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Al Gore's Arab Moneyman
Crime/Corruption News Keywords: AL GORE, ARAB, CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS, EDWARD M. GABRIEL, CRIMINALS
Source: The American Spectator
Published: November, 1997 Author: Kenneth R. Timmerman
Posted on 03/28/2000 01:09:44 PST by Uncle Bill
Al Gore's Arab Moneyman
The American Spectator
by Kenneth R. Timmerman
November, 1997
The story of a suspended ambassadorial nomination.
Clinton-Gore hubris knows no bounds. In the thick of the campaign finance hearings on Capitol Hill, the White House has nominated a controversial DNC fundraiser, Edward M. Gabriel, to become United States Ambassador to Morocco, a key country to the Middle East peace process.
Gabriel's name was formally submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 8, before the FBI had completed its background investigation into Gabriel's finances, business connections, or personal life. Perhaps the White House was hoping Jesse Helms and his staff would be contrite for blocking ex-Massachusetts governor William Weld from becoming ambassador to Mexico, or that Gabriel's tobacco-lobbyist wife, Kathleen "Buffy" Linehan (who works for Phillip Morris), would suffice to woo tobacco-stater Helms.
As it turned out, the moment was ill-timed, and the candidate ill-starred. A scant ten days later, as we reported on The American Spectator's web site on September 18, the White House was forced to turn over Gabriel's file to the Justice Department for further investigation of allegations tying him to murky Arab campaign donations to the DNC and the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.
A few hours before Lebanese financier Roger Tamraz was to testify before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, committee staffers received a mysterious call from someone claiming to be Tamraz who alleged that Tamraz had been solicited by Gabriel to donate $50,000 to the DNC through the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based non-profit group. Gabriel called the allegation "science fiction," and in his public testimony later that day, Tamraz said he had not made the phone call and didn't know Gabriel. Nevertheless Jesse Helms announced he was postponing Gabriel's confirmation hearing "indefinitely."
Two things are certain about this curious case: Ed Gabriel has powerful enemies, and he made them by hitching his wagon to two highly controversial Arab-American lobbyists in Washington: James Zogby and Abdulrahman Alamoudi. In the "bad old days" when the State Department and Congress still considered the PLO a terrorist organization, both men were staunch backers of Yasir Arafat. More recently, Zogby has called on Arab states to reinvigorate the secondary boycott against Israel, which aims to deter U.S. companies by threatening to ban them from contracts in the Arab world if they do business with Israel.
Meanwhile, Alamoudi, who heads the American Muslim Council that was invited to the White House by Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Muslim Eid holidays, has been raising funds for "charitable" organizations whose branches in Gaza and the West Bank were closed down in late September by none other than Arafat. The PLO chairman accused them of supporting the military wing of Hamas, the radical Islamic group that has claimed responsibility for recent suicide bombings in Israel. Zogby, Gabriel, and Alamoudi sat together on the steering committee of Arab Americans for Clinton/Gore '96 and frequently appear at functions organized by Zogby's Arab American Institute.
Given these connections, one could easily suspect the pro-Israeli lobby of seeking to sabotage Gabriel's nomination. Not only has Gabriel supported radical Arab causes, but if confirmed would serve in a moderate Arab country whose ruler, King Hassan II, has long been an "honest broker" between Israel and its Arab neighbors and protected Morocco's Jewish community.
TAS was itself tipped off to Gabriel by an anonymous source who called several days before Gabriel's nomination became public knowledge. Claiming to be a former DNC employee, the caller made detailed allegations about Gabriel's activities as a fundraiser for Clinton-Gore and ties to former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary and Vice President Al Gore, his biggest backer at the White House. None of the pro-Israeli organizations and lobbyists we contacted was aware of Gabriel's pending nomination, nor did any have him on their radar screen.
In subsequent conversations, the anonymous "former DNC employee" alleged that Gabriel served as a conduit for campaign contributions to the DNC from Arab businessmen in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Syria. The source claimed the funds were solicited by Gabriel, and occasionally by Zogby, and were deposited into accounts controlled by Zogby's Arab American Institute, which then paid out the moneys to Arab Americans who could legally contribute to the campaign. "These are people who have no resources, who are not on the board of any organization," the source said about these nominal donors. "They sent in checks of $1,000, $5,000, occasionally $10,000, but never more. We're talking about several hundred thousand dollars in soft and hard money."
According to FEC records, Gabriel, Zogby, and board members of such groups as the Arab American Institute contributed more than $180,000 to Democratic campaigns during the 1995-1996 cycle. (Other AAI members contributed to Arab-American Republican candidates.) But if our source is correct, this is just the money that appears on the surface.
In telephone interviews Zogby admitted to having solicited money for his institute from Arab businessmen, but denied serving as a conduit for donations to the DNC. "Our PAC does not support Democratic causes. It supports Arab-American candidates, both Democrats and Republicans," he said. In a letter to the September 20 Washington Times, he called allegations that he was funneling foreign Arab money into the Clinton-Gore campaign "anti-Arab bigotry." "There are Arab businessmen who have contributed to the institute -- that's true," he told TAS. "But there was no money-for-favors. That's an unfair allegation, because it's just not true. I go to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Lebanon, the West Bank regularly. And there are people over there who have contributed. But I haven't gone there specifically to solicit contributions."
