The New American * February 3, 1997
by William Norman GriggWhen news of the Wang Jun scandal broke in December, observers of the Clinton circus felt an immediate sense of deja vu. Wang was not the first communist arms dealer to have been given a private audience with President Clinton. That distinction may belong to Grigori Loutchansky, a Latvian-born Israeli citizen who was referred to by Time magazine as "the most pernicious unindicted criminal in the world." Loutchansky is the head of Nordex, a Vienna-based company that, according to the German intelligence agency BND, was created in 1989 as a hard currency source for the KGB; the conglomerate has an annual income of over $2 billion.
According to former CIA director John Deutch, Nordex is an "organization associated with Russian criminal activity." Loutchansky himself has been the subject of intense scrutiny by Interpol, Britain's MI6, Israeli law enforcement agencies, and German intelligence, and he was banned from traveling to Canada after failing a background check in 1994. Yet he was photographed at a White House fund-raising dinner with Bill Clinton in October 1993 - at a time when the National Security Agency had uncovered evidence that Nordex may have been involved in nuclear smuggling.
KGB Dinner GuestAccording to Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe, Loutchansky attended the dinner "as a guest of a man from New York called Sam Domb." Domb, a real estate figure who has been a major political fund-raiser, has donated to both parties. During the year following Loutchansky's dinner with Mr. Clinton, Domb donated $160,000 to the DNC; since 1995 he has given only $5,000. Loutchansky was invited to a second DNC fundraising dinner in July 1995, but according to Tobe the invitation was withdrawn following a DNC background check.
Apparently, the DNC's screening procedures are more vigorous than those employed by the White House. According to Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), the former general head of the DNC, "You don't do a full field investigation on everyone that sends in a contribution or that's invited to the White House." But Loutchansky was no mere dinner guest: According to the November 3, 1996 London Sunday Times, "Clinton used their meeting in October 1993 to discuss problems involved in making Ukraine a nuclear-free state. He asked Loutchansky, a Latvian, to act as an intermediary in discussions between America and Ukraine." Is it standard practice in the Clinton White House to discuss matters of nuclear diplomacy with unvetted East European businessmen - including an individual regarded by nearly every significant intelligence and law enforcement agency in the West as a KGB-trained mobster?
Despite the obvious implications of this matter to national security, the Clinton Administration has refused to provide a detailed accounting of its contacts with Loutchansky. In a December 12, 1996 letter to President Clinton, House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon (R-NY) requested that the President provide "all correspondence and records of meetings you had with Grigori Loutchansky, president of Nordex, and with his friend Sam Domb.... Public accounts have placed both you, Mr. President, and Vice President Gore with both Mr. Loutchansky and Mr. Domb at least once." To date, this request has been ignored.