Pubdate: Sun, 18 Feb 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036
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Author: William Jefferson Clinton
Note: William Jefferson Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States.

MY REASONS FOR THE PARDONS

CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. - Because of the intense scrutiny and criticism of the 
pardons of Marc Rich and his partner Pincus Green and because legitimate 
concerns have been raised, I want to explain what I did and why.

First, I want to make some general comments about pardons and commutations 
of sentences.

Article II of the Constitution gives the president broad and unreviewable 
power to grant "Reprieves and Pardons" for all offenses against the United 
States. The Supreme Court has ruled that the pardon power is granted "[t]o 
the [president] . . ., and it is granted without limit" (United States v. 
Klein). Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that "[a] pardon . . . is . 
. . the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare 
will be better served by [the pardon] . . ." (Biddle v. Perovich). A 
president may conclude a pardon or commutation is warranted for several 
reasons: the desire to restore full citizenship rights, including voting, 
to people who have served their sentences and lived within the law since; a 
belief that a sentence was excessive or unjust; personal circumstances that 
warrant compassion; or other unique circumstances.

The exercise of executive clemency is inherently controversial. The reason 
the framers of our Constitution vested this broad power in the Executive 
Branch was to assure that the president would have the freedom to do what 
he deemed to be the right thing, regardless of how unpopular a decision 
might be. Some of the uses of the power have been extremely controversial, 
such as President Washington's pardons of leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, 
President Harding's commutation of the sentence of Eugene Debs, President 
Nixon's commutation of the sentence of James Hoffa, President Ford's pardon 
of former President Nixon, President Carter's pardon of Vietnam War draft 
resisters, and President Bush's 1992 pardon of six Iran-contra defendants, 
including former Defense Secretary Weinberger, which assured the end of 
that investigation.

On Jan. 20, 2001, I granted 140 pardons and issued 36 commutations. During 
my presidency, I issued a total of approximately 450 pardons and 
commutations, compared to 406 issued by President Reagan during his two 
terms. During his four years, President Carter issued 566 pardons and 
commutations, while in the same length of time President Bush granted 77. 
President Ford issued 409 during the slightly more than two years he was 
president.

The vast majority of my Jan. 20 pardons and reprieves went to people who 
are not well known.

Some had been sentenced pursuant to mandatory-sentencing drug laws, and I 
felt that they had served long enough, given the particular circumstances 
of the individual cases.

Many of these were first-time nonviolent offenders with no previous 
criminal records; in some cases, codefendants had received significantly 
shorter sentences.

At the attorney general's request, I commuted one death sentence because 
the defendant's principal accuser later changed his testimony, casting 
doubt on the defendant's guilt.

In some cases, I granted pardons because I felt the individuals had been 
unfairly treated and punished pursuant to the Independent Counsel statute 
then in existence.

The remainder of the pardons and commutations were granted for a wide 
variety of fact-based reasons, but the common denominator was that the 
cases, like that of Patricia Hearst, seemed to me deserving of executive 
clemency.

Overwhelmingly, the pardons went to people who had been convicted and 
served their time, so the impact of the pardon was principally to restore 
the person's civil rights.

Many of these, including some of the more controversial, had vigorous 
bipartisan support.

The pardons that have attracted the most criticism have been the pardons of 
Marc Rich and Pincus Green, who were indicted in 1983 on charges of 
racketeering and mail and wire fraud, arising out of their oil business.