But Zogby clearly seems to be hiding something. Three times we went to his offices to request a copy of his institute's tax forms -- as a nonprofit group it is required by law to make them available on its premises -- and each time Zogby refused to show them to us. Zogby claims his institute operates on a $700,000 annual budget, but the "former DNC employee" who called us said AAI distributed between $1 and $2 million in 1996. Without the tax forms, which Zogby has illegally withheld, there is no way to determine who is telling the truth. At least three congressional committees are now investigating Gabriel and Zogby and the possibility of an "Arabgate" at the DNC.
It turns out that Gabriel and Zogby's most determined enemies are not American Jews, but Lebanese-Americans bitterly opposed to Syria's illegal occupation of Lebanon and the U.S.'s acceptance of this state of affairs. Last July the State Department, following a major lobbying effort on behalf of the Syrian-controlled Lebanese government of billionaire Rafic Hariri, lifted its ban on travel to Lebanon. Gabriel and Zogby played central roles in this effort. The lifting means U.S. business is now free to invest in projects controlled by Hariri and his Saudi and Syrian partners.
Gabriel used his position as a founder and executive committee member of a Hariri-supported nonprofit, the pro-Syrian American Task Force for Lebanon (ATFL), to lobby Congress and the administration to have the travel ban lifted. In this activity he was aided by Zogby, who serves with Gabriel on the ATFL board, just as Gabriel served on the governing board of Zogby's Arab American Institute.
As George Cody, executive director of the ATFL and one of Gabriel's biggest supporters, told TAS: "Ed Gabriel has been very instrumental on the travel ban. He has raised this at every opportunity, including during meetings with Vice President Gore and with President Clinton." Cody went even further: "Gabriel is being supported in this nomination [as ambassador to Morocco] by Gore. He has an excellent relationship with the VP and with the president." Though Cody personally recalled paying three visits to the White House with Zogby and Gabriel, other sources tell TAS that Gabriel logged in to visit the vice president at the White House no fewer than seventeen times. Neither the vice president's office nor the White House Counsel's office would respond to questions about Gabriel, his ties to Gore, his fundraising activities, or his business and lobbying activities, despite repeated requests. Nor would they authorize Gabriel to comment before his nomination hearing.
Gabriel's ATFL has received two grants from the Clinton administration: $100,000 from the Agency for International Development in 1993 to host a conference on Lebanon, and another $25,000 in 1995 to conduct a symposium on Lebanon's capital markets -- a topic of great interest to Hariri, who has single-handedly floated several hundred million dollars in Lebanese government bonds on the international market to support his construction projects.
What may finally do in Gabriel's nomination, however, could have little to do with Lebanon. For one thing, there are his ties to Al Gore. Zogby and Cody both acknowledge that Gore was the driving force behind Gabriel's nomination, and that Gabriel was a regular White House visitor as both DNC fundraiser and board member of Arab-American organizations. Said one White House source, "Zogby came in here and pounded on the table in front of the vice president, and said you've got to appoint this guy." When we asked Zogby whether he'd lobbied Gore on Gabriel's behalf, Zogby called Gabriel "as qualified as anybody else I've seen." Although Gabriel is Lebanese American, he does not speak Arabic, or any other foreign language, and has no foreign affairs experience.
Also under scrutiny are Gabriel's links to former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, who's already the subject of a Justice Department preliminary probe that could lead to the appointment of an independent counsel. Gabriel, a long-time friend of O'Leary's, invited her to be guest of honor at a $100,000 DNC fundraiser that he held at his Washington home in the summer of 1996. On the résumé distributed by the White House, Gabriel is listed as an "energy consultant." But the background bio that's being circulated by the ATFL in support of his nomination states he worked as an "adviser to Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary."
The most explosive of Ed Gabriel's many explosive contacts may be with the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. In late 1993 or early 1994, TAS has learned, a Gabriel associate named Tracy Chamoun, along with Lebanese businessman Charles Chidiac, approached Iraq's U.N. ambassador Nizar Hamdoon with an indelicate proposition. According to one of the participants, as well as other sources with knowledge of the meeting, the pair told Hamdoon they were so plugged into the Clinton administration they could "guarantee" a lifting of the U.N. oil embargo on Iraq. Chamoun's lobbying partner in this effort, the sources said, was to be Edward M. Gabriel himself. The asking price for this very special service: $5 million! The Iraqi ambassador reportedly laughed off Chamoun's presumptuousness and dismissed the offer out of hand. Conveniently for Gabriel, Chamoun's husband told us she was out of the country and could not be reached for several weeks -- perhaps not until after Gabriel's confirmation hearing? That is, if Jesse Helms ever puts it on the calendar.
Kenneth R. Timmerman is the publisher of Iran Brief and a frequent contributor to The American Spectator.