HILLARY CLINTON: WORLD'S BIGGEST ARMS DEALER TO MUSLIM DICATORSHIPS
IBT:
Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals from Hillary Clinton’s State
Department
Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons
Deals From Hillary Clinton's State Department
By David Sirota @davidsirota
d.sirota@ibtimes.com
Andrew Perez @AndrewPerezDC andrew.perez@ibtimes.com on May 26 2015 8:44 AM EDT
Andrew Perez @AndrewPerezDC andrew.perez@ibtimes.com on May 26 2015 8:44 AM EDT
Under Hillary Clinton, the State
Department approved $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations
whose governments had given millions to the Clinton Foundation. Yana Paskova/Getty
Images
Even by the standards of arms deals between the United States and
Saudi Arabia, this one was enormous. A consortium of American defense
contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter
jets to the United States' oil-rich ally in the Middle East.
Israeli officials were agitated, reportedly complaining to the Obama
administration that this substantial enhancement to Saudi air power risked
disrupting the region's fragile balance of power. The deal appeared to collide
with the State Department’s documented concerns about the repressive policies
of the Saudi royal family.
But now, in late 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was
formally clearing the sale, asserting that it was in the national interest. At
a press conference in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an
assistant secretary of state, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top
priority” for Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime
aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air
Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.”
These were not the
only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before
Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic
enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton.
Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing -- the defense contractor
that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to
acquire, the F-15 -- contributed $900,000 to
the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.
The Saudi deal was one of dozens of arms sales approved by Hillary
Clinton’s State Department that placed weapons in the hands of governments that
had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire, an
International Business Times investigation has found.
Under Clinton's leadership, the State Department approved $165
billion worth of commercial arms sales to 20 nations whose governments have
given money to the Clinton Foundation, according to an IBTimes analysis of
State Department and foundation data. That figure -- derived from the three
full fiscal years of Clinton’s term as Secretary of State (from October 2010 to
September 2012) -- represented nearly double the value of American arms sales
made to the those countries and approved by the State Department during the
same period of President George W. Bush’s second term.
The Clinton-led State Department also authorized $151 billion of
separate Pentagon-brokered deals for 16 of the countries that donated to the
Clinton Foundation, resulting in a 143 percent increase in completed sales to those
nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. These extra
sales were part of a broad increase in American military exports that
accompanied Obama’s arrival in the White House.
American defense contractors also donated to the Clinton
Foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and in some cases made
personal payments to Bill Clinton for speaking engagements. Such firms and
their subsidiaries were listed as contractors in $163 billion worth of
Pentagon-negotiated deals that were authorized by the Clinton State Department
between 2009 and 2012.
The State Department formally approved these arms sales even as
many of the deals enhanced the military power of countries ruled by
authoritarian regimes whose human rights abuses had been criticized by the
department. Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar all donated to the Clinton Foundation
and also gained State Department clearance to buy caches of American-made
weapons even as the department singled them out for a range of alleged ills,
from corruption to restrictions on civil liberties to violent crackdowns
against political opponents.
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton also accused some of these
countries of failing to marshal a serious and sustained campaign to confront
terrorism. In a December 2009 State Department cable
published by Wikileaks, Clinton complained of “an ongoing challenge to persuade
Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a
strategic priority.” She declared that “Qatar's overall level of CT cooperation
with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region.” She said the Kuwaiti
government was “less inclined to take action against Kuwait-based financiers
and facilitators plotting attacks.” She noted that “UAE-based donors have
provided financial support to a variety of terrorist groups.” All of these countries
donated to the Clinton Foundation and received increased weapons export
authorizations from the Clinton-run State Department.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Clinton Foundation
did not respond to questions from the IBTimes.
In all, governments and corporations involved in the arms deals
approved by Clinton’s State Department have delivered between $54 million and
$141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of
dollars in payments to the Clinton family, according to foundation and State
Department records. The Clinton Foundation publishes only a rough range of
individual contributors’ donations, making a more precise accounting
impossible.
Winning Friends, Influencing Clintons
Under federal law, foreign governments seeking State Department
clearance to buy American-made arms are barred from making campaign
contributions -- a prohibition aimed at preventing foreign interests from using
cash to influence national security policy. But nothing prevents them from contributing
to a philanthropic foundation controlled by policymakers.
