a very difficult three or four years,
extraordinarily difficult. And there were times that I didn't really care whether I
lived or died. I didn't want to die, but I was so down --- when you lose your wife
and your job at the same time, that's a big blow for somebody who cared about
their wife and their company as much as I did.
"But I'm in a lot better frame of mind," he said. And he is happiest, he said, when
he feels he is leading a life of service.
Now that his efforts at philanthropy, which once seemed far-fetched, suddenly
look so on-the-mark, does Turner feel vindicated?
"I didn't ever think I needed vindication," he said. "I felt like I was absolutely
spot-on at the time. I don't know whether it's luck or vision or whatever, but you
know --- it's like CNN. I just have some kind of uncanny ability to see things that
other people don't see."
People who know Turner say he is a constant reader and a person unafraid of
risks or criticism.
"This is a man of remarkable vision whose view of the world is not constrained by
the conventional wisdom," said Tim Wirth, the former Colorado senator who runs
the U.N. Foundation, which Turner uses to disburse his U.N. gift. "He proved that
by putting together CNN. He proved that when he bought the MGM library. And
he did that when he bought the Braves and made it part of a communications
empire. I mean, he's done it over and over and over again."
Wirth, who also is a former U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs, said
Turner is remarkably well-informed about world events.
"He knows an enormous amount," Wirth said. "There's a huge reservoir of
knowledge there. He reads voraciously. Everything that we send him, he reads in
detail --- and unfortunately he remembers it months later."
Turner "has a very shrewd institutional sense," Wirth added. That may have
served him well in setting up the U.N. Foundation, created when the United
Nations was under fire.
The foundation supported Annan's efforts to reform the U.N. bureaucracy. It has
offered financial incentives for a variety of U.N. agencies, which often operated
independently, to work together. It has worked to strengthen the
secretary-general's influence by giving him veto power over the foundation's
grants.
And the foundation led a successful campaign to have the U.S. government pay
its back U.N. dues.
The strengthening of the institution may have played a small supporting role in
helping the U.N. and Annan win the Nobel prize, Wirth said.
Turner said he is pleased.
"Right now, I think you can look at the U.N. Foundation and say it's unbelievable
it's had as much impact as it's had in four or five years," he said. "And it was a
whole new idea. It was an idea that the private sector could help the United
Nations. No one had ever thought of that before."
Sam Nunn, the former U.S. senator from Georgia who is co-chairman of Turner's
newly formed Nuclear Threat Initiative, says Turner is not alone in spotting trends
early.
"There are a lot people who sort of can get out in front of the crowd with their
vision of what may happen but they're not convinced enough to act on it," Nunn
said. "Ted has vision but he also has commitment. . . . He's willing also to have
people basically sit back and say, 'This is wacky.' "
When Turner looks into the future, what he sees worries him. With the global
atmosphere warming, the environment increasingly despoiled and the world's
population continuing to grow, he said the world is in for very challenging times.
"The way I see the current times, the world is like the seventh game of the World
Series," he said. "And it's the seventh inning. And we're down by three runs. But
we've got two innings left. We've got six more at-bats. We have not been
eliminated yet, you understand? And while there's life, there's hope. But you'd
have to say that we've got our backs to the wall."
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