Category Archives: Russia

The Denise Simon Experience Radio Show Archive: 04/23/15

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Tonight, Denise hosted a round table with Joel Arends, a 21 year active and reserve duty Iraq veteran, accomplished lawyer and Chairman of Veterans for a Strong America.

Topics covered the devastation of sequestration of the military having major implications in the near future where America cannot keep pace with global adversaries like Russia and China.

And in hour 2, Kyle Orton, a Counter-terrorism expert from the United Kingdom spoke to conditions in the Middle East, the threat matrix and estimates for what may come in the near future with regard to hostilities around the globe.

BROADCAST LIVE WORLDWIDE:  THURSDAYS – 9:00PM (eastern) / 6:00pm (pacific) on the following networks:

WDFP – Restoring America Radio
Red State Talk Radio
Nightside Radio Studios
TalkStreamLive
The Leading Edge Radio Network
Talk 92.1 WDDQ
American Agenda Radio
UNIR1 Radio
TuneIn Radio
Stand Up America US Radio
Streema Radio

Hillary Clinton Foundation and Uranium

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Primer:

The Russian reset via Hillary appears to be uranium and Putin’s control of the same. Reminder, Russia sells uranium to ahem….Iran.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rA-vSIIyz9I#t=51

Sheesh, almost by the hour news breaks on the Clinton Foundations(s) where fraud and collusion are bubbling to the surface.

Last week Newsweek broke a story about InterPipe owned by Victor Pinchuk of Ukraine whose financial worth is estimated at $4.2 billion. He is quite close to the Clintons and generous with his money to their Foundations in exchange for policy decisions at the State Department. As an aside, Pinchuk is tied to Tony Blair, Paul Krugman, Shimon Perez, Dominique Strauss Khan, Larry Summers and well yes, even Elton John.

When it comes to Hillary’s run for the Oval Office, these actions may be coming out too soon given election day in November of 2016, but this could all be a good thing as money going into her campaign may slow to a crawl. It should also be noted that the Gowdy Benghazi Commission reports are not slated to be published either until the height of the election season in 2016.

Now let us move on to uranium and Hillary.

Gifts to Hillary Clinton’s Family Charity Are Scrutinized in Wake of Book

State Department sat on panel that approved sale of mine involving contributor to foundation

Hillary Clinton’s State Department was part of a panel that approved the sale of one of America’s largest uranium mines at the same time a foundation controlled by the seller’s chairman was making donations to a Clinton family charity, records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show.

The $610 million sale of 51% of Uranium One to a unit of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear agency, was approved in 2010 by a U.S. federal committee that assesses the security implications of foreign investments. The State Department, which Mrs. Clinton then ran, is one of its members.

Between 2008 and 2012, the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, a project of the Clinton Foundation, received $2.35 million from the Fernwood Foundation, a family charity run by Ian Telfer, chairman of Uranium One before its sale, according to Canada Revenue Agency records.

The donations were first reported in “Clinton Cash,” a new book by Peter Schweizer, an editor-at-large at a conservative news website, about the financial dealings of Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton. A copy of the book, set to be released next month, was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The book is to be published by HarperCollins, a division of News Corp. NWSA 0.23 % , which also publishes the Journal.

The book adds fresh details to previous reporting by the Journal and others about potential conflicts between Mrs. Clinton’s private charitable work and her public activities as secretary of state. The Journal reported in February that at least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during her tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Josh Schwerin, a campaign spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, the front-runner for Democratic presidential nomination, said the Uranium One sale “went through the usual process, and the official responsible for managing CFIUS reviews has stated that the secretary did not intervene with him. This book is twisting previously known facts into absurd conspiracy theories.”

The campaign on Wednesday also provided a comment from Jose Fernandez, a former assistant secretary of state who served as the department’s principal representative on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which reviewed the sale. “Secretary Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter,” Mr. Fernandez said.

