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washingtonpost.com: Campaign Finance Special Report Politics Section Special Reports To Loral's Schwartz, Donations Are About Fun, Not Favors By John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 18, 1997; Page D01 When aerospace executive Bernard Schwartz got phone calls from Democratic National Committee Co-Chairman Donald Fowler, he usually opened his checkbook, Schwartz said. The $600,000 that Schwartz gave various Democratic fund-raising committees in 1995 and 1996 made him one of the party's biggest donors. Schwartz, chief executive of Loral Space & Communications Ltd., said he has never asked for a favor in return, or received one. The numerous Pentagon contracts and favorable decisions he has received from the Clinton administration, including its antitrust approval of Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp.'s $9 billion purchase of his Loral Corp. last year, would have been rendered without the donations, he said. Schwartz said he would never ask President Clinton for favors. "It would be inappropriate for me," he said, "and embarrassing for him." Rather, he said he contributed to the Democrats because he agrees with their ideas. He said he enjoys discussing his proposals for infrastructure investment with Clinton, and derives "psychic income" from donating his money. One aerospace industry official agreed, saying the Manhattan-based Schwartz "gives money the way Barbra Streisand does. It's the groupie syndrome. He's not in our [industry] club, but in their [New York liberal] club." But some critics recently have cited Schwartz as an example of Washington's money-swollen politics. When a business executive donates such large sums, and receives favorable decisions from the government, such as the Loral merger approval, it demeans government, they said. "The question is: When government decisions are made [favoring a campaign donor], was the public or private interest served?" said Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity in D.C., which monitors political ethics issues. "Did someone grease the skids? If you have doubts, you doubt government itself, and that's bad." There's no doubt Schwartz and the Clinton White House are fond of each other. In 1994, then-White House official Harold Ickes wrote a memo to Clinton, saying the Democrats needed $3 million to mount a TV ad campaign. He asked Clinton to call Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), lawyer and Clinton friend Vernon Jordan and Schwartz, and to ask each in turn to raise money from 10 executives. "I have it on very good authority that Mr. Schwartz is prepared to do anything he can for the administration," Ickes wrote in a memo given to congressional investigators. The White House, Rockefeller and Schwartz all say Clinton never made the calls. Jordan did not return calls seeking comment. Meanwhile, executives of Motorola Inc. and its Iridium satellite communications project have grumbled about Schwartz's connections since 1994. That's when he went on a trade trip to China with then-Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who set up a meeting between Schwartz and a top Chinese telecommunications official. The meeting helped Schwartz push his own satellite venture, which competes with Iridium. Motorola officials weren't invited on the trip, although the company's Iridium project also is proceeding nicely in China. Schwartz said Brown was "even-handed" by also helping TRW Inc. chief executive Joseph Gorman -- a Republican whose firm backs yet another competing satellite network -- attend the same meeting with Chinese officials. Another episode demonstrates some federal officials' wariness over Schwartz's access. The incident recently became known with the public release of the work diaries of William Ginsberg, who was chief of staff to Brown, who died in a plane crash last year. Congress subpoenaed the diaries in its probe of Democratic fund-raising. Some 1995 diary entries refer to Loral's purchase that year of Unisys Corp.'s defense division. The Unisys unit had been working for years on a Commerce Department contract to computerize weather radars. Before Loral bought Unisys, the contract was ensnared in cost overruns, federal audits and years of litigation. One 1995 entry said Frank DeGeorge, Commerce's inspector general, was "concerned that Bernie Schwartz . . . [was] trying to meet with Sec, DepSec, COS [chief of staff], etc." about the contract. Another said, "key: not to talk to Loral (Bernard Schwartz) re this." A source familiar with the diary said the excerpt referred to times that DeGeorge, knowing Schwartz was a contributor who might meet with Brown, warned that Brown should not respond if Schwartz brought up the troubled contract. Asked last week about the entries, Loral officials said Schwartz never met with Brown in 1995, and "never sought a meeting with Brown, other Commerce officials or anyone else in government" on the contract, which is no longer in trouble. Schwartz said critics are too cynical of his motives, and cannot know his mind. A loner among aerospace moguls, Schwartz relishes his role as the industry's only Democratic, liberal, Brooklynite, non-engineer CEO. Industry executives who know Schwartz say that, in his quirky way, he views requesting political favors as crass. "It's totally implausible" that Schwartz would lobby the White House for favors, said one, who added, "he doesn't want to be thought of as a narrow marketer." A lifelong Democrat, Schwartz said his grandfather, a Tammany Hall functionary in New York around 1900, died after catching pneumonia while campaigning for Democrats, and for decades, his grandmother received a turkey at Christmastime. "It left an impression that my family was connected to somebody who cares," he said, and helped shape his belief that campaign gifts are "an obligation of citizenship." Schwartz recalled that, in the early 1970s, he frequently argued against the Vietnam War with generals who then awarded contracts to his firm. "Americans can sleep well knowing . . . 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