Tracking the Clintons

CLINTON CASH
The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich
Peter Schweizer
HarperCollins, 2015
256 pages; Rs 599

Here is a story of a smart politician who agreed to be the foreign minister of the rival who beat her to the top post, her seasoned, now semi-retired politician spouse and their young daughter acting in unison to promote what they called humanitarian causes abroad. You are already sick and tired of the seemingly endless Lalitgatha exposes? But I am talking not of India's Swarajs, but the Clintons of the US of A!

This reviewer would be allergic to works by someone of Peter Schweizer's credentials (a hagiography of Ronald Reagan, consultant speech-writer to George W Bush, foreign policy adviser to Sarah Palin). But he is also, as the blurb claims, a meticulous researcher who uses the very astute strategy of partnering with a respectable mainstream media to air his findings. CBS did two episodes of 60 Minutes based on his Throw Them All Out, exposing insider trading in the United States Congress. The New York Times and The Washington Post published lengthy articles on the Clintons based on the current book, which led to my initial interest in it. If Mr Schweizer is credible enough for those exemplars of modern journalism, I should at least read him!

And he is certainly worth the effort. He has produced a first-rate political pot-boiler, a veritable page turner. Mr Schweizer - or rather, his research - relentlessly tracks the former president and current elder statesman Bill Clinton and the once and future presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton through their peregrinations in the wilds of Kazakhstan, Russia, India (yes, we are in it too), Colombia, Canada, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Haiti - really, to all corners of the globe. Everywhere, the thorough research, rather objectively reported with political or ideological comment withheld, unravels a familiar pattern, best summarised in Mr Schweizer's own words:

"[Mr Clinton] flew around the globe making speeches and burnishing his image as a global humanitarian and a wise man. Very often on these trips he was accompanied by "close friends" or associates who happened to have business interests pending in these countries. Introductions were made, deals struck and photo-ops arranged before an admiring foreign press. Meanwhile, bureaucratic or legislative obstacles mysteriously cleared or approvals granted within the purview of his wife, the powerful senator or secretary of state. Huge donations then flowed into the Clinton Foundation while [Mr Clinton] received enormous speaking fees underwritten by the very businessmen who benefited from these apparent interventions."

In this compelling narrative, Bill's patronage confers an aura of respectability on those who would be otherwise in the international rogues' gallery: the Kazakh despot Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Congolese dictator Joseph Kabila, the Ethiopian tyrant Meles Zenawi, the Colombian autocrat Alvaro Uribe, not to mention our own Amar Singh. Long-standing American policies were reversed or muted in the wake of such visits. Businessmen such as the Canadian close associate of Bill Clinton, Frank Giustra; or Gilbert Chagoury (the last word in corrupt American businessmen) pocketed projects, mostly concerned with natural resources such as oil, timber and uranium, worth billions soon after.

Mr Clinton's lecture fees, paid mostly by entities with close ties to these business moguls, went ballistic, up to $700,000 a pop. Most of it is scrupulously sourced, with notes forming a quarter of the book's length.

Despite some discrepancies (later corrected or deleted by the author), the facts as presented are not to be questioned, but do they add up to a compelling hypothesis of malfeasance? They may last Arnab Goswami (were he on Fox News) all the way to 2024, the end of Hillary's presumptive term, to support his claim that the nation wants to know; but the hawk-eyed American media, print, electronic, and increasingly, online, have not yet detected any smoking gun. That is not for want of trying. Mr Schweizer himself says, "The Clintons aren't stupid people. They know the law and take pains to operate within it." Meanwhile, the Clinton juggernaut rolls towards 2016.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, the ultimate power couple, are enigmatic, though certainly the fiendish Frank and Claire Underwood of House of Cards they are not. Mr Clinton's "situational" ethics have long been commented upon. Hillary Clinton has some explaining to do herself - not just of the Whitewater episode from Bill's days as Arkansas governor, but more recently, her turnaround on many positions she had espoused as a senator and later as the second most powerful US official, as also the mystery surrounding her official emails as secretary of state. Their charm, individually and collectively, is legendary; but equally, their ways are not always considered kosher. Memories of the way Bill Clinton is supposed to have derailed his rivals' candidacies in 1992 and the abortive efforts to do the same to Barack Obama in 2008 have not faded away. So the miasma lingers: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, can it be a camel?

"Friends, money, and politics are a dangerous cocktail. The Clintons should know to avoid that kind of drinking while driving the US policy." Well put, Mr Schweizer. That should apply to all countries, certainly not excluding India circa 2015.