Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (5 page)

Specter also announced that he would seek testimony from Denise Rich, in pursuit of evidence that the pardon of her former husband represented a “quid pro quo,” as he put it—a Clinton favor in return for the many hundreds of thousands of dollars she had donated in previous years to Democratic political campaigns and to the Clinton foundation. The Pennsylvania Republican wondered aloud whether she had served as a conduit for funds flowing from Marc Rich in his Swiss hideaway to the Clintons, insinuating a series of indirect payoffs from the fugitive. “I don’t know the source of the money, but I think it’s a fair question,” he added.

Basking in unusually favorable coverage from right-wing media outlets, Specter told reporters a few days later that, as a constitutional matter, Clinton could be vulnerable to a new impeachment proceeding, even though he was no longer in office. While the “second impeachment” was a characteristically eccentric proposal—swiftly quashed by House speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate majority leader Trent Lott—Specter was reflecting a real desire in certain Washington quarters. Some in the capital cherished the prospect of “impeaching” Clinton again, if not in Congress then in public opinion, feeling certain that this time he would not escape.

With that vengeful enterprise under way, media coverage during the
week leading up to the hearings was relentlessly scorching, provoking scarcely any substantive response from the Clinton camp. Seemingly bored by the nascent Bush administration, which offered nothing as titillating as a Clinton scandal, the Washington press corps returned to a scandal frenzy, offering up abundant rumors, tangents, and of course, copious leaks.

Perhaps the most intriguing leak, which almost nobody bothered to follow up, appeared to emanate from the House Government Reform Committee, which was reportedly planning “to look into the question of whether financier Marc Rich . . . may have been involved in spying during his flight from U.S. authorities.” The
New York Post
, obsessed with Clinton and working its own sources in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, reported suggestively—without any further pertinent detail—that Rich “had a relationship with the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency.”

“The government of Israel considered Rich a critical ally and the president took that seriously when he considered the pardon request,” Siewert told the
Post
. But attention swiftly turned from the Mossad to Jack Quinn, the Rich lawyer who answered a subpoena from the House committee by turning over documents concerning his communications about the pardon with Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder at the Justice Department—and simultaneously released them to the press.

According to Quinn, his notes proved that he had indeed consulted Holder about Rich and the Swiss fugitive’s business partner, Pincus Green, contrary to the assertion that he had bypassed the usual pardon process. But if he was trying to help Clinton—after Terry McAuliffe’s profane admonishment two weeks earlier—Quinn only raised new questions about Holder, who appeared more aware (and supportive) of the pardons than he had acknowledged. Evidently Holder had also discussed with Quinn his desire to be appointed attorney general, should Al Gore win the presidency.

On the day before the hearings, a lawyer for Denise Rich told Congress that his client would claim her Fifth Amendment privilege, refusing to testify lest her words incriminate her. This announcement only inflamed suspicions that the songwriting socialite and her money had played a dubious role in the pardon process.

If Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House were gleefully exploiting the Rich pardon and all of Clinton’s other troubles, the
Democrats now felt exhausted by him. Having fought back day after day against impeachment, Whitewater, and the assorted other scandals, real or mostly invented, that plagued the Clinton White House during two presidential terms, figures like Rep. Henry Waxman of California, ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, had little energy left for this renewed battle. Even had they roused themselves to support Clinton again, what was there to say in defense of the Rich pardon, which looked so much like an unjustified favor for an arrogant, well-connected criminal on the lam?

“The Rich pardon is a bad precedent. It appears to set a double standard for the wealthy and powerful,” said Waxman at the hearing. “And it is an end run around the judicial process.”

“It’s indefensible, they all know that,” said a Republican committee staffer, referring to the chastened Democrats. Rep. Christopher Shays, a moderate Connecticut Republican and longtime Clinton antagonist, summed up the tenor of the hearing: “Everything about [the Rich pardon] seems sleazy.”

