THE
SHORT END
This
is a question that seems to answer itself. Even if you add
in the $1 million-plus given by Marc's ex-wife, Denise Rich,
to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Rodham
Clinton's successful campaign for a Senate seat, it seems
obvious that, in this supposed deal, the usually crafty
Clinton somehow got the short end of the stick. Our ex-President
is facing a veritable storm of criticism, some of the harshest
coming from members of his own party, and even his biggest
defenders are taken aback: they always knew that
he was reckless and vulgar, but the sheer scale of this
latest example of Bill Clinton's moral turpitude has disgusted
even them. They didn't mind when the Lincoln bedroom was
being rented out like a Motel 6, but selling presidential
pardons to the highest bidder? It didn't go over very well,
to say the least: why, even Joe Conason, who took Sidney
Blumenthal's place as Clinton's journalistic champion when
the latter went on the White House payroll, hung his head
in reflected shame at the actions of the man he has so consistently
defended:
"The
Rich pardon will never reflect well on the former president.
Exercising an extraordinary power that ought to be reserved
for the repentant and rehabilitated, he rushed to a bad
judgment that benefited a very bad man. Yet the true motives
behind that decision may be far less damning than whatever
Clinton's most demented detractors want us to believe."
A
LOBBY TO DIE FOR
Aha!
And what, pray tell, were his "true motives"? According
to Conason, it wasn't for the love of money, but for the
love of Israel: Clinton gave in to pressure from Ehud Barak,
Shimon Peres, and Shabtai Shavit the former chief of the
Mossad intelligence service, not to mention the Speaker
of the Israeli Knesset and a long list of Israeli dignitaries.
A series
of emails between various members of Rich's legal team,
published in Salon, details the concerted campaign
to mobilize Israeli support, while Zev Chafets, writing
in the New York Daily News, snorts in disgust at
the well-organized pressure on behalf of the Rich pardon
from Israel's friends in the US, including
Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League
of B'nai B'rith, and Eli Wiesel – who now denies it.
Conason writes that "it is almost certain that those entreaties
swayed him more than the largesse of Rich's ex-wife Denise,
who donated more than $1 million to Democrats over the last
decade."
DAMN
YOU
Yes,
Joe, but just how much "less damning" is this explanation
than the charge of selling out for filthy lucre? Indeed,
such a motive seems far more damning and dangerous,
for what we are talking about is a President's circumvention
of American justice at the behest of a foreign power. We
all knew Clinton was a sleazeball: that, after all, was
a key factor in his popularity among certain sectors of
the population. It was part of his charm. Why the popular
revulsion at this latest revelation? A sleazeball they could
handle. Sullying the Oval Office with his furtive trysts
was one thing, but selling out American justice to satisfy
demands emanating from beyond our borders? That's a different
story – and it's the real story of the Marc Rich Affair.
NOT
SO SECRET AGENT
Barak
called Clinton twice, just before the announcement of the
President's pardons, and interceded on Rich's behalf: following
a scenario spelled out in the Rich legal team's memos, Barak
in effect said he'd settle for Rich in lieu of a pardon
for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. Wiesel, on the other
hand, now claims that, while he was solicited to
appeal to Clinton to grant the pardon, he was determined
to hold out for Pollard. Why would the Israelis go all out
for Rich? The story is that he has performed certain "services"
for the Israeli government, and they are "grateful" for
his "unselfish" and even noble actions, which are vaguely
connected to the alleged "rescue" of Israelis from Arab
clutches and other good deeds. But now it is coming to light
that the Rich Foundation, set up by Marc Rich to launder
his ill-gotten fortune, is the Israeli government.
Avner Azulay, executive director of the Rich Foundation,
is a former Mossad agent, according to a
very interesting article in the San Jose Mercury News.
So are the bodyguards who, since 1983, have been protecting
their boss from being jailed on charges of racketeering,
fraud, etc. The piece cites Vincent Cannistraro, a former
spook and a Middle East expert, who said the Mossad used
Rich as a "conduit for financial transfers" and to pass
messages to Iran when necessary. He is a very wealthy man,
so he is not on the payroll per se. He was a very
close friend of the Israeli government and has been cooperating
with Israeli intelligence since the early 1980s."
WHO
IS MARC RICH?
But
it would be wrong to simply characterize Rich as an Israeli
pawn, for he is a power to be reckoned with in his own right:
the case could be made – and, indeed, should be made
by Israel's true friends – that it is the other way
around: that the Israeli government was the pawn in Rich's
game. As Craig Copetas put it in
a 1990 magazine article in Regardies':
"To
get a sense of how deep Rich's tentacles may reach into
the U.S. government, it's necessary to recap the rise of
an obscure New York University dropout whose genius catapulted
him to the top of Philipp Brothers, the most powerful commodities
trading company in the world, where he single-handedly created
what's now called the spot oil market. After he left Philipp
Brothers (now Phibro-Salomon), Rich founded an oil company
and engineered its growth into a multibillion-dollar trading
firm. Then he molded his holdings into an international
financial conglomerate that gave him access to capital from
the four corners of the earth. He bought real estate, refineries,
film companies, movie studios, mines, oil wells, politicians,
tanker fleets, Picassos, grain silos, weapons, and, perhaps
to satisfy his thirst, a Coca-Cola distributor. Rich mastered
the arcane game of buying and selling the earth's crust.