Ordinarily, I would have denied pardons in this case simply because these 
men did not return to the United States to face the charges against them. 
However, I decided to grant the pardons in this unusual case for the 
following legal and foreign policy reasons: (1) I understood that the other 
oil companies that had structured transactions like those on which Mr. Rich 
and Mr. Green were indicted were instead sued civilly by the government; 
(2) I was informed that, in 1985, in a related case against a trading 
partner of Mr. Rich and Mr. Green, the Energy Department, which was 
responsible for enforcing the governing law, found that the manner in which 
the Rich/Green companies had accounted for these transactions was proper; 
(3) two highly regarded tax experts, Bernard Wolfman of Harvard Law School 
and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center, reviewed the 
transactions in question and concluded that the companies "were correct in 
their U.S. income tax treatment of all the items in question, and [that] 
there was no unreported federal income or additional tax liability 
attributable to any of the [challenged] transactions"; (4) in order to 
settle the government's case against them, the two men's companies had paid 
approximately $200 million in fines, penalties and taxes, most of which 
might not even have been warranted under the Wolfman/Ginsburg analysis that 
the companies had followed the law and correctly reported their income; (5) 
the Justice Department in 1989 rejected the use of racketeering statutes in 
tax cases like this one, a position that The Wall Street Journal editorial 
page, among others, agreed with at the time; (6) it was my understanding 
that Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's position on the pardon 
application was "neutral, leaning for"; (7) the case for the pardons was 
reviewed and advocated not only by my former White House counsel Jack Quinn 
but also by three distinguished Republican attorneys: Leonard Garment, a 
former Nixon White House official; William Bradford Reynolds, a former 
high-ranking official in the Reagan Justice Department; and Lewis Libby, 
now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff; (8) finally, and importantly, 
many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major 
political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe 
urged the pardon of Mr. Rich because of his contributions and services to 
Israeli charitable causes, to the Mossad's efforts to rescue and evacuate 
Jews from hostile countries, and to the peace process through sponsorship 
of education and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank.

While I was troubled by the criminalization of the charges against Mr. Rich 
and Mr. Green, I also wanted to assure the government's ability to pursue 
any Energy Department, civil tax or other charges that might be available 
and warranted.

I knew the men's companies had settled their disputes with the government, 
but I did not know what personal liability the individuals might still have 
for Energy Department or other violations.

Therefore, I required them to waive any and all defenses, including their 
statute of limitations defenses, to any civil charge the government might 
bring against them. Before I granted the pardons, I received from their 
lawyer a letter confirming that they "waive any and all defenses which 
could be raised to the lawful imposition of civil fines or penalties in 
connection with the actions and transactions alleged in the indictment 
against them pending in the Southern District of New York."

I believe my pardon decision was in the best interests of justice.

If the two men were wrongly indicted in the first place, justice has been 
done. On the other hand, if they do personally owe money for Energy 
Department penalties, unpaid taxes or civil fines, they can now be sued 
civilly, as others in their position apparently were, a result that might 
not have been possible without the waiver, because civil statutes of 
limitations may have run while they were out of the United States.

While I was aware of and took into account the fact that the United States 
attorney for the Southern District of New York did not support these 
pardons, in retrospect, the process would have been better served had I 
sought her views directly.

Further, I regret that Mr. Holder did not have more time to review the 
case. However, I believed the essential facts were before me, and I felt 
the foreign policy considerations and the legal arguments justified moving 
forward.

The suggestion that I granted the pardons because Mr. Rich's former wife, 
Denise, made political contributions and contributed to the Clinton library 
foundation is utterly false.

There was absolutely no quid pro quo. Indeed, other friends and financial 
supporters sought pardons in cases which, after careful consideration based 
on the information available to me, I determined I could not grant.

In the last few months of my term, many, many people called, wrote or came 
up to me asking that I grant or at least consider granting clemency in 
various cases.

These people included friends, family members, former spouses of 
applicants, supporters, acquaintances, Republican and Democratic members of 
Congress, journalists and total strangers.

I believe that the president can and should listen to such requests, 
although they cannot determine his decision on the merits.

There is only one prohibition: there can be no quid pro quo. And there 
certainly was not in this or any of the other pardons and commutations I 
granted.

I am accustomed to the rough and tumble of politics, but the accusations 
made against me in this case have been particularly painful because for 
eight years I worked hard to make good decisions for the American people.

I want every American to know that, while you may disagree with this 
decision, I made it on the merits as I saw them, and I take full 
responsibility for it.

William Jefferson Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States.
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