There were no clear guidelines about what was and what wasn't permissible. After the speech in California, Bill Clinton's office contacted the State Department and sought approval for a speech sponsored by the Shanghai Airport Authority (SAA). Note the flexibility and lack of understanding that it had already approved the speech in California when the State Department wrote back, "[Your correspondence] states that the Shanghai Airport Authority, a state-owned enterprise, would be a 'title sponsor only.' Does this mean that SAA is not contributing any funds to pay for President Clinton's fees? I don't believe we've previously cleared acceptance of fees from PRC-linked entities, but could consider this variation."
The State Department Ethics Office was willing to "consider" a "variation" on guidelines, they wrote to Clinton's office. Ultimately Clinton declined the speech. His office said there was a scheduling problem. Bill also took a $550,000 payment for an appearance in Shanghai at something called the Huatuo CEO forum, underwritten by Chinese billionaire Yan Jiehe, a man described as "China's baddest billionaire builder."
Yan has become wealthy in part through large government construction contracts. His company is perhaps most famous in China for lopping off and flattening seven hundred mountaintops for a construction project. (Yan says, in defense, the number wasn't quite that high.)
Yan, who calls Clinton a “close friend," is an outspoken Chinese nationalist, explaining that foreign countries must “not look down on China. ... I understand that my country, my nation, China is the greatest in history."
Yan Jiehe
Prior to Hillary's appointment as secretary of state, Bill had given only two speeches on the Chinese mainland, for a total of $450,000. After Hillary's appointment, the Clintons promised both the incoming Obama White House and the US Senate that his speeches and business ties would be vetted by the State Department Ethics Office, as described in chapter 1.
The link is here.
This approach was doomed to fail, because the disclosures to be made were not required to indicate anything other than the name of the donor, certainly not investments or what business they might have with the State Department.
An examination of the communication between Bill's office and State Department ethics officers, which was obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), indicates that Bill Clinton's office never provided anything but a cursory description of who was paying for each speech.
The link is here.
TD Bank's ties to the Keystone Pipeline, for example, were never disclosed. Ericsson, in the correspondence concerning that speech, is simply described as a “world-leading provider of telecommunications equipment."
No mention is made of its tangles with the State Department at the time. And the department green-lighted 215 speechmaking arrangements as not posing conflicts of interest.
For the ethics officers replying to the Clinton requests, the emphasis was on a speedy response. And then there was the intimidation factor: they were vetting speeches being done by the spouse of their ultimate boss. And the spouse happened to be a former president.
For good measure, all correspondence pertaining to Bill's speeches between his office and the ethics office was copied to Cheryl Mills, Hillary's chief of staff and Bill's longtime friend. And who ran the ethics office at the time? That would be the State Department legal adviser, Harold Koh, who had previously been appointed by President Clinton as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor.
Speaking of ethics problems, some of Bill's largest paydays for speaking fees have come from scandal-plagued Nigeria. As we will learn in the next chapter, the Clinton financial ties to the continent of Africa run deep, and often include those with troubling reputations and rich histories of corruption.
The link is here.
CHAPTER 8
Warlord Economics
THE CLINTONS DO AFRICA
It was an unusually hot July in 2009 when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Kinshasa, the sprawling capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC (previously named Zaire) had for decades been a house of horrors. Ruled by corrupt dictators, populated by child soldiers, plagued by tribal fighting, and suffering from invasions by neighboring countries, few places on earth are more hellish than the DRC.