The business gave him deep – hell, bottomless –
pockets, but information was his true currency, and with
it he bought power. Real power. No one but Rich has ever
fully harnessed and directed the energy that's created when
money and power collide."
HOW
MARC RICH LOOTED RUSSIA
Rod
Dreher, in
the New York Daily News, recounts the story of
how Rich looted Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's
collapse, citing Paul Klebnikov, a Russia expert and senior
editor of Forbes magazine. Klebnikov is the author
of Godfather
of the Kremlin, a book that painstakingly documents
how Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and his cronies plundered
Russia under the rubric of a phony "privatization" program.
Rich, based in Switzerland, was in a perfect position to
act as a key link in an international scheme to strip Russia
of its assets and sock away the profits in secretive Swiss
banks. As a dealer in oil, aluminum, zinc, and other commodities,
Rich moved in with amazing speed and alacrity to strike
deals with local party bosses who wanted to spirit their
stolen wealth out of the country. "He'd strike a deal with
the local party boss, or the director of a state-owned company,"
explains Klebnikov, "he'd say, 'OK, you will sell me the
[commodity] at 5 to 10 percent of the world market price.
And in return, I will deposit some of the profit I make
by reselling it 10 times higher on the world market, and
put the kickback in a Swiss bank account.'" Rich "made a
complete mint off of Russia," says Klebnikov. "Marc Rich
ended up being a mentor to all these young kids who came
out of the Communist Party establishment, and who made billions
off these schemes themselves." Dreher cites an article in
The National Interest reporting that the KGB had
been spiriting assets out of the country since the early
eighties – just about the time Rich went on the lam
– through front companies: "The program evolved into
. . . avenues for squirreling away funds for the safe retirement
or political comeback of embattled communist leaders."
LETTER
FROM THE MOSSAD
In
a letter to Clinton dated Nov. 28, 2000, ex-Israeli intelligence
chief Shavit said the Mossad had "requested [Rich's] assistance
in looking for MIAs and help in the rescue and evacuation
of Jews from enemy countries. Mr. Rich always agreed and
used his extensive network of contacts in these countries
to produce results sometimes beyond the expected. Israel
and the Jewish people are grateful for these unselfish actions
which sometimes had the potential of jeopardizing his own
personal interests and business relations in these countries."
Shavit does not identify these "enemy countries," although
the implication is clear that we are talking about Arab
countries, perhaps Iran, where Rich has connections due
to his oil interests, but it could just as easily be any
place where Jews face danger – and Russia could very
well fit that particular bill. Acting on behalf of the Israeli
government's perceived self-interest, Rich's alliance with
the ex-Commie kleptocrats makes perfect sense: as a political
buffer against the alleged resurgence of Russian anti-Semitism,
and a facilitator of Russian Jewish emigration to Israel,
the remnants of the old Soviet party machine would be valuable
allies.
A
MANY-TENTACLED CREATURE
Rich's
tentacles are everywhere: his Glencore
corporation owns a controlling stake in the state-controlled
Kazakhstan Zinc (KazZinc),
and is the single largest investor in Montenegro, where
Glencore enjoys the special favor of the gangsterish President
Djukanovic: this cozy relationship has aroused the charge
of "crony
capitalism," and it does indeed seem like a repeat
of his tactics in the Ukraine. Under the protection
of NATO troops in Bosnia, Glencore virtually controls the
aluminum franchise and word
is out that he has his eye on Kosovo, where UNMIK is
busy giving away the store. And while the Israelis have
taken the lead as Rich's biggest advocates, the fugitive
financier has other powerful allies: according to Copetas,
they include "Henry Kissinger, lawyer Leonard Garment, [former]
deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger, public relations
gurus Harold Burson, Robert Gray, and Frank Mankiewicz,
opera superstar Placido Domingo, and a boxcar full of European
princes, American politicians, OPEC sheiks, and Fortune
500 bosses. But they can't lift the criminal counts that
are suspended over his head." Clinton could, and did –
with more than a little help from the Republicans, who,
after eight years of trying to ambush Bill Clinton, are
now covering for him.
TIME
TO MOVE ON?
