Rich’s team was able to keep its efforts out of the media spotlight. In late November the two-inch-thick petition was finally ready. Jack Quinn sent it to “the Honorable William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States” on December 11. It contained a legal argument combined with a personal and emotional appeal. The legal argument maintained that Rich and Green had been “wrongfully indicted” and “unfairly singled out.”7 “This case was grossly overprosecuted,” Quinn emphasized during our telephone interview. All comparable cases in the past, he said, had been tried in civil instead of criminal courts. It was the same argument that Rich’s various lawyers had unsuccessfully made over the last sixteen years in order to come to some sort of arrangement with the Southern District of New York (see chapters 10 and 13).
Avner Azulay was responsible for the personal and emotional aspect of the petition, and his efforts to this effect were quite impressive. According to the first lines of the petition, “Mr. Rich and Mr. Green are extraordinary businessmen and philanthropists who have lived exemplary lives since the alleged offenses.” Rich’s charitable foundations had donated “over 100 million dollars to charitable, cultural and civic organizations.”8 Attached to the petition were letters from dozens of prominent figures offering testimony of Rich’s generosity. The petition was supported by several prominent Israelis, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Nobel Prize winner Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, former director general of the Mossad Shabtai Shavit, mayor of Jerusalem (and later prime minister) Ehud Olmert, and several other Israeli and Jewish dignitaries such as Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council chairman Rabbi Irving Greenberg. From Switzerland came letters from the well-known art collector Ernst Beyeler, Zurich mayor Josef Estermann, and top UBS banker Pierre de Weck. King Juan Carlos of Spain also put in a good word for his countryman Rich and in the process offered a form of official recognition for the important services that Rich had provided for Spain in the 1960s and 1970s (see chapter 6).
Ehud Barak’s Support
Azulay’s greatest tactical masterstroke was that he had been able to convince Ehud Barak to personally lobby President Clinton on Rich’s behalf. The timing could not have been better. On December 11—the same day that Clinton received Rich’s petition—Barak made a telephone call to the White House. According to the White House transcript, the call was made at 6:16 P.M. and lasted exactly nineteen minutes.9
“One last remark,” Barak said to President Clinton. “There is an American Jewish businessman living in Switzerland and making a lot of philanthropic contributions to Israeli institutions and activities like education, and he is a man called Marc Rich. He violated certain rules of the game in the United States and is living abroad. I just wanted to let you know that here he is highly appreciated for his support of so many philanthropic institutions and funds, and that if I can, I would like to make my recommendation to consider his case.”
Clinton responded, “I know about that case because I know his ex-wife. She wants to help him, too. If your ex-wife wants to help you, that’s good.”
“Oh,” Barak said. “I know his new wife only, an Italian woman, very young. Okay. So, Mr. President, thank you very much. We will be in touch.”
Azulay had known Ehud Barak well for quite some time. They had served in the same unit together—the Aman, Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, which Barak had directed from 1983 to 1985. Barak, Israel’s most highly decorated soldier, was active in Lebanon at the same time as Azulay. In November 2000 Azulay asked Barak for his support in obtaining Rich’s pardon. “Ehud Barak knew this was an honest request and that I would not lie to him or ask or do anything which would compromise him,” Azulay explained. The former Mossad officer told Barak that Rich had supplied Israel with oil in its most difficult times (see chapter 8) and was thus of great importance to Israel’s national security. Azulay also explained how Rich had helped the Mossad (see chapter 15). After Barak had verified this information with the Mossad, he told Azulay, “This man had done nothing but good for this country. Why should I not support him?”
Financier of the Peace Process
Azulay proceeded in a similar manner with Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and foreign minister. He asked Peres to give President Clinton a call. “You remember,” Azulay reminded Peres, “you asked us for Marc Rich’s help in the peace process.” He was referring to the Oslo Accords of 1993–94, which had offered a major breakthrough in relations between Israel and the Palestinians when both parties agreed to officially recognize one another for the first time. The accords also envisaged a plan for Palestinian self-government. During the negotiation process, Peres approached Azulay, who at that time was already serving as the managing director of the philanthropic Marc Rich Foundation. Thanks to his work with the Mossad, Azulay was personally acquainted with both the Israeli and Palestinian participants. “Peres asked me, ‘What can you do to help this process?’ ” Azulay explained.
Azulay informed him that Rich had come up with the idea of financing a Palestinian investment bank in order to speed up the economic development of the Palestinian areas. He also suggested developing the border area shared by Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian West Bank for tourism. Azulay discussed these plans in Jerusalem and Ramallah with the Palestinian economic expert Ahmed Qurei (who would later serve as “prime minister” of the Palestinian Authority). A group of Palestinians, including an economic adviser for Yasser Arafat, traveled to Zug to meet with Rich in 1994, a meeting that until now has remained a secret. “We discussed how Marc could help them,” Azulay said. A further suggestion was made that Rich assist in training programs for the Palestinian Authority. Rich was prepared to invest 1 million to help train executive members of staff in the areas of education and social welfare.
