Did someone say…Jimmy Carter?
[quote]The Question of Carter’s Cash
In which our reporter follows the money
CLAUDIA ROSETT
Did Jimmy Carter do it for the money? That’s the question making the rounds about Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, an anti-Israeli screed recently written by the ex-president whose Carter Center has accepted millions in Arab funding.
Even in Carter’s long history of post-presidential grandstanding, this book sets fresh standards of irresponsibility. Purporting to give a balanced view of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, Carter effectively shrugs off such highly germane matters as Palestinian terrorism. The hypocrisies are boundless, and include adoring praise of the deeply oppressive, religiously intolerant Saudi regime side by side with condemnations of democratic Israel. In one section, typical of the book’s entire approach, Carter includes a “Historical Chronology,” from Biblical times to 2006, in which he dwells on events surrounding his 1978 Camp David Accords but omits the Holocaust. Kenneth W. Stein, the founder of the Carter Center’s Middle East program, resigned last month to protest the book, describing it in a letter to Fox News as “replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.” As this article goes to press, more protest resignations, this time from the Carter Center’s board of councilors, appear to be in the works.
In recent weeks, a number of articles have noted that Carter’s anti-Israeli views coincide with those of some of the center’s prime financial backers, including the government of Saudi Arabia and the foundation of Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, whose offer of $10 million to New York City just after Sept. 11 was rejected by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani because it came wrapped in the suggestion that America rethink its support of Israel. Other big donors listed in the Carter Center’s annual reports include the Sultanate of Oman and the sultan himself; the government of the United Arab Emirates; and a brother of Osama bin Laden, Bakr BinLadin, “for the Saudi BinLadin Group.” Of lesser heft, but still large, are contributions from assorted development funds of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as of OPEC, whose membership includes oil-rich Arab states, Nigeria (whose government is also a big donor to the Carter Center), and Venezuela (whose anti-American strongman Hugo Chávez benefited in a 2004 election from the highly controversial monitoring efforts of the Carter Center).
A recent editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, headlined “Jimmy Carter’s Li’l Ol’ Stink Tank,” listed a number of “founders” of the Carter Center. The names were drawn from the annual reports, and included “the king of Saudi Arabia, BCCI scandal banker Agha Hasan Abedi, and Arafat pal Hasib Sabbagh.” And, writing last month in the Washington Times, terror-funding expert Rachel Ehrenfeld described links going back to the 1970s between the Carter family peanut business and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, whose Pakistani founder helped bankroll the Carter Center at least until BCCI went belly-up in 1991, busted as a global criminal enterprise.
There is, of course, much more to the Carter Center than this list implies. It is large, with assets totaling $377 million (as of 2005), an operating budget of some $46.8 million, a staff of some 150, a 200-member board of councilors, and hundreds of donors, including not only individuals and foundations, but the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. State Department. Some of the center’s work is devoted to such laudable causes as wiping out the parasitical guinea worm. Indeed, it is possible to glean from various news items and brief mentions in the center’s annual reports that some of the more intriguing donors, such as the sultan of Oman and the OPEC development fund, have been giving money for exactly such causes. According to one notation on the Carter Center website, for example, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia donated $7.6 million in 1993 to help Carter fight the guinea worm.
But notwithstanding such occasional tidbits, it’s stunningly hard to discern from the Carter Center’s public documents who is giving precisely how much, and for what. Donor names, sometimes listed only as “Anonymous,” are lumped under broad categories such as “$100,000 or more” or “$1 million or more.” There is no systematic tally of just how much “more” — no clear way to know, for example, whether Saudi money accounts for only a tad of Carter’s funding or a mighty dollop, and whether the Saudi share of total contributions has changed over the years. Neither is there any systematic disclosure of who is funding exactly what activities in the name of “waging peace,” “fighting disease,” and “building hope” — the center’s self-proclaimed missions. A reporter’s e-mail exchange with Carter Center press secretary Deanna Congileo elicits the response that none of the anonymous donors are from the Middle East, but no further details can be released without permission from the donors — which, even if granted, will take some time to obtain (stay tuned).
National review Online[/quote]
