Sometimes lawyers make the best criminals because they know how to skirt the law. It helps when money power and bribed and blackmailed people are placed in key roles to keep their system going. We continue to share patterns of behavior which are all to familiar to us by now.
For that very reason, the agreement was widely criticized for not going far enough. Senator Lugar was direct: "The only certain way to eliminate this risk going forward is for the Clinton Foundation to foreswear new foreign contributions when Senator Clinton becomes Secretary of State." The Washington Post's editorial page agreed, pointing out that "even if Ms. Clinton is not influenced by gifts to her husland's charity, the appearance of conflict is unavoidable.”
The Post warned, "The new administration is buying itself a heap of potential trouble with this agreement.” Still, the agreement did the trick. The commitment to disclose and seek preapproval for government-tied funds left the Senate, the press, and the public with the widespread impression that these issues had been fully addressed.
Hillary was confirmed as secretary of state by a 94-2 margin. But the claimed commitment to transparency was fleeting, The Clintons violated it almost immediately. As we will see, the Clinton Foundation failed to disclose gifts amounting to millions of dollars from foreign entities and businessmen who needed Hillary's help as secretary of state to approve a transaction with serious national security implications. The Clinton Foundation also collected money from foreign government-owned businesses without getting prior Obama administration approval. And the pattern of taking money from businesses or individuals that owned entities that had matters before Hillary would continue unabated.
Some might say it is unfair to connect Hillary's public career as a US senator and secretary of state with her husband's private commercial activities. After all, they both led active public lives and spent significant amounts of time apart. She seems to prefer their home in Northwest Washington, DC, while Bill spends much of his time in Chappaqua, New York. But by their own account, the two often work in tandem and are in regular communication. Hillary says, “[W]e have an endless conversation. We never get bored. We get deeply involved in all the work that we do, and we talk about it constantly."
Journalists who have traveled with the Clintons confirm this. When Andrew Jack of the Financial Times traveled with Bill in Africa for seven days, he noted "his frequent calls with Hillary during the trip." Spouses have long been seen as avenues for cronyism, corruption, and influence. That is why federal government ethics laws require politicians to disclose not just their own financial assets, holdings, and income, but those of their spouses as well. Enriching a politician's spouse or family is one of the most common methods of political corruption.
As secretary of state, Hillary pushed for international anticorruption standards that addressed this very concern. Others might argue that this is simply a "Bill problem." They would like to divide the Clintons into "good Clinton" and "bad Clinton." Hillary is the "good" one, the devoted and tough-minded public servant. Bill is the "bad" one, ethically challenged, pursuing money and personal desires. One magazine headline explained it this way: "Hillary's big ethical problem: Bill." But as we will see, this is a crude caricature of their complex relationship. In a way, all that has really happened is that the Clintons have reversed roles. When Hillary entered the Senate, and then the State Department, she became the one who had real power, rather than Bill.
How did the Clintons amass so much wealth in such a short period of time? The answer makes for fascinating reading. For one thing, the Clintons have operated at the fringes of the developed world, often appearing to assist in facilitating huge resource-extraction deals that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The era of globalization has opened up a Wild West bonanza where profits can be made on a scale not seen since the height of nineteenth-century colonialism.
The Clintons' most lucrative transactions originate not in places like Germany or Great Britain, where business and politics are kept separate by stringent ethical rules and procedures, but in despotic areas of the developing world where the rules are very different. Money also comes from foreign businessmen in Europe or Canada who have amassed their wealth in parts of the world where corrup- tion and payoffs are simply a part of doing business.
We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable US policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds. Here is how it worked: Bill flew around the world making speeches and burnishing his reputation as a global humanitarian and wise man. Very often on these trips he was accompanied by "close friends" or-associates who happened to have business interests pending in these countries. Introductions were made, deals struck, and photo ops arranged before an admiring foreign press. Meanwhile, bureaucratic or legislative obstacles were mysteriously cleared or approvals granted within the purview of his wife, the powerful senator or secretary of state. Huge donations then flowed into the Clinton Foundation while Bill received enormous speaking fees underwritten by the very businessmen who benefited from these apparent interventions.
Of course, it is perfectly possible that in some cases Hillary did nothing at all to ensure these favorable outcomes. Perhaps these foreign interests made large payments to Bill simply in the hope of influencing Hillary. Maybe they were mistaken in thinking that multimillion-dollar payments to Bill and the foundation would have the desired effect. We don't know. Either way, though, the Clintons ended up with the money.
I realize how shocking these allegations may appear. Are these activities illegal? That's not for me to say. I'm not a lawyer. But as someone once said, the most troubling thing about Washington is not what's illegal but what isn't.
The Clintons are lawyers themselves and they know very well what legal lines they may not cross. By using their legal finesse, the Clintons have often skirted the boundaries of ethical conduct. They have been frequently censured and criticized for their conduct, but have usually escaped serious legal consequences. In a way, what you are about to read is similar to what they have always done, from Little Rock to the Lincoln Bedroom.
They are just doing it now on a truly global scale. Unsavory foreigners with an interest in climbing higher up the global status chain have clearly seen the Clintons as a path to respectability and influence. Take the case of Gulnora Karimova, the eldest daughter of the dictator of Uzbekistan. In a country dominated by organized crime, forced labor, and torture, Gulnora is loathed by her country's citizenry. As one US diplomatic cable put it, "Most Uzbeks see Karimova as a greedy, power-hungry individual who uses her father to crush business people or anyone else who stands in her way... She remains the single most hated person in the country."" Being the most hated person in Uzbekistan is saying something.
Karimova and Clinton
Her father, who still runs the country, is widely reported to have boiled his political opponents to death in the 1990s. Karimova is also glamorous and ambitious, and for a while she sported a fashion and jewelry line she tried to establish in Europe and the United States. According to a "secret/noforn" cable sent from the US embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to the CIA and other intelligence agencies in July 2009, she was "hoping that a connection with him [Bill] will allow her to establish good relations with the Secretary of State [Hillary)."
How to go about it? She started by cosponsoring a Clinton Foundation fundraiser in Monaco. She posed with Bill for a photo at the event and soon NBC's Today Show reported that Bill Clinton was "among her friends." Where it all might have led we will never know, because in 2013 Karimova had a falling out with her dictator father. As of this writing-she is thought to be under house arrest in Uzbekistan. Brash Gulnora Karimova was only expressing what so many foreign oligarchs and interested investors already know. And the Clintons know it, too. Supporters and opponents have called the Clintons many things over the years, but one word you never hear is naive.
