Palestinian authorities to blame for terror attacks

NEW YORK (AP) — The Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority were the catalysts for a series of terrorist attacks in the early 2000s in Israel that killed or wounded several Americans, a U.S. jury found Monday at a high-stakes civil trial.

In finding the Palestinian authorities liable in the attacks, jurors awarded the victims $218.5 million in damages for the bloodshed. The U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act could allow for that to be tripled.

The case in Manhattan and another in Brooklyn have been viewed as the most notable attempts by American victims of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to use U.S. courts to seek damages that could reach into the billions of dollars.

The PLO and Palestinian Authority had no immediate comment. None of the victims was in the courtroom Monday for the verdict.

In closing arguments, plaintiff attorney Kent Yalowitz had urged the Manhattan jury to order the PLO and Palestinian Authority to pay $350 million for providing material support to terrorists involved in six bombings and shootings from 2002 to 2004.

No amount could make up for the human toll, he said. “But if the only thing you can give them is money, then money has to stand in as compensation for the unspeakable loss,” he added.

Defense attorney Mark Rochon had argued there was no proof Palestinian authorities sanctioned the attacks as alleged in a 2004 lawsuit brought by 10 American families, even though members of their security forces were convicted in Israeli courts on charges they were involved.

“What they did, they did for their own reasons … not the Palestinian Authority’s,” he said in federal court in Manhattan.

The suit against the PLO and Palestinian Authority and the other against the Jordan-based Arab Bank had languished for years as the defendants challenged the American courts’ jurisdiction. Recent rulings found that they should go forward under the Anti-Terrorism Act, a more than 2-decade-old law that allows victims of U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations to seek compensation for pain and suffering, loss of earnings and other hardship.

Jurors heard dramatic testimony from family members of people killed in the attacks and survivors who never fully recovered. One, Rena Sokolov, described how a family vacation to Israel in 2002 turned to tragedy with a bomb blast outside a Jerusalem shoe store.

The Long Island woman testified that she felt like she “was in a washing machine,” and blood flowed so quickly from a broken leg she thought she would die.

“I looked to my right and saw a severed head of a woman about 3 feet from me,” she said.

The plaintiffs also relied on internal records showing the Palestinian Authority continued to pay the salaries of employees who were put behind bars in terror cases and paid benefits to families of suicide bombers and gunmen who died committing the attacks.

“Where are the documents punishing employees for killing people?” Yalowitz asked. “We don’t have anything like that in this case. … They didn’t roll that way.”

He also put up a photo of Yasser Arafat on a video screen, telling the jury that the Palestinian leader had approved martyrdom payments and incited the violence with anti-Israeli propaganda.

“The big dog was Yasser Arafat,” he said. “Yasser Arafat was in charge.”

Rochon argued that it was illogical to conclude that payments made after the attacks motivated the attackers in the first place.

“You know a lot about prisoner payments and martyr payments,” he said. “Do you have any evidence that they caused these attacks? No.”

Last year, a Brooklyn jury decided that Arab Bank should be held responsible for a wave of Hamas-orchestrated suicide bombings that left Americans dead or wounded based on claims the financial institution knowingly did business with the terror group.

A separate phase of the Brooklyn trial dealing with damages, set to begin in May, will feature testimony from victims.

***

From the New York Times:

The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable on Monday by a jury in Manhattan for their role in knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 in which Americans were killed and injured.

The jury in Federal District Court in Manhattan awarded $218.5 million in damages, a number that is automatically tripled to $655.5 million under the special terrorism law under which the case was brought.

The verdict ended a decade-long legal battle to hold the Palestinian organizations responsible for the terrorist acts. And while the decision was a huge victory for the dozens of plaintiffs, it also could serve to strengthen the Israeli claim that the supposedly more moderate Palestinian forces are directly tied to terrorism.

The financial implications of the verdict for the defendants were not immediately clear. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, had serious financial troubles even before Israel, as punishment for the Palestinians’ move in December to join the International Criminal Court, began withholding more than $100 million a month in tax revenue it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf.

