The political furor over the pardoning of wealthy speculator and oil
trader Marc Rich—Bill Clinton's last act before leaving the
White House—combines big money politics, media hypocrisy and right-wing
hysteria in roughly equal proportions.
There is little dispute about the basic facts of the case. The Belgian-born
Rich, who became a multimillionaire commodities
trader in the 1960s, fled the United States in 1983 after he was indicted
on charges of tax evasion related to his oil-trading
business, as well as violating the US ban on trade with Iran. Rich-owned
companies paid $200 million in penalties for the tax
charges. Many other US-based international oil companies paid similar
fines and civil penalties for such infractions, under
Department of Energy regulations which were abolished by the Reagan
administration in 1984, but Rich was the only capitalist
to face criminal charges.
Over the past 17 years, Rich has grown even wealthier in exile, with
especially lucrative ventures in the former Soviet Union,
Iraq, Nigeria and South Africa. He renounced his US citizenship, and
now holds Swiss, Spanish and Israeli citizenship. His
money has bought him effective immunity from US prosecution in Switzerland,
where he resides, as well as in Israel, where he
has top-level connections with politicians in both the Labor and Likud
wings of the Zionist political establishment, and
unspecified but well-publicized relations with the Israeli intelligence
agency Mossad.
For years Rich sought a settlement of his legal problems in the United
States, but US prosecutors, beginning with Rudolph
Giuliani, now the mayor of New York City, always refused to negotiate
with a fugitive, while Rich refused to return without
assurances that he would not receive a prison term.
Rich's money has now bought him a pardon in the United States. Direct
bribery was unnecessary. After hiring prominent
Republican lawyers during the Reagan and Bush administrations—Leonard
Garment, former Nixon White House counsel,
William Bradford Reynolds, once an official of the Reagan Justice Department,
and Lewis Libby, now chief of staff to Vice
President Richard Cheney—Rich hired a top Democratic lawyer, Jack Quinn,
to give him direct access to Clinton.
Quinn was White House counsel in 1993-94, and remained close to both
Clinton and Gore. He eventually opened a lobbying
firm in Washington with such well-heeled clients as Cisco Systems,
Viacom and a bevy of telecommunications firms. His
partner in the bipartisan firm was a former communications director
for the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie, who
took a leave of absence last year to work for the Bush campaign.
Rich's ex-wife Denise, a major contributor to the Democratic Party and
the Clinton Presidential Library, also played a
significant role, making personal appeals to Clinton in the waning
days of his administration.
Even more important was the extraordinary outpouring of support from
the American Jewish and Israeli political establishment,
including Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami,
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Ohlmert, former Mossad
chief Shabtai Shavit, Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League
of B'nai B'rith, and Rabbi Irving Greenberg,
chairman of the US Holocaust Memorial Council. All cited Rich's assistance
to Israeli intelligence and his donations to Israeli
charities in their messages to Clinton.
The pardon was rushed through in the midnight hours of Clinton's final
day in office, avoiding the usual Justice Department
reviews as well as any consultation with the US Attorney in Manhattan,
Mary Jo White, who has jurisdiction over the case.
However crass and tawdry this influence-peddling may be, it hardly comes
as a shock. The American two-party system serves
the interests of the corporate elite, and Marc Rich and his advocates
pulled all the strings available to a man possessed of a vast
fortune. Clinton denied clemency for prisoners genuinely deserving
of mercy, such as Leonard Peltier, the American Indian
activist framed up and imprisoned for a quarter century, and many other
less prominent but equally unfortunate victims of the
capitalist “justice” system. Meanwhile, he placed the billionaire wheeler-dealer
at the head of the pardon queue.
What is striking about the furor over Rich's pardon is the cast of characters
leading the onslaught against Clinton. Those who
spearheaded the Whitewater and impeachment campaigns—the national media
and the frothing right wing of the Republican
Party—are out in force.
The Wall Street Journal, which ordinarily defends billionaires as an
abused and persecuted minority, suddenly finds it shocking
and abhorrent that vast wealth should bring with it political privilege.
The Marc Rich case, the newspaper declared, was a
vindication of impeachment, demonstrating that Clinton's character
was “sociopathic.” (It is noteworthy that, even as it
fulminated over the pardon of Marc Rich, the Journal ran a fawning
column over the plight of another billionaire swindler, junk
bond king Michael Milken, whose pardon application Clinton turned down.)
The television networks have given saturation coverage to the case,
together with a series of even more flimsy allegations about
supposed sabotage by outgoing Clinton White House aides, the Clintons'
removal of gifts from the White House, the
ex-president's efforts to rent high-priced Manhattan office space,
and other trivialities. According to a study by the Center for
Media and Public Affairs, the network coverage of the ex-president's
affairs has been comparable to that provided to all the
actions, appointments and statements of his successor. The most Clinton-obsessed
TV network, NBC, actually ran more
stories on Clinton than on Bush during the first 25 days of the new
administration.
