[Who is Marc Rich? And why did he need a presidential pardon?]
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THE CLINTONS AND THE RICH WOMEN  
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Jeffrey St. Clair
May 26, 2023
CounterPunch
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_ Who is Marc Rich? And why did he need a presidential pardon? _

Clinton talks on the Oval Office telephone with Prime Minister Ehud
Barak of Israel. , David Scull, National Archives.

 

Hillary Clinton has never addressed her role in the midnight pardon of
billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. In fact, she’s rarely been asked her
opinion on the free pass given to one of the world’s most wanted
fugitives, a man who violated embargoes against Iran and South Africa
and fled the country rather than face trial in what was billed as
“the biggest tax evasion case in history.” HRC has variously said
that she was “unaware” of the decision and “surprised” by it.
When pressed, she merely cackles.

Even though 300 pages of core documents relating to the pardon
decision remain under seal at the Clinton Library, a review of the
available record tells a much different story. In fact, the Rich legal
team viewed Hillary as a secret weapon, and as one door after another
closed on their search for a pardon, they focused more and more on
invoking what Rich lawyer Robert Fink called the “HRC option.”

Who is Marc Rich? And why did he need a presidential indulgence?

Born in Belgium to Jewish parents, Marc Rich moved with his family to
the United States to escape Hitler. Young Marc soon went to work for a
commodity firm in New York called Phillip Bros, later acquired by
Salomon Brothers. He soon made his mark as an oil trader and, along
with his friend Pincus “Pinky” Green, he is credited with
inventing spot market trading in oil, ferrous metals and sugar.
Billions flowed into the firm, and the European press took to calling
Rich “the Aluminum Finger.”

But Rich and “Pinky” Green felt underappreciated and underpaid.
They bolted the firm, and Rich angrily vowed to “grind Phillip Bros.
into oblivion.” In 1974, the pair started their own holding company,
eventually known as the Marc Rich Group, and began making oil deals
with Iran, Iraq and wildcatters in Texas. He and Pinky soon became
billionaires and big shots in the global petrochemical trade.

Around this time, Rich courted a buxom young Jewish singer/songwriter
from Worchester, Massachusetts, named Denise. He whisked her off to
his seaside villa in Marbella, Spain, where the couple were married
and rapidly assumed the life of international jet-setters and art
collectors. It is said that Rich owns one of the largest private
collections of Picasso paintings and sculptures in the world. Rich
began referring to himself as a “business machine.” The years
passed. Denise bore Rich three daughters and honed her songwriting
skills on transcontinental flights on the family’s private jet.
Saccharine pop flowed off her micro recorder, including minor hit
“Frankie.” The bank accounts swelled.

Then in 1983 crisis hit the Rich family. The U.S. Attorney’s office
for the Southern District of New York notified Rich and Pinky that
they were under investigation for fraud, illegal oil deals with Iran
and the apartheid regime in South Africa, as well as tax evasion.
Documents were subpoenaed. Indictments were in the works. Rich hired
D.C. heavy-hitter Edward Bennett Williams to fend off assaults of a
vicious young prosecutor—none other than Rudy Giuliani.

When Giuliani requested that Pinky and Rich turn over their passports
and post a large bond, Williams acted indignant and personally avowed
to the federal judge overseeing the case that his client was not a
flight risk. Two days later, Pinky and Rich were on a plane bound for
Europe. As expected, the indictments came: a 65-count charge alleging
fraud, trading with the enemy (Iran), and tax evasion.

Humiliated, Williams resigned in a huff, and Rich hired a succession
of new lawyers over the next decade, including former Nixon attorney
Leonard Garment and Lewis Scooter Libby, who would later find refuge
in the awesome power of presidential privilege.

Rich’s escape from Giuliani’s clutches is the stuff of spy novels,
made even more thrilling due to the fact that he almost certainly had
several moles inside Giuliani’s office, U.S. law enforcement and
intelligence agencies who kept him apprised of the schemes to nab him.
He evaded the U.S. marshals on his tail at Heathrow Airport in
England, and then later his plane bound for Finland mysteriously
turned at the last moment for Sweden, once again narrowly avoiding
landing in custody. Years later, Rich would also escape capture in
Germany and Jamaica, courtesy of anonymous tips to the fugitive
billionaire.