The verdict came in the seventh week of a civil trial in which the jury had heard emotional testimony from survivors of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem, in which a total of 33 people were killed and more than 450 were injured.

“Money is oxygen for terrorism,” Kent A. Yalowitz, a lawyer for the families, said in a closing argument on Thursday, noting that the antiterrorism law “hits those who send terrorists where it hurts them most: in the wallet.”

The case was brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows American nationals who are victims of international terrorism to sue in the United States courts. The law was used last September by a Brooklyn jury to find Arab Bank liable for supporting terrorism by Hamas. Damages in that case, filed by about 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks, are to be decided in a second trial, which has not yet been held.

In the Palestinian case, the plaintiffs included 10 families, comprising about three dozen members, eight of whom had been physically injured in the attacks while the others had been left with deep psychological scars, testimony showed.

The plaintiffs also included the estates of four victims who had been killed in the attacks, which occurred on the street and at a crowded bus stop, inside a bus, and in a cafeteria on the campus of Hebrew University.

“It was a terrible thing to see,” one plaintiff, Robert Coulter Sr., 78, testified as he described watching a Fox TV news report about the cafeteria bombing and realizing his 36-year-old daughter, a New Yorker on a business trip, was one of the victims.

“They brought a body bag out on the TV station, right on it, and went right down to where she was laying and I knew it was a girl, had blond hair,” Mr. Coulter recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, my goodness, that’s Janis.’”

The defense had argued that their clients had nothing to do with the attacks. Mark J. Rochon, a defense lawyer, told the jury on Thursday that he did not want “the bad guys, the killers, the people who did this, to get away while the Palestinian Authority or the P.L.O. pay for something they did not do.”

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the P.L.O.’s executive committee who testified for the defense, told the jury, “We tried to prevent violence from all sides.”

But citing testimony, payroll records and other documents, the plaintiffs showed that many of those involved in the planning and carrying out of the attacks had been employees of the Palestinian Authority, and that the authority had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and made martyr payments to the families of suicide bombers.

The Denise Simon Experience – Radio Show – 02/19/15


Hosted by DENISE SIMON, the Senior Research / Intelligence Analyst for Foreign and Domestic Policy for Stand Up America US as well as the aide de camp for MG Paul E. Vallely, US ARMY (ret.)

HOUR 1:  THE INTERVIEW WITH CRISIS NEGOTIATOR & COUNTER TERRORISM EXPERT DR. STEVE MOYSEY

DR. STEVE MOYSEY is an internationally recognized expert in the field of conflict and crisis negotiation, counter intelligence and counter terrorism with a specialization in the area of armed barricade standoff situations.

HOUR 2:  THE UNFILTERED INTERVIEW WITH ADMIRAL JAMES “ACE” LYONS

ADMIRAL JAMES “ACE” LYONS, JR. is a retired Admiral in the United States Navy who served as Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet from 1985-87.

Admiral Lyons served in the U.S. Navy for thirty-six years, including as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Senior U.S. Military Representative to the United Nations and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations.

He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and has received post graduate degrees from the U.S. Naval War College and the U.S. National Defense University.

BROADCAST LIVE WORLDWIDE:  THURSDAYS – 9:00PM (eastern) / 6:00pm (pacific) on WDFP – Restoring America Radio , Red State Talk Radio, American Agenda, and on Nightside Radio Studios

For Hillary, it all Happens at Whitehaven

Just a few days ago, Hillary invited her nemesis Elizabeth Warren to Whitehaven. Campaign manager David Plouffe has been there too. The people like Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, even Diane Sawyer have been to Whitehaven. The dining room is the conference room and Bill is not even a common visitor to ‘her’ house.

Perhaps we should wonder if A.T. Smith has been to Whitehaven. Who is he? Well Smith was the former director of the Secret Service who was just forced out and has taken yet another position at DHS, where it appears Hillary had major influence on that transfer. Why would that be? Well, back during Hillary’s days as First Lady, A.T. was head of her security detail. Ah, so he DOES know where the bodies are buried.