In response to past questions about possible conflicts, Mrs. Clinton has said she is proud of the foundation’s work. Earlier this week, she called the book a distraction from real campaign issues.

Mr. Telfer, in an interview Wednesday, said he made the contributions not for the sake of the Clintons, but to support his longtime business partner, Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining executive and longtime Clinton friend who co-founded the program to spur development in poor countries.

“The donations started before there was any idea of this takeover,” Mr. Telfer said. “And I can’t imagine Hillary Clinton would have been aware of this donation to this growth initiative,” he added.

The Fernwood contributions don’t appear on the Clinton Foundation website, as was required under an agreement between the foundation and the Obama administration. A Clinton Foundation spokesman referred questions to the Clinton-Giustra program spokeswoman in Canada, who didn’t respond.

Under the terms of the sale, the company said it wouldn’t seek an export license to send uranium out of the country, and that executives at the U.S.-based unit would control the mine, according to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report. Uranium One, now a fully owned subsidiary of the Russian nuclear agency, owns a 300,000-acre mine in Wyoming and could produce up to half of the U.S. output of uranium this year. Some members of Congress at the time wrote to the committee calling on it to block the sale.

The Journal confirmed some other instances detailed in the book about Mrs. Clinton’s official activities and her family charity.

In June 2009, the Clinton Giustra initiative received two million shares in Polo Resources, POL 1.33 % a mining investment company headed by Stephen Dattels, a Canadian businessman, according to a Polo Resources news release. About two months later, the U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh pushed the energy adviser to that nation’s prime minister to allow “open pit mining,” including in Phulbari Mines, where Polo Resources has a stake, according to a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks. The company seeking to develop the mine is still waiting for government approval, according to the firm’s website.

It isn’t known whether the Clinton-Giustra program still owns the shares. Neither Mr. Dattels nor his foundation nor Polo Resources are listed as donors by the Clinton Foundation website. Mr. Dattels, who retired in 2013, and representatives for Polo Resources couldn’t be reached for comment.

Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, who heads a mobile-phone network provider called Digicel, won a $2.5 million award in 2011 from a program run by the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development to offer mobile money services in post-earthquake Haiti. The firm won subsequent awards. Funds for the awards were provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, while USAID administered the program, with a top Clinton aide directly overseeing earthquake aid.

Mr. O’Brien has given between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation since its launch. It is unclear whether Mr. O’Brien gave while Mrs. Clinton was at the State Department because of the way the foundation discloses its donations.

A USAID spokesman said the company met the criteria laid out in the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative. A spokesman for Mr. O’Brien said he couldn’t be reached and declined to comment. The Clinton campaign didn’t respond to request for comment on Polo Resources or Mr. O’Brien.

Write to Rebecca Ballhaus at [email protected] and Peter Nicholas at [email protected]

A Coming Showdown Europe vs. Russia?

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Ukraine is the gateway for energy pipelines feeding Europe with fuel sources controlled by Gazprom. Given the aggressive moves by Putin in Ukraine, the Baltic States and eventually the rest of Europe, it appears that Europe has found corruption.

European Commission – Fact Sheet

Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Gazprom – Factsheet

22 April 2015

The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections to Gazprom alleging that some of its business practices in Central and Eastern European gas supply segment the EU’s Single Market and constitute an abuse of its dominant market position in breach of EU antitrust rules.

Gazprom is the dominant gas supplier in a number of Central and Eastern European countries. It has a market share well above 50% and in some cases up to 100% in these markets. In light of its antitrust investigation, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom is hindering competition in the gas supply markets in eight Central and Eastern European Member States (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia).

 

The Commission’s preliminary conclusions in the Statement of Objections

On the basis of its investigation, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom is breaking EU antitrust rules by pursuing an overall strategy to partition Central and Eastern European gas markets with the aim of maintaining an unfair pricing policy in several of those Member States. Gazprom implements this strategy by:(i) hindering cross-border gas sales,(ii) charging unfair prices, and (iii) making gas supplies conditional on obtaining unrelated commitments from wholesalers concerning gas transport infrastructure.