Just before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, the Clinton
Foundation signed an agreement generally
obligating it to disclose to the State Department increases in contributions
from its existing foreign government donors and any new foreign government
donors. Those increases were to be reviewed by an official at the State
Department and “as appropriate” the White House counsel’s office. According to
available disclosures, officials at the State Department and White House raised
no issues about potential conflicts related to arms sales.
During Hillary Clinton’s 2009 Senate confirmation hearings, Sen.
Richard Lugar, R-Ind., urged the Clinton
Foundation to “forswear” accepting contributions from governments abroad.
“Foreign governments and entities may perceive the Clinton Foundation as a
means to gain favor with the secretary of state,” he said. The Clintons did not
take Lugar’s advice. In light of the weapons deals flowing to Clinton
Foundation donors, advocates for limits on the influence of money on government
action now argue that Lugar was prescient in his concerns.
“The word was out to these groups that one of the best ways to
gain access and influence with the Clintons was to give to this foundation,”
said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, an
advocacy group that seeks to tighten campaign finance disclosure rules. “This
shows why having public officials, or even spouses of public officials,
connected with these nonprofits is problematic.”
Hillary Clinton’s willingness to allow those with business before
the State Department to finance her foundation heightens concerns about how she
would manage such relationships as president, said Lawrence Lessig, the
director of Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics.
“These continuing revelations raise a fundamental question of
judgment,” Lessig told IBTimes. “Can it really be that the Clintons didn't
recognize the questions these transactions would raise? And if they did, what
does that say about their sense of the appropriate relationship between private
gain and public good?”
National security experts assert that the overlap between the list
of Clinton Foundation donors and those with business before the the State
Department presents a troubling conflict of interest.
While governments and defense contractors may not have made
donations to the Clinton Foundation exclusively to influence arms deals, they
were clearly “looking to build up deposits in the 'favor bank' and to be well
thought of,” said Gregory Suchan, a 34-year State Department veteran who helped
lead the agency’s oversight of arms transfers under the Bush administration.
As Hillary Clinton presses a campaign for the presidency, she has
confronted sustained scrutiny into her family’s personal and philanthropic
dealings, along with questions about whether their private business interests
have colored her exercise of public authority. As IBTimes previously reported, Clinton switched from opposing an
American free trade agreement with Colombia to supporting it after a Canadian
energy and mining magnate with interests in that South American country
contributed to the Clinton Foundation. IBTimes’ review of
the Clintons’ annual financial disclosures also revealed that 13 companies lobbying the State
Department paid Bill Clinton $2.5 million in speaking fees while Hillary
Clinton headed the agency.
Questions about the nexus of arms sales and Clinton Foundation
donors stem from the State Department’s role in reviewing the export of
American-made weapons. The agency is charged with both licensing direct
commercial sales by U.S. defense contractors to foreign governments and also approving Pentagon-brokered sales to those
governments. Those powers are enshrined in a federal law that specifically designates the
secretary of state as “responsible for the continuous supervision and general
direction of sales” of arms, military hardware and services to foreign
countries. In that role, Hillary Clinton was empowered to approve or reject deals for a
broad range of reasons, from national security considerations to human rights
concerns.
The State Department does not disclose which individual companies
are involved in direct commercial sales, but its disclosure documents reveal
that countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation saw a combined $75
billion increase in authorized commercial military sales under the three full
fiscal years Clinton served, as compared to the first three full fiscal years
of Bush’s second term.
The Clinton Foundation has not released an exact timetable of its
donations, making it impossible to know whether money from foreign governments
and defense contractors came into the organization before or after Hillary
Clinton approved weapons deals that involved their interests. But news reports document
that at least seven foreign governments that received State Department
clearance for American arms did donate to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary
Clinton was serving as secretary: Algeria, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Thailand,
Norway and Australia.
Sales Flowed Despite Human Rights Concerns
Under a presidential policy directive signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, the
State Department is supposed to specifically take human rights records into
account when deciding whether to approve licenses enabling foreign governments
to purchase military equipment and services from American companies. Despite
this, Hillary Clinton’s State Department increased approvals of such sales to
nations that her agency sharply criticized for systematic human rights abuses.
In its 2010 Human Rights Report, Clinton’s State
Department inveighed against Algeria’s government for imposing “restrictions on
freedom of assembly and association” tolerating “arbitrary killing,” “widespread
corruption,” and a “lack of judicial independence.” The report said the
Algerian government “used security grounds to constrain freedom of expression
and movement.”