Continuing to wield her power, Hillary has proven to be successful in tapping foreign powerbrokers for money. That Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Foundation is not at all what is written on paper when it comes to philanthropy. Take a deeper dive here. Hat tip to Kimberly Strassel,

The Clinton Foundation Super PAC

It’s past time to drop the fiction that the Clinton Foundation is a charity.

Republican presidential aspirants are already launching political-action committees, gearing up for the expensive elections to come. They’ll be hard-pressed to compete with the campaign vehicle Hillary Clinton has been erecting these past 14 years. You know, the Clinton Foundation.

With the news this week that Mrs. Clinton—the would-be occupant of the White House—is landing tens of millions from foreign governments for her shop, it’s long past time to drop the fiction that the Clinton Foundation has ever been a charity. It’s a political shop. Bill and Hillary have simply done with the foundation what they did with cattle futures and Whitewater and the Lincoln Bedroom and Johnny Chung—they’ve exploited the system.

Most family charities exist to allow self-made Americans to disperse their good fortune to philanthropic causes. The Clinton Foundation exists to allow the nation’s most powerful couple to use their not-so-subtle persuasion to exact global tribute for a fund that promotes the Clintons.

Oh sure, the foundation doles out grants for this and that cause. But they don’t rank next to the annual Bill Clinton show—the Clinton Global Initiative event—to which he summons heads of state and basks for a media week as post-presidential statesman. This is an organization that in 2013 spent $8.5 million in travel expenses alone, ferrying the Clintons to headliner events. Those keep Mrs. Clinton in the news, which helps when you want to be president.

It’s a body that exists to keep the Clinton political team intact in between elections, working for the Clintons’ political benefit. Only last week it came out that Dennis Cheng, who raised money for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 bid, and then transitioned to the Clinton Foundation’s chief development officer, is now transitioning back to head up Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 fundraising operation. Mr. Cheng has scored $248 million for the foundation, and his Rolodex comes with him. The Washington Post reported this week that already half the major donors backing Ready for Hillary, a group supporting her 2016 bid, are also foundation givers.

How much of these employees’ salaries, how much of Mrs. Clinton’s travel, was funded by the Saudis? Or the United Arab Emirates, or Oman, or any of the other foreign nations that The Wall Street Journal Tuesday reported have given millions to the foundation this past year? How many voters has Mrs. Clinton wooed, how many potential donors has she primed, how many influential people has she recruited for her campaign via the Clinton Foundation?

The foundation claims none, but that’s the other Clinton stroke of brilliance in using a charity as a campaign vehicle—we can’t know. Poor Jeb Bush has to abide by all those pesky campaign-finance laws that require him to disclose exact donor names, and dates and amounts. And that also bar contributions from foreign entities.

Not a problem for Team Clinton. The foundation does divulge contributors—after a fashion—but doesn’t give exact amounts or dates. Did Mrs. Clinton ever take any oddly timed actions as secretary of state? Who knows? Not the Federal Election Commission.

The foundation likes to note that it adopted self-imposed limits on foreign contributions during the period when Mrs. Clinton was at the State Department. Which is nice. Then again, that ban wasn’t absolute, and it isn’t clear it encompassed nonprofits funded by foreign governments, or covered wealthy foreigners, or foreign corporations. Nothing is clear. This is the Clintons. That’s how they like it.

This is the baseline scandal of the Clinton Foundation—it’s a political group that gets to operate outside the rules imposed on every other political player. Then comes the ethical morass. Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short summed it up perfectly in a Wednesday WSJ story: “When that 3 a.m. phone call comes, do voters really want to have a president on the line who took truckloads of cash from other countries?”

The nation’s ethics guardians have gently declared the Clintons might clear this up with more disclosure, or by again limiting the foundation’s acceptance of foreign money. What about the amounts already banked? The damage is done. If this were Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely GOP candidate, he’d be declared disqualified for office. The benefit of being a Clinton is that the nation expects this, and the bar for disqualification now sits in the exosphere.