1. Gazprom might be hindering cross-border gas sales

Gazprom has included a number of territorial restrictions in its supply agreements with wholesalers preventing the export of gas in eight EU Member States (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia). These clauses include:

  • export ban clauses – provisions that explicitly prohibit the export of gas;
  • destination clauses – provisions that stipulate that the customer (wholesaler or industrial customer) must use the purchased gas in its own country or can only sell it to certain customers within its country; and
  • other measures that prevent the cross-border flow of gas, such as requesting wholesalers to obtain Gazprom’s approval for exports or refusing to change the location to which the gas should be delivered under certain circumstances.

The Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom is using these territorial restrictions to prevent gas from flowing freely between and to the eight Central and Eastern European countries. As a result these Member States do not have access to imported gas at potentially more competitive prices.

Territorial restrictions have a negative impact on gas prices preventing cross-border flows of gas and leading to market partitioning. In particular, they hinder gas from flowing where it is most needed and where prices are commercially most attractive.

Wholesale gas prices across the Central and Eastern European Member States can differ significantly. If gas prices in one country are higher than in another, then the wholesaler in the low price Member State should be able to sell surplus gas that it does not need to meet its domestic consumption to a market where prices are higher. Territorial restrictions prevent such price arbitrage. As a result of these restrictions, wholesalers cannot compete with Gazprom, in other words, Russian gas cannot compete with Russian gas. This leads to higher prices and gas markets that are segmented along national borders.

The Commission has already made clear in past decisions that territorial restrictions and measures to partition the market are anticompetitive:

  • In 2004, the Commission adopted two decisions, regarding contracts concluded by GDF (Gaz de France) with Italian companies ENI and ENEL, confirming that territorial restriction clauses in the gas sector restrict competition. The territorial restriction clauses prohibited ENI and ENEL from selling in France the natural gas which GDF transported on their behalf. The clauses therefore prevented French consumers from obtaining their supplies from the two Italian operators and hindered competition in the market.
  • In 2009, the Commission fined EDF and E.ON under Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) not to sell gas transported over the MEGAL pipeline in each other’s home markets.

The Commission also has an ongoing antitrust case concerning territorial restrictions in the electricity sector in Bulgaria against Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH), which may have limited purchasers’ freedom to choose where to resell the electricity bought from BEH. The Commission sent a Statement of Objections to BEH in March 2015.

2. Gazprom’s alleged unfair pricing policy

The Commission’s investigation concerns the prices that Gazprom’s customers such as gas wholesalers and industrial customers pay for their gas. These wholesale prices play an important role in determining the prices for gas charged at retail level to households and businesses. They can also impact the prices of industrial goods for which energy costs are an important factor in the production costs.

Generally, Gazprom pegs the price of the natural gas it sells to a number of oil products (so-called “oil indexation”). The Commission is investigating whether, and to what extent, the individual price levels in a country are unfair and how Gazprom’s specific price formulae based on oil indexation have contributed to the unfairness. The Commission does not consider that indexing a product’s price to oil products or any other product is in itself illegal. It also does not take issue with the fact that gas prices are different in different countries. Competitive conditions may vary in Member States, such as the importance of gas as an energy source in a country’s “energy mix”.

In order to assess whether individual price levels in a country are unfair, the different Member State prices were compared to a number of different benchmarks, such as Gazprom’s costs, prices in different geographic markets or market prices. On the basis of this analysis, the Commission has come to the preliminary conclusion in its Statement of Objections that the specific price formulae, as applied in Gazprom’s contracts with its customers, have contributed to the unfairness of Gazprom’s prices: Gazprom’s specific price formulae which link the price of gas to the price of oil products seem to have largely favoured Gazprom over its customers.

