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发帖数: 19235 | 1 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fobs-hillarys-state-dept-gave-special-attention-friends/story?id=42615379
'FOBs': How Hillary's State Dept. Gave Special Attention to 'Friends of Bill
' After Haiti Quake
In a series of candid email exchanges with top Clinton Foundation officials
during the hours after the massive 2010 Haiti earthquake, a senior aide to
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly gave special attention to
those identified by the abbreviations “FOB” (friends of Bill Clinton) or
“WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).
“Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC,” wrote Caitlin Klevorick
, then a senior State Department official who was juggling incoming offers
of assistance being funneled to the State Department by the Clinton
Foundation. “Most I can probably ID but not all.”
“Is this a FOB!” Klevorick writes later, when a Clinton Foundation aide
forwards a woman’s offer of medical supplies. “If not, she should go to
cidi.org,” she adds, directing the person deemed not to be a Clinton friend
to a general government website.
Klevorick and Amitabh Desai, the director of foreign policy for the Clinton
Foundation, exchanged dozens of emails, which were obtained through a
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Republican National Committee and
then shared with ABC News. ABC News independently authenticated the emails.
The new emails have surfaced as the Clinton Foundation has once again
mobilized a response to the latest humanitarian crisis in Haiti — the death
and destruction following Hurricane Matthew. That effort is part of an
ongoing commitment by the Clintons to help the Haitian people dating back
nearly a decade.
Fears of Famine in Haiti Following Devastating Hurricane
However noble the motives of the officials working to get supplies into
Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, numerous messages show a senior aide to
then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton coordinating with a Clinton
Foundation official to identify FOBs. The Clintons have said repeatedly that
the State Department never gave favorable treatment to foundation
supporters in Haiti or anywhere else.
“Nothing was ever done for anybody because they were contributors to the
foundation,” Bill Clinton told CBS News’ Charlie Rose in September. “
Nothing.”
The correspondence offers a glimpse into the first stages of a $10 billion
Haiti recovery effort. The emails appear to show a State Department process
that at times prioritized — and, some argue, benefited — people with close
ties to the Clintons.
“I think when you look at both the State Department and the Clinton
Foundation in Haiti, that line was pretty faint between the two,” said Jake
Johnston, a Haiti analyst for the nonpartisan Center for Economic and
Policy Research. “You had a lot of coordination and connection between the
two, obviously. And I think that raises significant questions about how they
were both operating.”
Klevorick told ABC News she served as a point of contact for numerous
organizations seeking to help. She said she made notations about Bill
Clinton to help determine whether they had a history in Haiti or with
disaster relief.
“Everyone’s priority was to get the necessary resources to the right
places as soon as possible to save lives,” Klevorick said.
State Department spokesman John Kirby told ABC News the agency served as “
an important coordinating hub” for U.S. and international relief efforts.
The emails, he said, “show State Department employees working across
agencies and organizations, including President Clinton’s aides, to
identify potential resources, solve problems and achieve the department and
the U.N.’s shared goal of helping Haiti.”
Bruce Lindsey, the chairman of the board of the Clinton Foundation, told ABC
News in a written statement that “no special treatment was expected or
given.”
“This was a time of dire need, and we mobilized our network and wanted to
make sure that any help offered was put to good use,” Lindsey said. “Many
had been involved in disaster response before, in New Orleans after Katrina
or after the tsunami, and again sought to help.”
Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton was directly looped into the email
conversations.
The correspondence paints a picture of the chaotic first days after the
earthquake leveled much of the Haitian capital and claimed an estimated 200,
000 lives. One series of messages chronicles efforts by billionaire Denis O
’Brien, a longtime donor to the Clinton Foundation and the CEO of the
Jamaica-based telecom firm Digicel, to fly relief supplies into Port-au-
Prince and get employees of his company out.
“This WJC VIP just called again from Jamaica to say Digicel is being pushed
by US Army to get comms back up but is not being cleared by [the U.S.
government] to deploy into Haiti to do so,” Desai wrote in an email with
the subject line “Close friend of Clintons.”
Later, O’Brien writes to longtime Clinton aide Doug Band to express
frustration. “We’re finding it impossible to get landing slots,” he says.
“I’m sorry to bother you but I am not making any progress through
conventional channels.”
Band tasks Desai to “pls get on this,” telling O’Brien, “Never a bother.”
