In a city given to caricature, Roger Tamraz is a corner-cutting, influence-peddling, fugitive Lebanese-American oil magnate who symbolizes the slimy ways of President Clinton’s re-election campaign.
That the truth is more complicated, if not without its distinct ambiguities, may explain why Republicans running the best show in town have not given the unabashed Tamraz his moment at their microphone.
“I have not been asked,” Tamraz said with uncharacteristic brevity during a phone chat from Paris, after I asked why he had not testified before the Senate committee investigating 1996 campaign finance abuses.
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Of course, any reporter–any chimpanzee, for that matter–who has sat through the 5-week-old hearing would think that he was obligatory.
He has been the subject of lots of fugitive-in-the-White House! stories, including recent front-page efforts in The New York Times, Washington Post and other august journals. Most seem to have the not-so-hidden handiwork of committee Republicans leaking documents the newsies’ way. The Cliffs Notes version follows:
Tamraz, 57, is an Egyptian-born, Lebanese-raised Harvard University Business School grad who made a fortune in the oil pipeline business and has been a CIA source on Middle East matters since 1973. It’s beyond dispute that he ran for president of Lebanon. Less clear are details about his being kidnapped and poisoned by pro-Syrian forces and convicted of embezzlement by Lebanese authorities.
He lives in Paris and New York, is an American citizen and clearly craves attention, calling himself a “frustrated secretary of state.” More germane, he’s a big political donor and gave more than $200,000 to the Democrats during the 1995-1996 election cycle.
The Republicans find those donations suspect when twinned with his clear desire to get the Clinton administration to support his plan for a $2.5 billion oil pipeline in the Caspian Sea area, likely the next great oil-producing region.
It is undisputed that the National Security Council urged he not be let into the White House. But the Democratic National Committee, craving his money, bent rules, kissed his butt and successfully lobbied to get him into various social affairs with Clinton.
Those included his presence in the White House screening room on June 22, 1996, with 50 or so other donors, making idle chat and then standing tall as the President of the United States, informally clad with a bowl of popcorn in hand, arrived for a private screening of “Independence Day.”
“It was nice to see him offer popcorn,” Tamraz recalled, jokingly citing the affair’s “intimate nature.” The assembled at such gatherings “butt you if you seem to be monopolizing him (Clinton).” He says he got very few words in edge-wise, nothing about his pipeline deal.
When invited last year to a small White House coffee with Clinton, he did get “a substantive chance to talk with him.” In that instance, he brought up the Middle East peace process.
“I told him not to count on an early peace. I didn’t think it was in the cards,” Tamraz said.
He was happy after the coffee because “part of my pleasure is geopolitics, to see how the rest of the world works. That is part of what I was really after. Therefore, it shouldn’t be taken as a strict quid pro quo. But all you guys, the journalists, think about is the pipeline.”
Upon deeper exploration, one may sense why the Republicans may not be so obtuse in keeping their distance from a man they deposed at length on May 13, passing along some juicy tidbits about his involvement with the CIA, the Democrats and the pipeline business.
“You know, everybody says it’s for the pipe,” he said, referring to media coverage of his Clinton dealings. “Yeah, the pipe is an interest, but I’m promoting myself. I would like to be recognized and with my name correct, and maybe one day, I might play a role which I aspire to.”
Right there, one may get close to a reality about the man not being called by the Senate committee claiming to seek the Truth about our campaign finance system.
He’s a Double Donor, fueled not by ideology but ego and a wish for access. He has given to both parties and has been aggressively courted by both.
“You get put in a data bank, and your name gets passed around,” Tamraz said. “Once in the data bank, it never stops. Solicitations, more than you can handle. One for the president’s birthday, then the inauguration” and so on.
“From time to time you say, `Let’s see what we can do with the Democratic Party, and you sit down with them and do a deal.’ “
“Do a deal.” A candid way to put it. It turns on a simple verity: money talks.
Forget about what one side thinks about welfare reform or what the other thinks about capital-gains taxes or indecency on the Internet.
“Ideologically, I believe in the person, not the party,” Tamraz said. “I think the parties are very close to one another, but the person does change our history,” he said.
“Reagan changed history by breaking up the Soviet Union, or at least he was the last drop. I thought Clinton was a young Kennedy type, doing something I also believed in.”
“No matter the criticism of him, we have a safe situation today. Maybe he hasn’t done anything great. But he has not made great mistakes. The economy is good, the world safe.”
The 5-week-old Senate hearing is rife with the senators’ own sanctimonious, self-righteous and, ultimately, hypocritical declarations about the need to change our system.
To Tamraz, that system “is full of holes, but I don’t find a better one. Having lived overseas and in places with dictatorships, the U.S. system, with a due process of law, is fine.”
“But if you’re in big business, and you stay out of the system, you have problems. Most of your peers talk to ambassadors, the National Security Council. You can be out of it,” said Tamraz, the longtime CIA source. “Half the people I met at the White House were also in the oil industry.”
“It’s a tough, competitive world out there, especially if you’re an entrepreneur dealing with the Seven Sisters (the oil giants).”
It’s why Tamraz took obligatory notice of a “Dear Friend” letter he got a few months ago, long after negative publicity about him and his Democratic donations, from Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
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“A few days ago Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott wrote to you to inform you of your recent nomination to the Republican Senatorial Inner Circle,” the form letter opened.
“Today, I am pleased to join him, and all of my Republican colleagues in the United States Senate, in extending you this formal invitation to become part of this special organization,” McConnell wrote.
If the Republican majority on the Government Affairs Committee does not beckon Tamraz–to show what obvious scum the Democrats are–maybe we can guess why.
Get your head together
For media conspiracy theorists, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s first trek to the Middle East may be tough to swallow. Check out how Thursday editions of several major newspapers covered the same event, her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
ALBRIGHT VISIT BARES U.S.-ISRAEL DIVISION OVER PEACE PROCESS–Washington Post
ALBRIGHT STUNS WITH CENSURE OF PALESTINIANS–Washington Times
ARAFAT MUST PUSH HARDER ON TERROR, ALBRIGHT INSISTS–New York Times
ALBRIGHT, ARAFAT TO MEET TODAY–USA Today (Huh?)
NETANYAHU REJECTS APPEALS BY ALBRIGHT–Los Angeles Times
ALBRIGHT STRESSES ISRAELI SECURITY ALONG WITH OBLIGATIONS–baiduhai
ALBRIGHT: I’LL TELL YASSER TO CLAMP DOWN ON TERROR–New York Post
ALBRIGHT LASHES OUT AT ARAFAT, ALSO RAPS NETANYAHU–Boston Globe
Everything clear now?