The Clintons' Big Payback
Former president Bill Clinton couldn't stay out of the spotlight long. Just two weeks out of the White House, he has been answering questions about his last-minute pardons, the expensive new office he may lease in Manhattan, lucrative speaking engagements and gifts he received while in office.
Mr. Clinton's transition office said Friday that the former president and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will reimburse people who gave them gifts during their last year in the White House, including controversial Democratic fundraiser Denise Rich, CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller reports.
The Clintons will pay back $86,000, slightly less than half the value of the $190,000 in gifts they kept when leaving the White House last month, the office said.
The unprecedented sum of gifts has caused a furor among Republican and Democratic critics alike.
“As have other Presidents and their families before us, we received gifts over the course of our eight years in the White House and followed all of the gift rules,” the former president said in a statement. “To eliminate even the slightest question, we are taking the step of paying for gifts given to us in 2000.”
Among those to be repaid are Rich, who gave the Clintons $7,375 in furniture and who lobbied on behalf of her former husband, fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who was given a pardon by Mr. Clinton as he left office.
Trying to make a fresh start in the Senate, Hillary Clinton has instead been pummeled by stinging suggestions that accepting the gifts in the period between her election and her swearing-in was improper. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said he would consider legislation to extend the ban on gift-taking from the Jan. 3 Senate swearing-in day to Election Day on Nov. 7.
"I believe the step we are taking today reaffirms that I am fully committed to being the best senator I can possibly be for the people of New York," Hillary Clinton said in a statement.
According to Clinton's annual financial disclosure reports, they kept about $287,250 in gifts during his White House tenure. That total, after Friday's announcement, falls to about $201,000.
"They both talked about it. They made the decision together. They can certainly pay for the gifts, so they decided to do so," a Clinton aide said on condition of anonymity. "There's a lot of completely partisan rhetoric surrounding all these issues. They (the Clintons) have no interest in having this kind of stuff go on."
Meanwhile, Mr. Clinton is about to hit the lucrative lecture circuit, making a pair of speeches in Florida, including one on Monday for a reported $100,000.
The fee for the first speech, at a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter convention in Boca Raton, is for $100,000, according to sources familiar with the speaking arrangements.
That's about the same amount paid to ex-President Bush for his first post-White House appearances. Former President eagan created a stir the year after he left office when he received $2 million from a Japanese company for delivering two speeches.
On Feb. 10, Mr. Clinton will give a speech, likely focused on the Middle East, at a synagogue in Aventura, Fla., near Miami. The sources would not disclose the fee.
And he may be asked to speak in Washington soon, although he's not likely to be thrilled about it.
Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., next week starts a Judiciary Committee hearing on Mr. Clinton's pardon of Rich, a commodities trader who fled to Switzerland, evading 51 counts of tax evasion and fraud. Specter said the former president may be called before the panel. The pardon is irreversible.
In his most extensive remarks on the Rich incident, Mr. Clinton on Friday said he stood by the pardon.
"I take full responsibility for my final decision. Nobody else made the decision, and I handled it in what I thought was the most appropriate way," he said. "On the merits, I don't think it was a wrong decision. I regret all the political flap."
 AP The pricey New York City office the former president is planning to rent is flanked on the left by the Russian Tea Room (red awning) and Carnegie Hall on the right. |
He said the rental would be "below or at market value for New York," but no lease has been signed.
Annual rent for the 56th-floor suite is expected to run about $650,000.
The William J. Clinton Foundation notified the government in a letter that it would pay half the annual rent for Mr. Clinton's Manhattan office. Standing outside in New York City, Mr. Clinton said high rent is "part of being in New York, and I'm proud to be here, but I don't want the taxpayers to be taken for a ride on the lease."
The resulting total of approximately $325,000 coming out of taxpayers' pockets would still leave them shelling out more for an ex-president's office space than they do for any other former Oval Office occupant. The highest such pricetag at the moment is the $285,000 the federal government pays for Ronald Reagan's offices.
Opinion is mixed in the Carnegie Hall area on whether it's a good thing to have the former president as a neighbor.
Some New Yorkers grouse about the traffic delays a former president might produce, but others have their arms wide open. One restaurant has a big sign in the window welcoming Mr. Clinton to the neighborhood.
The office building is about an hour's drive from the Clintons' five-bedroom home in suburban Chappaqua. They purchased that home to givHillary Rodham Clinton a New York address from which to launch her successful bid for the U.S. Senate.
The controversies have impeded, but not stopped, Mr. Clinton's frenetic foray into the next chapter of his life. Stopping to rest for just two weeks, Mr. Clinton this week gave his first interview as an ex-president to an Israeli TV station, telling viewers that Prime Minister Ehud Barak was a courageous peacemaker. Barak faces a stiff challenge from Ariel Sharon in the Israeli presidential election on Tuesday.
On Friday, Mr. Clinton was busy in Manhattan meeting with Indian-American businessmen and others to organize a fund-raising drive for victims of the Jan. 26 earthquake in India. He has two speeches scheduled in Florida next week and has an invitation to attend a global forum in Hong Kong in May.
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