Hoping to Halt Talk, Clintons to Pay for Gifts

Seeking to end the controversy that has followed them from the White House, former President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Friday that they will pay for thousands of dollars of gifts they accepted last year.

Clinton, declaring that he does not want taxpayers to be “taken for a ride,” also revealed that a new philanthropic foundation would assume part of the cost of the expensive 56th-floor office he plans to rent in mid-Manhattan.

And earlier Friday, he said that his pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich on his last day in office “makes sense” and “was not a political” decision.

Controversy over these issues has dogged the former president and his wife, a Democratic senator from New York, since Clinton left office two weeks ago. Clearly, the announcements were designed to put those questions behind them.

“To eliminate even the slightest question, we are taking the step of paying for gifts given to us in 2000,” Clinton said in a statement issued by his office.

The Clintons will repay $86,000 of the $190,000 worth of gifts they kept after leaving the White House, the statement said.

The expensive presents include furniture worth $7,375 from Denise Rich, the former wife of billionaire fugitive Rich, who fled the country 17 years ago to escape tax fraud charges.

The former president’s new office, renting for an estimated $624,000 a year, is more than the total of what all other former chief executives pay for their offices. It has sweeping views of Central Park.

The former president told reporters in a sidewalk news conference in Manhattan that the nation’s taxpayers would pay about the cost of renting former President Reagan’s office--$285,000 a year--for his new office.

“We are going to allocate some of the rent to the foundation, and I’ve got staff working on it . . ,” he said. “I think that’s appropriate.”

In his most extensive remarks on the Rich pardon, Clinton said: “This was not a political thing. But I take full responsibility for it. It was my decision. Nobody else made the decision.”

Clinton said he wishes that “it would have happened 30 days before the end” of his term in office, alluding to complaints that the pardon was rammed through at the last possible moment and without routine reviews. “If you look at it, it makes sense.”

The pardon of Rich was by far the most controversial of 176 acts of clemency that Clinton approved during his hectic final hours in office. Rich and his business associate, Pincus Green--also pardoned--were accused of tax evasion, oil profiteering and trading with Iran during the Iranian hostage crisis. Rich has lived in Switzerland since 1983.

In a statement sent to news agencies, Clinton said: “As have other presidents and their families before us, we received gifts over the course of our eight years in the White House and followed all the gift rules.

“While we gave the vast majority of gifts we received to the National Archives, we reported those gifts that we were keeping. To eliminate even the slightest question, we are taking the step of paying for gifts given to us in 2000.”

The gifts include furniture, clothing, electronics, works of art, silverware and china.

“As New York’s junior senator, I intend to focus all my energies on the interests of my constituents,” Mrs. Clinton said in the statement. “I believe the step we are taking today reaffirms that I am fully committed to being the best senator I can possibly be from New York.”

The former president sent a letter to the the General Services Administration, explaining that the new William J. Clinton Foundation, designed to help fund philanthropic projects, would pay $300,000 a year in rent for his new office.

In addition, the foundation will assume financing of some of the development work associated with Clinton’s presidential library in Arkansas.

Clinton’s remarks on the pardon of Rich followed revelations that a high-level Justice Department official, Eric H. Holder Jr., was aware of the pardon request, contrary to widespread views that the Justice Department had been kept largely in the dark on the matter. The pardon of Rich, who fled a 65-count indictment, will be the subject of congressional hearings beginning Thursday.

Rich’s former wife has been a prolific Democratic fund-raiser and supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s Senate candidacy. In 1998, Mrs. Rich hosted a lavish Democratic Party fund-raiser in her New York apartment. Despite an acrimonious divorce, she later became an advocate for her ex-husband’s pardon.

“I know the immense frustration that comes when the prosecutors will not discuss their charges and when no one will look at the facts in a fair way,” she wrote in Rich’s pardon petition. “While the charges were untrue, no one would listen.”

Members of Congress and even Justice Department officials have expressed unhappiness with Clinton’s decision to bypass the criminal justice hierarchy in granting the Rich pardon. But earlier this week, Jack Quinn, Rich’s attorney, released documents showing that Quinn had been in contact with Holder, the second-ranking official in the Clinton Justice Department.

According to Quinn’s notes of a phone conversation with Holder that took place two days after the pardon, Holder said he had been “neutral, leaning towards” a pardon for Rich. In addition, Quinn said, Holder advised him in the call that he should talk about the case’s “legal merits” so negative publicity could be countered.

Quinn has argued that the criminal case against Rich is flawed; he also noted that Rich remains vulnerable to civil actions if he returns to the United States. Rich has not decided whether to return to this country, a Quinn associate said Friday.

“We’re all a little confused,” said James C. Wilson, chief counsel of the House Government Reform Committee, which plans a hearing Thursday in which both men have been asked to appear. “What did Eric Holder say to Jack Quinn? What did Jack Quinn say to Eric Holder? This is an opportunity to ask the fundamental questions and get some answers.”

Although Quinn may have disclosed his contact with Holder to make the Clinton White House look better, the controversy appears likely to continue.

Even if Holder shared his views on the Rich matter with Clinton, “it doesn’t make Clinton look any better” because it will be seen as a political appointee doing Clinton’s business, maintained Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, noting that normal procedures were bypassed.

“There’s a big dollop of stupidity in the Republican response to this,” he said, warning of overkill. “They should leave it alone.”

Despite the upcoming hearings, prominent Democrats seem unfazed about the potential fallout. Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate minority leader, waved off a question even though he had previously criticized Clinton’s last-minute action for the fugitive businessman. “Nah, I think it’s dissipating as an issue,” Daschle said Friday.

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Times staff writer Nick Anderson contributed to this story from Washington.