The Commission’s preliminary conclusion, as outlined in the Statement of Objections, is that Gazprom has charged unfair prices in five Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland).

3. Concerns on gas transport infrastructure

The Commission has concerns that Gazprom leveraged its market dominance in Bulgaria and Poland by making gas supplies conditional upon obtaining certain infrastructure-related commitments from wholesalers.

In Bulgaria, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom made wholesale gas supplies conditional upon the participation of the Bulgarian gas incumbent wholesaler in a large-scale infrastructure project of Gazprom (the South Stream pipeline project) despite high costs and an uncertain economic outlook.

In Poland, the Commission’s preliminary view is that Gazprom made gas supplies conditional upon maintaining Gazprom’s control over investment decisions concerning one of Poland’s key transit pipelines (Yamal). This pipeline is one of the main infrastructures that could allow gas from suppliers – other than Gazprom – to enter the Polish market.

Procedural background on antitrust investigations

Article 102 TFEU prohibits the abuse of a dominant position which may affect trade and prevent or restrict competition. The implementation of these provisions is defined in the Antitrust Regulation (Council Regulation No 1/2003), which can be applied by the Commission and by the national competition authorities of EU Member States.

A Statement of Objections is a formal step in Commission investigations into suspected violations of EU antitrust rules. The Commission informs the parties concerned in writing of the objections raised against them. The addressees can examine the documents in the Commission’s investigation file, reply in writing and request an oral hearing to present their comments on the case before representatives of the Commission and national competition authorities. The Commission takes a final decision only after the parties have exercised their rights of defence.

There is no legal deadline for the Commission to complete antitrust inquiries into anticompetitive conduct. The duration of an antitrust investigation depends on a number of factors, including the complexity of the case, the extent to which the undertaking concerned cooperates with the Commission and the exercise of the rights of defence.

Obama Giving Allies Away, Putin Winning Them

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In Eastern Europe:

Hungary, a NATO member whose prime minister recently named Putin’s Russia as a political model to be emulated. Or NATO member Slovakia, whose leftist prime minister likened the possible deployment of NATO troops in his country to the Soviet invasion of 1968. Or NATO member Czech Republic, where the defense minister made a similar comparison and where the government joined Slovakia and Hungary in fighting the European Union’s sanctions against Russia. Or Serbia, a member of NATO’s “partnership for peace” that has invited Putin to visit Belgrade this month for a military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Red Army’s “liberation” of the city. Then there is Poland, which until recently was leading the effort within NATO and the European Union to support Ukraine’s beleaguered pro-Western government and punish Putin’s aggression. This month its new prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, ordered her new foreign minister to urgently revise its policy.

Russia recruits U.S. allies in Eastern Europe by raising doubts about security commitment

Russia is trying to slowly strip away U.S. allies in Eastern Europe by playing up fears that Washington will not come to their aid, as promised nearly a decade ago, because of a lack of foreign strategy and commitment to the region, analysts say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has authorized a string of provocative moves from the Arctic to the Black Sea in recent months in an attempt to intimidate NATO allies along the border for the old Soviet Union, including Hungary, Romania and Latvia, and boost allies of Moscow living in those countries.

Last year, a Russian-friendly party won the largest number of votes in Latvia’s parliamentary elections amid reports that a mayor of a city in eastern Latvia voiced concerns that activists were engaged in door-to-door campaigning in support of the communities’ secession from Latvia to join Russia.

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, who helped engineer his country’s successful application for membership in NATO in 1999, now seems to be cozying up to Russia by making large deals with Moscow and criticizing Western sanctions.

In November, Hungary authorized construction of the South Stream pipeline, a Russian-backed project that will bypass Ukraine to funnel natural gas exports to Europe and elsewhere, to the dismay of the European Union. Ukraine is engaged in a fierce political and military standoff with Russian-based separatists.

