G.O.P. Inquiry Lists Gifts to Clintons in White House
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/politics/10GIFT.html[/url]

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ


ASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — Denise Rich, Malcolm S. Forbes, Nelson Mandela and other friends and supporters of the Clintons showered the couple with roughly $1 million in previously unreported gifts during the Clinton presidency, according to documents released by Republican Congressional investigators.




The gifts vary from tens of thousands of dollars in jewelry, rugs and furnishings to a $90,000 framed handwritten letter by President Harry S. Truman, a $10,000 Mickey Mantle trading card from 1952 and nine rare books, including a six-volume, first-edition set by Winston Churchill, according to the documents.

The gifts were not disclosed by the Clintons because the couple turned them over to Bill Clinton's presidential library, the investigators said. Under federal law, gifts that the first family do not keep for themselves are exempt from the public disclosure requirement on presidential gifts, the investigators said.

The findings are contained in a 319-page report that provides a detailed account of gifts that the Clintons received in the White House. The report was compiled after a months-long inquiry by Republican investigators on a House Government Reform subcommittee.

Responding to the report, James E. Kennedy, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton, said: "This story is so old, it's not just dated, it's carbon-dated."

Philippe Reines, speaking for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, also dismissed the report, saying, "Despite a concerted effort to turn a partisan preoccupation into a gift that keeps on giving, there is nothing new here."

The findings, compiled from information contained on the White House gift database, were released this morning during a meeting of the full committee. The report was commissioned by Representative Doug Ose, a California Republican, who is seeking to build support for legislation he has proposed to tighten the rules on gifts to presidents.

He suggested that the people who gave these gifts to the Clintons could have been trying to gain access to the White House and influence the administration's policy decisions.

"I believe that the American people have the right to know what gifts were received and retained by their president," Mr. Ose said.

In February the committee issued a preliminary report in which investigators detailed nearly $400,000 in gifts that the Clintons took with them upon leaving the White House. But the report said that the Clintons underestimated the value of dozens of those gifts.

The February report also said the Clintons did not report dozens of the gifts because their value was set below the threshold for reporting gifts on disclosure statements. The threshold was $250 from 1993 to 1998, and $260 from 1999 on.

The report released today contains a new round of potentially embarrassing information. It documents an array of gifts that the Clintons received and the names of the people who gave those gifts.

There was a $2,000 bronze statue of an angel from Denise Rich; a $9,000 hand-woven Navajo chief's blanket (circa 1885) from Larry Rockefeller; and an oil painted in a gilt frame, a cheese plate, a porcelain teapot, a gold cross and other items totaling $6,000 from Nelson Mandela.

Then there were other gifts that investigators say the Clintons may have used before donating them to the presidential library: nine custom-made tuxedo and dress shirts worth $900 from Walter and Selma Kaye; and four purses worth $8,680 from the handbag designer Judith Leiber.

The report also shows that the former first family received gifts from individuals who were at the center of the Clinton White House campaign finance scandals. To investigators and others, that suggests that the gifts became another avenue for influencing the administration.

There was a $2,100 sculpture of a goddess on a wooden base given by James Riady, an Indonesian businessman who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations last year and agreed to pay $8.6 million in fines for using foreign corporate money to back Mr. Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. The Clintons also received two sculptures worth $1,550 from Johnny Chung, who was at the center of a 1996 campaign fund-raising investigation.

The report prompted sharp criticism from government-reform advocates, who said the Clintons acted inappropriately if not illegally, by not reporting the gifts.

"It's a serious allegation if it's true," said Gary Ruskin, the director of the Congressional Accountability Project, a watchdog group. "The least you can say is that they are trying to evade gift reporting."

Corruption