Desai then turns to Klevorick to help “a friend of President Clinton,” and
the request is pushed up the chain of command to USAID officials organizing
the relief effort.
In an interview with ABC News, O’Brien said desperate times called for
desperate measures.
“I don’t see any problem contacting anybody in the United States if I’m
bringing in emergency aid where people are dying on the street because of
lack of medical attention,” he said. “I make no apologies for that.”
Scarcely a month into the reconstruction process, it was being described in
a diplomatic cable as a “gold rush” for government contractors and aid
groups.
Most of the messages do not discern whether the offers of help, which range
from earthmoving equipment and generators to solar-powered water purifiers,
were purely charitable or if they were made with the expectation of becoming
part of the lucrative recovery effort. In one instance, though, Klevorick
observes about a company’s offer of help with water units, “Sounds like
they want a contract.” That firm lacked Clinton connections, according to
the email, and it is unclear what became of its offer, but it did do Haiti
recovery work. And at least one chain involved an introduction for a company
specializing in disaster response.
Desai forwarded a note to Klevorick from Garry Mauro, who served twice as
the Texas state chairman for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns and has
donated $25,000 to $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation. The offer was for “
major assets in Haiti” from a company called DRC Emergency Services. On its
website, the company boasts of having performed emergency response work at
disasters around the globe, with over $2 billion in disaster response
contracts. Desai noted that Mauro was “a friend of WJC.”
Klevorick replied, “also note hrc friend,” using initials for Hillary
Rodham Clinton. The email chain does not indicate if Mauro’s recommendation
led to a contract for DRC, though the company’s website states, “Within
24 hours of the earthquake’s occurrence, DRC assembled and mobilized a team
of highly experienced and dedicated personnel to Port-au-Prince and the
surrounding areas.”
Mauro told ABC News he approached the Clinton Foundation on behalf of DRC
after seeing on television that former Presidents Clinton and George H.W.
Bush were raising money for the disaster. DRC had already been doing
temporary housing work in Haiti, and company officials thought the
earthquake would open the door to a major business expansion.
“They wanted to get some of the business,” he said of DRC. “The Clinton
Foundation was a facilitator. They didn’t have the money.”
Mauro said he flew to New York and attended a meeting run by Bill Clinton at
his Clinton Foundation offices, where contractors and aid groups with Haiti
experience described their capabilities. Mauro said he was not aware that
foundation officials sent emails to the State Department about his client,
and he did not know if the company ultimately received a contract.
An official with DRC said the company’s Haiti relief work was overseen by
supervisors who were no longer with the company, and he did not know which
entity paid for the contract.
Klevorick also fielded several requests for Rolando Gonzalez-Bunster, a
board member of the Clinton Foundation who has business interests in power
plants in the neighboring Dominican Republic and other nearby countries. In
an email sent just days after the quake, with the subject line, “CLINTON
FRIEND/WANTING INFO,” Bunster asks for detailed satellite imagery of the
Haitian power grid after the earthquake to help “do a reconnaissance of the
status of the transmission and distribution lines and power plants.”
In another email, Klevorick alerts a top USAID official of the request,
referring to Bunster as a “close friend of the Secretary and Former
President dating back to [their college years at] Georgetown.”
Bunster told ABC News the grid work was a donation and later garnered his
company an award for its efforts.
A week after the earthquake hit, Klevorick wrote to the USAID’s
congressional liaison, Kate Beale, who previously served as a policy staffer
in the offices of then–New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
“Wjc/hrc friends come to you now,” she writes. “Would be great since you
likely get this paradigm.” | l*****o
发帖数: 19235 | | T**********1
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Bill
officials
to
Klevorick
【在 l*****o 的大作中提到】
: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fobs-hillarys-state-dept-gave-special-attention-friends/story?id=42615379
: 'FOBs': How Hillary's State Dept. Gave Special Attention to 'Friends of Bill
: ' After Haiti Quake
: In a series of candid email exchanges with top Clinton Foundation officials
: during the hours after the massive 2010 Haiti earthquake, a senior aide to
: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly gave special attention to
: those identified by the abbreviations “FOB” (friends of Bill Clinton) or
: “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).
: “Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC,” wrote Caitlin Klevorick
: , then a senior State Department official who was juggling incoming offers
| l*********r
发帖数: 695 | | n*********e
发帖数: 25274 | 5 留条后路。
【在 l*****o 的大作中提到】
: ABC不是MSM么？咋也开始爆女克了
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