Marc Rich

I confess to being one of those people who blames George W. Bush for getting into politics. Meaning, I don't really know much about small-scale political stories prior to 2003. Which is another way of saying I don't understand why people seem to think Marc Rich's pardon was a big deal. My read is this.

Rich was a rather ri...wealthy guy who fled the country in 1983 to avoid charges of tax evasion and trading with Iran. His perfidity cost the US government large sums of money. Seventeen years pass, during which Rich gives money to a number of Israeli charitable foundations. Rich's ex-wife gives large sums of money to the Democratic Party, and to the Clinton Presidential Library. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who has just completed torturous and  politically difficult (for Barack) negotiations with Yasser Arafat that put Israel and Palestine within a hair's breadth of a peace deal, asks Clinton to pardon Rich. Talk Radio then proceeds to have a field day and allege that somehow Rich bought the pardon.

Unless this is one of those open secrets wherein Rich really did buy the pardon, there's hardly any smoke and almost certainly no fire. Pardongate ranks up there with Fostergate, troopergate, furnituregate, Algoreusedthewrongphonegate, Antiquitiesactgate, and any number of other low-grade "scandals" trumped up by the talk radio-House Republican-Al D'Amato complex. Yet for some reason The Village sees the need to treat this as a Big Deal, for reasons that escape me.

Use this as a thread to discuss your favorite non-scandal of the Clinton era.

Comments

[Ursula]

Nick, Fostergate is real. Hillary Rodham and her lesbian lover, Janet Reno, slit Vince Foster's throat with their own hands while doing lines of cocaine off of a designer glass table filled with aborted fetuses.

[Stephen]

Marc Rich did business with an avowed enemy of the US? Let's make that man Vice President!

Oh, yeah, he's not a Republican, so "ethics" and "laws" are supposed to apply.

That's the heart of this, the reason IOKIYAR* is accepted shorthand. The Village knows Republicans are soulless bastards who will break every law and disembowel their own mothers for a nickel. Democrats are supposed to be the good guys, so even when they're not doing anything wrong - or at least anything outside accepted practice - it's a scandal.

My favorite is the way the Clintons trashed the White House and stole a bunch of stuff when they moved out. None of it true, of course.

*It's OK if you're a Republican

[MR Bill]

God, where to begin? The allegation that Bill Clinton had Commerce Secretary Ron Brown killed in a plane crash in the former Yugoslavia? Greeting cardgate?
Oy. The "sex toys and crack pipes" on the White House Tree is one I actually have a tie to: I was one of 6 Georgia artists (from a few hundred nationwise) who had an ornament on the tree (still have a nice note from Hillary). The theme was 'snowmen', and I did a fiber one with an overshot weave scarf...I forget the guy, former FBI or Secret Service dude, who claimed the tree was decorated with nasties...Of course, in photo, some of the ornaments might sorta, kinda look like sex toys or crack pipes, but...It just wasn't true.
But Travelgate was purely the Mainstream Media against those dreadful people from Arkansaw...The White House had become a booking agency for Press travel, and the guy running it has somewhat loose(to be kind) ideas about bookkeeping. He was fired, the press took it personally, and the Travel office went away. from Wikipedia:

"The White House Travel Office dates back to the Andrew Jackson administration and serves to handle travel arrangements for the White House press corps, with costs billed to the participating news organizations.[2] By the time of the start of the Clinton administration, it was quartered in the Old Executive Office Building, and had seven employees with a yearly budget of $7 million.[2] Staffers serve at the pleasure of the president;[3][4] however, in practice, the staffers were career employees who in some cases had worked in the Travel Office since the 1960s and 1970s, through both Democratic and Republican administrations.[5] Travel Office Director Billy Ray Dale had held that position since 1982,[2] serving through most of the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, and had started in the Travel Office in 1961.[5] To handle the frequent last-minute arrangements of presidential travel and the specialized requirements of the press, Dale did not conduct competitive bidding for travel services,[6] but relied upon a charter company called Airline of the Americas.[2]

According to the White House, in early 1993 the incoming Clinton administration looked at an audit by KPMG Peat Marwick which discovered that Dale kept an off-book ledger, had $18,000 of unaccounted-for checks, and kept chaotic office records.[7] White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty and the White House counsels thus decided to fire the Travel Office staff and reorganize it.[7] The actual terminations were done on May 19, 1993 by White House director of administration David Watkins.[2] There was also a feeling among the White House and its supporters that the Travel Office had never been investigated by the media due to its close relationship with press corps members[6][8] and the plush accommodations it afforded them.[9] (Congress would later discover that in October 1988, a whistleblower within the Travel Office had alleged financial improprieties; the Reagan White House counsel looked into the claim but took no action.[8][10])"

It is the quintessential Washington Insider story, and probably what David Broder meant when he said "the Clintons trashed the place..."

[low-tech cyclist]

MR Bill, you beat me to it - Travelgate was the one I was going to bring up, too!

I'd forgotten about the alleged tree decorations, and 'greeting-card-gate.'

Crazy times, back then, when we lefties had no means of pushing back against the talk-radio madness. Hell, it was difficult to even do the fact-checking, back in the last days of the pre-Web era. Thank goodness we've reduced the tilt of the playing field somewhat, which is why I'm confident that we're not about to see a replay of 1993-94.

[Edmund in Tokyo]

Out of interest, what was the non-corrupt, legitimate reason for giving this person a presidential pardon?

