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In charity and politics, Clinton donors overlap
A joint effort
At a Democratic debate in September, when Mrs. Clinton was asked whether the foundation would disclose its donors, she indicated that the decision was not hers. “Well, you’ll have to ask them,” she replied, referring to the former president and his staff.
But Mrs. Clinton’s effort to distance herself understates the extent to which the foundation was a joint enterprise from the start.
Shortly after the Clintons left the White House, close advisers convened meetings at the couple’s Washington home to map out Mr. Clinton’s future as a philanthropist.
Mrs. Clinton played an important role in shaping both the foundation’s organization and the scope of its work, said Karen A. Tramontano, a senior adviser in the Clinton White House and the foundation’s first chief of staff.
Advisers also were acutely aware that the foundation’s operations — and any perception of a conflict — could harm Mrs. Clinton politically. “She and I would speak frequently,” Ms. Tramontano said. “She had a lot of ideas. All the papers that went to him went to her.”
Early on, donations to the library caused perception problems. The day after he left office, Mr. Clinton was embroiled in a scandal over his 11th-hour pardon of the financier Marc Rich, who fled the United States in 1983 to avoid tax evasion and other charges. A Congressional hearing later revealed that the pardon came after Mr. Rich’s former wife, Denise Rich, contributed $450,000 to Mr. Clinton’s library.
That spring, Mrs. Clinton co-sponsored legislation to publicly identify donors to foundations of future sitting presidents. She referred to that legislation in the debate three months ago, although the bill had died in committee.
Beyond the revelation of the Rich donation, the names of some other donors emerged after the library opened in November 2004, when a New York Sun reporter found a partial contributor list displayed on a public computer there. The list, with neither amounts nor dates, disclosed donations from the Saudi royal family and other foreign sources. After the Sun story, the computer plug was pulled.
As the foundation has evolved into global philanthropy, it has attracted more large donors. Among them are Tom Golisano, an iconoclastic billionaire from upstate New York, who gives the foundation $3 million to $5 million a year, according to Mr. Golisano’s confidants; Stephen Bing, a Hollywood producer and a Hillraiser, who contributed stock worth $10,028,614 in 2005; Sir Tom Hunter, a Scottish businessman who began donating $10 million a year in 2006 for economic development in Africa; and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which said it had given or pledged $23,145,677 since 2005, mostly to support AIDS work and an effort to reduce the costs of malaria drugs.
Throughout, Mrs. Clinton has offered “good, specific ideas” to the foundation when Mr. Clinton asks her to attend planning sessions, said Ira Magaziner, a top foundation executive and longtime Clinton adviser.
As the presidential campaign got under way, foundation officials began working to ensure that none of their enterprises would have political repercussions for Mrs. Clinton. Brian Byrd, who once worked for the Rockefeller Foundation and is now a lobbyist for arts groups, said that this year he interviewed for a job created to help review attendees to Mr. Clinton’s annual conference and make sure charitable pledges were met.
“Part of it was that Hillary was running for president, and they wanted to be sure everything was on the up and up — that was said to me,” said Mr. Byrd, who added that he decided he did not want and was not offered the position. “They wanted to get all their ducks in a row.”
Alain Delaquérière and Aron Pilhofer contributed reporting.
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