The tycoon’s eventual passage to safe harbor in Switzerland went
from Sweden through East Germany, aided by the notorious Wolfgang
Vogel, an East German lawyer who specialized in shuttling spies into
and out of Eastern Europe.

Rich dropped millions at every stop, especially in Switzerland. He and
Pinky Green choose the town of Zug to establish their new headquarters
in a blueberry-colored office tower. Entreaties were made to Swiss
officials, and money liberally dispensed.

“He bought Swiss loyalty,” says Shawn Tulley, a financial crimes
reporter for _Fortune _magazine, who covered the Rich case. “He
really put out the charm and the money.” When the U.S. Marshals
finally tracked Rich down in Switzerland, they immediately petitioned
the Swiss government for his extradition. Request denied. As far as
the Swiss were concerned, financial crimes, especially involving
taxation, were trivial matters unworthy of governmental consideration.

When the Swiss refused to turn Rich over, the Marshals tried to kidnap
the world’s most famous tax evader under the extraordinary rendition
program, which has since become a staple of the Bush regime.

The Marshals set up snatch teams outside of Rich’s mansion and his
offices. But again, there was a fortuitous leak. The Swiss police
approached the would-be kidnappers and told them to shut down their
operation or they would be the ones sitting in jail. The Marshals
retreated. Rich had found his sanctuary. He summoned Denise and the
children to join him in a sprawling mansion near Lucerne and then
renounced his U.S. citizenship. This freed him from the nagging
obligation of ever again having to worry about entanglements with the
IRS over tax obligations. But it also threw the validity of his
eventual pardon into question.

The exile of Marc Rich was not an idle one. Indeed, from 1983 to 1996
Rich’s fortune ballooned from a mere billion dollars to more than $7
billion. He and Pinky struck oil deals in Russia and Bulgaria
(prompting accusations of fraud and thievery in both countries) and
mining operations in central Asia, Africa and South America. Along the
way, he sharpened the art of the political gratuity. Rudy Giuliani
alleges that during this period Rich tried to bribe the state of New
York, offering millions to the State Department of Education in
exchange for a withdrawal of the pending charges.

In order to buy alumina from the new leftist government of Jamaica for
less than half the market price, Rich wired $50 million to Jamaican
President Michael Manley in an hour of acute distress for the
embattled ruler.

Even as he neared the top of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, Rich
didn’t see any reason to abandon his operations in the United
States. In fact, his hand is seen orchestrating one of the most savage
crackdowns on organized labor in recent decades. In 1989, Rich
secretly acquired the controlling interest in a West Virginia-based
company called Ravenswood Aluminum. Ravenswood was embroiled in a
tumultuous battle between management and workers at the plant when in
1990, under Rich’s long-distance orders, the company tried to bust
the union. On a bitterly cold night, a private security force arrived
at the plant, set up armed guards at the gates, and deployed
surveillance cameras around the perimeter of the facility, and locked
out 1,700 workers, all members of the Steelworkers Union. Over the
ensuing weeks, the armed guards repeatedly clashed with picketing
union members, fogging the air with tear gas and beating skulls with
their police clubs. Soon Rich made the call to hire permanent
replacement workers, for less pay and reduced benefits. The lockout
went on for two more years. “It was a brutal affair,” says Dan
Stidham, president of the Ravenswood union local at the time of the
lockout. “I’m still pretty upset with Clinton for pardoning that
guy after all we went through.”

Meanwhile, back in Lucerne, Rich was beginning to cultivate the
Israeli government. He established the Rich Foundation in Tel Aviv,
which would distribute more than $100 million to Israeli causes over
the next decade. To oversee the foundation, Rich selected a former
high-ranking Mossad official named Avner Azulay, whose ties to the
intelligence agency probably never totally evaporated. Azulay was a
useful conduit to Israel’s political elite. He was close to Yitzak
Rabin, Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres and Ehud Olmert. A decade later,
Azulay would play a key role in securing Rich’s pardon from the
Clintons.

Through Azulay, Rich offered his services to the Israeli government,
especially the Mossad. Indeed, according to letters from Israeli
officials, Rich played the role of a “Say-Ayon,” or unpaid asset
of the Mossad. In fact, Rich was subsidizing Israeli intelligence
operations. He financed numerous covert missions and allowed Mossad
operatives to work covertly in his offices around the world.

