-Caveat Lector-
NYTimes
AUG 26, 2001
Roger Clinton's Dogged Effort for Drug Trafficker
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
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 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 Mr. 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.
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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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