THE CLINTON FORTUNE

Posted at 8:54 a.m. ET

The issue of Bill Clinton's financial sources, and their possible effect on his wife's decisions as secretary of state, has come up repeatedly.  Now, the former president has released details on where the money comes from.  As they used to say on Laugh-In...very interesting.

WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton has collected tens of millions of dollars for his foundation over the last 10 years from governments in the Middle East, tycoons from Canada, India, Nigeria and Ukraine, and other international figures with interests in American foreign policy.

And they're not always the class of the field.

Lifting a longstanding cloak of secrecy, Mr. Clinton on Thursday released a complete list of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation as part of an agreement to douse concerns about potential conflicts if Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state in the Obama administration.

Wait, wait.  Did the story say "douse concerns"?  Look at this:

Saudi Arabia alone gave to the foundation $10 million to $25 million, as did government aid agencies in Australia and the Dominican Republic. Brunei, Kuwait, Norway, Oman, Qatar and Taiwan each gave more than $1 million. So did the ruling family of Abu Dhabi and the Dubai Foundation, both based in the United Arab Emirates, and the Friends of Saudi Arabia, founded by a Saudi prince.

Also among the largest donors were a businessman who was close to the onetime military ruler of Nigeria, a Ukrainian tycoon who was son-in-law of that former Soviet republic’s authoritarian president and a Canadian mining executive who took Mr. Clinton to Kazakhstan while trying to win lucrative uranium contracts.

How precisely does that douse our concerns?  Are your concerns doused?

Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said donations from “countries where we have particularly sensitive issues and relations” would invariably raise concerns about whether Mrs. Clinton had conflicts of interest.

“The real question,” Mr. Levitt said, “is to what extent you can really separate the activities and influence of any husband and wife, and certainly a husband and wife team that is such a powerhouse.”

It is, to some, a matter of perception:

Mr. Clinton’s office said in a statement that the disclosure itself should ensure that there would be “not even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

There is a memorandum of understanding between Mr. Clinton and the Obama team:

The memorandum...requires that if Mrs. Clinton is confirmed, the Clinton Global Initiative, an offshoot of the foundation, will be incorporated separately, will no longer hold events outside the United States and will refuse any further contributions from foreign governments. Other initiatives operating under the auspices of the foundation would follow new rules and consult with State Department ethics officials in certain circumstances.

That's good, and thoughtful.  But the key question is whether dubious sources can hide their contributions behind, say, American partners.  Hardly an unknown tactic.

Fairness requires us to point out that other former presidents have taken "library" contributions from foreign sources.  Carter is notorious, and Bush 41 has sources in the Middle East. 

It would probably best for former presidents to decline all foreign contributions to libraries, or at least make them public as soon as they're received.  Right now there is virtually no guaranteed transparency, and money does talk.

The effect on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?  We don't know yet, but decisions she makes involving countries from which checks came should be subjected to special scrutiny.

December 19, 2008.