Pubdate: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company Section: Politics Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Alison Leigh Cowan ROGER CLINTON'S DOGGED EFFORT FOR DRUG TRAFFICKER Roger Clinton was hacking his way through a friendly game of golf in 1999 when his foursome was interrupted by a visitor who drove up on a cart and, after a brief conversation, handed Mr. Clinton a box containing a Rolex watch. The encounter near the 10th hole of the Rancho Park golf course in Los Angeles might have been forgotten but for a few salient details. Current and former federal government officials say the young man who delivered the watch was Tommy Gambino, son of a convicted heroin trafficker serving a 45-year sentence. And, unknown to Mr. Clinton, his partners included two Air Force intelligence officers who reported the incident and said that Mr. Clinton had said he was "helping" Tommy Gambino's father, Rosario Gambino. In late September 1999, two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation walked up the driveway of Mr. Clinton's home in Redondo Beach, Calif., to ask him about his relationship with Rosario Gambino, who prosecutors have repeatedly said is an associate of the Gambino crime family and a distant relative of Carlo Gambino, the late crime boss. Mr. Clinton, the half-brother of the former president, acknowledged that he had lobbied the United States Parole Commission for the early release of Rosario Gambino, according to the bureau's account of the interview. Mr. Clinton said that Tommy Gambino had told him "we will take care of you" if he won Rosario Gambino's release from prison, according to the agents' notes, and Mr. Clinton said he understood that meant he would be financially rewarded. "I'm not stupid," he told the agents, according to their notes. Two years later, Roger Clinton is the subject of Congressional and federal investigations of influence peddling and other possible illegalities in last-minute pardons granted by President Bill Clinton. Shortly before President Clinton left office, Roger Clinton assured Tommy Gambino that his father was a "lock" for a pardon, a person close to Tommy Gambino has said in an interview. Rosario Gambino's name was on a list sent by the White House to the Justice Department in late January for possible clemency, but no pardon was granted. In an unrelated case, a felon has told prosecutors that he paid Roger Clinton $225,000 to lobby for a pardon and complained that Mr. Clinton did little or nothing in return. A close look at Mr. Clinton's effort to help Rosario Gambino secure early release from prison, based on interviews and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, portray him in a different light: a tireless, if inept, advocate whose persistent pleas annoyed and worried parole commission officials. Nearly two years before President Clinton left office, the F.B.I. was suspicious enough of Roger Clinton's efforts to free Rosario Gambino that agents tried a sting operation that involved parole commission officials. It failed. Roger Clinton's campaign on Mr. Gambino's behalf was persistent and inventive, documents and interviews show. He made at least four visits to the parole commission's headquarters in Chevy Chase, Md., a Washington suburb. He tried to exploit his ties to an Arkansas parole commissioner. He invoked his brother's authority. He produced listings from a Sicilian telephone book to show that Gambino was a common Italian name and, thus, not every Gambino was tied to the New York crime family. "Every time the phone rang, you thought, 'Oh, no, is it Roger Clinton again?' " recalled Thomas C. Kowalski, a top parole commission staff member. Roger Clinton's lawyer Bart H. Williams said he was not surprised to hear that Mr. Clinton's brand of advocacy stirred consternation at the parole commission. "That's the kind of guy Roger is," Mr. Williams said. "Once he is engaged in something, he's a pretty passionate guy." Mr. Clinton, a sometime rock singer, told the F.B.I. agents in the 1999 interview that he felt a bond with Tommy Gambino, a Californian in his late 20's who runs a company, Progressive Telecom, which sells pay phones to restaurants and stores. According to the F.B.I. account of the interview, Mr. Clinton said the two men were introduced at a club in Beverly Hills, Calif., by an acquaintance in the music business. Mr. Clinton said he identified with the younger Gambino's struggle to get through life without a father while being judged by his family name. Federal law enforcement officials were scrutinizing Tommy Gambino's activities long before he crossed paths