With experience as an international spook now added to his C.V., Marc
Rich reached out through intermediaries to both the FBI and the CIA.
He offered his services to both agencies in exchange for dropping the
charges against him. The CIA’s response is unknown, but the FBI was
intrigued and sent the request to the Justice Department, where it was
quashed.

Around this time, Rich launched into a public liaison with a glamorous
Italian widow by the name of Gisela Rossi. He flaunted the affair in
front of Denise, the tycoon’s wife who had followed him into his
luxurious life on the lam. Denise filed for divorce and prepared to
return to New York. But Rich, whose net worth now neared $10 billion,
was offering her only a tiny settlement. So Denise took matters into
her own hands. She removed a Van Gogh painting from the wall of their
palace in Lucerne and warned her estranged husband that unless he
ponied up more money, she would take the masterpiece with her.
Ultimately, Rich offered her a settlement of $200 million. Although
the amount is far less than she would have gotten in most U.S. courts,
Denise signed the papers and took her daughters with her back to
Manhattan.

Rossi and Rich soon married and divided their time between St. Moritz
and Marbella, Spain.

A year after the Rich’s divorce, their oldest daughter, Gabriella,
was diagnosed with a rare and terminal form of leukemia. She died
within the year. Marc Rich made no effort to visit Gabriella in her
final months. Denise Rich seethed.

PARDON ME

The machinations to secure a pardon from Bill Clinton for Marc Rich
began in earnest in the fall of 1998, when Rich’s public relations
flack in the U.S., Gershon Kekst, squirmed his way into a seat next to
Eric Holder, the number two in the Clinton Justice Department, at a
gauche D.C. party thrown by Daimler/Chrysler. Without mentioning Rich
by name, Kekst asked Holder how a man of considerable resources might
be relieved of the burden of being “unproperly indicted by an
overzealous prosecutor.”

Holder took a sip of wine and told Kekst that such a man would need to
hire a D.C. lawyer who knows the ropes and has deep connections inside
the Clinton administration. “He comes to me and we work it out,”
confided Holder.

“Can you recommend such a person?” Kekst inquired.

Holder pointed to a man sitting at a nearby table. “There’s Jack
Quinn,” Holder whispered. “He’s a perfect example.”

Kekst dutifully wrote down Quinn’s name, conducted background
research on the former lawyer for the Clintons, and transmitted the
joyful news to the Rich camp.

There is every indication that Holder was trying to drum up business
for Quinn, a partner at the powerhouse firm of Arnold and Porter, as
well as a top advisor for Al Gore’s presidential campaign. Holder
was desperate to have Quinn’s backing in his doomed bid to become
attorney general.

Back in Switzerland, Rich ordered up a dossier on Quinn. His initial
response was not favorable. Rich believed Quinn to be merely a
“pretty boy” with little experience and “more connections than
clout.” He decided to stick with Scooter Libby’s team. But
Scooter, who had represented Rich since 1985, produced no results, and
in the summer of 1999, with the clock ticking down on Clinton time,
the desperate tycoon reached out to Jack Quinn.

Quinn formally became Rich’s lawyer on July 21, 1999. His fees were
stiff: an initial retainer of $355,000, plus a minimum payment of
$55,000 each month. Quinn’s firm, Arnold and Porter, reserved the
right to represent clients suing Rich on a range of matters. Rich
consented.

Initially, Quinn intimated to the Rich team that securing the pardon
would be a relatively easy matter. A few calls to his good friend Eric
Holder, and that would be that. Quinn was wrong. When Holder contacted
the prosecutors in Manhattan about the Rich case, they vowed to oppose
any deal until Rich returned to the U.S. and entered a plea in the
case. Rich refused.

From that point on, the Rich team, including his sympathizers inside
the Clinton administration, hid their maneuvers from federal
prosecutors. After discussions with White House aides Bruce Lindsey
and Beth Nolan, Quinn sent out an email calling for a new approach:
“It’s time to move on the GOI [Government of Israel] front but we
have to get the calls initiated over there.”

Letters and calls soon flooded the White House from Israeli officials
and high profile Jews, including Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert
and Elie Weisel. In one way or another, each had received benefits
from Rich or one of his foundations. But a problem soon developed.
When presented the opportunity to discuss presidential pardons with
Clinton, many of these leaders, anxious perhaps to legitimize Israeli
penetration of the U.S. government, choose to plead the case of
convicted spy Jonathan Pollard instead of the fugitive billionaire.