Veteran Clinton critics in the Washington press corps could scarcely contain themselves—or confine their copy to mere facts. Among the most unrestrained was Dowd, whose
Times
column so faithfully echoed the hostile tone of the capital’s establishment toward the former first family. That the paper would publish her accusations of criminality verging on treason was a signal of Clinton’s perceived weakness.

“Oh heck, let’s just impeach him again,” she began, continuing:

Beyond Denise Rich’s $3 million fund-raising lunch and personal donations—$450,000 to the Clinton library, more than $1 million to Democrats, $10,000 to the Clinton legal defense fund, $7,375 for Clinton furniture—let’s hope Bill Clinton has a Swiss bank account set up by Marc Rich.

Otherwise, it would not be worth sliming the Constitution, his legacy and his party.

Bill and Hill are tornadoes, as James McDougal memorably observed, twisting through people’s lives and blithely moving on.

But this time, they may not dance away from the wreckage. The egg may have hit the fan, as Congressman Steven LaTourette put it at the Congressional hearing on the Rich pardon.

This time, maybe the user was used. Bill Clinton was manipulated by a man who made billions manipulating foreign markets. Marc Rich bought a pardon with the money he made betraying America.

Dowd’s column was extreme but not exceptional. Despite the torrent of speculation and suspicion aroused by the pardons’ circumstances, however, nothing emerged during hours of droning testimony to suggest, let alone prove, that Clinton had granted them in exchange for Denise Rich’s generous campaign and foundation contributions—all of which she had given months and years before she approached him on behalf of her ex-husband.

While the first round of congressional hearings found no evidence of bribery or corruption, they certainly showed that the vetting of Clinton’s last-minute pardons had been haphazard at best. At least forty-seven pardons, or more than a third of all those granted by the president during his final days in office, had not gone through the usual review procedures at the Justice Department and were instead brought directly to his office. Most of those seeking clemency had never even filed a petition with Justice; others fell outside the legal parameters of that system; and a few had already seen earlier pleas rejected by Clinton.

His grant of clemency to four Hasidic Jewish men from upstate New York—serving time for defrauding the government of $40 million—also provoked distrust, because their hometown of New Square had delivered nearly all its 1,369 votes to Hillary in her Senate campaign. But if Clinton was selling pardons, or merely doling them out as favors to his friends and supporters, he had rebuffed at least two generous donors who had done much more for him and the Democratic Party than the former Mrs. Rich or the New Square rabbis.

In the first instance, Clinton had rejected a clemency application from Leonard Peltier, the Native American militant long imprisoned for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in North Dakota. Peltier’s campaign had become a cause célèbre in Hollywood circles led by movie mogul David Geffen, who along with his DreamWorks partners had given well over a million dollars toward the Clinton library and hundreds of thousands more to Democratic can
didates and causes. (Years later, a “disillusioned” Geffen would cite the rejection of Peltier as a major reason for shifting his allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, as the 2008 presidential campaign approached.)

In the second case, Clinton had refused to grant a pardon to Michael Milken, the legendary junk bond financier and convicted fraudster, who had served twenty-two months of a ten-year sentence before his 1993 release. He had turned down Milken’s application, even though its outspoken supporters included Rudolph Giuliani, who had sent Milken to prison as a federal prosecutor—and despite a fervent request from Ron Burkle, a personal friend with whom Clinton would soon enter a business relationship. By then Burkle already had given at least $4.5 million to the foundation and other Clinton causes.

Still, eliminating the checks and balances of the normal process had left Clinton vulnerable to charges of abuse, especially in the case of Rich and Green. Testimony from former White House counsel Beth Nolan, former White House chief of staff John Podesta, and Bruce Lindsey, the presidential lawyer and confidant who headed the Clinton Foundation, revealed that they had all bluntly opposed pardoning the fugitives in Switzerland. And until the last minute of the last day, all three of those close advisers said, they had been certain that Clinton ultimately would deny a pardon to Rich and Green.