That year, the Algerian government donated $500,000 to the
Clinton Foundation and its lobbyists met with the State
Department officials who oversee enforcement of human rights policies.
Clinton’s State Department the next year approved a one-year 70 percent
increase in military export authorizations to the country. The increase
included authorizations of almost 50,000 items classified as “toxicological
agents, including chemical agents, biological agents and associated equipment”
after the State Department did not authorize the export of any of such items to
Algeria in the prior year.
During Clinton’s tenure, the State Department authorized at least
$2.4 billion of direct military hardware and services sales to Algeria --
nearly triple such authorizations over the last full fiscal years during the
Bush administration. The Clinton Foundation did not disclose Algeria’s
donation until this year -- a violation of the ethics agreement it entered into
with the Obama administration.
The monarchy in Qatar had similarly been chastised by the State Department for a raft
of human rights abuses. But that country donated to the Clinton Foundation
while Hillary Clinton was running the State Department. During the three full
budgetary years of her tenure, Qatar saw a 14-fold increase in State Department
authorizations for direct commercial sales of military equipment and services,
as compared to the same time period in Bush’s second term. The department also approved the Pentagon’s
separate $750 million sale of multi-mission helicopters to Qatar. That deal
would additionally employ as contractors three companies that have all
supported the Clinton Foundation over the years: United Technologies, Lockheed
Martin and General Electric.
Clinton foundation donor countries that the State Department
criticized for human rights violations and that received weapons export
authorizations did not respond to IBTimes’ questions.
That group of arms manufacturers -- along with Clinton Foundation
donors Boeing, Honeywell, Hawker Beechcraft and their affiliates -- were
together listed as contractors in 114 such deals while Clinton was secretary of
state. NBC put Chelsea Clinton on its payroll as a
network correspondent in November 2011, when it was still 49 percent owned
by General Electric. A spokesperson for General Electric did not respond to
questions from IBTimes.
The other companies all asserted that their donations had nothing
to do with the arms export deals.
“Our contributions have aligned with our longstanding
philanthropic commitments,” said Honeywell spokesperson Rob Ferris.
"Even The Appearance Of A Conflict"
During her Senate confirmation proceedings in 2009, Hillary
Clinton declared that she and
her husband were “committed to ensuring that his work does not present a
conflict of interest with the duties of Secretary of State.” She pledged “to
protect against even the appearance of a conflict of interest between his work
and the duties of the Secretary of State” and said that “in many, if not most
cases, it is likely that the Foundation or President Clinton will not pursue an
opportunity that presents a conflict.”
Even so, Bill Clinton took in speaking fees reaching $625,000 at
events sponsored by entities that were dealing with Hillary Clinton’s State
Department on weapons issues.
In 2011, for example, the former president was paid $175,000 by
the Kuwait America Foundation to be the guest of honor and keynote speaker at
its annual awards gala, which was held at the home of the Kuwaiti ambassador.
Ben Affleck spoke at the event, which featured a musical performance by
Grammy-award winner Michael Bolton. The gala was emceed by Joe Scarborough and
Mika Brzezinski, hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe show. Boeing was listed as a sponsor of
the event, as were the embassies of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait and Qatar -- the latter two of which had donated to the Clinton Foundation
while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
The speaking fee from the Kuwait America Foundation to Bill
Clinton was paid in the same time frame as a series of deals
Hillary Clinton’s State Department was approving between the Kuwaiti government
and Boeing. Months before the gala, the Department of Defense announced that
Boeing would be the prime contractor on a $693 million deal, cleared by Hillary
Clinton’s State Department, to provide the Kuwaiti government with military
transport aircraft. A year later, a group sponsored in part by Boeing would pay Bill Clinton another $250,000 speaking
fee.
“Boeing has sponsored this major travel event, the Global Business
Travel Association, for several years, regardless of its invited speakers,”
Gordon Johndroe, a Boeing spokesperson, told IBTimes. Johndroe said Boeing’s
support for the Clinton Foundation was “a transparent act of compassion and an
investment aimed at aiding the long-term interests and hopes of the Haitian
people” following a devastating earthquake.