The fact that some countries along the tense border with Russia may be tempted to switch sides suggests a broader problem of a lack of trust in the U.S. commitment to protect them if they are attacked, said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

“Why don’t they feel that deterrent effect of America’s commitment to defend them?” he said. “They clearly don’t think that we are committed to that commitment. That’s really where the problem is. They’re doubting the American security commitment.”

NATO’s famous Article 5 declares that an attack against any of the 28 countries in the alliance will be considered an attack against all. As a result, countries that have signed the treaty must come to the defense of others that are threatened or attacked.

Mr. Rojansky likened the U.S. commitment to these countries to life insurance: A 25-year-old healthy person generally has no trouble getting a life insurance policy because the company knows it likely won’t have to pay up soon. A 67-year-old with a history of heart disease, however, could have trouble obtaining a policy and face high premiums.

Seven countries — including Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — became NATO members in 2004. Because the threat of a Russian attack wasn’t a serious consideration at that time, there was no lengthy debate on the wisdom of letting these Baltic states join, Mr. Rojansky said.

Now that Russia under Mr. Putin has taken a far more aggressive stance in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere, the situation has changed, he said.

“We’ve given them the policy coverage, but we gave it to them in a totally different circumstance, and that’s creating doubts on their part about if we’ll honor the policy,” Mr. Rojansky said.

Saber-rattling

Both sides have engaged in saber-rattling in recent weeks, leading to talks on both sides of the European divide of a potential new cold war.

Russian fighter jets have grown increasingly brazen in challenging U.S. and allied surveillance flights, and Sweden this fall scrambled ships and helicopters to track a Russian submarine that was believed to have surreptitiously entered Swedish waters. Planes from Russia’s Northern Fleet this week have begun anti-ship exercises in the Barents Sea.

Pentagon officials said Thursday that they were asking Russia to investigate an incident in early April in which a Russian fighter jet intercepted a U.S. reconnaissance plane in international airspace north of Russia and conducted multiple “unprofessional and reckless and foolish” maneuvers in proximity to the American plane.

Analysts in Moscow say the West has been just as provocative, with the U.S. holding joint exercises with Ukraine’s military, accelerating talks with Poland on a state-of-the-art missile defense system, staging a high-profile military convoy trip through six Eastern European nations, and deploying 12 A-10 Warthog planes to Romania as part of a theater-security effort to counter Russian moves in the region.

“The unit will conduct training alongside our NATO allies to strengthen interoperability and demonstrate U.S. commitment to the security and stability of Europe,” Pentagon spokesman James Brindle said this month in a statement about the action to Military.com.

Pentagon officials told the website that the deployment of the A-10s was part of NATO’s Operation Atlantic Resolve. The mission objective is, in part, to send a message to Russia about the U.S. commitment to NATO allies.

“Operation Atlantic Resolve will remain in place as long as the need exists to reassure our allies and deter Russia from regional hegemony,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. James Brindle said.

Pentagon officials strongly contested criticism that the Obama administration was having second thoughts about fulfilling the U.S. commitment to its allies in Eastern Europe now that Russia poses a significant threat.

“The U.S. thoroughly considered all aspects associated with establishing and joining NATO,” the official said. “The principles contained in opening paragraphs of the Washington Treaty remain as relevant today as they were 66 years ago.”

The U.S. needs to do more to reassure NATO allies of its commitment, including permanently basing troops in Eastern Europe, as well as more frequent and larger-scale deployments, said Boris Zilberman, deputy director of congressional relations at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

The ultimate goal, he said, is to ensure that countries that have been allies remain on the side of the U.S.

At the same time, the U.S. must walk a fine line by increasing its presence enough to reassert its commitment to allies but not so much so as to give Mr. Putin political ammunition to escalate Russian aggression, Mr. Zilberman said.

“How much do we want to mirror image what they’re doing and give Putin a reason to keep doing it?” he said.

The U.S. is deploying small groups of service members to conduct drills in Baltic partner countries and has imposed sanctions on Russia, a policy that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said is working.

