On January 19, the Clinton White House was in chaos. Clinton, loath to leave, had not slept in days, and his primary concern was working out a deal with the independent counsel’s office to stave off an indictment over his perjured testimony in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Although Podesta and Nolan and Lindsey all later testified to Congress that they had opposed the Rich pardon, they certainly did not argue against it vigorously after the president received a final call from Barak, which Clinton belatedly spun as a deciding factor. Meanwhile, when the pardon attorney Roger Adams called the White House counsel’s office, who should answer the phone and begin discussing pardon issues but ex-staffer Cheryl Mills, who had been invited there by Lindsey and who also attended a final Oval Office meeting on the disposition of the Rich pardon.

Late that night the White House heard from Justice, following an F.B.I. criminal-record check, that there might be a problem for Rich with arms dealing. Once again the president turned to Quinn, who denied it. Clinton simply said, “Take Jack’s word.”

In congressional hearings, members queried Quinn about his representation of Rich to his old boss the president in a case which ultimately made the president look bad. Shouldn’t Quinn have been more loyal? And wasn’t Quinn stretching a “revolving-door” rule that he had helped write which barred former presidential-staff members from lobbying the White House for five years? Quinn, when pressed on this question, countered that he didn’t believe he was violating his own rule—there was an exception for “criminal proceedings.” Martin Auerbach, who prosecuted the Rich case in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, recognized the classic Marc Rich strategy: “An important piece of Rich’s success comes from information arbitrage—knowing something the guy across the table doesn’t know and getting the guy to betray his primary allegiance. In this case he gets Quinn to push the definition of lobbying, because it’s in Marc’s best interests instead of the president’s best interests, with a package giving only one side of the story. And he’s able to time it so precisely that it can’t be checked. What Marc Rich finally figured out is, if you attack the pardon process the same way you attack your business, you will achieve the same result.” Morris Weinberg adds, “It’s really why [Rich and Green] ran—because they thought money would always resolve everything. Now, 20 years later, it appears they’re right.”

Denise Rich at first appeared to deny any knowledge of the pardon, but then reversed herself. Jack Quinn wasted no time in telling the press that his now former friend Eric Holder had known all about the pardon, and Holder’s weak testimony before Congress has dimmed his shining career. Like a deadly virus escaping from a broken vial, the Rich pardon infected everyone who touched it.

After Barak lost the election, the Pollard forces were furious. “I am disgusted,” Esther Pollard, Jonathan’s wife, told Kreitman in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot. “Ehud Barak took an active role running Jonathan as a spy when he was head of Israel’s military intelligence.” Pollard’s sister, Carol, tells me, “I wouldn’t even want to be associated with that pardon list.” Carol Pollard says she was solicited for a million dollars for a pardon for her brother—“no guarantees.” “Nobody in Israel cares about an American tax cheat—nobody,” says Zev Chafets, an Israeli columnist for the New York Daily News. “Those people prostituted themselves.… Why in the world would anyone do anything for him except for money?”

Denise Rich will never be free of being known as the ex-wife of an infamous fugitive, and her usefulness as a Democratic donor and fund-raiser is probably over. Beth Dozoretz is leaving Democratic fund-raising altogether. The State Department has not accepted Marc Rich’s renunciation of his citizenship, so he faces serious tax investigations by the state of New York and the I.R.S. for the last 17 years—a sum that could run to hundreds of millions of dollars—should he ever set foot on U.S. soil again. He will also probably have to litigate the issue of his citizenship. Leading Democrats are outraged that Jack Quinn, who has said he got only $330,000 for his efforts, has put the party and President Clinton in such a compromised position. As for the Clintons, their stock has plummeted. The Rich and other controversial pardons not only raised the specter of new investigations for them but also ruined Hillary Clinton’s Senate debut and any chance she may have had to run for president in 2004.

Whether conduits, conspiracies, or quid pro quos will ever be nailed down is doubtful. Marc Rich is far too shrewd ever to have left a real money trail, and bribery is hard to prove. Therefore, while President Clinton’s reasons for the pardon appear indefensible, perhaps one of his closest advisers came near the truth when he told me, “He did it for Denise.”

Maureen Orth is a Vanity Fair special correspondent and National Magazine Award winner.