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MARC RICH: TREASON IS THE REASON
THE RICH PARDON WAS A PAYOFF - BUT TO WHOM?
By: Justin Raimondo
Everybody's talking about the Marc Rich pardon, but in all the
newsprint (and bandwidth) devoted to this story the spin is that
this is just the crowning example of Clinton's utter depravity:
it's all supposed to be about money. But is it? Did the President
of these United States, in his final hours in the White House,
really pardon one of the top ten on Interpol's list of most
wanted criminals � and set himself up for a storm of protest and
opprobrium � all for a measly $450,000 contribution to his
presidential library?
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:
indeed, the case could be made � and, indeed, should be 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 it must be an Arab country, perhaps Iran, where Rich
has connections due to his oil interests, but it could just as
easily be any country in which 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's 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 the more than a little help from
the Republicans, who, after eight years of trying to ambush the
President, 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
Crag Copetas titled his piece "The Republic of Marc Rich." 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.
Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director of AntiWar.Com. He is a
regular columnist for Ether Zone. We invite you to visit their
website. They may be contacted at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Published in the February 23, 2001 issue of Ether Zone Copyright
� 2001 Ether Zone (http://www.etherzone.com) Reposting permitted
with this message intact.
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