Quinn scrambled comically for a solution. The DC fixer sent an urgent
email to Robert Fink, Rich’s longtime New York lawyer.

From: Jack Quinn.
To: Fink, Robert, NY.

Hope you’re checking email; I don’t have access here to avner’s
email address, or marc’s, and wonder if you can inquire whether
there is a possibility of persuading Mrs Rabin to make a call to POTUS
[President of the United States]. He had a deep affection for her
husband. 

Fink leapt into action with an email to Avner Azulay, the former
Mossad officer, now heading the Rich Foundation in Tel Aviv.

From: Fink, Robert, NY. Sent: Saturday.
To: Avner Azulay

… Jack asks if you could get Leah Rabin to call the President; Jack
said he was a real big supporter of her husband…

Azulay wrote back with distressing news.

From: Avner.
To: Fink, Robert, NY.

Bob, having Leah Rabin call is not a bad idea. The problem is how do
we contact her? She died last November …

Eventually, Quinn secured a letter and congenial phone call to Clinton
from Rabin’s daughter, who didn’t really know Rich. Their best
hopes seemed to be evaporating. Perhaps Rich was right about Quinn,
after all.

FIRST CATCH YOUR FOXMAN

The scene shifts to a crowded restaurant in Paris. It’s
Valentine’s Day. Two men are having dinner and drinking wine. They
know each other well. One man has just received a $100,000
contribution from the other man’s boss. The man on the receiving end
of the money is Abe Foxman, and the financial gift was for his group
the Anti-Defamation League. The man picking up the hefty dinner tab is
Avner Azulay—though Marc Rich will soon reimburse him.

Rich has one last shot, Foxman advises. They need to get directly to
Bill and Hillary. And the key to unlocking the inner doors of the
White House, Foxman told Azulay, is Denise Rich. Foxman confided that
he and Denise had flown together on Air Force II to the funeral of
Yitzak Rabin.

There was just one problem. Denise Rich still loathed her husband.
Entreaties are made to Denise, now a New York socialite and successful
songwriter, by Quinn and others on the Rich teams. Three times Denise
Rich declined to come to the rescue of her former husband.

Then suddenly, in November 2000, she agrees to help. What made her
change her mind?

That remains open to speculation, but given Marc Rich’s history and
Denise’s view that she was shortchanged in the divorce, it may well
have involved a financial offering. This much is known. On November
16, Avner Azulay flies to New York and takes Denise to dinner. He
pleads for her to back Rich’s pardon to her friends Bill and
Hillary. Two days later Denise consents.

Denise calls her close friend Beth Dozoretz for help in the best way
to handle the matter. Another rich Manhattan socialite, Dozoretz had
been the finance chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). She
had contributed more than $1 million to Democratic coffers. Bill
Clinton was the godfather of her daughter.

Dozoretz who, like Denise Rich, would later plead the Fifth at a
Senate hearing in the matter, helped Rich craft her strategy. Almost
immediately, a check for $25,000 was sent from Denise Rich’s account
to the DNC. This was soon followed by Denise Rich’s first letter to
the Clintons, imploring them to pardon her ex-husband. Dozoretz also
helped Rich bundle a $450,000 contribution to the Clinton library
fund. (A Democratic fundraiser told the _New York Times_ in 2001
that Denise had also pledged another million in four installments over
the next two years. This figure was disputed by Denise Rich. But the
donor lists to the Clinton Foundation are kept secret.) In all, Denise
Rich made at least $1.1 million in contributions to Democratic causes,
including $70,000 to Hillary’s Senate campaign and PACs, and at
least $450,000 to the Clinton foundation.

For her part, Dozoretz kicked in another million of her own money to
the fund. This is the same library that refused to release more than
300 pages of Clinton’s records relating to the pardon. She later
lavished gifts on the Clintons as they left the White House, including
antique furniture for the new home and golf clubs for Bill.

As Beth Dozoretz and Denise Rich plotted their strategy, Quinn and
Azulay sought another opening. In a December 19, 2000, email to Quinn,
Azulay emphasized the importance of Hillary’s role in the affair.
She has just been elected senator from New York, where Rich was
indicted. If there was to be fallout, it might backfire on Hillary.
She would need reassurance. Dozoretz and Denise would provide
financial aid, but HRC might also need political cover. Azulay
recommends Abraham Burg, former speaker of the Knesset. “Burg is on
very friendly terms with Hilary (sic) and knows POTUS from previous
contacts.”

