Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (41 page)

This is the chronic sufferer of Truth Deficit Disorder whom President Obama—with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate—has entrusted to conduct good-faith negotiations on foreign affairs and put America’s interests above all else.

Feeling queasy yet?

TRANSPARENCY AND TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

“I think I’m probably the most transparent person in public life,” Senator Hillary Clinton asserted in 2008.
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To borrow a trademark Clintonian phrase, it all depends on what the meaning of “transparent” is. Her insatiable ambition is as see-through as a Britney Spears top. But her commitment to openness in government earns a big, fat “F.”

It took a public disclosure lawsuit by Washington, D.C.-based Judicial Watch to force Mrs. Clinton to release thousands of pages from her schedules while serving as First Lady. The group also successfully filed suit to obtain records regarding Mrs. Clinton’s secret health care task force—including internal memos detailing the creation of a government “interest group database” to collect personal information on interest group leaders, such as their home phone numbers, addresses, “biographies, analysis of credibility in the media, and known relationships with Congresspeople.”
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For years, the Clintons refused to disclose donors to the Clinton presidential library. The
Washington Post
called the Clintons’ lack of full disclosure “outrageous,” noting that “presidential libraries, though built and endowed with private funds, are public property, run by the National Archives. The public has a right to know who’s underwriting them.”
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“To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t take money from anybody I shouldn’t have,” former president Clinton said in explaining why the public should simply trust his judgment instead of opening the books.
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In 2004, a
New York Sun
reporter accessed a public touch-screen computer terminal at the facility that produced a list of donors to the $165 million compound. The
Sun
reported that in addition to the infamous $450,000 gift from pardon-seeker Marc Rich’s ex-wife, donations included “gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen,” as well as $1 million-plus each contributions from the “governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon.”
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After the
Sun
‘s article appeared, the list of donors available on the library’s computer terminal disappeared.
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For years, the Clintons refused to disclose their full income tax forms.
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It took her rival-turned-boss Barack Obama’s full IRS document disclosure to force Hillary to follow suit in April 2008.
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The tax documents covering 2000-2007 revealed the Clintons’ get-rich windfall of approximately $111 million in total income over that time period. “Their income increased by nearly 50 times in the first year after Bill Clinton left office,”
Politico
reported, “highlighting the lucrative opportunities awaiting former presidents.”
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For years, the couple refused to disclose donors to the former president’s mega-charity, the William J. Clinton Foundation (described by the
Chronicle of Philanthropy
as “one of the most successful fund-raising organizations in the United States”).
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It took Mrs. Clinton’s secretary of state nomination to force this treasure trove of foreign conflicts of interests to be dislodged. But even this belated, reluctant gesture was incomplete.

To close the deal on the nomination, the Clintons released a public list of past donors to the foundation and signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the Obama transition team agreeing to disclose new donors once a year. Foreign government donations will be reviewed by State Department ethics officials. Former President Clinton agreed to step down as the public face of the Clinton Foundation and break off a separate program, the Clinton Global Initiative. Mrs. Clinton called her disclosure agreement “unprecedented” in its scope and cited government reviews concluding that “there is not an inherent conflict of interest in any of my husband’s work at all.”
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But through thick and thin, through hell and high water, through stained blue dresses and purple fits of rage, Bill and Hillary Clinton are joined at the hip. As GOP Senator Richard Lugar put it while pondering how to disentangle their “cosmic ties” and conflicted interests: “I don’t know, frankly. . . I would just suspect that given all of the ties, all of the influence that he has, all of the relationships that he is a major player in foreign policy. Now, Mrs. Clinton is going to be the secretary of state. They are married, they are a team.”
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Like they promised in 1992, America gets “two for the price of one” with the Clintons. No matter which of them is in office.

COSMIC TIES

The Clinton Foundation donor list did not provide precise amounts, date of the donations, or background information on the donors’ employers. Non-governmental foreign sources were not and will not be disclosed.

But among the information the Clintons did disclose was the donation of “up to $5 million” to the Clinton foundation from one Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese businessman born in Nigeria who calls himself an “economic adviser to Benin” and a UNESCO ambassador to St. Lucia.
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He also happens to be a scandal-tainted operative who was tight with Nigerian General Sani Abacha, a dictator who seized power in a coup in the 1990s. In 2001, Chagoury forked over $300 million to the Nigerian government to get rid of a pesky probe into charges that billions of dollars had been improperly siphoned out of Nigeria during the Abacha regime.
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During those years,
Harper’s
magazine reported, “Chagoury received oil concessions and large-scale government construction contracts, and allegedly offered Abacha help with his financial affairs.”
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And during that time, Chagoury used his wealth to insinuate himself into the Clinton White House and the Democrat party—arranging a $100,000 speaking fee for Clinton at a Caribbean event and pitching in $460,000 for a Miami-based voter registration drive backed by the Democratic National Committee.
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For his quid, the foreign national Chagoury enjoyed many quos. The
Wall Street Journal
reported that Chagoury attended Clinton’s 60th birthday bash in New York and joined the former president at a gala wedding party in France for a top Clinton aide.
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For her part, Mrs. Clinton received thousands of dollars in donations from stateside relatives of Chagoury, including Michel Chaghouri—identified as a bundler who raised at least $100,000 for Hillary—and several other donors who maxed out with $4,600 in individual contributions using the names “Chagoury” or “Chaghouri” or “Chamchoum.” (The latter is the maiden name of Gilbert Chagoury’s wife.)
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Another wealthy donor listed as giving up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation: billionaire Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of former Ukrainian strongman Leonid Kuchma. The steel company magnate was fingered in several sweetheart deals and accused by Ukrainian reformers of crony capitalism. In 2006, he settled a lawsuit that accused him of bribing officials of a mega-iron alloy producer, skimming $41 million in profits, and wrongfully diverting other funds worth an estimated $500 million.
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Sidling up to former President Clinton helped burnish Pinchuk’s philanthropic credentials. After donating millions to Clinton’s anti-poverty and AIDS programs, Pinchuk was warmly received at the inauguration of the Clinton Library in Little Rock and at Clinton’s 60th birthday bash. (No word on whether Chagoury and Pinchuk ran into each other.)

