Political Economics - Page A1
Updtaed February 9, 1997 Money Talks Ethics Walks:
By HOWARD HOBBS, PHD, ECONOMICS EDITOR
The Clinton Money Trail of Tears
THE DAILY REPUBLICAN NEWSPAPER
WASHINGTON DESK - President Clinton has told the American people that Clinton-Gore campaign donors who have been invited to the White House got nothing.
However, the Daily Republican has learned that the president has been directing a secret a plan, approved in 1993 by both Bill Clinton and Al Gore, to obtain money by renting out the bedrooms of the Wgite House, selling places at State dinners, and holding an endless series of 'coffee events'.
Money scored in these activities was pumped directly by the DNC into anti-Republican ads. The DNC became an extension of the Clinton-Gore campaign. Clinton says all he did was to attend a few coffees and listen politely, take money but do nothing.
Clinton and Gore attempt to ignore the criminal implications of their actions. Those donors had business matters pending before the government. Clinton attempts to ignore the fact that after time money changed hands in the White House there are documented changes in U.S. policy and its implementation that benefitted those donors who met in the coffees with the president.
He also ignores the fact that after the policies were moved to accommodate the donors, additional transfers of cash from the donors to the Clinton-Gore Campaign took place. It appears that presidential influence was bought and paid for.
White House spokesman Lanny Davis says that Clinton 'makes his decisions about policy and governmental actions based on the national interest.'But, the facts belie David's protestations of selling influence by the president.
For example, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday, that Alan Leventhal and Fred Seigel, of Boston, went to the White House and met with president Clinton in early 1995 They wanted to make a deal with Clinton.
Characteristic of Clinton's style, he met with them. He wanted something they had. With his popularity sagging,Clinton needed Leventhal and Seigel, to bring in large political contributions for the Clinton-Gore Campaign for re-election.
Alan Leventhal and Fred Seigel were well known Democrat Party fund raisers who would collect $3 million for Clinton-Gore. Leventhal donated $185,000, himself, to make certain that Clinton would appoint his company Energy Capital Partners as the Department of Housing and Urban Development major lender in the new Al Gore program where the government would spend $200 million to make federally assisted housing more energy efficient.
President Clinton was so enthusiastic about Leventhal and Seigel's 'money getting machine' that he had HUD enter into an arrangement allowing Energy Capital to be repaid ahead of the government if housing-development owners defaulted. If that wasn't enough, the federal notice outlining the loan program mentioned Energy Capital and Seigel by name.
The result of the political campaign funds raised by Leventhal and Seigel for the Clinton-Gore Campaign was that the company is the only pre-approved lender. So, Energy Capital is the exclusive lender now servicing the new loan program. The funds for the loans will come from the Federal National Mortgage Association. With this generous Clinton pay-back Energy Capital is positioned to collect millions of dollars of profits in interest and fees.
Evidence of president Clinton's face-to-face contact with the men behind the Clinton money getting machine is well documented in the public records -
- Leventhal came to two coffees with the president in 1995 and Seigel attended three others.
- Leventhal was on the White House south lawn for the 1993 signing of a Mideast peace agreement between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.
- Leventhal also attended a reception for Russian President Boris Yeltsin and a state dinner for South Korean President Kim Young Sam.
Leventhal & Seigel were in the White House on a regular basis. President Clinton and his top aides regularly conducted the government on the basis of the size of the donations collected. The evidence of the merging of the political fund raising and governance of the nation is only now fully emerging from the shadows of the White House. The amount of time spent by the president raising money and the influence and access available to donors exceeds anything ever dreamed of by political power brokers and lobbyists in the history of the United States.
The Times reports that it is now routine White House practice for Democrat Party fund raisers to be granted special meetings with the president inside the White House, where they could make their pleadings on specific policy matters. Large sums were often donated right around the time of some of these presidential audiences. Administration officials joined in the fund raising, bringing them over the line of the legal limits on political activity by government employees.
Seigel openly boasts that he was seeking underwriting business at HUD when he attended White House coffees.
News accounts in the Daily Republican since 1993 have attributed the Democratic National Committee fund-raising controversy to financial pressures created by the failing Clinton presidency. The Wall Street Journal had carried stories revealing a Clinton pattern of mixing governing with fund-raising.
From the very beginning, the President and first lady were secretly going about the creation of the 'money getting machine' that would entice donors to start the cash flowing into the Clintons' pockets.
After the GOP victory in 1994 under-cut the president's political standing with Congress the trickle of money became a virtual flood as the White House and the president let it become known that the White House had put out the 'For Sale' sing on the South Lawn.
The president has now admitted that 'mistakes were made' in last week's news conference from the White House. Even the Clinton-Core Campaign finance director, Richard Sullivan, is now saying that, despite instructions to the contrary, some fund-raisers improperly told donors they could buy their way into White House coffees.
