Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton's State Department
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 $750 million sale of multi-mission helicopters
to Qatar. That deal would additionally employ as contractors three
companies that have all supported the Clinton Foundation over the years:
United Technologies, Lockheed Martin and General Electric.
Clinton foundation donor countries that the State
Department criticized for human rights violations and that received
weapons export authorizations did not respond to IBTimes’ questions.
That group of arms manufacturers -- along with
Clinton Foundation donors Boeing, Honeywell, Hawker Beechcraft and their
affiliates -- were together listed as contractors in 114 such deals
while Clinton was secretary of state. NBC put Chelsea Clinton on its payroll as a network correspondent in November 2011, when it was still 49 percent owned by General Electric. A spokesperson for General Electric did not respond to questions from IBTimes.
Defense Contractors Donated To The Clinton Foundation
The Clinton Foundation accepted donations from six companies benefiting from U.S. State Department arms export approvals.
| Defense Contractor | Donation Min. ($) |
|---|---|
| Boeing | 5,000,000 |
| General Electric | 1,000,000 |
| Goldman Sachs (Hawker Beechcraft) | 500,000 |
| Honeywell | 50,000 |
| Lockheed Martin | 250,000 |
| United Technologies | 50,000 |
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
$250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to donation records.
“There is absolutely no connection among all the
points that you have raised regarding our firm,” said Andrew Williams, a
spokesperson for Goldman Sachs.
Federal records show that ethics staffers at the
State Department approved the payments to Bill Clinton from Goldman
Sachs, and the Lockheed- and Boeing-sponsored groups without objection,
even though the firms had major stakes in the agency’s weapons export
decisions.
Stephen Walt, a Harvard University professor of
international affairs, told IBTimes that the intertwining financial
relationships between the Clintons, defense contractors and foreign
governments seeking weapons approvals is “a vivid example of a very big
problem -- the degree to which conflicts of interest have become
endemic.”
“It has troubled me all along that the Clinton
Foundation was not being more scrupulous about who it would take money
from and who it wouldn’t,” he said. “American foreign policy is better
served if people responsible for it are not even remotely suspected of
having these conflicts of interest. When George Marshall was secretary
of state, nobody was worried about whether or not he would be distracted
by donations to a foundation or to himself. This wasn’t an issue. And
that was probably better.”
Clinton Foundation Donors Get Big Weapons Deal
17 out of 20 countries that have donated
to the Clinton Foundation saw increases in arms exports authorized by
Hillary Clinton's State Department.
| Country | Donation Min. ($) | FY2006-FY2008 ($) | FY2010-FY2012 ($) | Difference (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Algeria | 250,000 | 649,943,709 | 2,431,535,005 | 274 |
| Australia | 10,000,000 | 8,030,754,085 | 23,953,849,391 | 198 |
| Bahrain | 50,000 | 219,718,802 | 630,586,020 | 187 |
| Brunei | 250,000 | 101,239,902 | 19,256,846 | -81 |
| Canada | 250,000 | 20,975,621,915 | 24,844,128,294 | 18 |
| Germany | 100,000 | 9,147,637,319 | 9,839,619,231 | 8 |
| Ireland | 5,000,000 | 144,929,678 | 107,064,341 | -26 |
| Italy | 100,000 | 6,195,891,571 | 12,274,692,168 | 98 |
| Jamaica | 50,000 | 18,572,209 | 11,360,582 | -39 |
| Kuwait | 5,000,000 | 1,895,298,212 | 2,109,893,611 | 11 |
| Morocco | 2,000,000 | 250,045,824 | 253,096,156 | 1 |
| Netherlands | 5,000,000 | 3,069,131,994 | 4,655,490,802 | 52 |
| Norway | 10,000,000 | 2,718,237,833 | 3,351,140,380 | 23 |
| Oman | 1,000,000 | 170,597,237 | 547,003,781 | 221 |
| Qatar | 1,000,000 | 271,325,915 | 4,291,824,236 | 1,482 |
| Saudi Arabia | 10,000,000 | 4,105,561,815 | 8,094,719,012 | 97 |
| Taiwan | 500,000 | 2,612,251,394 | 3,811,233,565 | 46 |
| Thailand | 250,000 | 656,266,680 | 1,113,283,489 | 70 |
| UAE | 1,000,000 | 2,261,801,903 | 24,998,754,760 | 1,005 |
| United Kingdom | 1,000,000 | 26,225,307,395 | 38,015,933,065 | 45 |
UPDATE (7:38pm, 5/26/15): In an emailed statement,
a spokeswoman for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative
Office told IBTimes: "Taiwan’s 2003 donation was for the fund to build
the Clinton Presidential Library. This was way before Mrs. Clinton was
made the U.S. Secretary of State. We have neither knowledge nor comments
concerning other issues."
http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-foundation-donors-got-weapons-deals-hillary-clintons-state-department-1934187
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