President
Bush, asked if he thought the investigation into Rich's
pardon should continue, burbled that it was "time to move
on." The Republicans are as wary of opening this can of
worms as any die-hard Clintonista. The recent House hearings
conducted by Dan Burton completely ignored the Israeli angle,
while the Senate hearings made it clear, as
Salon noted, that Clinton and Rich have reason to
be optimistic: Bush's opposition put a definite damper on
the proceedings. The continuing cover-up of the Marc Rich
outrage, as
Arianna Huffington points out, is a bipartisan
affair. While much is made of Jack Quinn, the supposed Svengali
who hypnotized Clinton into pardoning his client against
the advice of the White House legal staff, little is said
about Lewis "Scooter" Libby, also one of Rich's legal hired
hands, who recruited Quinn to Rich's cause – and then
segued into position as Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Then
there's David Bossie, Rep. Dan Burton's chief investigator
and a veteran of the impeachment hearings, who was hired
by Quinn to brief him for his appearance before a House
investigating committee this week – one that just happened
to be chaired by Rep. Burton. What a coincidence!
But here, let Arianna tell it:
"Working
alongside Bossie are two other conservative Republicans
– and longtime fellow Clinton-bashers – Joe diGenova
and his wife Victoria Toensing. It feels like I'm hallucinating
every time I see diGenova on TV defending Quinn and, in
effect, Clinton and his pardon. It takes weeks of gut-wrenching
tribal councils before the two tribes on 'Survivor' merge
into a single team. In Washington, it just takes a client
with an unlimited bank account."
THE
TRIBES OF CAPITOL HILL
Arianna's
facts are interesting, but her conclusions are, as usual,
a little off. While money greases the wheels of this corrupt
machine, she overlooks what seems to be the main factor
in the pardon of Marc Rich, and that is the extraordinary
lobbying effort by the Israeli government. The two tribes
who rule Capitol Hill merge into a single team when it comes
to satisfying what everyone acknowledges is among the most
powerful lobbies in Washington. What did the Clintons get
in return? Not just money, although there was some of that,
but far more important: continued political support, and
not only from American friends of Israel. What did the Republicans
get in exchange for collaborating in the cover-up? Brownie
points with Ariel Sharon and the incoming Israeli government.
Which raises an interesting point.
PARDON
FOR PEACE?
Joe
Conason makes the case that it was a "pardon for peace"
in the Middle East, but where oh where is the peace? The
much-touted "concessions" that the pardon was supposed to
have garnered from the Israelis never materialized. Furthermore,
it was clear, as Barak made his last call to Clinton on
Rich's behalf, that Sharon would sweep away the Labor government,
so Barak was hardly in any position to make such a deal.
Clinton knew, at that point, that there was no chance or
basis for a peace agreement, and that he would leave it
to Bush to cash in his chips for whatever they are worth.
There is much about this affair that we don't know, but
of one thing we can be absolutely certain: those chips were
worth a lot more than Denise Rich's chump change.
INTERNATIONAL
MAN
Marc
Rich is the New Man of the new millennium, no ordinary person
but a transnational entity – it was not for nothing
that Copetas titled his piece "The Republic of Marc Rich."
He reminds me of George Soros – of whom Strobe Talbott remarked
that, in formulating foreign policy, the US always consulted
with its allies "and with George Soros." Like Soros, with
whom he is reputed to have business dealings, Rich's vast
international holdings have made him a state unto himself,
albeit one without borders – just tentacles, reaching
into the Russian government, the US government, and a lot
of governments in between. Marc Rich – criminal, racketeer,
spy – perfectly captures the spirit of the age: he
is the brave New Man of the New World Order, the international
man without a country who surrenders his American citizenship
at the drop of a hat and whose loyalties, in any case, lie
elsewhere.
ANTI-SEMITISM
– THE CONSERVATISM OF FOOLS
No
doubt the usual motley crew of anti-Semites will haul out
all this as "evidence" of a World Zionist Conspiracy to
overthrow human civilization and usher in the coming of
the Anti-Christ – or something to that effect. To those
people I say: get help. The Israeli connection is incidental,
not central, except in the flamboyant way it is being bandied
about. It hardly seems useful to the Israeli government
to be lobbying so openly for Rich's release, but it is not
for me to determine what is or is not in Israel's national
self-interest. I'll leave that up to the New York Post
to decide.
EXEMPLAR
OF THE NEW AGE
The
real villains are the individuals involved, both
representative of the Zeitgeist in two of its aspects.
Just as Clinton embodied the bread-and-media-circuses vulgarity
of a paganized and decadent political culture, so the crook
he pardoned is the exemplar of a new elite now rising on
a world scale, the offspring not of any particular race
or nation but a new kind of creature altogether. One born
of the marriage of money and power: the Money Power, which
is beyond all ethnicity and all nations, a law unto itself.
It is the system of global state capitalism, culminating
in the creation of a world run by giant corporate cartels
acting by and through national governments – and, increasingly,
international institutions, such as the International Monetary
Fund, the World Bank and all the various transnational institutions
that have grown up over the years, including NATO, the EU,
the UN, and all the other acronymic enemies of national
sovereignty. This is the murky milieu in which the New Man
evolves and flourishes: the dank and stagnant waters of
the New World Order.
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