Israel Matzav

Mrs. Clinton's conflicts of interest

Former President Bill Clinton disclosed the list of donors for his Presidential library this past week, and it should be obvious to everyone why the Clintons did all they could to keep this list out of the Presidential campaign while Hillary Clinton was a candidate.

Saudi Arabia alone gave to the foundation $10 million to $25 million, as did government aid agencies in Australia and the Dominican Republic. Brunei, Kuwait, Norway, Oman, Qatar and Taiwan each gave more than $1 million. So did the ruling family of Abu Dhabi and the Dubai Foundation, both based in the United Arab Emirates, and the Friends of Saudi Arabia, founded by a Saudi prince.

Also among the largest donors were a businessman who was close to the onetime military ruler of Nigeria, a Ukrainian tycoon who was son-in-law of that former Soviet republic’s authoritarian president and a Canadian mining executive who took Mr. Clinton to Kazakhstan while trying to win lucrative uranium contracts.

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Mr. Clinton’s foundation has raised $500 million since 1997, growing into a global operation with 1,100 paid staff members and volunteers in 40 countries. It said it had provided medicine to 1.4 million people living with H.I.V./AIDS, helped dozens of cities reduce heat-trapping gases and worked to spread economic opportunity.

Mr. Clinton’s advocates said that the disclosure on Thursday showed he had nothing to hide and that most of his largest contributors were already known.

Yet while unprecedented, the disclosure was also limited.

The list posted on the foundation’s Web site — www.clintonfoundation.org — did not provide the nationality or occupation of the donors, the dates they contributed or the precise amounts of their gifts, instead breaking down contributors by dollar ranges. Nor did the list include pledges for future donations. As a result, it is impossible to know from the list which donations were made while Mr. Clinton was still president or while Mrs. Clinton was running for president.

Many benefactors are well-known Americans, like Stephen L. Bing; Alfonso Fanjul; Bill Gates; Tom Golisano, a billionaire who ran for New York governor; Rupert Murdoch; and Barbra Streisand. Bloomberg L.P., the financial media empire founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, contributed, as did Freddie Mac, the mortgage company now partly blamed for the housing market collapse.

Another potentially sensitive donation came from Blackwater Training Center, part of the private security firm hired to protect American diplomats in Iraq. Five of its guards have been indicted for their roles in a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

The potential for appearances of conflict was illustrated by Amar Singh, a politician in India who gave $1 million to $5 million. Mr. Singh visited the United States in September to lobby for a deal allowing India to obtain civilian nuclear technology even though it never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. He met with Mrs. Clinton, who he said assured him that Democrats would not block the deal. Congress approved it weeks later.

Other donors have connections with India, a potential flashpoint because of tensions with Pakistan. Among them was Lakshmi Mittal, a steel magnate and, according to Forbes magazine, the fourth-richest person in the world. Mr. Mittal, who donated $1 million to $5 million, was involved in a scandal in 2002 in London, where he lives. After Mr. Mittal made a large donation to the Labor Party, Prime Minister Tony Blair helped him persuade Romania to sell him its state steel company.

Another donor was Gilbert Chagoury, a businessman close to Gen. Sani Abacha of Nigeria, widely criticized for a brutal and corrupt rule.

Mr. Chagoury tried during the 1990s to win favor for Mr. Abacha from the Clinton administration, contributing $460,000 to a voter registration group to which Democratic officials steered him, according to news accounts. He won meetings with National Security Council officials, including Susan E. Rice, who is now Mr. Obama’s choice to be ambassador to the United Nations.

There's really little that can be done to force a former President not to accept donations from foreign countries. But the big issue here is what impact Clinton's 'fund raising' ought to have on his wife's bid to become Secretary of State in the Hopenchange administration. Thus far, the Obama administration has reacted with stunning hypocrisy.

Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said donations from “countries where we have particularly sensitive issues and relations” would invariably raise concerns about whether Mrs. Clinton had conflicts of interest.

“The real question,” Mr. Levitt said, “is to what extent you can really separate the activities and influence of any husband and wife, and certainly a husband and wife team that is such a powerhouse.”

Mr. Clinton’s office said in a statement that the disclosure itself should ensure that there would be “not even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for Mr. Obama, said the president-elect had chosen Mrs. Clinton for his cabinet because “no one could better represent the United States.”

“Past donations to the Clinton foundation,” Ms. Cutter said, “have no connection to Senator Clinton’s prospective tenure as secretary of state.”

What's worse, the Republicans aren't really likely to hold up the nomination over this issue. Unfortunately, Republicans do the same thing.

Republicans have addressed the issue cautiously, suggesting that they would examine it but not necessarily hold up Mrs. Clinton’s confirmation as a result. Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, which will consider her nomination, was in Russia on Thursday and unavailable for comment, according to Mr. Lugar’s office.

But in an interview on Nov. 30 on “This Week” on ABC, Mr. Lugar said Mr. Clinton’s activities would raise legitimate questions, adding, “I don’t know how, given all of our ethics standards now, anyone quite measures up to this who has such cosmic ties.”

Still, he indicated that he would vote for Mrs. Clinton and praised Mr. Obama’s team for doing “a good job in trying to pin down the most important elements” in its agreement with Mr. Clinton.

The agreement forced Clinton to disclose the donors before year-end and to make annual disclosures thereafter as long as Hillary is in office. I'm sure that will make all of you feel warm and fuzzy about having Hillary as Secretary of State when her husband received a $10-25 million donation from the Saudis. About as comfortable as we all feel with Harvard and Georgetown's Islamic studies departments.

If any of you still think this doesn't matter, watch this O'Reilly show segment with Tammy Bruce and watch her reaction when her host suggests that maybe this will have no effect on Hillary. Let's go to the videotape.



Unfortunately, you don't really have to be clean to join the Obama administration. No hope and no change. And four years of a slick talker in power. I'm not looking forward to this.

I wonder if Soha Arafat was on the list.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:34 PM