Rwanda Aid Shows Reach and
Limits of Clinton Foundation
In addition to doing good deeds, the foundation enhances the Clinton brand,
never more so than while Hillary Rodham Clinton is running for president.
By KEVIN SACK and SHERI FINKOCT. 18, 2015
https:// www.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/us/politics/rwanda-bill-hillary-clinton-foundation.html
In 2011, for instance, when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, leaders of the foundation’s health care arm lobbied her department to shift American aid dollars away from H.I.V. programs in Rwanda in order to fund a training program for health professionals that the foundation helped design. The proposed reallocation, a heavy bureaucratic lift in Washington, was approved over the objection of some State Department technical experts as well as foreign aid contractors that stood to lose money.
Mrs. Clinton had pledged to recuse herself if the Clinton Foundation ever had business before her department, and she steered clear of direct decision making. But mediating the dispute was her chief of staff, Cheryl D. Mills, a longtime counselor to both Clintons who had served for five years on the Clinton Foundation board before going to the State Department. Furthermore, the department’s top AIDS official said he had kept Mrs. Clinton apprised of the proposal and sought and received her backing before approving his portion of the deal. She then signed the overall budget that shifted the money.
Mr. Clinton hailed the victory when he came to Kigali in 2012 to inaugurate the program.
“The government of Rwanda had to convince some of the largest donors, especially the U.S. government, to support the plan,” he said. “They actually offered, the government of Rwanda did, to give up funding for some existing programs so that the money could be redirected.” He then pointedly thanked the State Department, which, he noted, “I happen to think is very well led.”
It is natural to view the Clinton Foundation’s work here as an outgrowth of Mr. Clinton’s deep regret that the United States stood on the sidelines in 1994, when he was president, as Hutu extremists slaughtered an estimated 500,000 to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Mr. Kagame led the invading force of Tutsi exiles that quelled the massacre after 100 days, and he has been the country’s leader ever since. Mr. Clinton met him in 1998 when the American president came to Kigali to apologize that the international community “did not act quickly enough after the killing began.”
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