Democrats might nonetheless consider how big a liability this is for their potential nominee. It’s hard to label your GOP opponent anti-woman when the Clinton Foundation is funded by countries that bar women from voting and driving like Saudi Arabia. It’s hard to call your GOP opponent a heartless capitalist—out of tune with middle-class anxieties—when you owe your foundation’s soul to Canadian mining magnates and Ethiopian construction billionaires. And it’s hard to claim you will fix a burning world when you owe foundation gratitude to countries holding the fossil-fuel blowtorches.

Mrs. Clinton won’t let that stop her. So Democrats have to decide if they want to once again put their ethics in the blind Clinton trust.

Community Organizing, Back to the Future

The White House just wrapped up a 3 day summit on violent extremism. The platform of the summit was ending the cycle of hate, in other words, it was a collaboration of anger management classes. Barack Obama told his audience that scaling back on the tensions was not meant for Islamists, but rather to every common citizen worldwide to be gentle going forward with Muslims.

The invitees were hand chosen and those not in attendance were also notable. Were leaders in the fields of intelligence, counter-terrorism, Christians or Jews invited? Well now so much. Imagine the Director of the FBI, James Comey who has open cases in 49 American states not attending.

When it comes to those that did attend standing for ‘human rights’, those representatives come from countries whose own human rights come into question.  “There is a very profound conceptual disagreement about whether the best way to counter violent extremism is through human rights and civil society or through an iron fist,” said Marc Lynch, director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University. The Obama administration wants “to project the human rights side, but you look at the people they’re working with and fighting alongside, and there’s a lot more to it than that.”

Elisa Massimino, president of the advocacy group Human Rights First, attended Thursday’s meeting and was struck by the juxtaposition of rhetoric and reality: “We’re sitting in that room with representatives of governments that are part of the problem,” she said. “If the president believes what he’s saying, then the actions that these governments are taking are undermining our supposedly shared agenda.”

From the outside, however, the summit appears hastily organized and fraught with gaps. As of Friday, neither the White House nor the State Department had announced the names of any attendees, an agenda or what specifically the summit is designed to achieve. The summit is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, Feb. 18, and Thursday, Feb. 19.

“It’s bizarre,” says Naureen Shah, a former legislative counsel with the ACLU who recently became the security and human rights director at Amnesty International. “On the one hand they’ve been touting this summit and trying to showcase the U.S. and global efforts to combat violent extremism. But on the other hand, they’re not providing any information about what’s going to happen.”

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki declined to comment last week on whether Russia would be participating in the summit, saying she did not currently have the list of invitees. She anticipated that, in the days before the summit, “we’ll do a briefing on the plans for the summit, what we hope to accomplish, et cetera.”

The takeaway was Barack Obama’s edit to reach out to governance in Muslim countries and require them to be more sensitive to the plight of those in poverty that would build programs generating educational access and later jobs. This is where the ‘community organizing’ comes into play.

Michelle Malkin says it best, laying it out for required reading.

