The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

dispositions of criminal charges with fugitives” (see chapter 13 ). Quinn told me that at that time he almost took the refusal as an affront. “It was like—you know—drop dead.” All attempts to have the case legally reassessed were thus doomed to failure.
    “Why not try a pardon at the end of the Clinton term?” Michael Steinhardt first came up with the idea. Avner Azulay liked it. “What are the chances?” he asked Rich’s lawyers. Azulay remembers how they all just shook their heads. “Five percent, they said.” He then asked, “Do we have a five percent chance with another solution?” The lawyers were silent. “Then let’s go with the five percent,” Azulay said.
    Rich agreed and gave his permission to seek a pardon. “I kept looking for solutions. I kept trying and nothing succeeded, so the pardon seemed to be a solution,” Rich told me. According to Azulay, one of Rich’s most trusted employees, the system was “blocked.” “The best lawyers created the biggest mess. They just created more aversion. Eventually, the thing developed into a legal monster. It became a political case,” Azulay explained. “There was no legal solution. That’s why it needed a political solution—an unconventional one.”
    The Israeli Avner Azulay and the American Jack Quinn were the masterminds behind the application for a presidential pardon. They quickly put together a two-pronged strategy that—at least internally—was described as an “avenue of last resort.” One aspect was based on the facts; the second was personal in nature. Quinn would take care of the legal issues, write the petition, and present it to the president. Azulay would be responsible for the personal networking and would try to find as many dignitaries as possible who were willing to put in a good word for Rich and Green.
    It is no stretch to say that without Quinn’s involvement, Clinton would never have pardoned Rich. Quinn had more contacts in Washington than almost anyone else—and he had a direct line to the president as a holdover from his days as Clinton’s White House counsel from 1995to 1997. Prior to taking on his position in the White House, Quinn was Vice President Al Gore’s chief of staff—a position that made him Gore’s most important adviser. After leaving the Clinton administration, Quinn founded a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., and in late July 1999 Rich hired Quinn’s company to represent him. Quinn had been recommended to Rich by Gershon Kekst, the well-known New York communications consultant. Michael Steinhardt had asked his friend Kekst to see what he could do to help with Rich’s case. During our interview in his Madison Avenue office in Manhattan, I asked Steinhardt why he had been willing to help. “Over all these years Marc has never publicly defended himself against the most fallacious and terrible rumors. He never used the power of his wealth to carve his image,” Steinhardt explained. Kekst visited Rich in Switzerland and returned with a piece of advice for Steinhardt. “Marc should hire Jack Quinn,” he said. As would soon become clear, Quinn was an excellent choice and well worth the retainer of55,000 per month his law firm was paid for some time.
Crucial Discretion
     
    Avner Azulay, the second mastermind behind the pardon application, was a gifted negotiator and strategist with high-ranking contacts in Israel’s political establishment. The former Mossad officer, who had been responsible for Rich’s personal security and later went on to direct Rich’s humanitarian foundations in Israel, was the one who came up with the plan to directly petition the president for Rich’s pardon.
    According to the Department of Justice, a presidential pardon is usually obtained in the following manner. 6 The petition is first submitted to a special pardon attorney at the Department of Justice, who, after an initial examination, passes it on to the associate attorney general—the number three in the department—for further consideration. The attorney general then advises the president as to whether he should accept or refuse the petition. Rich’s lawyers had intended to follow this path in petitioning for Rich’s pardon. Azulay, however, had a fine nose for politicaland bureaucratic realities, something he had developed while working for Israel’s intelligence service. He recognized the risk in the lawyers’ plan. “If we do this, the story would immediately explode in the