Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (6 page)

The
Times
editorial page editors quickly agreed to give Clinton plenty of space to explain himself. As he wrote and rewrote, plowing through dozens of drafts that he handed over to Kendall and others for comment, the newspaper of record found opportunities to express a subtle satisfaction over the former president’s political fall, which had only justified the negative assessments of his character long nurtured by its editors and columnists. More than a hint of institutional schadenfreude could be detected between the lines of Adam Nagourney’s “Political Memo” column on February 14, a mocking Valentine to Clinton. Soon to be appointed the paper’s chief political correspon
dent, Nagourney outlined the tribulations that had beset the former president since his arrival in New York, depicting him as enfeebled, unprepared, and perhaps ruined:

Until recently, when Mr. Clinton’s former aides lumbered back to life, the same Democrats who had reliably come to his aid over the last eight years were notable for their silence. Part of that was because, as one of Mr. Clinton’s strongest advocates said yesterday, the defense of his presidential pardons was a daunting task for even the most devout Clinton supporters.

But it also was clear evidence that former presidents do not have the clout of sitting ones, and that there is little price to be paid for being silent.

Mr. Clinton was described yesterday as increasingly concerned about how he was being perceived and irritated at coverage that some of his advisers described as unfair. And he and his advisers were beginning, if belatedly, to try to help Mr. Clinton through a period that some of his own supporters acknowledged had permanently stained his reputation.

The next day, as if to confirm that judgment, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, the chief federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York—and appointed by Clinton in 1993 as the first woman to hold that prestigious post—announced that she had opened a criminal probe into the pardons.

“The seriousness of the crimes is diminished, and the fact and the appearance of evenhanded justice is compromised,” she had said when the pardons first became public. Now she would make her displeasure felt.

The media bombshells began to explode shortly after dawn, when the network morning shows all led with Clinton’s latest embarrassment. On ABC News’
Good Morning America,
the assignment fell to correspondent Jackie Judd, whose professional hostility toward Clinton dated back to the Whitewater investigation. Although Judd reported the story straight, she made sure to air tape of Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, Republican of Mississippi, explaining his theory of the case.

“If
a person takes a thing of value for themself [
sic
] or for another person that influences their decision in a matter of their official capacity,” he explained, “then that could be a criminal offense.” The irony of such a remark coming from a man who had accepted millions of dollars in campaign donations from lobbyists, banks, insurance companies, agricultural interests, and defense contractors was not remarked upon.

Closer to the mark was
Good Morning America
anchor Charlie Gibson’s colloquy with ABC correspondent and former top Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos. It would be difficult for White to prove that Clinton had knowingly taken money from Denise Rich as a payment on a pardon for her ex-husband—especially, although neither Gibson nor Stephanopoulos said so, because she had not even been asked to support his pardon application until many months after she had made those donations.

But how would Clinton ever prove that he
hadn’t
taken a payoff? Gibson wondered. “What does he do now to get this cloud off, if he can?”

Replied Stephanopoulos, “The big question is, does he go public with his explanation in some kind of an interview and really lay out this case and say, ‘Listen, you guys may disagree with my decision, but I did not do it—it wasn’t a trade for campaign contributions.’ He’s got to lay out the reasons for this decision in a clear way.”

On CNN, the morning anchors displayed the front pages of the
New York Times
and the
Washington
Post
, with the pardon probe news splashed in bold headlines above the fold—the prelude to a report by correspondents Frank Sesno and Daryn Kagan on Bill and Hillary Clinton that described them as unpopular “losers” and pariahs in their own Democratic Party.

“They are distancing themselves thoroughly from Bill Clinton,” remarked Sesno. “As one Democratic strategist commented to me today, ‘he’s not our responsibility anymore.’ And you’re not seeing any Democratic senators or others rush to his defense; quite the contrary.”

On February 18, three days after White’s announcement, the
Times
published Clinton’s op-ed, titled “My Reasons for the Pardons.” At nearly 1,600 words, the final product of many hours of rewriting provided a detailed legal rationale for his decision on Rich and Green, citing the opinions of top tax attorneys and prominent Republican
lawyers, including Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Clinton explained why he believed that the original prosecution of Rich had overreached, applying criminal statutes to business practices that had resulted in mere civil fines for other oil companies. Rich and Green had paid nearly $200 million in fines and penalties already, he noted—and he had required them to waive “any and all defenses” against further civil litigation by the government as a condition of the pardons. He acknowledged that he ought to have consulted directly with the United States attorney and that he had proceeded with excessive haste in discussions with the Justice Department. Finally, he expressed the pain that the accusations of corruption had caused him.

Firmly denying any quid pro quo in any of the pardons he had granted, Clinton concluded: “I want every American to know that, while you may disagree with this decision, I made it on the merits as I saw them, and I take full responsibility for it.”

The prose was competent, the reasoning was lucid, and yet the op-ed fell flat, with no discernible impact. It was simply too late, too dry, too emotionless, and above all, too reticent in detailing the real diplomatic context of the pardon decision. By the time that context finally began to emerge, Clinton’s enemies had set the narrative of sleaze in concrete.

The House committee continued to drag out its investigation, eventually diverting attention to other pardons when the Rich case turned into a dead end. Committee staff delved into clemency applications pushed by Hugh Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, and Bill Clinton’s brother, Roger, in hopes of earning large fees. Rodham, a lawyer and public defender in Miami, had received roughly $200,000 each from Glenn Braswell, a businessman convicted of mail fraud in connection with the sale of a baldness remedy, and Carlos Vignali, a convicted cocaine trafficker with family connections to Democratic politicians in California.