“I was willing to do anything they needed,” Rich told me. “ ‘Define your needs,’ I urged the Palestinians, ‘come back to me, and tell me what I can do.’ ” Yet he waited in vain for concrete suggestions to make their way back to him. He heard nothing more from the Palestinians, who in the meantime had succumbed to a bitter internal power struggle. Thus the Marc Rich Foundation developed its own series of plans for various projects, mainly in the area of establishing a public administration service to manage the international funds and donations as well as health services, which the foundation would later finance to the tune of several million dollars in cooperation with the World Bank.
It was these projects that prompted Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami to intercede on Rich’s behalf. Ben-Ami wrote a letter on official Foreign Ministry paper to President Clinton, stating that Rich’s foundation “was among the first private entities to support the Oslo Accords by sponsoring education and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority. Many of these projects of people to people between Israelis and Palestinians would not have been possible without Marc Rich’s generous involvement.”10 Sidney Blumenthal, President Clinton’s brilliant senior adviser, was not far from the truth when he wrote in his book The Clinton Wars, “In short, Rich was a financier of the peace process.”11
Azulay reminded Shimon Peres of this fact in December 2000. Peres played a central role in the Oslo Accords, and for his efforts he shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. “If you could just say a few good words about the character of this man,” Azulay asked Peres. “Say that he is not the devil that he is painted to be in the media.” Peres did not have to think twice about putting in a good word for Rich. He had already lobbied the U.S. government on Rich’s behalf in the mid-1990s. He was enthusiastic about the idea of Israeli and Palestinian economic cooperation and wanted Rich to be able to move about more freely without running the risk of arrest.
So Peres called Clinton on the same day as Ehud Barak. It was December 11, 2000—the day that Clinton received the petition for Rich’s pardon. Peres also asked the president to pardon Rich and
extricate him from the legal impasse his case had reached. According to an e-mail from Azulay to Jack Quinn, President Clinton “took note of his intervention.”12 Rich’s importance to Israeli politicians is further illustrated by the fact that Barak spoke to Clinton about a possible pardon on two additional occasions.13 In a telephone call of January 8, 2001, Barak again stressed Rich’s importance to Israel’s security: “He helped Mossad on more than one case.” “It’s a bizarre case, and I am working on it,” Clinton answered. “I really appreciate it,” Barak said. On January 19, 2001, the same day that President Clinton finally attended to the presidential pardons, Barak called again and asked, “Might it move forward?” “I’m glad you asked me about that,” Clinton answered. “The question is not whether he should get [the pardon] or not but whether he should get it without coming back here.”
“He just told the truth,” Rich said when I asked him about Barak’s support. “He knew about me. I’ve met him. We talked about my case, and he knew I was a positive element for Israel. They appreciated what I was doing for and in Israel, so he decided to be positive.”
The Role of Denise Rich
As soon as the pardon had been made public, the media began their descent on a single individual: Denise Rich. She was the perfect subject for a story. She was a member of the international jet set who was worth hundreds of millions of dollars and owned a luxurious penthouse on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, an extrovert socialite who had once flooded her penthouse terrace to form an ice rink for one of her fabulous parties. She was a successful songwriter known throughout the music industry. She was also a woman who was prepared to stand up for her ex-husband, even though he had left her for another woman.
Denise’s involvement in Marc Rich’s pardon was particularly scandalous as she was one of the biggest and most loyal supporters of the Democratic Party, to which she had donated more than 1.1 million since 1992. The list of leading Democratic politicians whose campaigns she had supported reads like a roster of the U.S. Senate. Geraldine Ferraro, Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin, Barbara Boxer, Charles Schumer, and Barbara Mikulski all received donations from Denise Rich. She was particularly close to Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose election campaigns she helped finance, and she donated 450,000 to Bill Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas. Politicians and members of the media soon began to voice the opinion that Marc Rich’s ex-wife had managed to “buy” her ex-husband’s pardon.
The House Government Reform Committee, which was tasked with investigating the circumstances surrounding Rich’s pardon, described Denise as a “key figure in the effort to obtain a pardon.”14 In truth, Denise did enjoy a special relationship to the president as a result of her generous donations. During the Clinton administration, she visited the White House on no fewer than nineteen occasions, and President Clinton once even described her as one of his “closest friends.”15 In 1998, when the president appeared in public for the first time after the publication of independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report on the Monica Lewinsky affair, it was at an event held in Denise’s penthouse. Clinton also appeared as a speaker at a fund-raiser for the G&P Foundation, a cancer research organization Denise founded after Gabrielle’s death. (The G stands for Gabrielle and the P for Philip, Gabrielle’s husband.)
A letter from Denise Rich dated December 6 was the first personal letter attached to the pardon petition. “I am writing as a friend and an admirer of yours,” Denise wrote to the president. “I support this application with all my heart.” Her letter, which Jack Quinn helped write, was a masterpiece. It appealed to the president’s emotions while referring to Clinton’s own bad experiences with aggressive prosecutors.
