Clinton’s ‘Considered’ Reply on Donors: Not Yet

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The New York Sun

President Clinton’s answer to Senator Clinton’s suggestion during a televised debate Wednesday that he might “consider” voluntarily making public a full list of donors to his presidential library and foundation was a simple one: No.

“She couldn’t answer that question last night because we don’t believe in one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else,” Mr. Clinton said yesterday, according to the Web site of NBC News. He said that if Congress passes a law that Mrs. Clinton is co-sponsoring to require disclosures from sitting presidents, he would release the names of future donors.

“If she becomes president, I will treat it as if we are covered by that and I will disclose all the donors to our library and activities,” he said, according to NBC.

However, the former president indicated he would resist naming all past donors.

“A lot of people gave me money with the understanding that they could give anonymously and if they gave publicly then they would be the target of every other politician in America to hit on them for the rest of their lives. And some of them are Republicans; they may not want anybody to know. It might ruin their reputation in their own party,” Mr. Clinton said, according to NBC. Shortly after the Clinton Library opened in 2004, The New York Sun visited and copied the names of dozens of major donors from a computer terminal on the third floor of the museum. The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar, a deputy prime minister of Lebanon, several Saudi businessmen, and the Saudi royal family were each listed as “Trustees,” apparently for gifts of $1 million or more. The library’ s computer did not explain the donor levels, but the tiers could be estimated based on the donations from foundations whose finances are public. Other donors at the Trustee level included an heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, Alice Walton, and a Hollywood power couple, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw. One donor at a lower level, “Humanitarian,” was a well-known San Diego class action attorney, William Lerach, who agreed last week to plead guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Soon after the Sun published an article about the donors, the computer display was removed.

At the time, a foundation official, Andrew Kessel, said there were few donors who asked to remain anonymous. “We don’t have many,” he said. “It doesn’t involve anyone controversial.”

At the debate Wednesday in New Hampshire, NBC’s Washington bureau chief, Timothy Russert, asked Mrs. Clinton whether the Clinton foundation and library “should publish all the donors who give to those entities?” Mrs. Clinton responded by saying that she was co-sponsoring legislation that would require “sitting presidents to reveal any donation to their presidential library.”

Mr. Russert pressed further, asking whether her husband’s foundation and library would make such disclosures “voluntarily” until Congress addresses the issue.

“Well, you’ll have to ask them,” Mrs. Clinton replied.

“What’s your recommendation?” Mr. Russert countered.

“Well, I don’t talk about my private conversations with my husband, but I’m sure he’d be happy to consider that,” the senator said.

Several news accounts said Mr. Clinton bristled yesterday at Mr. Russert putting his wife on the spot over his activities.

“She has got no business being asked to speak for me in a presidential debate, just like I don’t try to speak for her unless I know what her position is,” he said.

Mr. Clinton spoke at a news conference held as part of an annual meeting of philanthropists, world leaders, and corporate chieftains involved with one of his charitable efforts, the Clinton Global Initiative.

The decision to resist disclosure of the donors echoed the Clinton White House’s reported conclusion that voluntarily releasing requested information regarding the Whitewater affair, fund-raising techniques, and other contentious issues would only fuel the controversies. Some top advisers, however, had argued that releasing information would quiet journalists frenzied over the secrecy, according to reports.


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