Joining in this chorus are the usual suspects among the congressional
Republicans. They combine furious denunciations of the
Rich pardon as a case of political bribery with plans to greatly expand
tax breaks for the wealthy capitalists who funnel bribes,
disguised as campaign contributions, in their own direction.
House Government Affairs Committee Chairman Dan Burton, who has made
a career of anti-Clinton probes, has already held
one set of televised hearings at which Denise Rich took the Fifth Amendment
(hardly surprising given that her ex-husband is a
fugitive and her contacts with him putatively illegal). More hearings
have been set for March 1, at which the former president
himself may be called as a witness, giving the ultra-right the prospect
of their most deeply felt wish, Clinton in the dock.
On the Senate side Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania took the early lead,
suggesting that it might be possible to impeach Clinton a
second time, even though he is out of office, for abuse of his pardon
power. Republican deputy leader Don Nickles suggested
legislative action to reduce Clinton's pension and perks as an ex-president.
Another Republican, Jefferson Sessions of
Alabama, declared that there was an evident basis for a criminal charge
against Clinton.
Congressional Democrats, prostrate before the new occupant of the White
House, saw no reason to defend the previous
resident. They tried to outdo Republicans in their denunciations of
the pardon. Liberal Congressman Barney Frank denounced
Clinton's action as “a real betrayal.” Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold,
who voted to confirm John Ashbrook, declared that he
was “appalled by the connection between the pardon and the soft money.”
Illinois Senator Richard Durbin condemned “the
appearance of impropriety.” Senator Charles Schumer of New York said
Clinton's action “makes a mockery” of the criminal
justice system.
The most sickening hypocrisy comes from the New York Times. Its specialty
has been to use moralizing about Clinton's
personal conduct to cover up the fundamental issues of democratic rights
raised in the right-wing campaign over impeachment,
and then in the Supreme Court coup that placed George W. Bush in the
White House. The Times urged submission to the high
court's partisan and anti-democratic subversion of the 2000 election.
Now it declares, “We sense a national need to come to
grips with the wreckage, both civic and legal, left by former President
Clinton.”
It is significant that the Bush administration has been openly unenthusiastic
about a heavily publicized investigation of the Marc
Rich pardon. Only days after Burton announced his plans for expanded
hearings based on a grant of limited immunity to Denise
Rich, and possibly a subpoena ordering Clinton to testify, the Justice
Department authorized US Attorney Mary Jo White to
begin a criminal investigation into the pardon.
This legal move could yet become the starting point for another round
of investigations modeled on those of Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr. But it is more likely that it will have the
effect of crimping the congressional probe, since prosecutors
are certain to oppose grants of immunity to those, like Denise Rich,
whose testimony might be sought in a federal investigation.
The Wall Street Journal criticized the action for exactly that reason,
noting that White's office in Manhattan had been
investigating a campaign contribution swapping arrangement between
the Teamsters Union and the Democratic National
Committee since 1997 without charging any top Democrats. “The Bush
Administration keeps suggesting it wants the pardon
scandal to go away, so perhaps Ms. White's blockade serves their purposes
as well as Mr. Clinton's,” the Journal
complained.
There are numerous reasons for the Bush White House to be less than
enthusiastic about a full-fledged exploration of the Marc
Rich affair. There is concern for the institutional prerogatives of
the president, such as the right to grant executive clemency or
pardon. Not that mercy was a defining characteristic of Bush's six
years in the Texas state house, when he put more prisoners
to death than any other governor in modern US history.
More significant is the concern that public attention to tax evasion
in the oil industry could be damaging to the section of big
business with which Bush and Cheney are most closely aligned. Cheney
himself could become the subject of such a probe,
since there are reports that Halliburton, the giant oil services company
he headed for five years, carried out operations in Iran
which may be illegal under US law. During his tenure as Halliburton
CEO, Cheney made speeches denouncing the very
sanctions on Iran that Rich was prosecuted for violating.
The whole subject of presidential pardons is a touchy one for the
Bush family. Clinton's pardon of
Marc Rich is a squalid affair, but it pales by comparison, as an
act of presidential malfeasance,
with the pardons issued by President George Herbert Walker Bush
in December 1992 to five of
the principal figures in the Iran-Contra affair. The pardon of former
Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger was a particularly flagrant case of politically
motivated abuse of power.
Weinberger had lied to special prosecutor Laurence Walsh, concealing
for years his contemporaneous
notes of White House discussions on the secret arms sales to Iran
and the illegal war against Nicaragua. Weinberger's notebooks were eventually
uncovered by investigators for Walsh, and the former
Pentagon chief was about to go on trial for perjury and cover-up.
Walsh hoped that a conviction would induce Weinberger to testify
against President Bush, who as
vice president had famously claimed to be “out of the loop” where
Iran-Contra was concerned.
Weinberger's notebooks reportedly contained material contradicting
Bush's denials of involvement
in the illegal Iran-Contra operations.
Thus by pardoning Weinberger, Bush not only let a crony go scot free,
he immunized against
prosecution a potential witness against himself. This crude judicial
“fix” was given far less
examination by the media than the Clinton pardon of Marc Rich, and
was quickly buried.