Clinton had rejected the pardon promoted by his brother, and had been unaware of the fees collected by Rodham—which he and Hillary angrily (and successfully) urged her brother to refund after learning of them. Staying in Washington at Hillary’s residence when he learned that the Rodham story was about to come out, Clinton had jumped
abruptly into a van with two Secret Service agents and driven himself home to Chappaqua in the middle of the night. He didn’t want to be in the capital when the next round of gloating began.

While the House committee probe went on for months, the evidence that emerged substantiated none of the suspicions voiced by the chairman—and in fact came close to proving the opposite. Ultimately, what Burton’s machinations revealed was not a corruption conspiracy, but the unfolding diplomatic and political relationship that had impelled Clinton to issue the risky pardon.

When Clinton waived executive privilege to allow the testimony of Podesta, Bruce Lindsey, and Nolan, he simultaneously opened his administration’s archives—under the control of Bush White House lawyers—to the Burton committee investigators. Among the many Israeli officials and former officials who had contacted the White House on behalf of Marc Rich, as the press had already noted, was Ehud Barak, then Israel’s prime minister. Barak had reportedly discussed Rich with Clinton on at least two and perhaps three occasions. Armed with that scant knowledge, the Burton staffers made an unprecedented demand: They wanted the transcripts of notes recording the conversations between the two heads of state that had been taken down by stenographers in the Oval Office.

While all such discussions between the president and other heads of state are recorded in that manner, virtually no documents in the White House would be considered more sensitive—especially involving the prime minister of Israel, and even more especially during a period of critical negotiations between the Jewish state and the Palestinian Authority. Transcripts of private conversations between the president and foreign heads of state are not routinely provided to congressional committees or anyone else, particularly not when the conversations had occurred only months earlier.

It was difficult to imagine a more blatant breach of the discretion expected by world leaders when they are on the telephone with the president of the United States.

Yet the Bush White House bowed to the committee’s request swiftly and even eagerly. Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, ensured that the written notes of three Clinton-Barak conversations concerning Rich—which had occurred on December 11, 2000; January 8, 2001; and
January 19, 2001—were declassified, redacted, and released to Burton “at warp speed,” as one lawyer put it. (As a shining example of transparent government, this contrasted sharply with the obsessive secrecy that shrouded the following eight years of the Bush presidency.)

The extraordinary alacrity of Gonzales in releasing the transcripts to Burton troubled David Kendall, who assumed that the Bush White House wanted nothing more than to discredit his client. Kendall and Clinton had repeatedly discussed those conversations with Barak, which the former president recalled very clearly. During three lengthy calls with the Israeli leader about the complications of the peace talks with the Palestinians—which had reached an impasse that required further Israeli concessions to revive any chance of success—Barak had raised the subject of the Rich pardon request, according to Clinton. The justification offered by Barak was Rich’s many services to the Israeli state and the Jewish people, whom the Swiss-based oilman had assisted even while trading with hostile regimes in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria.

Now Clinton told Kendall again that those conversations, if released, would confirm the “foreign policy” rationale for the Rich pardon. But like any wise defense lawyer, even one whose client has a memory renowned for near-photographic accuracy and detail, Kendall fretted that the documents might somehow contradict or undermine Clinton.

The Israeli prime minister’s intervention on behalf of Rich had been anything but casual. Months earlier, at the beginning of the quiet pardon campaign mounted by Rich’s legal and public relations team, a man named Avner Azulay had reached out to the prime minister in Jerusalem. A former Mossad operative, Azulay headed Rich’s private foundation, which had given millions to charities in Israel and Europe. He had also once served as an Israel Defense Forces captain alongside Barak—who would become the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history—when both were young officers in the intelligence corps. So when he contacted the prime minister’s office, Barak had agreed to see him.

Azulay told Barak that Rich had been serving as a covert instrument of Israeli policy for nearly a quarter of a century—dating back at
least to the fall of the Shah of Iran, who had supplied most of Israel’s oil needs until his overthrow by Shiite Islamist militants. Rich had been doing business with the Shah, and yet somehow continued to work with the regime that followed under Ayatollah Khomeini, serving as a middleman for the continued flow of Iranian oil to Israel.

But Rich had done much more than provide petroleum, explained Azulay. Beginning in the early 1980s, Rich had used his connections with various regimes in Africa and the Middle East to negotiate the safe exit of Jewish families from places hostile to them. The first covert operation had involved Ethiopia, where Rich assisted Jerusalem in negotiating the exit of the Falasha Jews from that country, ravaged by famine and civil war under Mengistu Haile Mariam, a Soviet-backed dictator. Rich’s firm oversaw construction of an emergency medical clinic as part of a deal with Mengistu to release thousands of Jewish Ethiopians to emigrate to Israel.

Rich also maintained connections with the regime in Yemen, where hundreds of Jewish families remained after most had emigrated, and were under the constant threat of anti-Semitic attacks. Again, he was able to make deals with Yemeni officials who would never have talked with the Israelis, helping to bring dozens of Jews to safety in Israel. Over the next two decades he conducted similar operations—quietly spiriting endangered Jewish families out of the tiny remaining communities in Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In all those places, he had done business with officials who could be persuaded to look the other way.

Rich had also regularly allowed his firm’s offices in many of those countries to serve as safe havens for intelligence officers and their local sources. As a high-ranking Israeli official explained, the cover of Rich’s company was often used “just to allow access to a place, like when someone is active in some country in Africa, for example—to go visit certain places where you can’t go otherwise.” On some occasions, a Rich employee, or Rich himself, had carried messages from Jerusalem to a leader in Yemen or Libya or Syria or Iran, whose government had no official or any other kind of relations with Israel.

What Barak might have considered even more convincing at the time was Rich’s willingness to provide financial assistance to the Palestinians as part of the peace process—a favor he had already done on a small scale at the behest of Israeli president Shimon Peres.