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Libby, a top Republican lawyer who is now vice president Dick Cheney's
chief of staff, told the House
Government
Reform Committee last night that he agreed with much of Bill Clinton's
widely discredited op-ed article outlining the former president's
reasons for pardoning fugitive tax evader Marc Rich.
In a session that stretched late into the evening, Libby, who represented
Rich for several years ending in the spring of 2000, told the committee
he believes Rich is not guilty of the tax and racketeering charges
filed by federal prosecutors in 1983. Libby also said he "quite
possibly" would have considered applying for a pardon for Rich had
Rich asked him to do so.
Libby, who said his law firms collected as much as $2 million for
representing Rich, testified he had nothing to do with the application
that led to clemency for Rich. He declined to say whether he approved
of the decision to pardon Rich, but he conceded that he called Rich
on January 22, two days after the pardon, to "congratulate him on
having reached a result that he had sought for a long time." Libby
testified he made the call from his home to make clear that he was
calling in a personal capacity, and not as a representative of the
Bush administration.
In a particularly damaging exchange with Pennsylvania Democrat Paul
Kanjorski , Libby agreed that Rich might be characterized as a traitor
for fleeing the country and renouncing his American citizenship.
Kanjorski asked Libby why he would call a traitor to congratulate
him on his good fortune in winning a pardon. Visibly uncomfortable,
Libby had no answer.
For Republicans, Libby's testimony was a sour endnote to what had
been a long day of revelations that made President Clinton's decision
to pardon Rich seem even more inexplicable than previously thought.
Early in the day, Republicans revealed that former deputy White
House counsel Cheryl Mills, who played a prominent role in Clinton's
impeachment defense and now serves as a trustee for the Clinton-library
foundation, took part in a discussion with the president about the
Rich pardon the night Clinton made his last-minute decision. Mills
left White House employment in the fall of 1999. Several witnesses
at the hearing — former White House chief of staff John Podesta,
former White House counsel Beth Nolan, and former top Clinton adviser
Bruce Lindsey — testified that Mills was often at the White
House in the year and a half after she left to become a senior vice
president at Oxygen Media, a television and internet firm devoted
to women's programming.
"She continued to be a trusted adviser to the president," Nolan
told the committee. Nolan said that in the last weeks of the administration,
Mills was at the White House frequently for end-of-term parties
and other events. On the chaotic evening of January 19, Clinton
called several advisers to the Oval Office to discuss his plans
to pardon a number of people who had been convicted or pled guilty
in the Whitewater, Mike Espy, and Henry Cisneros independent-counsel
investigations.
"I invited Ms. Mills to join that conversation," said Bruce Lindsey,
former close adviser to the president, citing Mills's expertise
on independent-counsel issues. Lindsey testified that at the meeting,
Clinton raised the Rich pardon issue and that Mills took part in
that discussion, too. "I do not believe she took a position on
it," Lindsey said, referring to the Rich case.
But it appears that Mills's involvement was greater than simply
participating in one meeting. Republicans on the committee also
revealed that Roger Adams, the pardons attorney in the Justice Department,
has told the committee he called the White House to discuss the
Rich matter and ended up discussing it with Mills, who spoke authoritatively
on the matter. Adams was apparently somewhat bewildered that a
former White House employee would be involved in pardon discussions.
In addition, the committee released a January 5, 2001 e-mail from
Robert Fink, a lawyer for Marc Rich in New York, to two other members
of the Rich team. "Here is the letter Jack [former White House
counsel Jack Quinn] just sent to the White House," Fink wrote.
"As you may notice his secretary said that Jack sent copies to Beth
Nolan, Bruce Lindsey and Cheryl Mills. April said they have clearance
to deliver it to the WH [White House], so it will get there this
evening, presumably before POTUS leaves for Camp David." Quinn told
the committee that he brought Mills into the case in an effort to
help convince Clinton to pardon Rich.
Earlier in the hearing, former Democratic National Committee finance
chair Beth Dozoretz appeared briefly before the committee. Connecticut
Republican Christopher Shays read to her from a January 10, 2001
e-mail from an associate of Rich's to Quinn. "DR [Rich's former
wife Denise] called from Aspen," the e-mail began. "Her friend
B [Dozoretz] — who is with her — got a call today from
potus — who said he was impressed by JQ's [Quinn's] last letter
and that he wants to do it and is doing all possible to turn around
the WH counsels."
Shays asked Dozoretz why she discussed the Rich case with the president.
"Upon the advice of my counsel, I respectfully decline to answer
that question," Dozoretz said, citing her Fifth Amendment right
against self-incrimination. Shays asked whether she would refuse
to answer all questions on those grounds. She said yes.
Georgia Republican Bob Barr asked Dozoretz whether she would at
least tell the committee whether she intends to cooperate with the
criminal investigation being conducted by federal prosecutors in
New York. She declined to answer that, too.
On another topic, the committee released information casting doubt
on one of Quinn's main arguments in favor of the Rich pardon. On
February 8, Quinn testified that he was frustrated at the "intransigence"
of federal prosecutors in New York who, Quinn said, were unwilling
to discuss the case with Rich. Quinn also testified that the prosecutors'
use of RICO, the racketeering statute, was the "sledgehammer" that
resulted in Rich's decision not to return to the United States to
face charges.
Now it appears that prosecutors were not as inflexible as Quinn
contended. In his opening statement, committee chairman Dan Burton
announced that in 1999 the government offered to drop the RICO charges
against Rich if he would return to the U.S. to face trial. E-mails
between members of the Rich team indicate that prosecutors also
agreed to set a bail for Rich in advance so he would not have to
worry about being incarcerated before trial. Rich refused the government's
offer.
The committee also released information suggesting that the campaign
to win a pardon for Rich began significantly earlier than was previously
known. The idea was referred to in a February 10, 2000 e-mail from
Avner Azulay, one of Rich's top advisers to Robert Fink, the New
York lawyer. The e-mail discussed strategies to follow in the case
and concluded, "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." That "unconventional
approach" was apparently the pardon initiative.
The next month, on March 18, 2000, Azulay again e-mailed Fink.
"We are reverting to the idea discussed with Abe [Anti-Defamation
League head Abraham Foxman]," the e-mail said, "which is to send
DR [Denise Rich] on a 'personal' mission to NO1. with a well-prepared
script." Congressional investigators believe "NO1." refers to the
president.
Quinn testified that he had no recollection of any such discussion,
but he did not rule out the idea of early pardon discussions. "It
is entirely possible that…everyone of us involved in this thought
out loud with each other," Quinn testified. "It is possible that
we were involved in a conversation where someone said, 'You know,
we're going to have to try a pardon one of these days.'"
Finally, committee lawyers are preparing to examine the donor records
of the Clinton library. On Wednesday, Burton's lawyers saw a list
of approximately 150 people and companies who have given or pledged
at least $5,000 to the library. The next step, which will take
place today, will be for them to see the amounts of those donations
and the dates they were given.
Because of their long and painstakingly detailed investigation of
the campaign finance scandal, experts on Burton's staff are familiar
with the names of most people who have given large sums of money
to the Democratic party and Clinton-related causes over the years.
Congressional sources say there are some unfamiliar names on the
library donor list. Investigators will want to find out who those
people are and whether they gave their own money to the library
— or whether they served as fronts for the donations of others.
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