[Stephen]

Edmund,

Every person who receives a pardon has been convicted of a crime. Most of them have been convicted of felonies, and most of those felonies are quite severe.

Every presidential pardon is suspect in some way, since in most cases, if these people were obviously innocent, they wouldn't have been convicted in the first place, or would have had success in the appeals process.

In other words, the only reasons to care why Marc Rich was pardoned are partisan reasons. Don't pretend otherwise.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

I would also say that "Ehud Barak had just put his party's political career on the line for peace negotiations" is a good reasons to throw him a bone.

[Stephen]

Nicholas,

That Clinton obviously did it as a favor to Barak is something the GOP/media doesn't want to emphasize, because it highlights the huge double standard when it comes to Democrats. Normally pretty much anything can be justified to the GOP if it can be spun as benefitting Israel.

[phensley]

Stephen:

You are incorrect; Richard Nixon is but one person who was pardoned without having been convicted of anything. I would guess that the President's broad authority to grant pardons 'preemptively' will be on display January the 20th. Though naturally, Stephen, I expect you will be defending the President from any 'partisan' criticism that might erupt.

[Stephen]

Though naturally, Stephen, I expect you will be defending the President from any 'partisan' criticism that might erupt.

Yup, because there really aren't any rules about who the President gets to pardon. I don't really like the practice, but it's part of our system of government. I try pretty hard to not have one standard for my side and another for the other side.

As for Nixon and blah blah, my main point stands, I think, even if people can point out a technicality. How about: everyone has either been convicted or clearly would have been without a preemptive pardon?

[ikl]

The Rich scandel is not that big a deal, but most of the folks commenting here would probably be complaining if this went down in a Republican administration. Rewarding campaign donars by pardoning their ex-spouses who are in jail for tax fraud is skuzzy even if within the President's legal authority. Many actions are legal, but dishonorable or even downright unethical. This is one of them. Just because there were a lot of phony non-scandals doesn't mean that all of the "scandals" were phony non-scandals.

[ikl]

To elaborate, the only good reason to pardon Rich would be if the initial convinction were unjust. Since he was prosecuted by Rudy Guiliani, this is certainly conceivable. But otherwise, he is pretty bad object of Presidential pardon authority: instead of serving time, he fled the country.

We presumably have Presidential pardons because even well-crafted laws won't cover every situation and some people may end up with convictions that cannot be challange or grossly excessive punishments. So someone (the President) gets the power to free those unjustly imprisoned as a last resort or have mercy on those who are for some reason specially deserving. The idea certainly isn't to let the President give their friends and associates a get out of jail free card just because they happen to know the right people.

[bigbadwolf]

we have pardons because the ruler traditionally had the discretion to grant clemency. clemency need not be rational; it need not be justified; it need not be merited. can it be abused? sure, in at least three ways, i think, cronyism, overuse, and underuse.

the first is always trotted out when someone we [whatever we is out of power] disfavor is the beneficiary. sometimes the criticism is warranted, sometimes not. to the extent that people make an issue out of the rich pardon it falls in this category.

the second has rarely been a problem. the third, to some of us, has been the real scandal of the last 16 years. all those last minute pardons from clinton (but no pardon for leonard peltier, which pissed me off) came because the power had been barely exercised over the first 7 years and 11 months. bush too had been mercy-challenged.

i'm in favor of mercy. it's a big country, with a lot of people in jail and in which a record hampers one for years to come. a little mercy a few hundred times a year cannot hurt.

[Vadranor]

Let us not forget that George H. W. Bush gave a pardon in 1989 to Armand Hammer after Hammer contributed $100,000 to the RNC and another $100,000 to the Bush-Quayle inauguration. This did not get one-tenth of the attention that the Marc Rich pardon received.

[low-tech cyclist]

George Herbert Walker Bush also pardoned Caspar Weinberger on his way out the door in the face of an indictment over his involvement in Iran-Contra. If anyone besides a few lefties with no access to the media were talking about this even a week later, I missed it.

And of course, George W. Bush essentially pardoned Scooter Libby, and the Broders of the world thought that was just great, as did the wingnuts of course.

[low-tech cyclist]

How poor my memory is - Bush Sr. pardoned Elliot Abrams and Bud McFarlane on the same day he pardoned Weinberger. They were also Iran-Contra participants.

[low-tech cyclist]

The things you never know, until you look them up.

Guess who represented Rich for most of the time that he was under indictment. Just guess. Then click the link.

[MR Bill]

aww jeezz lowtech. That's just too funny.
Washington is truly a small town.

[MR Bill]

And of course, in an unsigned editorial, the WaPo is flogging "Mr. Holder got some 'splanin' to do"...
It would be amusing to get Mr. Rich's attorney into the Hearing room, just to answer some questions, and the Senate Democrats ought to do just that.

[low-tech cyclist]

It would be amusing to get Mr. Rich's attorney into the Hearing room, just to answer some questions, and the Senate Democrats ought to do just that.

Hell, yeah!

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

How right you are.

The Rich thing is a classic trumped up scandal -- the specialty of the anti-Clinton media. Now Rich is a scumbag, don't get me wrong, but generally speaking the people who need pardons are ofter scumbags.

I don't think Holder has any splainin' to do. What the hell else can you say but "I wish I had vetted it a little more carefully" if that is how you feel.

I am curious what the Post is going to say about the massive number of pardons that Bush 43 is about to issue to his cronies. Mark my words, there are going to be mass pardons issued from Cheney to Gonzales to Rummy and Rove and on down the line.