The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

as claimed by the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. The president wanted to know if the information was correct. Fink waved the idea aside and told Quinn, “No way. Rich wouldn’t know a bazooka from a BB gun.” Quinn called Beth Nolan back and told her that none of Rich’s lawyers had ever heard of any “arms trading charges.” Such accusations, he added, were nothing more than rumors that had first appeared in, of all places,
Playboy
. 1 After Nolan informed the president of the conversation, Clinton replied, “Take Jack’s word.” On the morning of January 20, 2001, President Bill Clinton granted Marc Rich and Pincus Green “a full and unconditional pardon.”
The Furor
     
    Marc Rich was asleep in his Villa Rose in Meggen on the banks of Lake Lucerne when the telephone began to ring. It was Saturday, January 20, around 11:00 P.M . in Switzerland, 5:00 P.M . in Washington, D.C. Rich looked at his gold Rolex. “Who could that be?” he thought to himself. Robert Fink had news that would excuse his calling at such a late hour. “I bring very good news, Marc. President Clinton pardoned you,” Fink told him. It took a moment for Rich to realize what exactly Fink had just said. After seventeen years as a fugitive and life in exile, after seventeen years of pursuit by federal prosecutors, Rich was a free man. “I was extremely pleased,” Rich said to me. “Nobody had actually expected that.” I wanted to know what he had done to celebrate on that evening. “I didn’t celebrate,” he answered. “I went back to sleep.”
    At about the same time, Sandy Weinberg was sitting in front of the television in his Tampa home halfheartedly watching the inauguration of George W. Bush in the middle of a Washington downpour. Weinberg, who as an assistant U.S. attorney had led Rich’s investigation, was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. He had actively supported Al Gore’s candidacy, and he was deeply frustrated over the election recount fiasco in his home state of Florida. He was in an even worse mood after he received a call from Michael Isikoff, a reporter for
Newsweek
. “Hi, Sandy. What doyou think of the pardon?” the reporter asked. “Michael Milken got pardoned?” Weinberg asked with little sign of interest. “No, Marc Rich,” Isikoff answered. “I uttered a vulgarity,” Weinberg tells me. “ ‘This is outrageous,’ I thought. ‘This is just outrageous.’ ” In a staccato voice—one, two, three, four—he proceeds to list the four points that from his point of view made it impossible for the president to pardon Rich. “One, it was the biggest tax fraud. Two, he was a fugitive. Three, he renounced citizenship in order to avoid extradition. Four, he traded with the enemy Iran. You cannot pardon a person like that,” Weinberg says.
    News of Rich’s pardon spread among politicians, journalists, and judicial officials. Their reactions were unanimously negative. Rich’s case had once more taken on “historic” proportions. According to an article in the conservative
National Review
, the pardon was “one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of the Justice Department. Not the
modern
history, the
entire
history.” 2 For William Safire, a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the
New York Times
, the pardon was “the most flagrant abuse of the presidential pardon in U.S. history.” 3
Vanity Fair
even ventured to suggest that the pardon “may have damaged President Clinton’s reputation forever.” 4 Those who were involved in Rich’s case were particularly disgruntled with the pardon. Rudy Giuliani was “flabbergasted.” “It took me about a day to actually absorb the fact that the President of the United States actually pardoned one of our most notorious fugitives,” he said. Howard Safir said he was “outraged because this sends a message to the criminals around the world that if you have influence, if you have money, and if you have access, you can put out a sign that says ‘Justice for Sale.’ ” 5
Organizing a Pardon
     
    Safir was right on one point. Access to the president was a decisive factor in Rich’s pardon. It was not only about getting the president’s ear but also about explaining Rich’s side of the story. The idea of seeking a presidential pardon first came up in early 2000, after U.S. AttorneyMary Jo White had again informed Rich’s lawyers that it was the “firm policy” of the Southern District of New York “not to negotiate