Pardons with a Precedent

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By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 26, 2001; Page C01

A lame-duck president grants a slew of controversial pardons, eleventh-hour Get Out of Jail Free cards for the politically well-connected.

His pardon list includes: A former Cabinet official who could have been in a position to implicate the president himself in federal crimes. An assistant secretary of state who withheld information from Congress and a CIA official who lied to it. And a Pakistani who was caught smuggling $1.5 million worth of heroin into the United States and had 47 years left on his sentence.

Outrage billows. Editorials thunder. "The pardon," says a prominent prosecutor, "undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office . . . without consequences."

The president in question was George H. W. Bush.

On Christmas Eve 1992, Bush pardoned former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger, who had just been indicted for his role in the Iran-contra scandal, a conspiracy to sell arms illegally to Iran to free hostages and raise money for the Nicaraguan contras. He also pardoned former assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams, Alan Fiers of the CIA and three others, all implicated in the Iran-contra scandal.

The firestorm is echoed by today's outcry over President Clinton's decision to pardon Marc Rich, a fugitive financier. Except that the stakes in the Iran-contra pardons arguably were higher.

"It went way beyond what is alleged in the Marc Rich case," says Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archives at George Washington University. "Both presidents made the highly unusual move of pardoning someone before trial. The difference is that George Bush was in line to be called as a witness at Weinberger's trial."

The storm enveloping Clinton's pardons has obscured two central facts: Presidential pardons often outrage Congress and the nation. And the power to pardon felons and commute sentences is a singular and most unusual instrument of state.

Few democratic heads of state possess such power. Indeed, few kings of England boasted such a broad and unchallenged writ. "The king at least had common-law limitations on his power," says P.S. Ruckman Jr., an assistant political science professor at Rock Valley College in Illinois, who has studied the presidential pardon power.

In its absolute power, the pardon offers a terrific window into the moral universe of a particular president. In the end, he is constrained only by his own sense of what is right.

For this reason, presidents often try to explain their reasoning. Bush portrayed himself as a healer, trying to save Weinberger, "a true American patriot," the humiliation of trial and possible conviction for knowingly violating the nation's laws. (Bush never explained his pardon of the Pakistani heroin dealer, a move opposed by federal prosecutors.) And Clinton has framed his pardon of Rich, who was accused of repeatedly violating federal laws and trade embargoes, as a matter of state diplomacy and personal compassion.

"You are always dealing with the peculiar sensibility of a given president," says Boston University historian Robert Dallek. "An act of compassion is cause enough for some presidents."

It has been so from the beginning of the republic.

President Washington on his final day in office pardoned David Blair, a rum smuggler. His reasons are not clear, though word filtered up through history that Blair's rum slid smoothly down the gullets of prominent drinkers.

John Adams took office next, and soon hurled many opponents into prison under the Alien and Sedition Laws. Then he sought to boost his reelection chances by pardoning them, an offer the prisoners couldn't refuse.

Adams's successor, Thomas Jefferson, wielded his pardon powers no less erratically, even trying to compel testimony in Aaron Burr's treason trial by preemptively pardoning a potential key witness. The intrusion nettled the jury, and Burr was acquitted.

James Madison pardoned a slave trader and pirate. And, according to the online resource LexisOne, Abraham Lincoln was so fond of pardons that Sen. Elihu Root wrote: "Secretary [of War] Stanton used to get out of patience with Lincoln because he was all the time pardoning men who ought to be shot."

Andrew Johnson pardoned Jefferson Davis, only to hear Davis repeatedly proclaim himself an unrepentant Confederate. Woodrow Wilson had some clamorous suffragists arrested outside the White House, a move that created so much sympathy for their cause that he later pardoned them.

Warren Harding pardoned Socialist Eugene Debs, convicted of sedition for criticizing the government during World War I, so he could go home for Christmas; the two men are reported to have later shared a few glasses of whiskey.

And Calvin Coolidge found himself involved in a strange case a few years later. A convicted bank robber, in Prof. Ruckman's telling, escaped from federal prison and killed a police officer in Connecticut. The state sought to execute him, but the killer claimed this violated his constitutional rights and demanded to first serve out his 25-year federal term. So Coolidge commuted the prisoner's federal sentence and Connecticut hanged him.

Presidents often attempt to set conditions on their pardons. Black nationalist Marcus Garvey was pardoned on condition that he leave the country. Another felon was pardoned providing he not carry a gun. Another agreed to give up drinking. William Howard Taft pardoned two prisoners after being advised that they were near death, only to watch one former felon live merrily on.

