Bill was promptly appointed cochair, along with Bellerive. Together, they constituted IHRC's Executive Committee, giving them concentrated decision-making power. In this role Bill was ultimately responsible for the approval of any projects that would be funded by US taxpayer dollars or international organizations.
Clinton and Bellerive would prove to work effectively together. As we will see, Bellerive would later go into business with members of the Clinton family in Haiti.
In public statements, Bill waxed romantic about how they would rebuild Haiti, like a phoenix from the ashes, in a grand vision of social engineering. "I want them to close their landfills," he told Esquire magazine, “recycle everything and use the rest for energy. Wouldn't it be great if they become the first wireless nation in the world? They could, I'm telling you, they really could."
It is hard to underestimate the role that IHRC would play in the disbursement of funds. As the State Department itself noted, in addition to reviewing project applications and deciding if those projects would be funded, "IHRC is the planning body for the Haitian recovery."
In particular, as the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) put it, IHRC was supposed to "coordinate donors, conduct strategic planning, approve reconstruction projects, and provide accountability."
With the massive expenditure of US taxpayer money, some things have improved in Haiti. Some roads are considerably better than they were before. A large amount of debris has been removed. But beyond that, by the measure of promises made by the Clintons, the efforts to rebuild Haiti, which were largely controlled by Bill and Hillary Clinton, have been a massive failure.
Five years after the earthquake, Haiti is not a "wireless nation." Billions of dollars have indeed been poured into the country, with Hillary and Bill having much of the say in how the funds were allocated. But accord-ing to GAO, IHRC ignored the action plan and funding priorities that had been set up by the Haitian government and donor countries.
Moreover, much of the taxpayer money intended for practical rebuilding was squandered. Funds for reconstruction have ended up in worthless projects-while in several cases Clinton friends, allies, and even family members have benefited from the reconstruction circumstances. Natural disasters often create enormous opportunities for politically connected contractors to make money courtesy of the rebuilding effort.
Author and critic Naomi Klein calls it “disaster capitalism." Disaster capitalism need not be all bad. You do need qualified professionals to go Into devastated areas and begin the process of providing immediate relief and rebuilding infrastructure.
An example of where such efforts went well was in Indonesia, following the tsunami that devastated the region in 2004. Communities that were cut off from the rest of the country saw their services and infrastructure restored, and crime and corruption were generally kept under control, according to the World Bank.
In the case of Haiti, the process was handled very differently. IHRC, for example, was supposed to have a Performance and Anti-corruption Office (PAO) to monitor reconstruction efforts and investigate allegations of corruption.
The link is here.
But it was eleven months before a single employee was even hired as part of PAO. What's more, IHRC was never fully staffed, and much of the decision making was left in the hands of key employees of the Clinton Foundation.
Less than a month after the earthquake hit, US ambassador Kenneth Merten sent a cable from Port-au-Prince to State Department headquarters titled “THE GOLD RUSH IS ON."
The link is here.
A flood of eager businessmen were rushing to the capital looking to obtain government contracts. But securing contracts and business apparently required knowing the right people.
Put simply, it was widely believed you needed access to the Clintons. Florida-based contractor J. R. Bergeron was one of several business owners jockeying to land lucrative contracts to help with disaster cleanup.
To compete for cash in what Bergeron called "the Super Bowl of disasters," he understood the Clintons to be the referees. His company, Bergeron Emergency Services, invested more than a million dollars to move employees and equipment to Haiti even before landing a contract. But Bergeron knew he would have to do more than just demonstrate expertise and readiness.
Does a preponderance of the evidence show what’s going on here?
As he later observed, "posturing and aggressive self-promotion in Haiti was an inevitable part of this high-stakes competition.... Politics plays a large role." Bergeron hired two lobbyists, giving them the job of "reaching out to officials of the Clinton Foundation's Haiti earthquake relief efforts and the U.S. Agency for International Development."
The link is here.
They were Mitch Berger and Alex Heckler; Heckler had served on Hillary's national campaign finance committee.
Bergeron also says he made a donation to the Clinton Foundation. (Records indicate he gave less than $250.) He failed to obtain any contracts. The realities seemed clear.
As one individual told the Wall Street Journal, "if you don't have Clinton connections you won't be in the game." But those with impeccable Clinton credentials apparently didn't need to hire lobbyists.
