'Pardongate' row fuelled by leaked visitors' log

WASHINGTON - Denise Rich, the ex-wife of one of the most controversial recipients of Bill Clinton's last-minute pardons, was given security clearance for entry to the White House on the last night of Mr Clinton's presidency, just hours before the pardon for Marc Rich, a fugitive financier, was handed down.

A Swiss resident since he fled the United States in 1983, Mr Rich's pardon was one of 140 approved by Mr Clinton in the early hours of the following morning – his successor's Inauguration Day. Records of the White House Secret Service log, cited by a variety of US media outlets yesterday, recorded Mrs Rich and a friend of hers, Beth Dozoretz, as having been cleared for entry to a farewell party held by the Clintons.

Mrs Dozoretz, the former finance director for the Democratic Party and a friend of the Clintons, had been retained by Mr Rich's lawyer to lobby on his behalf and is known to have spoken to Mr Clinton about a pardon twice.

On 19 January, according to one account, both Mrs Dozoretz and Mrs Rich, also a long-time friend of the Clintons, were logged into the White House at around 6.30pm, but there was no record of when they left. The records were obtained by the House of Representatives committee, which is investigating "Pardongate", and appear to have leaked out through congressional sources hostile to the Clintons. On Monday, Mrs Dozoretz declined arequest to appear before a congressional committee investigating the Clinton pardons, citing her rights under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. The Fifth Amendment entitles someone to refuse to give evidence if that evidence might prove incriminating. Mrs Rich had "taken the Fifth" when she was called before the same committee and the refusals of both women fuelled suspicions that they had something to hide.

Mrs Rich, a long-standing donor to the Democratic Party, contributed both to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign and gave an unconfirmed sum of $450,000 to Mr Clinton's library fund. A criminal investigation launched in New York is trying to establish not only whether there was a direct link between the contributions and the pardon granted to Marc Rich, but whether the money originated with Mr Rich rather than with his ex-wife – in other words, whether the pardon was "bought".

In this convoluted saga, however, nothing is necessarily what it seems. Security clearance for entry into the White House is not proof that the recipient actually used that clearance, and both women insist that they were not at the party.

Mrs Rich flatly denied the reports; Mrs Dozoretz produced an alibi, in the form of her doctor husband, Ronald. He told reporters: "She was not at the White House on the 19th. She was with me; we left Baltimore, a private airport at Baltimore, probably four-ish, and there was another person with me, her and our children in the plane, and he can verify that." He suggested that the sources might have been working not from the White House log, but from the invitation list.

There was no clarification yesterday on whether the information had come from the log or the invitation list. It was the White House log, with its precise recording of Monica Lewinsky's comings and goings, that provided some of the most convincing circumstantial evidence of her relationship with Mr Clinton.

Citing the logs, The Washington Post yesterday said that Mrs Rich had visited the White House at least 13 times – and, some say, much more often – during Mr Clinton's last year in office. Mrs Dozoretz was also a frequent visitor throughout the Clinton presidency.