Diplomacy Economics - Page A4
Opinion Piece February 16, 1997
First Lady Implicated
by Howard Hobbs PhD, Economics Editor
in Guam Political Donations DebacleWASHINGTON DESK - The first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was on her way to attend the United Nations women's conference in Communist China. She stopped for several hours on the tiny Western Pacific island of Guam. The island is a U.S. territory where its residents are not permitted to participate voting in the U.S. political process. Guam sends one nonvoting delegate to the United States House of Representatives.
In 1898, Guam became American territory after the Spanish-American War. Vegetables, citrus and tropical fruits, coconuts, and sugarcane are grown, and livestock, especially poultry, is raised. Manufactures include textiles.
Guam is one of the principal U.S. defense fortifications in the western Pacific Ocean and is the site of extensive U.S. military installations.
Guamians have never been permitted to vote in U.S. elections. Yet, the first lady flew to the island of Guam, at public expense, to attend a Guam political fund raiser 'tea' on September 4, 1995.
Guam is 6,100 miles west of California. The first lady was the main attraction at the shrimp cocktail buffet and tea hosted by the island's governor, Carl T. Gutierrez(D).
Gutierrez has been attempting to influence the White House since 1988 by repeatedly attempting to influence a change in U.S, policy by enacting legislation in Congress he authored called the Guam Commonwealth Act.
The first lady's direct involvement in policy influence peddling implicates her as the source of a series of shoddy deals and illicit practices that were soon to become the most shameful fund raising debacle spread out over the world roughly correlated with the travel routes and diplomatic stops' and conferences scheduled by the first lady in attending United National and World Women's conferences trips at the public expense.
For example, a few days after a very persuasive Hillary Clinton left Guam, a Democrat Party Leader arrived in Washington D.C. from Guam with more than $250,000 in campaign contributions in hand. And later Gutierrez and a small group of Guam businessmen contributed an additional $632,000 to the DNC/Clinton-Gore Campaign.
The first lady's direct involvement in influence peddling is a first in U.S. history. Guam is a small island territory of the U.S. with a bare 140,000 impoverished residents. As soon as the Guam political contributions were received in Washington, the Clinton White House swerved in its policy with signs of a significant and controversial change in the Clinton administration's Guam policy.
The Clinton White House ordered John Garamendi, deputy secretary of the Interior Department, to support a new bill, The Commonwealth Act,that had a provision for allowing Guam to resume control over about one-third of the Island being used by U.S. Marines.
Congress has not passed the Commonwealth Act but administration support for its provisions is designed to persuade hold-outs in Congress to vote for the bill, U.S. officials said.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Consulate officials attribute the administration's support for the bill to the $632,000 raised by the first lady for the Clinton-Gore Campaign. One senior U.S. official said 'the political side' of her agency had informed her that the administration's shift was linked to campaign contributions. 'We had always opposed giving Guam authority over its own immigration,' the Post quoted the official as saying. 'But when that $600,000 was paid, the political side switched.'
U.S. officials from three other agencies have confirmed that they had been told that the policy shift was linked to political money.
Contacted by telephone, Garamendi acknowledged that the administration's policy on Guam was changing, but he denied it was connected to donations.
'The beginning of flexibility occurred when I took over this job [in January 1996] and began representing the issues in a way that the administration found acceptable,' he said.
A White House official, who declined to allow the use of her name, was quoted by the Post saying ' ... the first lady was not aware at the time of Gutierrez's fund-raising activities, but did not find it inappropriate. 'The event was not a fund-raiser, but it would not be surprising if the governor used her appearance subsequently to encourage people to support her husband's candidacy.'
U.S. officials said they are concerned about Gutierrez contacts and access to the Clinton White House because he has a police record after being investigated twice by federal authorities for involvement in immigration scams. Two of his deputies are convicted felons having served prison terms for bribery and corruption-related offenses.
It has become widely known that one of the donors involved in the first lady's fund-raiser 'tea' is being investigated for bribery connected to narcotics trafficking.
Another prominent donor who attended the first lady's 'tea is Willie Tan, whose Saipan-based garment companies donated at least $17,500 to the DNC/Clinton-Gore Campaign, according to records from the Federal Election Commission.
In 1992, Tan company was ordered by the federal government to pay $9 million in back pay and damages to 2,500 workers who had been denied overtime wages.
Gutierrez says that the money he paid to the first lady was worth every penny. He has met the president twice since making the contributions: first in March 1996 after delivering $170,000 to the DNC/Clinton-Gore Campaign, and most recently, he said, on Dec. 16 in the Oval Office.
'Only when we showed Washington that there were people who could write a $1,000 check, a $5,000 check, a $25,000 check, did people begin to sit up and take notice,'Gutierrez told the Post. His own daughter, Carla, was then working on Clinton-Gore Campaign headquarters staff in Washington.
According to Guam officials, Gutierrez raised the idea of contributing funds to Clinton during a visit to the White House in June 1995. On Aug. 19, 1995, Donald L. Fowler, chairman of the DNC, wrote Gutierrez to request $250,000 in contributions even though Guam residents cannot vote for the president.
'As a territory, Guam's contributions will be specially noted' DNC's Fowler wrote in the letter, obtained by the Post. While the letter did not mention Hillary Clinton's visit, 15 days later she was in Guam and the fund-raising began.