BostonGlobe | An unprecedented ethics promise that played a
pivotal role in helping Hillary Rodham Clinton win confirmation as
secretary of state, soothing senators’ concerns about conflicts of
interests with Clinton family charities, was uniformly bypassed by the
biggest of the philanthropies involved.
The Clinton Health Access
Initiative
never submitted information on any foreign donations to State Department
lawyers for review during Clinton’s tenure from 2009 to 2013, Maura
Daley, the organization’s spokeswoman, acknowledged to the Globe this
week. She said the charity deemed it unnecessary, except in one case
that she described as an “oversight.”
During that time, grants from foreign governments increased by tens of millions of dollars to the Boston-based organization.
Daley’s
acknowledgement was the first by the charity of the broad scope of its
apparent failures to fulfill the spirit of a crucial political pledge
made by the Clinton family and their charities. The health initiative
has previously acknowledged failing only to disclose the identity of its
contributors, another requirement under the agreement.
The
failures make the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which is
headquartered on Dorchester Avenue in South Boston, and goes by the
acronym CHAI, a prominent symbol of the broken political promise and
subsequent lack of accountability underlying the charity-related
controversies that are dogging Clinton as she embarks on her campaign
for president.
The charity defended the lack of some disclosures on the grounds that
the donations in question were simply passed through the charity to
fund an existing project. Previously, it has acknowledged that mistakes
were made.
But loopoholes and legalistic explanations about what
new foreign donations should be excluded from disclosure were not
publicly discussed in the initial deal. In 2009, the incoming Obama
administration, Clinton, and then-Senator John F. Kerry all publicly
touted the Clinton charities’ “memorandum of understanding’’ as a
guarantee that transparency and public scrutiny would be brought to bear
on activities that posed any potential conflicts of interest with State
Department business.
“Transparency is critically important here, obviously, because
it allows the American people, the media, and those of us here in
Congress . . . to be able to judge for ourselves that no conflicts —
real or apparent — exist,’’ Kerry said during a Senate floor speech on
Jan. 21, 2009.
The memorandum, which did not outline a penalty for
failing to comply, was signed in December 2008 by Valerie Jarrett,
co-chairwoman of the Obama transition team, and Bruce Lindsey, a
longtime Clinton aide who at the time was CEO of the Clinton Foundation
and sits on the board of the CHAI.
Jarrett and Lindsey declined to be interviewed about CHAI’s repeated failures to disclose major increases in foreign grants.
The White House and the State Department also declined to take a firm stand on the apparent violations of the agreement.
