http://www.observer.co.uk/Distribution/Redirect_Artifact/0,4678,0-442791,00. html Hillary's trouble with men With a husband and brothers like hers, who needs enemies? Ed Helmore finds the prospect of a return to the White House vanishing in the wake of the clemency scandal Sunday February 25, 2001 The Observer She looked drained even before it began. Standing on the marble floor of a Senate corridor in Washington on Thursday, Hillary Clinton wore a hunted look. It was time to explain. The former First Lady had become embroiled in the presidential pardons controversy after it emerged that her brother Hugh Rodham had received thousands of dollars from two prominent beneficiaries of Bill Clinton's clemency orders. Squinting into the glare of the television lights, the junior New York senator composed herself before telling reporters she was 'saddened and disappointed' by the affair. It was a vintage performance. Red-eyed, she said her brother's 'terrible misjudgment' was 'a very sad matter' to her personally. 'I was heartbroken and shocked and insisted the money had to be returned.' Hillary Rodham Clinton must be rueing her misfortune with men. No sooner had she embarked on her own political career than the men in her life - husband, errant brothers and brother-in-law - let her down one by one. Or that at least is her version of her first calamitous weeks in public service. This was supposed to be her time of triumph: a first First Lady elected to office on a landslide victory, with a chance for the White House in four years time. The impeachment of her husband for lying about his betrayal of her was in the past, and her own political blunders largely forgotten. She had two new houses, a daughter about to turn 21, an $8 million book deal and a husband who would be out of harm's way, building his presidential library in Little Rock. Everything looked rosy. But that was before the events of the last five weeks that have left the Clintons adrift, disgraced and exposed without the defensive machinery of the highest office in the land. To even their most ardent supporters, the rashness of their behaviour as their White House years drew to a close has left the bitter taste of disappointment. The hoarding of gifts, flouting the spirit of Senate rules with the book deal, the furniture returned and the accusations of petty vandalism at the White House - and above all, the unmistakably self-interested use of the presidential pardon - have all conspired to make the Clintons unwelcome. And it's Hillary who must pay the political price. 'The Clintons are the Sopranos,' wrote Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach in one of the kinder editorials. 'With each passing day we face a new rash of questions about the knowledge and motivations of what is now the nation's most notorious underworld family.' Polls show public approval slipping for both Clintons in the month since they left the White House and the revelations could derail Hillary's efforts to find her footing in the Senate, as well as prospects of an already longshot 2004 presidential or vice-presidential bid. Democrat anger at the Clintons is striking, given that barely two months ago there were high hopes that the couple would lead the party back to control of Congress and the White House. Even Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic Party chairman, who calls the ex-President his best friend, says Bill Clinton should disappear for six months. And last week former President Jimmy Carter ended his reluctance to comment on the pardons. 'In my opinion, it was disgraceful,' he said. Hillary's most ardent supporters are having a hard time accepting her story that she knew nothing about the pardons. She is also now under the scrutiny of prosecutors in New York who are to widen their probe of the pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich and open an investigation into whether the sentences of four convicted swindlers were commuted in exchange for a block of Hasidic Jewish votes during her run for the Senate. Again there was a denial: 'I did not play any role whatsoever,' she said last month, despite acknowledging she sat in on a meeting in December with supporters of the clemency appeal. 'I had no opinion about it'. The clear subtext of Senator Clinton's denials has been to pass the buck to the men in her life, particularly her accident-prone husband. A friend of Hillary told US News & World Report : 'I'm sure she's screaming at him. She gets mad at him for being so stupid.' When it was revealed that Hugh Rodham received $400,000 after successfully lobbying the White House on behalf of Glenn Braswell, a swindler in the anti-baldness business, and Carlos Vignali, a major cocaine dealer, Hillary said she knew nothing of the matter. She used the word 'disappointed' 20 times. Call it bad fortune or bad judgment, but Hillary's got man trouble. In fact, it's an affliction she's long suffered from. It's not just her husband, whose character fault-lines have been obvious to the world since Gennifer Flowers starred in the first bimbo eruption in 1992. Soon after he was elected there was the strange suicide of Hillary's friend and White House counsel Vince Foster. Then there was the Whitewater triumvirate of Jim McDougal, David Hale and Webster Hubble, and the death of Commerce Secretary and friend Ron Brown in an air crash in Bosnia. But perhaps the biggest man trouble Hillary now faces is with the men she had no choice in being connected to - her brothers and brother-in-law. For many Democrats the last straw has been the involvement of Hugh Rodham in the pardon controversy. To Hillary's White House staff her bearish brothers were known as 'the Brothers Rodham': Hughie and Tony, the President's occasional golfing partners, frequent visitors for family celebrations and holidays. They often brought bad news. 