 Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown, noted that a key strategy of "BCCI's successful secret acquisitions of U.S. banks in the face of regulatory suspicion was its aggressive use of a series of prominent Americans", Clifford among them.Clifford, who prided himself on decades of meticulously ethical conduct, summed his predicament up when he sadly told a reporter from "The New York Times", "I have a choice of either seeming stupid or venal.