Instead of killing jihadists, keeping them off our soil, locking up their poisonous spiritual agitators, and shutting off their terror-funding pipelines, President Obama called on America and the world to “invest” in unnamed immigrant “communities” vulnerable to unnamed extremism. Some of the most generous welfare states on the planet have suffered horrific jihad attacks this year. Liberal Denmark’s soft-on-jihad rehab program has been a disaster. But that hasn’t stopped State Department spokes-babbler Marie Harf from mewling incessantly about “combating poverty” to combat ISIS. Vice President Joe Biden opened the convention of jihad-coddlers on Tuesday by emphasizing the need for “respect” (cha-ching) and “a sense of community.” White House senior aides spoke generically about terrorists of “all shapes and sizes,” as they studiously avoided the precise nature and identity of the perpetrators of evil that precipitated the meeting. Screw that. Muslim jihadists chopped off the heads of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya last weekend. Muslim jihadists launched deadly shooting sprees in Copenhagen at a cartoonists’ free-speech event and a synagogue. Muslim jihadists murdered Jews at a kosher deli in Paris and slaughtered the entire staff of Charlie Hebdo over their drawings. Muslim jihadists caged and burned alive Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh. Muslim jihadists threw gays off buildings in Iraq. Muslim jihadists beheaded journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, humanitarian workers Alan Henning and Peter Kassig, and Japanese nationals Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto Jogo. Muslim jihadists have kidnapped and slaughtered thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Nigeria. The solution, the Obama administration wants the 60 nations that sent representatives to D.C. to learn, is a super-sized community-organizing campaign. It’s Jobs for Jihad Delinquents! No, this is not a Saturday Night Live anniversary skit. Politically correct public officials from L.A., Boston, and Minnesota are holding seminars on their “outreach” efforts to disaffected yoots as shining counterterrorism models. In Minneapolis, where al-Shabaab recruiters have metastasized, the U.S. attorney has bought into Muslim grievance-mongers’ complaints that “immigrant youngsters remain marginalized, without access to adequate education, employment, and other opportunities.” Social-justice warriors are united: Less “marginalization.” More midnight basketball. What a bloody crock. States like Minnesota and Maine have bent over backward to resettle thousands upon thousands of Somali refugees — putting their demands for halal-food freebies, taxpayer-funded foot baths, and “cultural sensitivity” over the safety and well-being of native-born citizens and taxpayers struggling to make ends meet. While grandmothers and disabled soldiers and breastfeeding moms must submit to invasive TSA screening, Muslim leaders in Minneapolis have the feds groveling in apology over increased scrutiny of some Somalis. I mean, it’s not like dozens of young male members of their “community” are flying off to the Horn of Africa and the Middle East to take up arms for jihad after benefiting from America’s blind generosity. Oh, wait. They are. The persistent left-wing myth of the poor, oppressed jihadist is absolute madness. How many times do we have to remind the clueless kumbaya crowd that al-Qaida mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri had a medical degree, as did Hamas bigwig Abdel al-Rantisi and the seven upper-crust doctors who helped plan the 2007 London/Glasgow bombings? Or that al-Qaida scientist Aafia Siddiqui studied microbiology at MIT and did graduate work in neurology at Brandeis. Terror architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed earned a mechanical-engineering degree at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. 9/11 lead hijacker Mohamed Atta majored in urban planning at a German technical university. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh attended the London School of Economics before abducting and murdering American journalist Daniel Pearl. And Osama bin Laden and Sayyid Qutb (Colorado State Teachers College) had plenty of exposure to wealth and Western studies. The “root cause” of their evildoing is not a lack of employment, education, community centers, iftar dinners at the White House, or publicly funded “opportunities.” When will these fools in high office learn that you can’t bribe these adherents of Stone Age ideology to behave? They don’t want jobs. They want blood. Revenge. Islamist dominance. Ruthless extermination of Jews, gays, Coptic Christians, Christian aid workers, cartoonists, journalists, apostates, and infidels of all shapes and sizes. The M****m j*******s are not victims of Islamophobic intolerance and Western callousness. We are the victims of our own leaders’ bleeding-heart overindulgence and reckless refusal to deal with reality.

Winning the hearts and minds of jihad….riiiiight….. maybe including Obamacare, Obama phones, the SNAP cards and Section 8 housing will work too.

Ask the Clinton’s About These Foreigners Please

How about the HSBC bank that is embroiled in a major scandal? How long have the Clinton’s known the Brit Richard Caring? Have Hillary and Bill describe their relationship with Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnet. Then of course there is Huma Abedin, the Dubai Foundation, Friends of Saudi Arabia, Hani Masri, Oman, Saban Family Foundation and the Soros Foundation, just handful of the Clinton’s foreign friendly network.

So, where does all this lead? Foreign friends, NGO’s, foundations and powerbrokers buy presidential candidates and Hillary is no exception. She using the same page out of the money playbook that Barack Obama used.

