DNC Donor Boasted of Clinton Link, Turks Say

A major contributor to the Democratic Party, seeking to win Turkish support for his multibillion-dollar business venture, privately boasted to Turkey’s prime minister that he enjoyed direct access to President Clinton.

The effort by Roger Tamraz, a Lebanese American entrepreneur, to exploit his purported ties to Clinton--an effort described in detail by Turkish officials--provides a glimpse of the value of White House access for promoters of overseas business deals.

In short, that access could pry open doors in foreign capitals. In Tamraz’s case, Turkish officials said, they were sufficiently impressed so that they checked with the White House to see if he really did have access to Clinton.

Tamraz’s meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller in early September 1995 to discuss his ambitious proposal to build an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Turkey came a week before he attended the first of six White House meetings with President Clinton. All six were group events for large Democratic donors. Tamraz did not meet, one on one, with either Clinton or Vice President Al Gore.

In an interview, Tamraz denied that he had told Ciller about his pending meeting with Clinton. “That never happened,” Tamraz said.

He added that he did not need to use Clinton’s name in Turkey: “I had no trouble with access to Ciller,” he said.

Turkish officials who attended Tamraz’s meeting with Ciller, and who asked not to be identified, said that Tamraz told the prime minister he was going to see Clinton the following week. They said that he left the impression the meeting would be between the two of them.

According to a White House official and White House records, Tamraz was at the White House on Sept. 11 for his first group session with Clinton--a Democratic National Committee business leadership forum reception.

Tamraz mentioned his access to Clinton when negotiations with the Turkish government on his pipeline deal were going badly for him, Turkish government officials said. Turkey was eager for a pipeline that would bring oil from Azerbaijan’s rich Caspian Sea oil fields to Turkey and the West, but a group of senior Turkish officials had determined quickly that Tamraz was not the man to develop it.

Turkish officials had quietly conducted a background check on Tamraz that found questionable conduct. Among other things, Tamraz was wanted in Lebanon on charges stemming from the collapse of his bank--charges that Tamraz says were politically motivated by his powerful enemies in Beirut.

Tamraz claimed to have the backing of an Austrian conglomerate and a state-owned Chinese firm that would help him finance the huge project. The Turkish officials were not convinced, especially since the major oil companies with oil concessions in the Caspian basin did not appear to support his proposal.

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The Turks ultimately rejected Tamraz’s plan, and no new pipeline has been built from the Caspian Sea oil fields to serve as an alternative to the only pipeline in place today, which runs through Russia. The United States endorses the principle of “multiple pipelines.”

After Tamraz’s meeting with Ciller, senior Turkish officials involved in the pipeline study asked for a quiet, back-channel check with the White House to determine whether he did have a meeting with Clinton.

The answer the Turks received was no. They were not told of the group session at the White House for large donors that Tamraz was to attend.

Asked for comment Friday, White House officials were unable to respond because they had difficulty determining who the Turkish officials might have contacted within the administration.

One Turkish official involved in the negotiations with Tamraz came to Washington to discuss the oil pipeline policy not long after Tamraz’s meetings in Ankara, the Turkish capital. In a discussion about Tamraz, one Clinton administration official, complained to the Turkish official about how difficult it was to keep Tamraz away.

“You throw him out the back door and he comes in the chimney,” the Turkish official recalled the American as saying.

Tamraz’s September meeting with Ciller came in the midst of his attempts to assemble political support throughout the region and in Washington for his trans-Caucasus pipeline proposal.

Early in 1995, Tamraz began to shuttle between Azerbaijan, Armenia and even the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to try to generate support for his proposal. He talked grandly of building a “peace pipeline” that would link the warring factions of the Caucasus together, forcing economic integration upon bitter enemies.

To make his pipeline a reality, he said in an interview, he took it upon himself to act as an informal diplomat, trying to broker peace between Armenian-backed Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, which claims the region as its own territory. Tamraz claimed that he even met with the Armenian Pope, Karekin II, to gain his support for his “peace pipeline.”

Armenian and Azerbaijani government officials now say that they never took Tamraz seriously.

Tamraz came to Washington to seek Clinton administration input and support as well, and met with officials at the State and Energy departments. On June 2, 1995, he met with Sheila Heslin at the National Security Council. The U.S. officials listened politely but greeted the proposals with skepticism.

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When Heslin raised red flags about Tamraz’s access to the White House, then-Democratic National Chairman Donald Fowler intervened by asking the CIA to provide Heslin with information about Tamraz. Fowler’s contacts with the CIA are now the subject of an investigation by the agency’s inspector general.

In July 1995, after those relatively unproductive meetings, Tamraz began contributing generously to the Democrats, ultimately giving at least $177,000 to the Democratic National Committee and state parties and pledging to give several times as much as he had. Tamraz’s pledges gained him an invitation to the White House in June 1996 with other donors of large sums for an exclusive dinner and screening of the film “Independence Day” with Clinton.

Sources said that Tamraz sought Democratic National Committee help in trying to arrange private meetings with the president and vice president to discuss his pipeline deal.