Recently I accused Bill Clinton of being stupid (or at least ignorant). One of the comments on that post corrected me: not stupid, the writer said. Corrupt.
Could this be true? I decided to look for the money.
Washington Post, December 2007:
The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, according to people directly familiar with the contributions.
Hmm, that’s a start.
Clinton has a foundation, which supports his library plus many charitable operations worldwide. In 2008, the Obama administration required the foundation to release its donor records as a condition of Hilary Clinton’s nomination as Secretary of state. It turns out that Bill’s foundation had received contributions totaling at least $492 million from various sources, including these:
Saudi Arabia gave $10 million to $25 million to the foundation…
Norway gave $5 million to $10 million. Kuwait, Qatar, Brunei and Oman gave $1 million to $5 million each.
Of course these are only the official contributions. Individuals can and did give more. So we are up to $25 million in Saudi money, plus millions more from, shall we say, non-Zionist sources. Here are just a few of the private donors:
- Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid: $1 – $5 million.
- Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation: $1 – $5 million.
- U.S. Islamic World Conference: $250,000 to $500,000.
- No. 97 on the Forbes billionaire list, Ethiopian-Saudi business tycoon Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi.
Now I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with what the Clinton Foundation does with its money. It funds various good causes like fighting AIDS, etc. Nor am I saying that all the donors were Arabs: one big donor is the apolitical Bill Gates, as well as prominent Jews like TV producer and activist Haim Saban. But the huge sums from Saudi and Arab sources — whose charity usually is limited to funding mosques and friendly academic enterprises (more on this later) are striking.
Here’s something else. The Saudi government made large contributions in 2007 and 2008, but not in 2009. In April of this year, Clinton paid an unpublicized two-day visit to the Saudi King. What do you think they talked about?
Could Clinton’s speech in Egypt be part of a quid pro quo?
I’ve just finished reading Mitchell Bard’s new book, The Arab Lobby. Bard explains that the lobby has basically three components: homegrown Arab-American groups, former government officials and oil-company executives of the Arabist persuasion, and Saudi Arabia and its agents. The Saudis are by far the most important and effective of the three (although of course there are connections between them).
Bard exhaustively documents how huge amounts of Saudi money flow, particularly to universities, departments of Middle East Studies, mosques and Islamic groups, even K-12 education and textbooks.
Like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton has apparently decided to tap into this immense source of funds. I’m sure he thinks that it’s a great deal — just preach their line a little and get millions to fight disease and poverty.
But you don’t make a bargain with the Devil and expect to wriggle out of it with your soul intact.
Technorati Tags: Bill Clinton, Saudi Arabia, Clinton Foundation
Now you’ve got the picture. And Slick Willie is just one of many….
I just bought Bard’s book and intend to read it forthwith.