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NEWSWEEK’S Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball (Here an F.O.B., There an F.O.B.) report on Bill Clinton’s multi-million dollar business relationships with various nefarious characters. Here are some highlights:

Clinton with Kuchma (left) and Chernomyrdin [NEWSWEEK]

• Victor Pinchuk, one of the richest men in Ukraine, has contributed millions to the Clinton Foundation. Last June, Pinchuk had Bill Clinton speak at an international conference he sponsored in Yalta. While there, Bill Clinton was photographed with the Ukraine’s former president Leonid Kuchma. Kuchma’s regime was linked to the decapitation in 2000 of dissident journalist Georgy Gongadze. “When Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava, saw a newspaper photo of Clinton and Cuchma at the conference, ‘I wanted to throw up,’ she told NEWSWEEK."


• Bill Clinton has earned at least $40.2 million giving speeches in 33 countries since leaving the White House.


• The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Clinton was expected to receive about $20 million from Yucaipa Cos., a private investment firm owned by billionaire Ron Burkle. One of Clinton’s partners in Burkle’s Yucaipa fund is the Dubai Investment Group, a company closely linked to Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler. Maktoum is a major contributor to Clinton’s presidential library.


• Bill Clinton is a consultant to InfoUSA, a data-processing and marketing firm owned by Vinod Gupta. Gupta has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Clintons’ campaigns and contributed $1 million to the Clinton Foundation. He has provided his private jet for the Clintons’ use. Gupta had been a guest in the Lincoln Bedroom, when Clinton was president. InfoUSA’s stockholders are suing Gupta for wasting company funds paying huge consultant fees to Clinton for little work and flying the Clintons around the world. “Last year, members of Congress – including Barack Obama – pressed the FTC to investigate allegations that InfoUSA sold personal and consumer data about senior citizens to crooked telemarkers.”


• Frank Giustra, a Canadian entrepenuer, flew to Kazahstan together on Giustra’s jet. Clinton gave a press conference in which he praised the country’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, “an authoritarian ruler with a poor human-rights record, for ‘opening up the social and political life of your country.’” Clinton praised Nazarbayev for promising fair elections. One day later, UrAsiaEnergy, a mining company with Giustra as a major shareholder and director, signed two “memoranda of understanding” to mine uranium in Kazakhstan. When UrAsia merged with a large Canadian mining company the next year, Giustra’s stock rose to more than $45 million.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton reports that she has loaned her own campaign $5 million against assets that include the $20 million windfall from Ron Burkle.

Labels: Bill Clinton, Frank Giustra, Hillary Clinton, InfoUSA, Leonid Kuchma, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Ron Burkle, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Victor Pinchuk, Vinod Gupta

Fighter aircraft being produced in China and Pakistan have achieved performance approaching that of the U.S. Lockheed Martin F-16A Block 15 fighter, thanks to the use of sensitive U.S. technologies transferred to China during the Clinton administration. That is the conclusion of a special report published in today's Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily ("Advanced Chinese and Pakistani Fighter Utilizes Illegally -- or Accidentally -- Transferred Sensitive U.S. Technology," November 8, 2004).

The aircraft is the CF-1/JF-17 Thunder fighter [sic -- see Defense Talk and Global Security for more information on the FC-1 "Chao Qi" / JF-17 Thunder] that is being made at Chengdu Aircraft Industry Corporation in the PRC and Pakistan Aeronautical Complex in Kamra. China expects to deploy 200 of the fighters by 2006; Pakistan plans to deploy 150 beginning in 2005-6.

The details emerged in a just concluded Aerospace exhibition in Zhuhai. The restricted technology in the fighter is the quadruple-redundant fly-by-wire technology and the single-crystal jet engine fan blade technology. Global Information Service recognized the fly-by-wire system as the system produced by Honeywell. This technology was approved by the Clinton administration, but only for civil use. The single-crystal jet engine fan blade technology is unique to the U.S., and had been prohibited for export, though the finished product is used on exported U.S. jet engines.

The report concludes that these fighters highlight the extent that sensitive technology was transferred from the United States to China during the Clinton administration, thereby confirming the concerns voiced in the 1999 official report of the U.S. Congress's Cox Commission.

Labels: Bill Clinton, Chao Qi, China, Defense and Foreign Affairs Daily, F-16A Block 15 fighter, FC-1/JF-17 Thunder fighter, Pakistan, PRC

Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national security adviser, is quoted by The Chosun Ilbo as a key foreign policy and security advisor to John Kerry, long after he had reportedly resigned from the position because of accusations of stealing documents from the National Archives.

Meanwhile, the Gulfsands oil company, a client of Stonebridge International, the "global strategy firm" founded by Sandy Berger, has oil and gas exploration interests in Syria and is looking to develop them in Iraq. Stonebridge Vice Chairman H. P. Goldfield claims Berger is not involved in the work for Gulfsands.

Labels: Bill Clinton, Gulfsands Oil Company, John Kerry, Sandy Berger, Stonebridge International