Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- March 24, 1998
Commerce trips called fund-raisers
By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The late Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown's former business partner testified yesterday that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton decided to use administration trade missions to raise Democratic political donations.
Nolanda B. Hill, 53, also said in U.S. District Court that the White House orchestrated a department cover-up of documents linking Commerce trade missions to political donations to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Mrs. Hill, indicted last week for fraud and tax evasion, testified in a lawsuit brought by the public-interest law firm Judicial Watch that Mr. Brown gave her departmental letters only weeks before his April 1996 death that showed business executives were being asked to pay a minimum of $50,000 for seats on foreign trade missions.
Mrs. Hill said he told her he was under orders from the White House to withhold documentary evidence "prior to the 1996 elections" that seats on administration-organized trade missions were bought with political donations.
And in an affidavit unsealed yesterday by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, Mrs. Hill said Mr. Brown's White House instructions came "through [former Chief of Staff] Leon Panetta and [Cabinet Secretary] John Podesta ... to devise a way not to comply with the court's orders" in the lawsuit.
White House spokesman James Kennedy called Mrs. Hill's assertions "false in every respect." Mr. Podesta issued a statement saying Mrs. Hill was accurate only in the spelling of his name. Mr. Panetta could not be reached for comment.
Judge Lamberth promised Mrs. Hill protection. She has said she feared Justice Department retaliation for her testimony. She gave her affidavit in the case Jan. 17.
After her affidavit was filed with the court, she was indicted on charges of conspiring to divert more than $500,000 to Mr. Brown from her Corridor Broadcasting Corp., and $232,000 to her own use from unpaid loans amounting to $21 million from now-defunct Sunbelt Savings Association.
The former owner of two television stations in Dallas faces nine felony counts of defrauding the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Internal Revenue Service.
In her affidavit, Mrs. Hill said, "I am concerned ... that if I [testify], the Clinton administration, and more particularly its Justice Department, will try to retaliate against me."
Judge Lamberth said he asked Mrs. Hill's criminal attorney, Stephan Charles, to help her plan her testimony.
The judge intervened after being informed by Judicial Watch in a sealed motion that Mrs. Hill was being represented by Washington attorney Courtney Simmons Elwood, who also represents Terry F. Lenzner, a private investigator hired by President Clinton's attorneys in the White House sex-and-lies scandal.
Mr. Charles told Judge Lamberth he was unaware until last week that she was even a target in an ongoing criminal investigation that evolved from a closed independent counsel probe of Mr. Brown's business activities with Mrs. Hill before his death.
During day-long testimony, Mrs. Hill said Mr. Brown showed her "an inch-thick" set of Commerce Department documents linking trade missions and political contributions, which he carried in an ostrich-skin portfolio.
During a meeting at the Watergate Hotel about three weeks before he was killed in the plane crash in Croatia, Mrs. Hill said, she read "four or five on top" and saw letters on Commerce Department stationery detailing how businesses paid the Democratic National Committee $50,000 each for seats on overseas business delegations headed by Mr. Brown.
One letter said, "'Glad you've agreed to $50,000 to the DNC,' or something like that," she said, while a second said, "The DNC has not got their $50,000 yet."
"Ron told me these documents came from Commerce Department files," she said. "He wanted to destroy them" because his business dealings with Mrs. Hill were then under investigation by an independent counsel, she said.
"I felt like he was asking for trouble. I pointed out to him that he would be taking an awful risk about obstruction [of justice] because surely they existed someplace else," she said.
Mrs. Hill said the letters seeking donations were written by Melissa Moss, Commerce's business liaison, who was at the DNC as a fund-raiser when Mr. Brown was DNC chairman. In a videotaped deposition, Miss Moss "absolutely, categorically" denied linking trade missions to DNC contributions.
Under cross-examination by Justice Department attorney Bruce Hegyi, Mrs. Hill said she does not know what happened to the documents, which were not produced by Commerce officials in response to subpoenas in Judicial Watch's lawsuit.
Mrs. Hill said she talked to Mr. Brown "every day, sometimes several times a day" after he was named commerce secretary. They were partners before the election in a company called First International, formed when Mr. Brown was DNC chairman, and had long been close friends.
She said Mr. Brown first resisted pressure to use the trade missions for Democratic political donations, but Mrs. Clinton and White House officials overrode his objections after the Republican sweep of Congress in 1994.
"He thought he was worth more than $50,000 a pop," Mrs. Hill said. "He knew it was not right. ... The purpose was perverted at the direction of the White House."
Mr. Brown believed Mrs. Clinton was "very instrumental" in the decision. The secretary told her, "'I'm doing my chores for Hillary Rodham Clinton' -- he felt that way," Mrs. Hill testified.
She said Mr. Brown told her that Mrs. Clinton took the lead over the president in such matters at the White House. "He thought she was the stronger of the two in terms of political workings."
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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