BILL'S UGLY BUDDY
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
May 24, 2007 -- EVERY year since he left the White House, former President Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA - an Omaha, Neb., company now identified as a key provider of databases that enable criminals to defraud the unsuspecting elderly.
Senate rules don't require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much - or for what - the company has paid her husband over the past five years. But former presidents - especially Bill Clinton - don't come cheap. And, just months after he left the presidency, InfoUSA paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to give a speech in Omaha. Since then, it has paid him an undisclosed amount each year - listed only as "more than $1,000" for "non-employee compensation" on Sen. Clinton's financial-disclosure forms. (Her latest Senate disclosure isn't yet public, so we don't yet know if the firm paid him anything last year.)
As best we can determine, this is one of only two companies with whom the ex-president has an ongoing, formal relationship.
As The New York Times reported on Sunday, InfoUSA compiled and sold lists of elderly men and women who would be likely to respond to unscrupulous scams. The company advertised lists such as: "Elderly Opportunity Seekers" - 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money "Suffering Seniors" - 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease; "Oldies but Goodies" - 500,000 gamblers over age 55. It described one list: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."
Internal e-mails show that InfoUSA employees were aware that they were selling this data to firms under investigation for fraud - but kept on selling the information, even as the scammers used the lists to bilk millions from the elderly.
Last week, Hillary Clinton sought and obtained an extension of time to file her financial-disclosure statement for the presidential race. This will tell us more than her Senate statements - she's required to list not just the sources of Bill's income but exactly how much they paid him. While Sen. Clinton offered no reason for the postponement, we can't help suspecting that she hopes to conceal InfoUSA's payments to her husband while the company is under fire.
The relationship between Bill Clinton and Vinod "Vin" Gupta, InfoUSA's CEO and chairman, is longstanding and deep.
A frequent donor to Bill's campaigns, Gupta stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom in the Clinton years. He admits donating $1 million to the Clinton Library and in 1999 gave $2 million for Hillary Clinton's Millennium New Year's Eve bash. He has raised over $200,000 for Hillary's Senate campaigns and given thousands to other Democratic funds.
Gupta's company has also been generous to Clinton causes. It was a sponsor of the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative, and of last summer's Aspen Festival of Ideas, where Bill and Hillary Clinton both spoke. It put Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton's longtime money man, on the board of a subsidiary firm, videoyellowpagesusa.com
President Clinton returned some of the favors - he nominated Gupta as consul general of Bermuda and U.S. ambassador to Fiji, but Gupta was never confirmed. In his last days in the White House, Clinton appointed Gupta to the Kennedy Center's board of trustees.
This connection between the Clintons and InfoUSA only underscores the necessity of full disclosure of income sources and amounts by all the presidential candidates and the release of their income tax returns - a step that Sen. Clinton has, thus far, refused to take.
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