with Roger Clinton. "They've never proven anything," said Duncan DeVille, a former federal prosecutor who until February served on the organized crime strike force in Los Angeles. "But Tommy was under investigation for a long period of time for his alleged connections to organized crime." James D. Henderson, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents Tommy Gambino and his father, said the suspicions about the son were groundless. "I've never seen anything that indicates Tommy is involved in any illegal activity," Mr. Henderson said. The legal case that drew together Tommy Gambino and Roger Clinton dates to 1984, when a federal judge sentenced Rosario Gambino to 45 years in prison for his role in a heroin smuggling ring. His first parole hearing was in 1995, 11 years after his conviction. The request was denied. It is not clear when Roger Clinton took up the case, but parole commission documents dated January 1996 report that he had repeatedly approached one of the commission's regional offices requesting a meeting with officials who had jurisdiction in the Rosario Gambino case. That posed a bit of a problem. Under the commission's rules, officials with final say over parole decisions must avoid contact with interested parties outside the public hearing process. The potential problem was not confined to the regional office. A member of the parole commission at its Chevy Chase headquarters, Michael J. Gaines, who had worked for Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas, knew the Clinton family, including Roger. The regional officials warned Mr. Gaines that Roger Clinton was headed his way, too. Parole commission memorandums show Mr. Gaines called the White House counsel's office and warned that the president's half-brother was lobbying on behalf of an inmate, even before had he received a call from Roger Clinton. Yet Roger Clinton called Mr. Gaines on Jan. 30, 1996, the first of many such approaches. The secretary who took the message scribbled a note that Roger Clinton had a "very important" matter to discuss and that his "brother recommended meeting," according to her notes. Mr. Gaines asked Michael A. Stover, the commission's general counsel, to return the call. Mr. Stover's notes state that Roger Clinton said that his brother "is completely aware of my involvement" and had recommended that he meet with Mr. Gaines, "a friend of ours" from Arkansas. Mr. Stover's notes say that he informed Roger Clinton that he was not permitted to meet with a commissioner on a specific case and urged him to submit his views in writing. The president's half brother, Mr. Stover wrote, expressed "bewilderment" that President Clinton was ignorant of the commission's rules, and, "He stated that he would have to inform his brother that his brother had been wrong." Mr. Stover's notes concluded that "the commission should be shielded if at all possible from the unwelcome intrusion of a man who would appear to have nothing to contribute to the commission's deliberations in the Gambino case but a crude (and I hope unauthorized) effort to exercise political influence." The pressure continued. President Clinton promoted Mr. Gaines to chairman of the parole commission in 1997, and memorandums show Roger Clinton soon tried to contact him again. Mr. Gaines asked Marie Ragghianti, his newly appointed chief of staff, and M r. Kowalski, the top commission staff member, to hear out Mr. Clinton. Ms. Ragghianti had her own national reputation for integrity. She was the woman who brought down Gov. Ray Blanton of Tennessee over a cash-for-clemency scandal when she headed the Tennessee Board of Pardons and Paroles in the 1970's. She had been the subject of a book, "Marie," by Peter Maas and a movie of the same name, in which Sissy Spacek played her character. Ms. Ragghianti said she was not particularly on guard about an interview with Roger Clinton, adding, "I just assumed nobody in their right mind would come to me to ask for something out of line." Mr. Clinton met with Ms. Ragghianti and Mr. Kowalski at 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 23, 1997, according to commission memorandums. He told them that Rosario Gambino had at least two job opportunities waiting for him. He argued that the man was not an organized-crime figure but at most was on the fringes of organized crime. Commission officials were unmoved. In a memorandum dated Dec. 30, Mr. Kowalski wrote that "documents in the file clearly depict the subject as an individual deeply involved in organized criminal activity." In 1998, Mr. Clinton got two more meetings with Ms. Ragghianti and Mr. Kowalski. At