Why the Stonewall, Bill?

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Written on - Not yet published to a wikizine

From: reform.squarespace.com

The George Herbert Walker Bush and Jimmy Carter libraries have made a very broad disclosure of its donors. Except for a few who asked to remain anonymous, the Bush contributors have been named publicly, and the names of the largest among them are either chiseled into a wall or onto the bricks of a walkway at the library in Texas. The Carter library also has a wall of founders.

The Clinton Library on the other hand has adopted a policy of non-disclosure. This is an attempt to glean information from various sources. Mr. Clinton will not be likely to dwell on the library's price tag originally either set at $125 million estimates grew to $500 million but the library’s actually cost was $165 million. (They include in addition to 97 donors reported by the New York Times, source below).

· Several foreign governments gave at least $1 million, including the Middle Eastern nations of Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the governments of Taiwan and Brunei. It has been reported that the Saudi government donated $10 million to the project. At least ten-percent of Clinton Library contributors are said to come from foreign sources.

· A handful of Middle Eastern business executives and officials also gave at least $1 million each. They include Saudi businessmen Abdullah al-Dabbagh, Nasser al-Rashid and Walid Juffali, as well as Issam Fares, a U.S. citizen who previously served as deputy prime minister of Lebanon.

· Clinton was challenged by members of Congress for accepting a reported $450,000 donation to his library from the former wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich before he granted Rich a pardon for tax evasion in 2001. Neither Clinton nor the Rich family confirmed the donation.
· The Clinton library has also received large donations from Americans and American entities. The Roy and Christine Sturgis Charitable Trust have pledged $4 million, a person familiar with the gift said. The Wasserman Foundation of Los Angeles gave between $6 million and $7 million.

· Filmmakers Steven Spielberg, Stephen Bing, and David Geffen; Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart heir Alice Walton; the Anheuser-Busch Foundation; Slimfast executive Daniel Abraham; and Vin Gupta, chairman and CEO of infoUSA Inc., a telemarketing firm that has come under scrutiny for its handling of private information.

· While the donors remain undisclosed it was reported Clinton sold part of the list to Walter Karl whose company is a subsidiary of InfoUSA. (InfoUSA is involved in an investigation in Iowa for selling mailing lists of elderly Americans to criminals. In response to the investigation, the company released a statement saying, "While InfoUSA cannot manage what a client does with the publicly available information InfoUSA provides, the company has a strict policy about not selling data to companies who act illegally."

Fashion industry leaders headed by Arnold Simon, chief executive of Aris Industries including the designers Vera Wang and Nicole Miller supported the library project.

· President Clinton began raising money for his library while still in office. Senator Clinton has introduced legislation barring such conduct by future presidents. President Clinton has said if his wife’s bill became law he would comply with public disclosure even though not covered by the legislation.

Conclusion:

The easiest way for Congress to completely eliminate the need for disclosure and limits on presidential library funds is to provide federal dollars for this purpose. It seems reasonable to suggest that the federal government has some interest in providing taxpayer funds for the express purpose of constructing safe repositories for presidential papers and associated mementos of an administration.

Source: The New York Times, In Charity and Politics the Clinton Donors Overlap

Senator Bill Bradley's take on Library-gate: http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=e0445859-c1f1-47c1-9692-8e72fb75b32a