-Caveat Lector-
A New Player
Investigators look into the role of Cheryl Mills.
National Review Online
March 1, 2001 6:05 p.m.
By Byron York
Former deputy White House counsel Cheryl Mills, who played a
prominent role in President Clinton's impeachment defense and now
serves as a trustee for the Clinton library foundation, took part
in an Oval Office discussion with the president about the Marc
Rich pardon the night Clinton made his last-minute decision to
grant clemency to Rich, according to testimony and documents made
public today by the House Government Reform Committee.
Mills left White House employment in the fall of 1999. Several
witnesses at today's hearing � former White House chief of staff
John Podesta, former White House counsel Beth Nolan, and former
top Clinton adviser Bruce Lindsey � testified that Mills was
often at the White House in the year and a half after she left to
become a senior vice president at Oxygen Media, a television and
internet firm devoted to women's programming.
"She continued to be a trusted adviser to the president," Nolan
told the committee. Nolan said that in the last weeks of the
administration, Mills was at the White House frequently for
end-of-term parties and other events. On the chaotic evening of
January 19, Clinton called several advisers to the Oval Office to
discuss his plans to pardon a number of people who had been
convicted or pled guilty in the Whitewater, Mike Espy, and Henry
Cisneros independent counsel investigations.
"I invited Ms. Mills to join that conversation," said Bruce
Lindsey, former close adviser to the president, citing Mills'
expertise on independent counsel issues. Lindsey testified that
at the meeting, Clinton raised the Rich pardon issue and that
Mills took part in that discussion, too. "I do not believe she
took a position on it," Lindsey said, referring to the Rich case.
But it appears that Mills' involvement was greater than simply
participating in one meeting. Republicans on the committee also
revealed that Roger Adams, the pardons attorney in the Justice
Department, has told the committee he called the White House to
discuss the Rich matter and ended up discussing it with Mills,
who spoke authoritatively on the matter. Adams was apparently
somewhat bewildered that a former White House employee would be
involved in pardon discussions.
In addition, the committee released a January 5, 2001 e-mail from
Robert Fink, a lawyer for Marc Rich in New York, to two other
members of the Rich team. "Here is the letter Jack [former White
House counsel Jack Quinn] just sent to the White House," Fink
wrote. "As you may notice his secretary said that Jack sent
copies to Beth Nolan, Bruce Lindsey and Cheryl Mills. April said
they have clearance to deliver it to the WH [White House], so it
will get there this evening, presumably before POTUS leaves for
Camp David." Quinn told the committee that he brought Mills into
the case in an effort to help convince Clinton to pardon Rich.
Earlier in the hearing, former Democratic National Committee
finance chair Beth Dozoretz appeared briefly before the
committee. Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays read to her
from a January 10, 2001 e-mail from an associate of Rich's to
Quinn. "DR [Rich's former wife Denise] called from Aspen," the
e-mail began. "Her friend B [Dozoretz] � who is with her � got a
call today from potus � who said he was impressed by JQ's
[Quinn's] last letter and that he wants to do it and is doing all
possible to turn around the WH counsels."
Shays asked Dozoretz why she discussed the Rich case with the
president. "Upon the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline
to answer that question," Dozoretz said, citing her Fifth
Amendment right against self-incrimination. Shays asked whether
she would refuse to answer all questions on those grounds. She
said yes.
Georgia Republican Bob Barr asked Dozoretz whether she would at
least tell the committee whether she intends to cooperate with
the criminal investigation being conducted by federal prosecutors
in New York. She declined to answer that, too.
On another topic, the committee released information casting
doubt on one of Quinn's main arguments in favor of the Rich
pardon. On February 8, Quinn testified that he was frustrated at
the "intransigence" of federal prosecutors in New York who, Quinn
said, were unwilling to discuss the case with Rich. Quinn also
testified that the prosecutors' use of RICO, the racketeering
statute, was the "sledgehammer" that resulted in Rich's decision
not to return to the United States to face charges.
Now it appears that prosecutors were not as inflexible as Quinn
contended. In his opening statement, committee chairman Dan
Burton announced that in 1999 the government offered to drop the
RICO charges against Rich if he would return to the U.S. to face
trial. E-mails between members of the Rich team indicate that
prosecutors also agreed to set a bail for Rich in advance so he
would not have to worry about being incarcerated before trial.
Rich refused the government's offer.
The committee also released information suggesting that the
campaign to win a pardon for Rich began significantly earlier
than was previously known. The idea was referred to in a February
10, 2000 e-mail from Avner Azulay, one of Rich's top advisers to
Robert Fink, the New York lawyer. The e-mail discussed strategies
to follow in the case and concluded, "The present impasse leaves
us with only one other option: the unconventional approach which
has not yet been tried and which I have been proposing all
along." That "unconventional approach" was apparently the pardon
initiative.
The next month, on March 18, 2000, Azulay again e-mailed Fink.
"We are reverting to the idea discussed with Abe [Anti-Defamation
League head Abraham Foxman]," the e-mail said, "which is to send
DR [Denise Rich] on a 'personal' mission to NO1. with a
well-prepared script." Congressional investigators believe "NO1."
refers to the president.
Quinn testified that he had no recollection of any such
discussion, but he did not rule out the idea of early pardon
discussions. "It is entirely possible that...everyone of us
involved in this thought out loud with each other," Quinn
testified. "It is possible that we were involved in a
conversation where someone said, 'You know, we're going to have
to try a pardon one of these days.'"
Finally, committee lawyers are preparing to examine the donor
records of the Clinton library. On Wednesday, Burton's lawyers
saw a list of approximately 150 people and companies who have
given or pledged at least $5,000 to the library. The next step,
which will take place on Friday, will be for them to see the
amounts of those donations and the dates they were given.
Because of their long and painstakingly detailed investigation of
the campaign finance scandal, experts on Burton's staff are
familiar with the names of most people who have given large sums
of money to the Democratic party and Clinton-related causes over
the years. Congressional sources say there are some unfamiliar
names on the library donor list. Investigators will want to find
out who those people are and whether they gave their own money to
the library.
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