Clinton also at the same time travelled with top Enron executives to countries like Russia. Another thing that makes you wonder...…..
I am going to need a citation on that one. Enron CEO Ken Lay was a big friend of Chaney, who was having meetings with him in the White House after the election (Read the book "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"). Enron and Dynegy were not big fans of Bill's, and they both wer big backers of the Bush-Chaney ticket. WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers (or as I referred to him in meetings at the time, "Uncle Bernie") was a Clinton guy, but never traveled to Russia.
N JULY 5, 1995, Enron Corporation donated $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Six days later, Enron executives were on a trade mission with Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor to Bosnia and Croatia. With Kantor's support, Enron signed a $100 million contract to build a 150-megawatt power plant. Enron, then a growing giant in energy trading, practically had a reserved seat on Clinton administration trade junkets. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who egregiously linked political donations to government assistance, accompanied Enron chairman Ken Lay on a mission to India. Enron president Joseph Sutton was on the trip to Bosnia during which Brown lost his life in a plane crash (Sutton was not on Brown's plane at the time). After Brown's death, Enron's Terence Thorn, a $1,000 donor to the Clinton-Gore campaign, traveled with Commerce Secretary William Daley to South Africa. Ken Lay also traveled with Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary on her trade trips. There were other contacts between Enron and the Clinton administration. Ken Lay was a close friend of Mack McLarty, Clinton's first chief of staff. In his 1993 disclosure statement, Robert Rubin listed Enron as one of the firms with which he had had "significant contact" while at Goldman Sachs. Enron was represented by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, the firm where Clinton advisers Robert Strauss and Vernon Jordan worked. And Enron benefited from its government contacts during the Clinton years. After Lay's trip to India with Ron Brown, Enron received nearly $400 million in U.S. government assistance so that it could build a power plant south of Bombay. According to reports in the Houston Chronicle at the time, the Export-Import Bank kicked in $298 million, while another federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, put up $100 million. In February 1995, David Sanger of the New York Times wrote a fascinating insider account of how the deal had been consummated. Enron had been the lead bidder to build the new power plant. Jeff Garten, then undersecretary of commerce for international trade, created what he called "our economic war room" to push the American firm's interests. The State and Energy departments were enlisted to press Enron's case. According to Sanger, the U.S. ambassador to India, Frank Wisner, "constantly cajoled Indian officials." The CIA performed some risk analysis and investigated rival British companies. Clinton himself was involved in starting the India effort for Enron. According to Michael Weisskopf of Time, Clinton scrawled a note to McLarty telling him to help with the project. Support for the Bombay power plant was just a small part of the help Enron received from the Clinton administration. All told, Enron received over $4 billion from OPIC and the Export-Import Bank for projects in Turkey, Bolivia, China, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Under Clinton, the Commerce Department was proud that it was finally using the might of the U.S. government to assist favored firms. But the enterprise was plagued by constant criticism that somehow it always seemed to be big political donors that got most of the help. According to the Boston Globe, all but three of the recipients of OPIC aid during Brown's tenure were substantial Democratic donors. According to a study by the Center for Public Integrity, Enron, U.S. West, GTE, McDonnell Douglas, and Fluor donated a combined $563,000 to the Democratic party during 1993 and 1994 and received $2.6 billion in foreign contracts secured with government help. The Globe found that during the first Clinton term, 27 firms had donated $2.3 million to the Democrats and received nearly $5.5 billion in federal support. All of this is not to deny that Enron was primarily a Republican donor. Nor is it to minimize the connections between Enron and the Bush administration. Rather, the connections between the Clintonites and Enron remind us that the scandal is not the donations. The scandal is what gets done by federal officials in return for the donations.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/david-brooks/enron-and-the-clintonites-2065