Harold Ickes, the president's deputy White House chief of staff who was in charge of Clinton-Gore Campaign re-election budget, admitted he failed to screen-out Clinton's guests at White House coffees.
President Clinton recognizes the gravity of the mounting charges that are coming directly at him. He even tried to duck responsibility when he called the DNC operation "the other campaign ..., not mine," the DNC effort was an integral part of the White House campaign machine, closely supervised by Mr. Ickes. The veteran political organizer summoned DNC finance officials to the White House basement's War Room every Wednesday at 3 p.m. to report on fund raising.
And the now-controversial coffees with President Clinton originated not with the DNC but with the Clinton-Gore Campaign. Eleven of the early Clinton coffees were sponsored by the Campaign and included donors or fund raisers among the guests.
At the weekly Wednesday meetings, Harold Ickes found out just how much money was in various political accounts and discussed the scheduling of fund-raising events.
In June 1996 president Clinton and vice president Al Gore participated in fund-raising in the White House's Map Room, which is also where most of the coffee was ground. At that meeting, Ickes discussed with Democrat Party officials how much money they could haul in every day.
DNC finance chairman Marvin Rosen and Fowler said they could push their staff to pull in $140 million, a day. John Huang, said he hoped to raise $7 million from the Asian-American community.
The secret computer database was called 'Big Brother' and is now under scrutiny by congressional investigators. Entries show individual profiles that include almost every DNC or White House event donors went to.
DNC officials told reporters this week that the Big Brother' database was routinely available for potential donor information.
The White House says it didn't 'systematically share information' on the 300,000 people profiled in the 'Big Brother' computer database with the DNC.
White House aides aren't going along with the official line. This week they said that Marsha Scott, did not have the technical to set-up the 'Big Brother computer' project. Database files show that the White House obtained the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign's National Finance Board list and entered it into the White House 'Big Brother' database. The administration obtained other fund-raising lists as well, such as a tally of the Democrat Leadership Council's financial supporters.
Great quantities of other campaign-related information were also collected and placed on the White House computer database, such as, identifying data on sugar magnate Alfonso Fanjul, like, '1992 Early Supporter' and 'DNC Latino 1000' and 'DNC Trustee.' Identifiers for venture capitalist Alan Patricof included '1992 Early Supporter-Financial.'
Questionable fund-raising activities by John Huang began earlier than is generally known. Before joining the DNC in late 1995, Mr. Huang was a Commerce Department official, a post in which he was legally barred from soliciting political funds. He has said in the past that he studiously adhered to this restriction. But DNC records credit him with raising $15,000 in the summer of 1994, while he was a Clinton appointee at Commerce.
While he was living in Washington at the time, Huang obtained foreign funds from Jakarta, Indonesia. The DNC, which has been unable to establish the origin of the funds, plans to return the money, someday.
The public became alarmed when it learned through a swarm of media stories about the number and frequency of White House visits requesting contribution to the DNC of $300,000 and White House visits of more than 50 times. Mr. Chung, of the DNC, channeled requests for explanations through Hillary Rodham Clinton's office.
The First Lady's office not only continued to arrange White House visits by Chung in the face of growing public concern, but agreed to still another White House photo session.
White House aides describe Chung as 'a Hillary groupie' and depicts the office of the first lady as unanware of any problem over Chung's many visits with her. Now, the White House says the first lady has shut her doors to Chung.
Extensive involvement by White House and officials in the executive department have been revealed in some internal memoranda obtained from the DNC. Documents implicate people in the White House and other Executive departments in fund-raising activities while on the job. One fund-raising document obtained by the Times lists the names of three midlevel Clinton officials next to sums as high as $30,000. 'Will fax names Friday a.m.' according to the written notation next to the name of Dang Pham, a Department of Education official who now works in the White House personnel office.
Pham says that the DNC asked him for names of potential donors. The DNC also set up meetings with Huu Dinh' He said he was the head of a small environmental-cleanup company in Oak Ridge, Tennessee' But his address was a Comfort Inn in suburban Virginia. Last fall he received a letter at the Comfort Inn from a DNC official he had met him the day before. 'As requested, I have scheduled the following meetings for you,' the DNC's William Kaneko wrote, listing times and places for Dinh to meet with fund-raiser Huang and a top Clinton White House aide and the Assistant Secretary of Defense Frederick Pang.
Secretary Pang says he knew the meeting was arranged by the DNC but says he had no idea fund raising might be involved, by American Technologies that contracts with the Energy Department. Three weeks later, Dinh gave $10,000 to the DNC, his first contribution to the Clinton-Gore Campaign.
A critical part of all of the Clinton-Gore Campaign fund-raising drive was direct access and influence with the President of the United States.
Soliciting money inside federal buildings is illegal. United States government officials are prohibited by the Hatch Act from soliciting, discussing, directing, or being involved in campaign donations. DNC officials say they tried to avoid the appearance that there was a set price to attend a coffee with the president. But admit they weren't successful.