Hillary and Obama in Spat Over New York Times Column

It all started with a pardon. In 2001, near the end of President Bill Clinton's term in office, Marc Rich - an American expatriate who fled the United States in 1983. He located in Switzerland, after having left the United States while under indictment on charges of tax evasion and under suspicion of having made oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis.

President Clinton gave Marc Rich his presidential pardon, which forced Rich to pay 100 million dollars in fines.

This angered longtime Clinton fundraiser David Geffen (who along with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg formed Dreamworks), who had been pleading with President Clinton to give a similar pardon to Leonard Peltier.

This slight, apparently, led directly to Geffen's recent quotes in an interview that was published recently in a Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times.

"Marc Rich getting pardoned? An oil-profiteer expatriate who left the country rather than pay taxes or face justice?" Mr. Geffen says. "Yet another time when the Clintons were unwilling to stand for the things that they genuinely believe in. Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it's troubling."

Mr. Geffen also discussed the candidate he is currently raising funds for - Barack Obama. "Obama is inspirational," he said. "And he's not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family."

In response, Hillary Clinton's spokesman Howard Wolfson released a statement: "While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband." The statement also included the demand that Senator Obama "should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money."