For Clinton, New Wealth In Speeches

Two-thirds of the former president's speaking money has come from foreign sources. Outside the United States, clients are willing to pay more to hear him speak, Clinton is able to conduct his charitable work on AIDS, and he can avoid upstaging his wife on the American political scene, associates say.

Foreign clients have included Saudi Arabia's Dabbagh investment firm, which paid $600,000 for two speeches, and China's JingJi Real Estate Development Group, run by a local Communist Party official, which paid $200,000 for a speech. The Mito City Political Research Group, a Japanese political studies center, paid Clinton $400,000 for a 2002 speech about politics.

Besides Goldman Sachs, the two firms that have paid Clinton the most over the past six years are foreign-based. Gold Services International, an event organizer based in Bogota, Colombia, brought Clinton to Latin America in the summer of 2005 for $800,000 in speaking fees. The Power Within, a motivational-speech company in Toronto, paid Clinton $650,000 for speeches in Canada in 2005 and brought him back for an undisclosed sum in 2006. The company was founded by Salim Khoja, a Kenyan immigrant who years earlier was convicted of stock fraud and was barred for life from the brokerage business.

Speaking for Charity

The nearly $40 million total is based on Hillary Clinton's annual ethics report to Congress, which showed that her husband made more than $30 million from speeches from 2001 to 2005. Under Senate ethics rules, she does not have to disclose 2006 fees until mid-May, and the estimate for that year's totals is based on interviews with speech organizers, who confirmed an additional $9 million to $10 million in fees.

Beyond the millions he has earned personally, the former president has given dozens more speeches that result in payments to the William J. Clinton Foundation, his nonprofit charity in New York. His associates say those have yielded millions to help cover the $60 million annual budget the foundation spends to fund his charitable work on AIDS and world hunger.

The Clintons declined to disclose the size and sources of the payments for speeches he delivered on behalf of the charity. Campaign law and Senate ethics rules require Hillary Clinton to disclose only the fees her husband has taken as personal income, not those he routed to charity.

The former president declined repeated requests to discuss his speeches or the income he earns from them. "The reason that he picked paid speeches is that it is an efficient way for him to make a living for his family and allow him a lot of time to do charitable work, which is his passion," said Carson, his spokesman.

Carson said Clinton's staff constructs his schedule to pack as much charitable work as possible -- along with political events helpful to Democrats -- around his for-profit speaking career.

"We take a look at the schedule and say, 'All right, he has to be in this place for that paid speech. There are these three or four great things we've been meaning to do in this place. Let's do them,' " Carson said.

Last June, for example, Clinton booked a speech in Denver before the National Apartment Association, the industry group for landlords, which earned him $150,000.

When his office heard that funds were lagging for a nearby memorial to victims of the Columbine High School massacre, he volunteered to be the keynote speaker at the groundbreaking ceremony -- at no charge -- and instantly boosted fundraising. On the dais that day, when told the project was still short of its goal, he pledged $50,000 that could be matched by a local company. On the same trip, he addressed a politically important group of school principals.

Likewise, in February 2006, Clinton headed to Asia for charitable work to help tsunami and AIDS victims. At the last minute, the State Department asked him to squeeze in a visit to Pakistan, helping ease tensions among Muslims angered by political cartoons they considered insulting. He then tacked on three days of paid engagements in Australia and New Zealand that earned him about $750,000.