More worrisome for Hillary, her husband displayed abysmal judgment in 2007—while she was running for president—when he flew to Yalta to join his pal Pinchuk. At a conference on the future of Ukraine, former President Clinton embraced a tainted symbol of the troubled corruptocracy’s recent past.
Newsweek
reported:

Clinton dazzled the audience with a powerful address about the global challenges facing Ukraine. But he also inadvertently caused a stir when he was embraced by Pinchuk’s father-in-law, Ukraine’s former president Leonid Kuchma, whose authoritarian rule had been condemned by the State Department. Three years ago, a Ukrainian government investigation linked Kuchma’s regime to the decapitation in 2000 of dissident journalist Georgy Gongadze. When Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava, saw a newspaper photo of Clinton and Kuchma at the conference, “I wanted to throw up,” she told NEWSWEEK. Clinton, she says, was being used by Pinchuk “to clean up and legitimize Kuchma’s legacy.” (A Clinton spokesman declined to comment on the ex-president’s encounter with Kuchma .)
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Gongadze’s death was no obscure historical blip. The investigative Internet reporter, found mutilated in a shallow grave, was an intrepid critic of Kuchma’s corruption. His grisly murder sparked the Orange Revolution that swept Kuchma out of power. Kuchma’s own former bodyguard released audiotapes with a voice identified as Kuchma’s conspiring to harm the journalist. Gongadze’s wife and two children won political asylum in the United States and have lived here since 2001. In March 2008, three former police officers were convicted of Gongadze’s murder. And a former Interior Ministry chief of Kuchma’s is still wanted for his role in plotting the crime.
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After observing the November 21, 2004, elections in Ukraine as an election monitor, Senator Lugar (then chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations) reported that “the government of President Kuchma allowed, or aided and abetted, wholesale fraud and abuse” that changed the results of the election. Widespread physical intimidation of voters and “illegal use of governmental administrative and legal authorities” were persistent throughout the campaign .
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Yet three years later, Bill Clinton lent his name and fame to the Yalta summit, organized by Kuchma’s wealthy son-in-law and top contributor to the Clinton Foundation and attended by Kuchma himself.

In addition to all that foreign funny money, the Clinton Foundation received $10 million to $25 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a total of at least $46 million from foreign governments, including Norway, Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei, Oman, Italy, Jamaica, and the Dutch national lottery, which pitched in $5 million to $10 million.
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Israeli business executives, the Blackwater private security company, oil, gas, and mining interests were all represented on the list as well. The Associated Press broke down more of the donor info, incomplete as it was, which was posted on the Clinton Foundation website:
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• Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid gave between $1 million to $5 million. So did two private entities, Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation.

• Amar Singh, another donor in the $1 million to $5 million category, is an Indian politician who hosted Bill Clinton on a visit to India in 2005 and met Hillary Clinton in New York in September to discuss an India- U.S. civil nuclear agreement.

• Tulsi Tanti, a wealthy executive also from India, chairs a wind turbine company that donated up to $5 million. He unveiled plans for a $5 billion project to develop environmentally friendly power generation in India and China.

• AUSAID, the Australian government’s overseas aid program, and COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico, a Dominican Republic government agency formed to fight AIDS, each gave $10 million to $25 million.
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COPRESIDA benefited from an Export-Import Bank loan at the 11th hour of the Clinton administration, according to a watchdog group, which also wondered: “Why would a cash-strapped AIDS agency accused of mismanagement
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in a country of 9.5 million give President Clinton one of his largest donations to do the same thing it is trying to do—collect money and redistribute for AIDS projects?”
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AIDS patients protested that the agency had failed to build long promised treatment centers and failed to expand treatment access.

• China Overseas Real Estate Development and the U.S. Islamic World Conference gave $250,000 to $500,000 each.

GOP Senator Lugar stated the obvious at Mrs. Clinton’s Senate confirmation hearing:

The core of the problem is that foreign governments and entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation as a means to gain favor with the Secretary of State. Although neither Senator Clinton, nor President Clinton, has a personal financial stake in the Foundation, obviously its work benefits their legacy and their public service priorities. There is nothing wrong with this, and President Clinton is deservedly proud of the Clinton Foundation’s good work in addressing HIV/AIDs, global poverty, climate change and other pressing problems.

But the Clinton Foundation exists as a temptation for any foreign entity or government that believes it could curry favor through a donation. It also sets up potential perception problems with any action taken by the Secretary of State in relation to foreign givers or their countries. The nature of the Secretary of State post makes recusal from specific policy decisions almost impossible, since even localized U.S. foreign policy activities can ripple across countries and continents. Every new foreign donation that is accepted by the Foundation comes with the risk that it will be connected in the global media to a proximate State Department policy or decision. Foreign perceptions are incredibly important to U.S. foreign policy, and mistaken impressions or suspicions can deeply effect the actions of foreign governments toward the United States. Moreover, we do not want our own government’s deliberations distracted by avoidable controversies played out in the media. The bottom line is that even well-intentioned foreign donations carry risks for U.S. foreign policy.