Barak To Be Questioned About Rich Pardon

Investigators in the congressional probe into former US President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich plan to formally question ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak about his role in the possible pardon-for-money scandal.

Top Clinton aides told a US congressional committee last week that Barak’s support of Rich’s petition was key to its success, and Barak spoke to the president about it as many as four times. But Barak’s former spokesman Gadi Baltiansky has said that Barak brought up the issue only one time, in a phone conversation with Clinton toward the end of last year.

This discrepancy has caught the eye of Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican whose House Government Reform Committee has been investigating the last-minute pardon. “That’s one thing we’re looking into,” he said Wednesday.

The committee plans to send a list of questions to Barak to find out what the two leaders discussed and how strongly Barak lobbied for the pardon, congressional sources said. The source close to Barak said that he “does not know” how Barak will respond if and when the questions arrive, but that he will “relate” to the questions.

Rich, who fled the US in 1983 rather than face racketeering and other criminal charges, was pardoned by Clinton on January 20, just before George W. Bush assumed the presidency. US Republicans want to know whether there was a money-for-pardons deal. Rich’s ex-wife, songwriter Denise Rich, contributed $450,000 to Clinton’s presidential library foundation and $100,000 to the senatorial campaign of then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Attempting to place the blame elsewhere and to avoid acknowledgement of his financial and political ties to Rich and his associates, Clinton said in an interview last month, “Now, I’ll tell you what did influence me; Israel did influence me profoundly.”

Used with Permission from International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.

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