“My observation is that this is having a real effect on the Russian economy and at some point the Russian people are going to ask themselves whether these kinds of adventures are worth the price,” Mr. Carter told reporters in a briefing Thursday.

 

 

 

 

Clinton Foundation(s) Collusion

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From their website:

Creating Partnerships of Purpose We convene businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity for women and girls, reduce childhood obesity

New Book, ‘Clinton Cash,’ Questions Foreign Donations to Foundation

The book does not hit shelves until May 5, but already the Republican Rand Paul has called its findings “big news” that will “shock people” and make voters “question” the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer — a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.

The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return.

“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Mr. Schweizer writes.

His examples include a free-trade agreement in Colombia that benefited a major foundation donor’s natural resource investments in the South American nation, development projects in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake in 2010, and more than $1 million in payments to Mr. Clinton by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the time the project was being debated in the State Department.

In the long lead up to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign announcement, aides proved adept in swatting down critical books as conservative propaganda, including Edward Klein’s “Blood Feud,” about tensions between the Clintons and the Obamas, and Daniel Halper’s “Clinton Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.”

But “Clinton Cash” is potentially more unsettling, both because of its focused reporting and because major news organizations including The Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have exclusive agreements with the author  to pursue the story lines found in the book.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which includes Mr. Paul and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have been briefed on the book’s findings, and its contents have already made their way into several of the Republican presidential candidates’ campaigns.

Conservative “super PACs” plan to seize on “Clinton Cash,” and a pro-Democrat super PAC has already assembled a dossier on Mr. Schweizer, a speechwriting consultant to former President George W. Bush and a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution who has contributed to the conservative website Breitbart.com, to make the case that he has a bias against Mrs. Clinton.

And the newly assembled Clinton campaign team is planning a full-court press to diminish the book as yet another conservative hit job.

A campaign spokesman, Brian Fallon, called the book part of the Republicans’ coordinated attack strategy on Mrs. Clinton “twisting previously known facts into absurd conspiracy theories,” and he said “it will not be the first work of partisan-fueled fiction about the Clintons’ record, and we know it will not be the last.”

The timing is problematic for Mrs. Clinton as she begins a campaign to position herself as a “champion for everyday Americans.”

From 2001 to 2012, the Clintons’ income was at least $136.5 million, Mr. Schweizer writes, using a figure previously reported in The Post. “During Hillary’s years of public service, the Clintons have conducted or facilitated hundreds of large transactions” with foreign governments and individuals, he writes. “Some of these transactions have put millions in their own pockets.”

The Clinton Foundation has come under scrutiny for accepting foreign donations while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state. Last week, the foundation revised its policy to allow donations from countries like Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Britain but prohibit giving by other nations in the Middle East.

Mr. Schweizer’s book will be released the same day former President Bill Clinton and the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, will host the Clinton Global Initiative gathering with donors in Morocco, the culmination of a foundation trip to several African nations. (A chapter in the book is titled “Warlord Economics: The Clintons Do Africa.”)

There is a robust market for books critical of the Clintons. The thinly sourced “Blood Feud,” by Mr. Klein, at one point overtook Mrs. Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices” on the best-seller list.

But whether Mr. Schweizer’s book can deliver the same sales is not clear. He writes mainly in the voice of a neutral journalist and meticulously documents his sources, including tax records and government documents, while leaving little doubt about his view of the Clintons.

His reporting largely focuses on payments made to Mr. Clinton for speeches, which increased while his wife served as secretary of state, writing that “of the 13 Clinton speeches that fetched $500,000 or more, only two occurred during the years his wife was not secretary of state.”

In 2011, Mr. Clinton made $13.3 million in speaking fees for 54 speeches, the majority of which were made overseas, the author writes.

*** Now the questions that need to be asked include what policies did the State Department, the NSC and the White House take covertly with regard to diplomacy and those affects on strategies.