In the aftermath of their indictment, one of the earliest strategies that Rich, Green, and their lawyers attempted to employ was that of claiming anti-Semitism was behind the legal measures brought against them: both claimed that they had been singled out because they were Jews. And so we find ourselves finding truth behind another ‘canard’ — that Jews have used accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ to avoid scrutiny of their behavior. In our bid to extricate ourselves from this one, let’s rely on the authority of the government investigators: the authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 157) that this argument was “false,” “preposterous” and a (p. 159) “clumsy attempt to play the race card” that was so poorly executed that it was “rejected by associates like Abraham Foxman.”
This is a very interesting choice of words by our helpful authors — for they imply that if this false charge had a little more credibility, the jovial Mr. Foxman would have been on it in no time. Who am I to argue? The report goes on to state that investigators discovered (p. 157) that Rich’s lawyers were in possession of a 1988 memo which clearly listed almost fifty other criminal cases brought against non-Jewish crude oil resellers in the previous year. Rich, Green, and his associates knew that their Jewishness had nothing to do with the indictment — the charge of anti-Semitism was indeed used cynically in an attempt to escape scrutiny and punishment.
Both Green and Rich remained on the F.B.I’s Ten Most Wanted list for over a decade, until the pace of Rich’s appeal effort increased in intensity around 1999. During his period of self-enforced exile, Rich made repeated efforts to extract strategic advantage from the fact his daughter was dying of leukaemia, and later in his petition to the White House he claimed that he had been prevented from returning to her bedside and from attending her funeral because of Federal prosecutors. The authors of House Report No. 454 write (p. 155) that “nothing could be further from the truth. Rich knew that if he returned he would receive bail, and that he would not be incarcerated unless convicted of crimes he had been accused of committing. He was prevented from returning to visit his dying daughter only if he refused to face the U.S justice system. Rich’s desire to have his cake and eat it too, makes it difficult to generate sympathy for him in this matter. In fact, the only possible conclusion is that Marc Rich placed his own needs over those of his daughter.”
The frankly unbelievable level of cynicism seen in Rich’s behaviour towards his daughter, and the deeply immoral core of this particular aspect of the petition was by no means the only significant problem with it. Government investigators state (p. 154) that “the centrepiece of Marc Rich’s effort to obtain a Presidential pardon was the pardon petition, which was put together by the Marc Rich legal team. … The resulting document, which had a number of misrepresentations and factual inaccuracies, was a surprisingly poor effort, considering the amount of time and money that went into it.”
Funny, I was thinking precisely the same thing the other day about the thousands of shoddy works of history, philosophy and junk science that take up valuable space on the shelves of our libraries. The petition consisted of over thirty double-spaced pages, the first twenty of which “attempted to cast Rich and Green in a favorable, even likeable light.” The authors of House Report No. 454 comment that “these statements seem almost laughable given what the world knows about Marc Rich and Pincus Green.” Read more