Boeing was one of three companies that helped deliver money
personally to Bill Clinton while benefiting from weapons authorizations issued
by Hillary Clinton’s State Department. The others were Lockheed and the
financial giant Goldman Sachs.
Lockheed is a member of the American
Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which paid Bill Clinton $250,000 to speak at an
event in 2010. Three days before the speech, Hillary Clinton’s State Department
approved two weapons export deals
in which Lockheed was listed as the prime contractor. Over the course of 2010,
Lockheed was a contractor on 17 Pentagon-brokered deals that won approval from
the State Department. Lockheed told IBTimes that its support for the Clinton
Foundation started in 2010, while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.
“Lockheed Martin has periodically supported one individual
membership in the Clinton Global Initiative since 2010,” said company
spokesperson Katherine Trinidad. “Membership benefits included attendance at
CGI annual meetings, where we participated in working groups focused on STEM,
workforce development and advanced manufacturing.”
In April 2011, Goldman Sachs paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to speak
to “approximately 250 high level clients and investors” in New York, according
to State Department records obtained by
Judicial Watch. Two months later, the State Department approved a $675 million
foreign military sale involving Hawker Beechcraft -- a company that was then
part-owned by Goldman Sachs. As part of the deal, Hawker Beechcraft would
provide support to the government of Iraq to maintain a fleet of aircraft used
for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Goldman Sachs has
also contributed at least $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to
donation records.
“There is absolutely no connection among all the points that you
have raised regarding our firm,” said Andrew Williams, a spokesperson for
Goldman Sachs.
Federal records show that ethics staffers at the State Department
approved the payments to Bill Clinton from Goldman Sachs, and the Lockheed- and
Boeing-sponsored groups without objection, even though the firms had major
stakes in the agency’s weapons export decisions.
Stephen Walt, a Harvard University professor of international
affairs, told IBTimes that the intertwining financial relationships between the
Clintons, defense contractors and foreign governments seeking weapons approvals
is “a vivid example of a very big problem -- the degree to which conflicts of
interest have become endemic.”
“It has troubled me all along that the Clinton Foundation was not
being more scrupulous about who it would take money from and who it wouldn’t,”
he said. “American foreign policy is better served if people responsible for it
are not even remotely suspected of having these conflicts of interest. When
George Marshall was secretary of state, nobody was worried about whether or not
he would be distracted by donations to a foundation or to himself. This wasn’t
an issue. And that was probably better.”
JUDICIAL WATCH:
STATE DEPT. DOCS REVEAL CONCERN ABOUT BILL CLINTON’S
ACTIVITIES WITH SAUDI DICTATORS
Hillary Clinton bellies with the 9-11 invading Saudi
dictatorship like Obama. She’s collected her bribes for pushing the Bush-Saudi
wars against Iraq and Obama smells the dirty Saudis loot coming for his
presidential libaray!
HOW TO BUY HILLARY
CLINTON: From selling overnights at the White House, she’s become a global
influence peddler.
“Hillary Clinton takes a course of action that benefits
those donors, in many cases, I think, outlined in the book, she is reversing
course on policy prescriptions.”
“Schweizer said he had found “a pattern of behavior…the
proof is, you look at a series of actions in which money flows to the Clintons,
either through speaking fees or Clinton Foundation donors.”
Another
possible explanation is that the Clintons don't believe voters will really care
that much. The renting of the Lincoln Bedroom to people who gave $5.4 million to the Democratic National Committee in 1995 and 1996 did no
lasting damage to Bill's approval ratings. Neither did the 1996 fundraising
scandal involving illegal foreign donations, which the Los Angeles Times
reported on just before the president easily won a second term.
HILLARY
RED CHINA
“I smell bribes!” the
first words Hillary spoke in Chinese!
The stunning revelation is just one of many in the
new book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and
Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.
THE GLOBAL CRIME WAVE
of HILLARY and BILLARY… the Bonnie and Clyde of Corrupt Democrat Politics – The
bankster-funded politics for the 1% , open borders, no LEGAL need apply and
amnesty for 40 million looting Mexicans.
Another
possible explanation is that the Clintons don't believe voters will really care
that much. The renting of the Lincoln Bedroom to people who gave $5.4 million to the Democratic National Committee in 1995 and 1996 did no
lasting damage to Bill's approval ratings. Neither did the 1996 fundraising
scandal involving illegal foreign donations, which the Los Angeles Times
reported on just before the president easily won a second term.
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