'You never wanted to hear their name come up in any context other than playing golf,' said a former senior aide. 'They're like mama's boys. They seem to feel, "We've been out there, we've been in this fishbowl, and we're not getting anything".' For Hugh and Tony Rodham, the impressive family connections have never quite clicked. A former public defender, Hugh Rodham joined high-stakes tobacco litigation in Florida but failed to collect on a $50 million fee he expected. He also joined a team of lawyers suing the firearms industry but that, too, has yet to pay off. In 1994 he made his first run for public office as a candidate for the Senate, enlisting his sister to campaign for him. That came to grief after he called his opponent an 'anti-semitic Jew'. The brothers got themselves into their biggest scrape when they were recruited into a business that grows and packages hazelnuts in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. They found themselves in the company of Aslan Abashidze, the political boss of the Adjari section of Georgia, an area full of drug dealers and organised crime bosses. Abashidze liked to have his picture taken with 'the boys' and used the hazelnut deal to suggest the US supported his political challenge to Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze. The Rodham brothers were asked by Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel Berger, to abandon the deal in 1998, and they agreed. But soon they were back meeting with Abashidze, who is close to Russian intelligence officials, saying they intended only to distribute the nuts. While Hugh Rodham finally did abandon the project, Tony, who was married to the daughter of California senator Barbara Boxer and was the more belligerent brother, continued to pursue it. He accompanied Abashidze on a trip to Washington earlier this year. 'The Rodhams are way over their heads in not understanding the geopolitical consequences of their deal,' said a former US government official familiar with their work in Georgia. 'They're swimming in hostile waters.' The Clintons seem unable to cast them adrift - they even accompanied the couple on their 1975 honeymoon to Acapulco - and aides say Bill and Hillary are fiercely protective of them. But Hugh's big clemency pay-off did not materialise: he was holed up in his Florida flat for three days last week after he promised his sister to return his $400,000 clemency windfall. And he surprised his sister again yesterday when it was revealed that he had successfully repaid the full amount to Braswell but has managed to repay only part of the fees he collected from the family of Vignali. Despite predictions to the contrary, Bill Clinton's half-brother Roger has been less trouble than the Rodhams - but only marginally less embarrassing. He once toured North Korea with his rock band, and was quoted as saying he found the standard of the country's artists 'higher than that of any country in the world'. Last week he was reported to be disappointed that the pardons he promised half-a-dozen of his friends, including some he served time with in prison for cocaine trafficking, did no materialise. Though he denies taking money for making the recommendations, which he left on his brother's desk in the Oval Office, he is still dejected that big brother Bill passed over his friends. He did not talk to his brother for two weeks. 'It sort of caused a rift,' he said. 'My feelings were hurt. I was a disaster.' He hit the bottle, and barely three weeks after receiving his own pardon was arrested for drunk driving in California. Ominously, congressional investigators looking into the whole pardon fiasco asked whether he played any role in the successful pardons of four men, including Vignali and Braswell. They say they have information that he received $30,000 from Vignali and $15,000 from Philip Young, a Louisiana man convicted in 1992 of illegal transport of fish and wildlife. Whether Hillary has difficulties with the men in her life just because politics is dominated by men, because she has poor judgment, because they take advantage of her or because they are convenient creatures to blame, it was clear yesterday that her problems are still multiplying. And the biggest of them is stewing at home in Chappaqua, upstate New York. For now, any talk about her presidential prospects has been quashed. 'If this hurts anyone, it hurts Hillary much more,' said a party official. Ever since her swearing-in last month, Hillary has tried to play the dutiful student. She has plunged into the arcana of health care and taxes, tended to her New York constituents and done her best to hammer out a political identity separate from that of her husband. James Carville, Clinton's 1992 campaign strategist, told the New York Times of his sympathy at Hillary having to deal with the mess created by the two most important men in her life. 'It's a horrible personal thing,' he said. 'You can pick your friends. But you can't pick your relatives.' Boys will be boys HUSBAND Bill Clinton: At 54, the youngest ever ex-US president. Ignited the entire controversy when he pardoned 140 people on his last day at the White House. Trying to raise funds to build a presidential library. BROTHER Hugh Rodham: Obese brother of Hillary. Pocketed $400,000 for successfully lobbying for the pardon of a convicted fraudster and a commutation for another criminal. Has since handed some of the cash back. BROTHER-IN-LAW Roger Clinton: Bill's 44-year-old half-brother. A former B-movie actor and singer, he was charged in California last week with drink-driving. Accused of trying to sell presidential pardons. BROTHER Tony Rodham: Embarked on a scheme with brother Hugh to sell hazelnuts in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Abandoned the scheme after pressure from Sandy Berger, former National Security Adviser to Bill Clinton.
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