Clinton photo aids con artists' scam

By Linda Chavez

It's a familiar and sad tale. A group of unscrupulous con-artists bilk thousands of unwitting investors out of millions of dollars of hard-earned savings. What makes this story different, however, is President Clinton's role in the sordid affair.

In October 1996, Clinton met briefly for a photo op with executives of a jewelry-making company, who paid some $85,000 to the Democratic National Committee for the privilege. The glossy pictures of a smiling Bill Clinton and company executives then made their way into promotional materials that were used to give the Miami-based group, Unique Gems International Corp., instant credibility with gullible investors, most of whom were new immigrants who hoped to turn a $3,000 investment into a secure income for their families.

Skeptics were told by one company executive, "We met with the president. If we were not a good company, the president would not have invited us to dinner." So, the "investors" lined up to buy worthless beads to assemble into necklaces, which the company promised to market to catalogues and retail stores. In February, when Unique Gems used the president's picture most extensively, the company took in $1 million a day in revenues.

Only 14 necklaces of the hundreds of thousands assembled were ever sold. By the time a Miami circuit court judge effectively shut down the operation last March, some 15,000 people had lost $38 million in the venture.

Of course, the White House denies any responsibility. When news of the presidential photos became public this week, chief White House spinmeister Lanny Davis told the New York Times, "We cannot condone the misuse of the opportunity to meet the president and to be photographed with him for inappropriate commercial exploitive purposes." Davis also admitted there were "other occasions" when similar incidents involving other unscrupulous characters occurred but said the White House and the DNC had tightened their "vetting procedures" so that scoundrels won't have such easy access in the future.

In fact, nothing the White House or DNC have done to improve their clearance procedures will stop this sort of thing from happening again. These "new " procedures involve little more than routine Secret Service name checks (which every previous White House has done as a matter of course) and searches through newspaper data bases for unflattering stories on intended guests.

These safeguards won't work because the Clinton White House operates, in the memorable words of the president's friend and fund-raiser Johnny Chung, like a subway turnstile: "You put in coins to open the gate." Chung should know. He was the conduit for some $400,000 in campaign contributions that gained access for his own business clients, at least one of whom used pictures taken at a White House event in advertisements for beer plastered on billboards in China.

During the '96 presidential campaign, the White House gates flung open for international arms merchants, drug dealers and embezzlers, among others. The president's own National Security Council couldn't keep some of these fellows out, despite repeated warnings. For Davis to now claim the White House was a victim of commercial manipulation is a little bit like a prostitute claiming she finds herself in bed because men take advantage of her sexual innocence.

Legendary huckster P.T. Barnum once said, "The public loves to be fooled." The public's apathy about the appalling ethics of the Clinton White House certainly seems to prove the point. It doesn't seem to matter how many illegal contributions found their way into presidential campaign coffers, how many felons and miscreants the president entertained, or how much influence was bought and sold. The president's approval ratings have never been higher.

We shouldn't be surprised that a few thousand dupes thought they could trust Clinton's picture to ensure a company's honesty. After all, millions of Americans still trust the man himself to run the country.

Creators Syndicate, Inc.