The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

white leather desk mat. As always, he’s wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie. He has a cold and is drinking a cup of chicken broth. There is cigar smoke in the air, as there was during almost all of our meetings. A half-smoked Cuban Cohiba lies in a crystal ashtray. This is one of the few pleasures that Rich could never have enjoyed in the United States. Since February 7, 1962, Cuban cigars—and all other Cuban products—have been forbidden there. That was the day John F. Kennedy imposed a trade embargo against Cuba by executive order—and, as a passionate cigar smoker, he had press secretary Pierre Salinger buy up all available stocks of his favorite type of cigar in Washington, D.C., beforehand. 10
    Rich’s desk is dominated by a large computer screen, and real-time currency exchange charts and stock indexes flash across it. The two books next to the screen grab my attention—the newest edition of the compendium
Metal Traders of the World
and
My Life
, Bill Clinton’s autobiography. Photographs of moments in Rich’s life are closely bunched together on a sideboard, mostly photographs of his daughters Ilona and Danielle and of his grandchildren. At the front of the collection there is a photograph of his second daughter, Gabrielle, together with Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Gabrielle died of leukemia in 1996 at the age of twenty-seven. Another photograph shows Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert embracing Rich. On the wall, in simple wooden frames, there are two certificates for honorary doctorates that Israeli universities awarded to Rich in 2007. As we’ll see, it was mainly due to the intercession of Israeli politicians on Rich’s behalf that Bill Clinton finally agreed to grant him a pardon. Israel owes Rich a debt of gratitude for many reasons, including the provision of crucial clandestine service, as I will show later.
    “You bought Iranian oil from the Ayatollah Khomeini while the mullahs were holding American embassy employees hostage,” I answer his question. “You did business with Fidel Castro’s Cuba despite theU.S. trade embargo. You delivered racist South Africa oil while the black population suffered under the laws of apartheid. You are considered the greatest tax fraudster in the history of the United States.”
    He looks at me and says in a soft voice, “I heard it so often that I became immune to it.”
    “To be painted as the biggest devil, as you put it, must hurt,” I insist.
    “No,” Marc Rich says.
    The last curt answer came only after a long, telltale pause. It was one of the few times in our conversations that his answer did not sound convincing. Several friends had assured me that the accusations had hurt him deeply.
    As if he sensed my skepticism, he gave me a sphinxlike smile and suddenly asked me, “Do you ski?”
    I nodded, surprised. “Every Swiss knows how to ski. I first stood on skis at the age of three.” I might have sounded a bit too self-confident.
    “Show me how good you ski,” he said and proposed we go skiing together just before Christmas.
Charming and Cunning
     
    I’m the first one to arrive at that empty parking lot at the bottom of a ski lift, where I wait for Rich on an icy-cold December morning. I had come to know him over the previous few months—monosyllabic, yet outspoken; charming, yet cunning; highly focused despite his seventy-four years of age. Perhaps most astonishing, the man who thinks as highly of publicity and journalists as a vegetarian does of a pork sausage, a man who gave his last previous interview of significant length while the Berlin Wall was still standing—this man answered nearly every question I had for him, even the most delicate ones.
    Marc Rich’s story is both typically American and typically Jewish. Parts of the saga can be seen as the embodiment of the American dream, a classic dishwasher-to-millionaire fantasy. Marcell Reich, the Jewish boy-refugee from Antwerp, barely escaped certain death in the Holocaust.In the spring of 1940, he fled from Belgium with his family, the day the Nazis marched into the country. Penniless and unable to speak a word of English, the young Reich fled to Morocco by freighter and, with a great deal of luck, finally reached the United States. Under the name of Marc Rich, he entered the world of trade—one of the few lines of business that Jews have been allowed to pursue over the centuries. People soon began to speak of a wunderkind. With remarkable skill, talent,