Foreign Government Gifts to Clinton Foundation on the Rise

Donations raise ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up expected 2016 bid

The Clinton Foundation has dropped its self-imposed ban on collecting funds from foreign governments and is winning contributions at an accelerating rate, raising ethical questions as Hillary Clinton ramps up her expected bid for the presidency.

Recent donors include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline.

In 2009, the Clinton Foundation stopped raising money from foreign governments after Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state. Former President Bill Clinton, who ran the foundation while his wife was at the State Department, agreed to the gift ban at the behest of the Obama administration, which worried about a secretary of state’s husband raising millions while she represented U.S. interests abroad.

The ban wasn’t absolute; some foreign government donations were permitted for ongoing programs approved by State Department ethics officials.

The donations come as Mrs. Clinton prepares for an expected run for the Democratic nomination for president, and they raise many of the same ethical quandaries. Since leaving the State Department in early 2013, Mrs. Clinton officially joined the foundation, which changed its name to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, and has become a prodigious fundraiser as the foundation launched a $250 million endowment campaign, officials said.

A representative for Hillary Clinton referred all questions to the Clinton Foundation.

A spokesman for the Clinton Foundation said the charity has a need to raise money for its many projects, which aim to do such things as improve education, health care and the environment around the world. He also said that donors go through a vigorous vetting process.

One of the 2014 donations comes from a Canadian agency promoting the proposed Keystone pipeline, which is favored by Republicans and under review by the Obama administration. The Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development agency of Canada, a first-time donor, gave between $250,000 and $500,000. The donations, which are disclosed voluntarily by the foundation, are given only in ranges.

One of the agency’s priorities for 2014-2015 was to promote Keystone XL “as a stable and secure source of energy and energy technology,” according to the agency’s website. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department was involved in approving the U.S. government’s initial environmental-impact statement. Since leaving State, Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly declined to comment on Keystone.

The Canadian donation originated from an agency office separate from the one that advocates for Keystone XL, a Foundation spokesman said.

While the Canadian donation didn’t appear in a Clinton Foundation online database of donors until recently, the donation of about $480,000 was announced in June in Cartagena, Colombia, where the program provides job training for youths.

Kirk Hanson, director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California, said the Clintons should immediately reimpose the ban, for the same reasons it was in place while Mrs. Clinton led U.S. foreign policy.

“Now that she is gearing up to run for president, the same potential exists for foreign governments to curry favor with her as a potential president of the United States,” he said.

If she becomes president and deals with these nations, “she can’t recuse herself,” added James Thurber, director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies. “Whether it influences her decision making is questionable, but it is a legitimate thing to focus on by her political opposition.”

The donations weren’t announced by the foundation and were discovered by The Wall Street Journal during a search of donations of more than $50,000 posted on the foundation’s online database. Exactly when the website was updated isn’t clear. The foundation typically updates its website with the previous year’s donations near the beginning of the year. All 2014 donations were noted with asterisks.

At least four foreign countries gave to the foundation in 2013—Norway, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands—a fact that has garnered little attention. The number of governments contributing in 2014 appears to have doubled from the previous year. Since its founding, the foundation has raised at least $48 million from overseas governments, according to a Journal tally.

United Arab Emirates, a first-time donor, gave between $1 million and $5 million in 2014, and the German government—which also hadn’t previously given—contributed between $100,000 and $250,000.

A previous donor, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has given between $10 million and $25 million since the foundation was created in 1999. Part of that came in 2014, although the database doesn’t specify how much.

The Australian government has given between $5 million and $10 million, at least part of which came in 2014. It also gave in 2013, when its donations fell in the same range.

Qatar’s government committee preparing for the 2022 soccer World Cup gave between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014. Qatar’s government had previously donated between $1 million and $5 million.

Oman, which had made a donation previously, gave an undisclosed amount in 2014. Over time, Oman has given the foundation between $1 million and $5 million. Prior to last year, its donations fell in the same range.

The Clinton Foundation has set a goal of creating a $250 million endowment, an official said. One purpose was secure the future of the foundation’s programs without having to rely so much on the former president’s personal fundraising efforts, the official said.

The Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman donations went to the endowment drive.