Given the nastiness of the breakup, why, just a few years later, would Denise Rich throw herself into a yearlong crusade to help win a pardon for her estranged ex-husband? That’s just one of the questions frustrating investigators on Capitol Hill, who have spent weeks trying to unravel the motivations, and money, behind Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardon of Rich and several others. They are especially baffled about why Denise Rich’s friend, Democratic fund-raiser Beth Dozoretz, worked so hard for Marc Rich’s pardon, visiting the White House dozens of times and repeatedly appealing to Clinton. Together, they managed to override the advice of the Justice Department and Clinton’s closest aides. Yet after three long days of hearings that seemed to raise more questions than answers–last week Dozoretz, like Denise, took the Fifth–even some of the staunchest anti-Clinton Republicans are beginning to wonder how long they should continue. “This is a dead end,” says an aide close to Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican leading the pardons investigation. Others don’t believe that the probe will ever prove criminal wrongdoing involving Clinton. The White House, irritated that the scandal is eclipsing the new president, is also beginning to get impatient. NEWSWEEK has learned that administration officials are quietly pressuring the GOP investigators to end the probe as quickly as possible. “Everybody’s not real happy with us over there,” says one Republican staffer. “I’ve been getting calls from the White House saying, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing?’ "
The investigation may not be over as soon as the White House would like. Last week came new revelations that the Rich pardon was much more carefully orchestrated than anyone had known. Marc Rich’s lawyer, Jack Quinn, had previously testified that the effort to get Rich a pardon hadn’t begun until November of last year. Yet new documents, including a trail of provocative e-mails, suggest it began much earlier, and that Denise Rich played a critical part in the plan. In February 2000, Quinn’s efforts to negotiate a legal settlement for Rich with New York prosecutors hit a wall when the authorities refused on principle to negotiate with a fugitive. With the legal doors seemingly closed, Rich’s advisers began contemplating another possible way out of his troubles: a presidential pardon. On March 18, Avner Azulay, a former Mossad agent and head of the Marc Rich Foundation in Israel, sent an e-mail to one of Rich’s lawyers: “We are reverting to the idea to… send DR on a ‘personal’ mission to NO1 with a well prepared script.” Rich’s lawyers said last week that DR was short for Denise Rich and NO1 was Number One–Bill Clinton.
In the months that followed, Denise Rich, already a major Democratic contributor, increased her donations, giving $271,000 to the Democratic Party. She also gave $100,000 to the Clinton Library, on top of the $350,000 she’d already donated. In December she wrote a personal letter to Clinton urging a pardon for Marc Rich “with all my heart” and made phone calls on his behalf. At the same time, Denise’s friend Beth Dozoretz was using her own close ties to Clinton, who is the godfather of her young daughter, to press for the Rich pardon. After talking with Clinton, Dozoretz would give progress reports to Denise. At last week’s hearings, Jack Quinn admitted that he recruited Dozoretz to get involved in part because “she was in much more frequent communication with the president than I was.”
Investigators have yet to prove that Denise Rich’s donations were directly tied to the pardon effort–or that the money secretly came from Marc Rich. Sources close to Denise Rich say she is now talking to federal prosecutors in New York and may soon reach a deal that would grant her immunity to tell her full story. It’s not certain the Feds will get much out of the bargain. According to these sources, Denise Rich says she has barely spoken to her ex-husband since the divorce and she used her own money to support the Clintons’ causes. She says she agreed to help her ex-husband so that he could return to the United States to visit the grave of their daughter Gabrielle, who died of cancer in 1996. Denise did not want to intervene at first, but Rich’s lawyers and her two living daughters prevailed upon her.
If that turns out to be true, the criminal probe into the Rich pardon may not get very far, and few Clinton antagonists believe they’ll ever prove that the Rich pardon was an explicit money-for-clemency scheme. GOP investigators were intrigued by new revelations last week about Hillary Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham, who helped win pardons for a Tennessee couple convicted of bank fraud in 1982. (Hillary’s other brother Hugh Rodham had already been forced to return $400,000 for his part in winning clemency for two convicted men.) Tony Rodham had been involved in business deals with the couple, who ran a carnival company, and the Justice Department had strongly objected to the pardon. But the story lost altitude when Rodham insisted he’d taken no money for lobbying Clinton.
In private, Bush White House officials worry about a political backlash from Democrats if the pardon investigation drags on much longer. For more than 10 years, Rich’s chief American lawyer and advocate was Lewis (Scooter) Libby, now Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff. Last week Democrats on the Burton committee fired a political warning shot, insisting that Libby, who worked for Rich until last year, be called as a witness. Libby acknowledged that his law firm had collected $2 million in fees from Rich, and that he had continued to consult with Rich’s current lawyers as recently as last November. Even more damaging, Libby admitted that two days after the pardon, he called Rich in Switzerland to congratulate him. The revelation delighted Democrats, who have been dying to inflict a little political pain themselves. Now some Republicans are having second thoughts. “A lot of our members are starting to ask, ‘Do we really want to push this?’ " says one GOP staffer. They may not stay gloomy for long. Burton will soon be scouring the list of Clinton Library donors, looking for contributors who might have lobbied for pardons, and might have a story to tell.
