-Caveat Lector-
"Eight reasons; four lies. Not bad, even for the old master himself."
The Pardoner's False Brief
By Michael Kelly
Wednesday, February 21, 2001; Page A23
Former president Clinton finally has offered his first serious
attempt at a defense of the pardons he granted in the last hours
of his presidency, when he bypassed the Justice Department
protocols system to issue clemency to scores of moneyed and
connected special pleaders. The argument is in almost every
important way a lie.
The first big lie is contextual. Clinton portrays his exceptional
abuse of the pardoning power as unexceptional. All presidents,
writes Clinton in a 1,700-word op-ed article in Sunday's New York
Times, have used their power to pardon, and "some of the uses of
the power have been extremely controversial." He cites examples
of controversial pardons by Washington, Harding, Nixon, Ford,
Carter and the first Bush. But no other president ever did what
Clinton did. Others may have in a rare case or two abused their
power, but none sought to corrupt the pardoning process on a
wholesale basis. None set up a secret shop to bypass his own
government and speed through the special pleas of the well
connected and the well heeled. None sent the Justice Department
dozens of names for pardon on inauguration morning, too late for
the department to run even cursory checks.
The second big lie is also contextual. In the specific case of
the alleged (and indicted) tax scammers and billionaire fugitives
Marc Rich and Pincus Green, Clinton offers eight reasons for what
he says was a decision "on the merits as I saw them" . . . "in
the best interests of justice."
Regard the carefully coy fashion in which Clinton describes how
he came to be aware of "the merits." He writes: "I understood";
and "I was informed that"; and "it was my understanding that."
Understood how? Informed by whom? Understood from and informed by
Jack Quinn, the six-figure attorney hired by Rich and Green.
Clinton carefully limited what he saw of the "merits" of the Rich
case to that which Rich's lawyer thought he should see. He never
sought recommendations from any appropriate Justice officials and
indeed hid his actions from them. He now tells us that he knew
when he pardoned Rich and Green that the official directly in
charge of the Rich case, the U.S. attorney for the Southern
District of New York, "did not support these pardons," but he
never spoke to her. It was his Quinn-based "understanding" that
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder was "neutral, leaning for" a
pardon, but he never talked directly to Holder either. Holder now
says (admittedly, with self-interest) that he had assumed the
Rich application was so out of the question that it never would
be granted. "I believed the essential facts were before me,"
writes Clinton. Yes, essential as determined and interpreted by
one side in the case.
The third big lie is again contextual, and is one of omission.
Clinton cites, as reason No. 3 for a pardon, the fact that "two
highly regarded tax experts" had examined the financial
transactions in the Rich case and concluded that Rich's companies
had not violated any tax law. What Clinton does not say is that
the two experts were acting as Rich's hired guns -- they wrote
their assessment clearing Rich specifically for use in Rich's
defense under a $100,000 contract with Rich's lawyers.
The fourth and most stunning lie is a flat-outer, reason No. 7:
"the applications were reviewed and advocated not only by my
former White House counsel Jack Quinn [note the reflexive passing
lie of omission; the important identifier of Quinn is not former
White House counsel but counsel for Marc Rich] 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."
This is how the statement appeared in copies of the Times printed
before 12:45 p.m. Saturday. Later copies contained a change,
dictated by Clinton's people, desperately trying to backtrack. In
the altered version, Clinton writes that "the case for the
pardons [not the applications per se] was reviewed and advocated"
etc.
Both versions are howlers. The suggestion here is that some sort
of panel of "distinguished Republican attorneys" had examined and
supported Quinn's case for a Rich pardon. In fact, Garment,
Reynolds and Libby had been, at one time or another, lawyers for
Rich; in this for-hire capacity, they had written arguments for
leniency for Rich. But all three distinguished Republicans leaped
to say they had never supported this pardon, either the
applications in particular or Quinn's "case" in general.
Eight reasons; four lies. Not bad, even for the old master
himself.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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