Six presidents pardoned felons who had attempted to assassinate one of their predecessors.

"If you said that some men could shoot up Congress with machine guns and that a later president would free them, most people would think you're crazy," says Ruckman. "But that's what Jimmy Carter did with the Puerto Rican nationalists who once assaulted Congress."

Perhaps the only certainty is that the pardon -- which substitutes one man's judgment for that of prosecutor, judge and jury -- will remain controversial. In the case of Iran-contra, Bush's pardons left stillborn a large and long investigation into an international conspiracy to subvert American laws. But the Democratic-controlled Congress decided not to investigate.

Republicans and some Democrats rumble louder today. Some vow to haul Clinton before Congress and force him to explain his pardons. Ruckman is not terribly impressed by the threat.

"Let's say you put him on the stand, and Clinton says, 'Well, I saw some overzealous prosecutions and I know what that's like so I pardoned them,' " Ruckman says. "Well, unless you can prove a bribe, guess what?

"Game's over."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company




-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 02, 2001

Answers

Cherri you are the dumbest cut and paste queen in the world! Go back to school, you idiot!!!



-- (cherri@is queen.of the idiots), March 02, 2001.


Truth hurts doesn't it?

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 02, 2001.

Cherri, why all the emphasis on personalities. Let's talk policy - like how can we get from "more government" to "less government"?

-- soap operas are us (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), March 02, 2001.

The only answer is to indict all former Presidents who have ever pardoned anyone, and investigate all pardons for political skeletons, Right, Cherri? Surely you wouldn't want those terrible pardons of Bush's to go uninvestigated, right? You must either object to the pardons of both Presidents, or to neither. If you object to the pardons of only one, then you (the impersonal "you") are a hypocrite.

The key fact that Cherri overlooks is that the filthy acts of President Bush in no way mitigate or invalidate the filthy acts of President Clinton. If Bush didn't get indicted or investigated, the Dems have only themselves to blame for it. But using Bush's acts as a defense now rings hollow and false. If the GOPs are now more assiduous in going after Clinton, that's too bad for the Dems. They had their chance eight years ago.

All that being said, though, I'd certainly like to know if President Bush, Sr. is as much of a dirtbag as the article suggests.

-- Why Cherri Can't Read (flip.flop@fly.com), March 02, 2001.


Bush cleared the pardons with the (Dem) leader in the House and the (Dem) head of the Armed Forces committee in Congress.

Weinberger had been previously indicted. The indictment was thrown out. He was then reindicted on election eve by Walsh. (Shades of Ken Star!)

The indictment was for "witholding records" from Congress. These records were notes that had been donated by Weinberger to a library that held his papers. Weinberger was against Iran-Contra.

So he was reindicted on an indictment that had been previously thrown out for witholding records that were in the public domain on the eve of an election. No politics there!

The pardon was cleared with the Dem party leaders by Bush. If either had opposed it he wouldn't have done it. Neither did.

Somewhat different then Bill

-- Get your facts straight. (Don't bother@contactme.com), March 02, 2001.



Questionable pardons are a dime a dozen but when you skirt the justice department you invite scrutiny. Bill doesn't mind, you don't mind and I just don't give a shit anymore.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), March 03, 2001.

All that being said, though, I'd certainly like to know if President Bush, Sr. is as much of a dirtbag as the article suggests.

Excerpts from the final report of the independent counsel for the Iran-contra affair, Lawrence E. Walsh, including rebuttals: Executive Summary
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-transcript.html

This January 19, 1994 article in the NewYorkTimes on the final report on the Iran-contra affair should interest you also

Walsh Criticizes Reagan and Bush Over Iran-Contra By DAVID JOHNSTON

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-report.html

**SNIP**
Mr. Walsh's report presented few fresh facts; he had disclosed most of his evidence in past legal battles. But he spun a web of documentary evidence and testimony from witnesses to support his view that At a news conference today, Mr. Walsh said a cover-up had kept significant information out of the hands of the Congressional investigators in 1987. He suggested that if Congress had gained access to the evidence he subsequently uncovered, Mr. Reagan's impeachment "certainly should have been considered."

As Mr. Walsh persevered on a trail that seemed to be growing cold, Republicans in Congress increasingly pressed him to step down and Mr. Walsh himself became an issue.

In his defense, Mr. Walsh said today that he could not turn away from evidence of wrongdoing in the face of "extraordinary difficulties."

In the report he said he was slowed by the destruction and withholding of records, a heavy lid of secrecy that kept much information from being used in court and Congressional grants of immunity that fatally undercut his ability to prosecute Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter.

In December 1992, the debate over Mr. Walsh was cut short when Mr. Bush, in a post-election grant of clemency that effectively ended the investigation, granted pardons to former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and five other former officials implicated in the affair.

Legal Battles Lost

The report is the prosecutor's final act in an inquiry that began in December 1986 after the scandal was first reported in a Lebanese newspaper. But Mr. Walsh's struggle against daunting legal obstacles left his most significant cases in tatters. Among those were convictions of Mr. North, the National Security Council aide, and Mr. Poindexter, Mr. North's superior, on charges of obstructing Congress and other crimes.

Over the years, Mr. Walsh charged 14 people with criminal offenses, primarily efforts to conceal or withhold information from Congress. Eleven people pleaded guilty or were convicted, but the two most celebrated cases, involving Mr. Poindexter and Mr. North, were overturned on appeals.

The inquiry centered on two interwoven operations that Reagan Administration officials carried out in secret in 1985 and 1986 -- activities that buffeted Mr. Reagan's final years in office and haunted Mr. Bush as he unsuccessfully sought a second term.

The Genesis

One operation began when Mr. Reagan directed his aides to find a way to support the Nicaraguan rebels, then fighting the Sandinista Government, after Congress barred further military aid. Mr. North and several business associates set up an arms pipeline that operated until a plane was shot down in Nicaragua in October 1986.

A second operation was the attempt to win the release of American hostages in Lebanon by selling arms to Iran, despite an embargo, in the hope that Teheran would use its influence on the Lebanese captors.

Ultimately, Mr. North and his colleagues used some of the proceeds from the arms sales to finance aid and arms for the Nicaraguan rebels.

At his news conference, Mr. Walsh expressed harsher criticism of Mr. Bush than of Mr. Reagan.

"I think President Bush will always have to answer for his pardons," he said. "I think that was the most unjustifiable act. There was no public purpose served by that."

Of Mr. Reagan, the prosecutor said, "He was was carrying out policies he strongly believed in."

Since August, when Mr. Walsh submitted his report to a special panel of three Federal appeals judges, lawyers representing people named in the report have fought to keep it secret. By statute, Mr. Walsh was required to prepare the report, but the judges were not required to release it.

It was not until Friday that some officials named in the report, including Mr. Reagan; his Attorney General, Edwin Meese 3d, and Mr. North abandoned their effort to keep the report from being disclosed; the appeals panel had issued a ruling saying the only avenue of further appeal was to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Walsh said his inquiry had found that Mr. Reagan; George P. Shultz, who was Secretary of State; Caspar W. Weinberger, the Defense Secretary; William J. Casey, the director of Central Intelligence, and their aides "committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to Congressional policy and contrary to national policy."

"They skirted the law," he said, "some of them broke the law and almost all of them tried to cover up the President's willful activities."

Mr. Walsh said top Reagan aides had deliberately tried to deceive Congress in an effort to hide Mr. Reagan's role in the arms sales.

But in his report Mr. Walsh said the exposure of the possibly illegal activities in the fall of 1986 generated what he described as "as new round of illegality." During Congressional hearings in 1987, "senior Reagan Administration officials engaged in a concerted effort to deceive Congress and the public about their knowledge of and and support for the operations."

The prosecutor concluded that the President's most senior aides took part in a strategy that made Mr. North and two national security advisers, Robert C. McFarlane and Mr. Poindexter, "scapegoats whose sacrifice would protect the Reagan Administration in it its final two years."

Mr. Walsh said the strategy succeeded. He said he had "discovered much of the best evidence of the cover-up in the final year of the active investigation, too late for most prosecutions."



-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 09, 2001.


Bush cleared the pardons with the (Dem) leader in the House and the (Dem) head of the Armed Forces committee in Congress. No he didn't.

Weinberger had been previously indicted. The indictment was thrown out. Not true He was then reindicted on election eve by Walsh. (Shades of Ken Star!)

The indictment was for "witholding records" from Congress. These records were notes that had been donated by Weinberger to a library that held his papers. Weinberger privately deposited his notes in the Library of Congress where no one could see them without his permission.
Weinberger was against Iran-Contra.
Another proven lie-The Government's trial evidence would have demonstrated that, contrary to the impression created by his false testimony before Congress, Weinberger was a knowing participant in the initiative to send arms to Iran in return for the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon.
So he was reindicted on an indictment that had been previously thrown out false for witholding records that were in the public domain false-no one could see them without his permission on the eve of an election. No politics there! Weinberger knew in 1987 of Congressional requests for his notes and diaries but produced none of them, and went so far as to lie under oath to conceal their existence from Congressional investigators.

The findings of the independent counsel for the Iran-contra affair;

Caspar W. Weinberger

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger lied to investigators to conceal his knowledge of the Iran arms sales. Contrary to Weinberger's assertions, a small group of senior civilian officials and military officers in the Department of Defense, comprised of Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and his closest aides, was consistently informed of the arms shipments to Iran in 1985 and 1986.

The O.I.C. uncovered documents and notes and obtained testimony, which had been withheld from the Tower Commission and the Select Committees. The most important new evidence was Weinberger's own detailed daily diary notes and his notes of significant White House and other meetings regarding arms shipments to Iran. These notes, along with withheld notes of other Administration officials and additional documents that were obtained from D.O.D., revealed that Weinberger and other high-level Administration officials were much more knowledgeable about details of the Iran arms sales than they had indicated in their early testimony and statements.

This evidence formed the basis for the 1992 indictment of Weinberger. It also provided Independent Counsel with valuable, contemporaneous information concerning high-level participation in Iran/contra activities.

. . .

On October 10, 1990, Weinberger, accompanied by his counsel, was interviewed by the O.I.C. attorneys in the presence of an F.B.I. Special Agent.

. . .

Between the October and December 1990 interviews, the O.I.C. obtained Weinberger's permission to review his papers at the Library of Congress. Assuming that any documents relating to Iran/contra were classified and relying on Weinberger's statements that the few notes he took were scribbled on the back and margins of documents in his briefing books, O.I.C. investigators asked both D.O.D. and Library of Congress personnel where such materials would be located. The investigators were directed to the classified subject list in the library's index to the Weinberger collection. Investigators found no collection of notes among the materials they examined.

When O.I.C. investigators returned to the Library of Congress in November 1991, they reviewed the entire index and found thousands of pages of diary and meeting notes that Weinberger had created as Secretary of Defense. These notes, which contained highly classified information, had been stored in the unclassified section of the Weinberger collection.

Weinberger's notes proved to be an invaluable contemporaneous record of the views and activities of the highest officials regarding those sales. They revealed, among other things, that contrary to his sworn testimony, Weinberger knew in advance that U.S. arms were to be shipped to Israel in November 1985 without Congressional notification, in an effort to obtain the release of U.S. hostages, and that Israel expected the United States to replenish the weapons Israel shipped to Iran. Weinberger's notes also disclosed that, contrary to his sworn testimony, he knew that Saudi Arabia was secretly providing $25 million in assistance to the contras during a ban on U.S. aid.

. . .

The Government's trial evidence would have demonstrated that, contrary to the impression created by his false testimony before Congress, Weinberger was a knowing participant in the initiative to send arms to Iran in return for the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon.

.. .

Count Five charged Weinberger with making false statements in the October 10, 1990, interview with members of Independent Counsel's staff and a special agent of the F.B.I.

. . .

During the interview, Weinberger was asked repeatedly, in several different ways, about his note-taking practices. He insisted that he rarely took notes; that, as a rule, he did not take any notes when he met with the President or other Cabinet members; and that he specifically did not take any notes during meetings concerning the Iran arms sales.

. . .

To establish the deliberate falsity of Weinberger's statements, the Government would have proved at trial that (1) Weinberger maintained voluminous notes of meetings and phone calls, many of which were relevant to Iran/contra; (2) Weinberger knew in 1987 of Congressional requests for his notes and diaries but produced none of them, and went so far as to lie under oath to conceal their existence from Congressional investigators; and (3) on his retirement as Secretary of Defense, Weinberger privately deposited his notes in the Library of Congress where no one could see them without his permission.

. . .

The pardon was cleared with the Dem party leaders by Bush. If either had opposed it he wouldn't have done it. Neither did. There is no documentation backing up this statement.

Somewhat different then Bill That is true, the pardons were given before the trial began, a trial which could have implicated Bush in criminal wrongdoing. He gave the pardons to protect himself from prosecution.

-- Get your facts straight. (Don't bother@contactme.com), March 02, 2001.
I suggest you get your facts straight. You might try reading the independent counsel's official report, which is on record.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 09, 2001.


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