The pain and suffering caused by that unjust indictment battered more than my husband—it struck his daughters and me. We have lived with it for so many years. We live with it now. There is no reason why it should have gone on so long. Exile for seventeen years is enough. So much of what has been said about Marc as a result of the indictment and exile is just plain wrong, yet it has continued to damage Marc and his family. . . .
Because of the indictment, I have seen what happens when charges are falsely—even if just incorrectly—made against those closest to you, and what it feels like to see the press try and convict the accused without regard for the truth. I know the immense frustration that comes when the prosecutors will not discuss their charges, and when no one will look at the facts in a fair way. My husband and I could not return to the United Sates [sic] because, while the charges were untrue, no one would listen—all the prosecutors appeared to think about was the prospect of imprisoning Marc for the rest of his life. With a life sentence at stake, and press and media fueled by the US Attorney, we felt he had no choice but to remain out of the country.16
One week after President Clinton received the petition for Rich’s pardon, Denise also spoke directly to the president about the issue. On December 20 she was a guest at a dinner in Washington to honor the winners of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal. During a quiet moment, Denise pulled the president to one side and told him that the pardon “would mean a lot to me.”17
It was rather surprising that Denise should make such an effort to stand up for her ex-husband. Her relationship to Marc Rich was virtually nonexistent at that point. The two had not spoken—let alone seen one another—for years after their bitter and nasty divorce. Denise not only resented the fact that he had left her for a younger woman, she also felt that Rich had wronged her financially. She still believed that he had cheated her by not matching the 40 million that she had contributed to the charitable foundation they had founded together in 1988—even though her claims were rejected by a Swiss court (see chapter 16). She was so angry with her ex-husband that she even made a financial contribution of 1,000 to the campaign of Rich’s nemesis, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
It had been Avner Azulay’s idea to include Denise Rich in Operation Avenue of Last Resort. He visited her in November 2000 and asked for her support. “He screwed me. He owes me money,” Denise replied. “I want the money he owes me for the foundation—40 million.” Azulay was shocked. He knew that Marc and Denise did not get along, but he had not expected such deep resentment. Azulay told Denise that it would look very strange if she, the mother of Rich’s children, did not stand up for her ex-husband. He promised her, “If you help us now, I will talk to Marc.” Only after a number of meetings and many long discussions did Denise finally agree to use her influence with the president to help her ex-husband.
What motivated Denise to throw her weight behind her ex-husband’s petition? I asked her this question during our conversation in her Manhattan penthouse. I was sitting next to her on a leather sofa taking notes and was having trouble keeping up with what she was saying. I could record our conversation if I liked, Denise said. “I have nothing to hide.” Danielle laughed and said, “That’s my mother. Everybody else is worried about themselves and she is worried about you.” Denise went on to explain that she had been willing to help because “my children asked me to support the pardon. They’re my children. How could I not?” Yes, but you had been so angry with him, I remarked. You had publicly accused him of destroying your family. Denise thought about this for a moment before saying, “Every divorce is bitter. He’s still the father of my children.” She then told me how Gabrielle’s death had changed her feelings about Marc Rich. “Gabrielle would have wanted that I forgive him. She would have wanted that I support him.”
A Delicate Financial Agreement
However, it is also true that Denise accepted Avner Azulay’s proposal to compensate her for the 40 million she thought Marc Rich owed her. According to an agreement, signed in January 2001 by all parties, shortly before President Clinton finally granted the pardon, Rich and Green would each contribute 500,000 per year to the G&P Foundation. (In order to prevent any possible misunderstandings, let me emphasize that Denise Rich herself was not the beneficiary, but rather the G&P Foundation was.) The foundation would
use these funds to cooperate with the Gabrielle Rich Leukemia Research Centre at the Weizmann Institute of Science, which Marc Rich had established separately in Israel to support leukemia research. It was up to a committee of scientists designated by both sides to decide how the money could best be invested.
Denise acknowledged the existence of this agreement. “Gabrielle asked that we continue her foundation. It was my daughter’s last wish. She had started it, and she asked for it. She was working on her computer up until she died. I had asked [Marc Rich and Pincus Green] if they would help me, and they had said they would. It had nothing to do with the pardon.” In the wake of the public outrage that was sparked by Rich’s pardon, Denise decided to waive her right to her ex-husband’s money. “I didn’t want anything to hurt the foundation, so I decided to accept no money from them. I didn’t want the question of money to tarnish the foundation.” “She wanted it to be pure,” Danielle added.
It was certainly the right decision, as the outrage that followed in the wake of the pardon was tremendous. To this day, Denise Rich still finds herself caught up in the critics’ crossfire. The whole affair took on the stench of corruption as a result of Denise’s contributions to the Clintons’ and various other Democratic campaigns. Denise had to deny even more insidious charges on Barbara Walters’s ABC newsmagazine 20/20. “I never had a sexual relationship or anything else that’s improper,” Denise explained in her interview with Walters.
The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich Page 27