one, Mr. Kowalski said, Roger Clinton brandished pages from a Sicilian phone book to convince them that Gambino was a common name and did not prove any link to the late crime boss Carlo Gambino. "I was very professional," Mr. Kowalski said. "I didn't laugh." The commission's ethics officer, Sharon Gervasoni, saw nothing funny in Roger Clinton's lobbying either. His meetings with the staff, she wrote in a memorandum in September 1998, "seem to me designed to influence the decision-making process outside of the official record." On Oct. 26, Ms. Ragghianti faxed a letter to Mr. Clinton at his home asking that all future communication be in writing. Mr. Clinton left a message for her, apologizing if anyone "thought he was asking for something inappropriate." He also asked Ms. Ragghianti to call him back. She did not. "The man never gave up," she said. Four days later, on Oct. 30, it appeared that Rosario Gambino might be headed for freedom. A parole hearing examiner announced he would recommend a release date of Jan. 15, 1999, for Mr. Gambino. When Roger Clinton got word of the recommendation, he did not seem to understand that was far from the last word. On Nov. 17, he dashed off a handwritten letter thanking the commission "from the bottom of my heart." "I have marked that date on my calendar as a day of celebration," he wrote. In January 1999, the commission again denied parole. Soon after, on Jan. 22, an F.B.I. agent arrived to question commission officials about Roger Clinton. As the agent waited in the offices, Mr. Clinton placed two more calls to the commission. The F.B.I. wanted commission staff members to help the agency lure Mr. Clinton to a nearby Holiday Inn for a meeting, which an undercover agent would attend, according to interviews with federal officials and parole commission memorandums. The staff members balked. The F.B.I. instead installed a listening device in one of the commission's conference rooms and Mr. Kowalski, the chief of staff, agreed to ask Roger Clinton open-ended questions like "What do you want me to do?" Mr. Clinton showed up soon after but commission officials say the conversations led to no improprieties. There is no record of any further lobbying of the commission by Roger Clinton. Nonetheless, in April of that year, the chairman of the commission, Mr. Gaines, recused himself from matters concerning the Gambino request, explaining in an interview that he wanted to avoid any hint of impropriety. In May the commission voted again to deny Mr. Gambino parole. The F.B.I did not give up. On Sept. 30 1999, after the encounter on the golf course, two F.B.I. agents walked up Mr. Clinton's driveway and questioned him about his relationship with the Gambinos. Asked whether he had accepted any gifts from the Gambinos, notes of the interview show Roger Clinton initially said no. He then said, according to the notes, "I was shown a Rolex watch once but it was not given to me." Tommy Gambino had taken him to a pawn shop in Beverly Hills to look at watches, he said, but that they left without buying. A little later in the interview, Roger Clinton amended his account, saying he had received a watch from Tommy Gambino, who informed him it was an "Italian custom" to give such tokens of appreciation. Mr. Clinton said he disposed of it when he heard it was a fake. A little later he amended that statement, too, saying he did keep the watch because it was a gift but that he never wore it because it was "gaudy." He acknowledged in the interview accepting plane tickets to Washington and expense money from Tommy Gambino and said Mr. Gambino had "offered to loan" him money for a house. At the time of the interview, bank records show, Tommy's sister Anna had already signed a check for $50,000 for Roger Clinton. Standing in the driveway with the bureau agents, Roger Clinton provided them with a sweeping account of his life as first brother. He told them he and his band had toured about a dozen countries, performing at the invitation of foreign leaders. He said he was often plied with gifts for himself and the president. On his earliest trips, Roger Clinton said, he sometimes even accepted money for the president and had to be told to send it back. On President Clinton's last day in office, he issued pardons and commutations for 177 people. Those recommended by Roger Clinton were not among them. Phone records show that Roger Clinton made a lot of telephone calls that afternoon, to those he had recommended for clemency. One of the first, lasting seven minutes, was to a California number belonging to Tommy Gambino. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager