Pardon Me
by JCH
March 10, 2001

More than six weeks after Clinton left office, the one hundred and forty last minute pardons are still news in this country. Other than a few suspicious circumstances regarding the Mark Rich debacle and a few questionable pardons, no one has been able to come close to substantiating any wrong doing.

But still they try.

Bill Clinton has left the building but the Republicans still want him behind bars.

Eight years ago, it was the current president's father, himself then out-going president, and another pardon controversy. With Backing from Bob Dole, President Bush on Christmas Eve 1992 issued pardons for six defendants in the Iran-Contra investigation -- including Caspar W. Weinberger, the indicted former secretary of defense. Weinberger was set to go to trial twelve days after the pardons came down. What's interesting is that he could have alleged in court that President Bush knew more about the Iran-Contra debacle than he had admitted. At the very least, Bush may have been called on to answer questions in court he wished to avoid. The pardon of Weinberger conveniently took care of that.

Merry Christmas, Cap!

At the time, Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh bitterly charged that "the Iran-Contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed."

I wonder if Bush has any recollection of pardoning Weinberger. Playing dumb certainly worked for Reagan during his administration.

Bush also pardoned Orlando Bosch, an immigrant exile convicted of masterminding the bombing of an airplane that killed 73 people, including 24 teenage Olympic fencing team members. President Bush did this, many say, to gain support for son Jeb Bush in the Miami exile community. Care to imagine the backlash if Clinton had done anything remotely similar? Rush Limbaugh would have been foaming at the mouth to get behind his EIB microphone and out right accuse Clinton of treason.

Bush also pardoned a known drug dealer, something Clinton did. You have to wonder why no one makes mention of Aslam Adam, a Pakistani heroin trafficker who was serving a 55 year sentence until the Bush pardon came down.

Let's not even mention Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. I take that back. Let's do mention it. Of course we all know that Ford was appointed V.P. under Nixon only after Spiro Agnew resigned with a nasty little case of tax fraud. Nixon then had to resign or face impeachment for the Watergate debacle thus making Ford the president when he hadn't even been elected vice-president.

Ford's pardon of Nixon was so broad that Tricky Dick could have been torturing small animals in the Rose Garden with a weed wacker wearing a Jimmy Hoffa mask and nothing could have been done against the man.

Nixon celebrates his pardon by Gerry Ford in style!

Here are some other noteworthy pardons in history:

But back to the more recent presidential pardons: Clinton stressed that most of the people he pardoned have paid their debt to society and that the main intent of his executive action was to lift restrictions on voting and employment. Especially if they vote Democrat.

High profile people who received pardons Clinton from include:

Notable figures missing from this list include Leonard Peltier, a Native American convicted of killing FBI agents Ron Williams and Jack Koler in June 1975. Also excluded was Michael Milken, who made billions for himself and others in the 1980s junk bond business. He spent 22 months in prison and paid $1 billion in fines before his release.

Webster Hubbell, a longtime Clinton friend and former Justice Department official who was convicted of fraud for over billing clients and served 18 months behind bars, was also passed over for a pardon. (I'm sure many have hypothesized why Clinton would pardon McDougal, but not Web Hubbell.)

Online sources for this rant include and hopefully are limited to:
http://members.aol.com/mstencel/clips/dole.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~neoludd/analysis.htm
http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/03/09/ED212933.DTL
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pardons6.htm

Here is the text of the speech given by Bush proclaiming the pardoning of Weinberger and others in the Iran-Contra affair. Meanwhile.....
 

The text of this article can be found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/aol/onthisday/991224onthisday_big.html

If any links do not work, it's their fault. Not mine.
 

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