In Clinton’s Washington transition office, Karen Tramontano and her colleagues worried that the reputation of the former president might never fully recover from the incessant incoming attacks. Tramontano knew she could do nothing about the pardons furor. Nobody in the press cared about the nuances and complications of the Rich case, which hinged on arcane tax law. But the impasse with Congress over high-priced Manhattan office space just might be resolved, if only she could persuade Clinton to choose a different location, somewhere less costly and controversial.

On a cold February morning, she steeled herself and called the house in Chappaqua. “How is he today?” she asked Oscar Flores. “He’s OK,” replied Flores, who handed the phone to the former president.

For a few moments, she and Clinton made small talk, which turned
quickly toward the continuing torrent of ugly publicity over the pardons, the gifts, and the Carnegie Tower offices. There would be no good time to bring up her new agenda with him, but this sounded like an opening—a chance to suggest constructive action.

“Certain things . . . we can’t do anything about,” she began, a bit gingerly. “But let’s get out of this lease.”

“How can you do that?” he replied angrily. “You’re giving in!” He hung up the phone.

Tramontano ignored his outburst of temper and went up to New York on the train to meet with an executive representing Rockrose Development, the building’s owners. Having benefited from the publicity surrounding Clinton’s potential tenancy, Rockrose no longer cared whether the lease was ever signed. It was true that they had given the former president a break on the cost; the market rent for his premium floor had only risen. “No worries,” the executive laughed, when she asked whether it was too late to cancel. “Do you realize what I can rent that space for?”

In the ensuing days, Tramontano talked with John Sexton, the New York University president, who had known the Clintons well since the 1980s, when his wife, Lisa Goldberg, became a close Hillary friend. As Clinton’s exit from the White House had approached, Sexton had broached the possibility of creating a global policy institute at NYU as a home for Clinton and the foundation. He was sure that he could find decent office space somewhere on or around the university’s vast Manhattan territories for them.

But then Tramontano took a call from Representative Charles Rangel, the Democrat from upper Manhattan, who had first pitched the idea of Hillary’s Senate candidacy. “Karen!” roared his familiar voice over the wire, gravelly yet piercing. “He should come to Harlem! Have him call me.”

To Tramontano, this idea was at least intuitively appealing. But was there adequate modern office space in Harlem to accommodate Clinton and his operations? A few days later, Rangel personally escorted her to visit a nondescript glass-fronted building at 55 West 125th Street, just east of Lenox Avenue. The top floor, fourteen stories up, offered a majestic view looking downtown over Central Park, but not much else. The space wasn’t attractive—“the ugliest place,” she later admitted—and
further inquiry revealed that there might not be enough water pressure to flush the toilets. Ultimately she was persuaded that all these problems could and surely would be fixed for a prized tenant like the former president.

Tramontano called Clinton at home again. “This is a very good option,” she told him. He grumbled, but agreed to talk with Rangel.

Not many days later, Clinton called back to tell her about a great new idea: They could move the offices to Harlem! Talking about all the things he could do in and for the neighborhood, and what it would mean to be there, he was clearly excited. On February 13, after touring the space with Hillary and their close friend, Washington attorney and civil rights veteran Vernon Jordan, he emerged from behind the glass doors onto Harlem’s busiest street to greet jostling reporters and camera crews. “I have decided to locate my office in this building.
If
we can work it out.” A crowd of jubilant residents who had stopped to listen began cheering.

In Harlem, nobody cared about Marc Rich.

With the congressional pardon probe bearing down and the strong chance of a criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan—where the Marc Rich prosecution had originated under Rudolph Giuliani—Clinton was talking with Kendall almost every day. He told the lawyer that he wanted to write an op-ed essay for the
New York Times
, laying out the best case for the Rich pardon without equivocation. It was important to make that case for the record, and to clearly reject the accusations of criminal misconduct.