Now that Bill Clinton has released the list of his 205,000 donors who
have given close to $500 million to his library and foundation, it is
clear why he resisted releasing the list while his wife was running for
president.
Compelled by the Obama transition team to make it public as a condition
of his wife's appointment as secretary of state, it becomes clear that
the list is a virtual encyclopedia of conflicts of interest for the
husband of a senator, to say nothing of the husband of an incoming
secretary of state.
Particularly troubling are the massive donations from Arab governments
in the Middle East. How can a secretary of state possibly be impartial
in conflicts involving Israel when her husband has gotten tens of
millions of dollars from Arabian governments and high-ranking people.
Specifically, Clinton got:
Between $10 million and $25 million from:
-- The government of Saudi Arabia
Between $1 million and $5 million from:
-- Friends of Saudi Arabia
-- The Dubai Foundation
-- Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid
-- Saudi tycoon Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi
-- Former Lebanon Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares
-- The government of Kuwait
-- The government of Qatar
-- The government of Oman
-- The government of Brunei
-- The Zayed Family, rulers of Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates
He also received between $500,000 and $1 million from Saudi businessman Walid Juffali.
Pardon us for looking such generous gift horses in the mouth, but it is
hard to imagine so many governments, monarchs and businessmen in the
Middle East giving money unless it was with some hope of a political
return on their investment. Will that return now come with the
appointment of Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state?
After all, the next secretary of state will be called upon to mediate
and negotiate conflicts in the Middle East as her first assignment. How
can Hillary Clinton undertake to do so impartially when her husband's
library and foundation -- over which he has total control -- have been
bankrolled by the very nations with whom she must negotiate?
The list reveals another key center of conflicts of interest in
Kazakhstan, the former Soviet Republic, now home to some of the world's
greatest mineral deposits and ruled by a corrupt dictator, Nursultan A.
Nazarbayev, who according to The New York Times has all but quashed
political dissent."
Clinton visited Kazakhstan and met with its president on Sept. 6, 2005,
accompanied by Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra. Soon after,
Giustra was awarded a highly lucrative contract to mine uranium there.
Now, lo and behold, Giustra turns up having given the library and
foundation $10 million to $25 million and the Clinton Giustra
Sustainable Growth Initiative-Canada gave $1 million to $5 million
more. And Clinton got $1 million to $5 million from Laksmi Mittal, the
fourth wealthiest person on the Forbes billionaire list and a member of
the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan.
In addition, Clinton further fished in troubled waters by taking $1
million to $5 million from Victor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of the
controversial former president of Ukraine.
Given the complexities of U.S. policy toward the former Soviet
republics in Central Asia, it is hard to see how this massive and
incestuous relationship cannot but complicate Hillary's independence.
One of the largest donors to the library and foundation was UNITAID, an
international organization largely controlled by France, which donated
more than $25 million. And the conflicts of interest are not all just
foreign. Corporate bailout recipients and wanna-be recipients donated
to the Clinton fund. They include: AIG, Lehman, Merrill, the Citi
Foundation and General Motors.
And, almost as an afterthought, the list reveals a donation of at least
$450,000 from Denise Rich, presumably in return for her ex-husband's
presidential pardon.
How could a United States senator possibly serve dispassionately while
her husband was collecting money from these donors on this kind of
scale? And how could we have almost elected a president without
realizing these conflicts existed? And how on earth can a secretary of
state function with these conflicts hanging over her head?
