Pardon Mess Thickens
A new batch of provocative e-mails suggests that top advisers to fugitive financier Marc Rich first plotted nearly a year ago to send Rich's ex-wife, wealthy Democratic donor Denise Rich, on a "personal mission" to President Clinton-the first foray in an extraordinarily well-orchestrated pardon campaign that began long before lawyers for Rich have publicly acknowledged.
The e-mails, among Rich's lawyers and advisers, were subpoeanaed by congressional investigators and are due to be released today at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee. They appear to show that the campaign to win Rich a pardon was far more elaborate-and may have begun much earlier-than was previously known.
Avner Azulay, a former top Mossad agent who now heads the Marc Rich Foundation in Israel, wrote an e-mail on March 18, 2000, to Robert Fink, one of Rich's lawyers in New York, which read: "We are reverting to the idea discussed with Abe--which is to send DR on a 'personal mission' to NO1 with a well-prepared script."
A congressional investigator said last night that the House Government Reform Committee believes Azulay's cryptic reference to "NO1" is in fact code for "Number One" or President Clinton. "DR" is a reference to Denise Rich. It was not immediately clear who "Abe" was.
Another Azulay e-mail suggests the former Israeli intelligence official had been contemplating a pardon plea for his boss even earlier than that. In a Feb. 10, 2000, e-mail, Azulay expresses his disappointment that federal prosecutors in New York had rejected an offer to negotiate a plea bargain of Rich's 1983 indictment on tax-evasion and racketeering charges while the financier remained overseas in Switzerland. Reacting with disgust to a report from Rich's lawyer Jack Quinn that the only thing the prosecutors are willing to negotiate is Rich's "surrender" to federal authorities, Azulay wrote: "I have to say that 'I told you so'..." Azulay then adds: "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."
If so, the plotting for a presidential pardon in February and March of 2000 would contradict previous public accounts by Quinn that there was no consideration given to seeking a pardon for Rich until November 2000 when federal prosecutors in New York again rebuffed efforts to persuade them to drop the criminal charges against Rich.
Azulay doesn't explain in the e-mail what "the unconventional approach" is. Fink, the e-mail recipient, is due to testify at Thursday's hearing and is expected to be grilled closely on what Azulay was referring to. But congressional investigators say they believe "the unconventional approach" is a reference to a presidential pardon. If so, the plotting for a presidential pardon in February and March of 2000 would contradict previous public accounts by Quinn that there was no consideration given to seeking a pardon for Rich until November 2000 when federal prosecutors in New York again rebuffed efforts to persuade them to drop the criminal charges against Rich.
Perhaps more significantly, the early talk of a pardon would undercut claims by ex-president Clinton's defenders that there was no link between the pardon campaign and hefty donations and pledges to the Clinton presidential library in May 2000 by Denise Rich and her loyal friend and ally in the pardon efforts, former Democratic Party finance chair Beth Dozoretz.
Records obtained by the House committee show that Denise Rich, who had donated more than $1 million to the Democratic Party during Clinton's presidency, also gave $450,000 to the Clinton library-including a $100,000 check that was written May 11, 2000, just two months after Azulay first talked about sending Denise Rich on a "personal mission" on behalf of her ex-husband. The records also show that Dozoretz, who solicited Denise Rich's contributions, pledged to raise $1 million for the library in May 2000. Federal prosecutors in New York are now aggressively investigating the pardon and are especially interested in determining whether monies donated by Denise Rich to the Clinton library were secretly advanced by her ex-husband as part of his efforts to win a presidential pardon.
Among the other documents obtained by congressional investigators are a flurry of phone messages from Dozoretz to Quinn that appear to seek regular updates on the status of the Rich pardon case. "Any news on the matter?" reads one Dozoretz message on Jan. 2, 2001, as the pardon campaign was moving into high gear. The phone-message slips show more than a dozen phone messages for Quinn from Dozoretz in the weeks immediately before and after the Jan. 20, 2001, pardon. (There are also a handful of messages from Denise Rich.) In one message dated Jan. 29, Dozoretz leaves a message informing Quinn that he is "getting a reputation as the smartest lawyer in America." Dozoretz has been subpoenaed to testify, but her lawyer has informed the committee that, in light of the criminal investigation in New York, she plans to invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Also due to testify today are former White House counsel Beth Nolan; former White House lawyer, and Clinton confidant Bruce Lindsey, and former chief of staff John Podesta, as well as another Rich lawyer, Scooter Libby, who is now Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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