The next night there’s a party at the White House honoring Barbra
Streisand, Quincy Jones and Maya Angelou. Dozoretz and Denise are
invited, and Denise lands a plum seat at the presidential table.
Denise is wearing a burgundy ball gown trimmed in fox fur. She eats
little and talks less. After dinner, Denise espies Bill having an
intimate conversation with Streisand. She rushes across the room, cuts
in on Babs and whisks Bill away. She makes an impassioned plea for the
ex-husband, who had humiliated her, stuffs a letter into Bill’s hand
and whispers, “I could not bear it were I to learn you did not see
my letter.”

When Denise arrives home, she makes a call to Lucerne. It’s the
first time she has talked to Marc Rich since the divorce. She
describes her meeting with Clinton. Her friends say she ended the
conversation by telling Rich: “You owe me.”

A week later the Rich team is getting antsy. There’s still been no
word on how Hillary feels. Rich’s New York attorney Robert Fink
sends an email to Quinn: “Of all the options we discussed, the only
one that seems to have real potential for making a difference is the
Hillary option.”

Quinn, Dozoretz, Burg and, perhaps, Denise call Hillary’s people.
They are told that the senator needs cover. According to a December 26
email from Azulay titled “Chuck Schumer”: “Hillary shall feel
more at ease if she is joined by her elder sen. of NY, who also
represents the Jewish population.”

Gershon Kekst leaps at the opportunity, firing an email to Fink
looking for Schumer’s pressure points:

Can Quinn tell us who is close enough to lean on Schumer?? I am
willing to call him but have no real clout. Jack might be able to tell
us who the top contributors are … maybe Bernard Schwartz??

Bernard Schwartz was a good guess. The former CEO of Loral (a friend
of Bill and Marc Rich) was a top DNC contributor and had lavished
money on both Schumer and Hillary. Schwartz also had donated $1
million to the Clinton library fund.

But Quinn had been around Washington a long time. He knew enough not
to trust Schumer, a famous media hog who was already showing signs of
being jealous of the attention Hillary was getting. Quinn notes: “I
have to believe that the contact with HRC can happen w/o him after
all, we are not looking for a public show of support from her.”

Calls continue to flood the Clinton White House. The King of Spain.
Sandy Berger. Ehud Barak.

Meanwhile, Denise and Beth are skiing in Aspen. Beth’s phone rings.
It’s Bill Clinton. Clinton tells Dozoretz, “I want to do it and am
trying to get around the White House counsel.” Keep praying, Bill
told the women. He also let them know that Michael Milken wasn’t
getting a pardon.

A few days later, the two women are back in Washington. It’s now
January 19, 2001. Jack Quinn is sitting at a board meeting of Fanny
Mae. He quietly types a message to Denise on his Blackberry. (It’s
not known if he bills both clients for this hour of his time.) The
text message urges Denise to make one last call to Bill. Quinn tells
her not to “argue merits” but merely to explain to Clinton that
“it is important to me personally.”

Though both women will later dispute it, the Secret Service logs show
that the next afternoon at 5:30, Beth and Denise were admitted to the
private quarters of the White House. This was Denise’s nineteenth
visit to the White House. Beth had visited the White House 76 times in
the last two years. The logs do not record when the women departed.
This is the encounter that appears to have consummated the pardon.

At 2:30 in the morning on January 20, Clinton gets a call from his
National Security Advisor. Marc Rich’s name has surfaced in an
intelligence file in connection with an international arms smuggling
network. Clinton calls Quinn. Quinn says the allegations are bogus.
Bill turns to his staff, all of whom oppose the pardon that is now
being signed. “Take Jack’s word,” Clinton snapped. Later Clinton
will claim to have been “sleep deprived” when he signed the
pardon, an excuse that his wife would resurrect to explain her
fabulous account of landing under sniper fire in Bosnia.

Marc Rich was free to fly the globe in his private jet, while Leonard
Peltier was left to languish in prison with no hope of release. That
pretty much sums up Clintonism.

_This is excerpted from An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its
Discontents
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_JEFFREY ST. CLAIR is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is
An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents
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Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: [email protected] or on
Twitter @JeffreyStClair3 [[link removed]]._

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