-Caveat Lector- NYTimes February 2, 2001 Lawyer Says Justice Official Knew of Financier's Pardon By RAYMOND BONNER and ALISON LEIGH COWAN WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — With two Congressional investigations into the pardon of Marc Rich looming next week, his lawyer today released 60 pages of documents that he said proved he had notified the No. 2 official at the Justice Department about the case going to the White House. The lawyer, Jack Quinn, said the Justice official, Eric H. Holder, knew about the pardon, supported it and even congratulated him at the first opportunity. An e-mail message that Mr. Quinn sent on Jan. 22 to the rest of Mr. Rich's legal team noted that Mr. Holder had told Mr. Quinn that he "did a very good job." According to the message, Mr. Holder urged Mr. Quinn, a former White House counsel whom Mr. Rich retained in the summer of 1999, to "be better about getting the legal merits of the case out publicly." Mr. Rich, a financier, has lived abroad for 17 years rather than face prosecution on federal charges of tax fraud and trading with Iran in violation of sanctions. Mr. Holder, who has publicly said little about the case so far, said through a spokesman that he would have no comment until he reviewed the documents. A Justice Department official said last week that Mr. Holder's only knowledge of the pardon had been a fleeting conversation with Mr. Quinn in November and a letter that reached Mr. Holder's desk on Jan. 17. The same official had said the department was opposed to the pardon and was preparing its opposition until a few hours before President Clinton issued the pardon on Jan. 20, the day he left office. All the documents released today and sent to Congressional investigators — a collection of telephone messages, memorandums, letters and e- mail correspondence — reflect Mr. Quinn's view of events and no documents contain written communication from Mr. Holder himself. But several notations that Mr. Quinn made to himself and his colleagues suggest that there had been conversations. "What we have in front of us indicates that Quinn did go to Holder and so we look forward to Mr. Holder's testimony next week," said James Wilson, chief counsel of the House's Committee on Government Reform, which expects to hold hearings on Thursday. The Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings into the matter are scheduled for Wednesday. Throughout the documents are notes Mr. Quinn made after conversations with Mr. Holder, including at least three times in which he described Mr. Holder as sympathetic. The first casual conversation the two had about a possible pardon occurred midday on Nov. 21, inside Mr. Holder's office just as another meeting was breaking up, a page from Mr. Quinn's datebook suggests. But the conversation in which Mr. Holder seemed most positive came Jan. 22, just after a cliffhanger weekend, in which President Clinton issued 140 pardons as one of his last official acts. A buoyant Mr. Quinn recalled telephoning Mr. Holder that afternoon to find out how soon Mr. Rich could expect to travel again without risking arrest. Mr. Quinn said Mr. Holder, the acting attorney general, congratulated him on securing the pardon for his client. The notes indicate that Mr. Holder advised Mr. Quinn to publicize that he, on behalf of Mr. Rich, had agreed to waive all statute-of-limitation defenses should the government want to pursue Mr. Rich in civil court — a concession made at President Clinton's urging. But many legal experts say that because Mr. Rich's companies settled the cases and paid the back taxes, Mr. Rich will not owe anything, the position his lawyers take. "We think he owes no civil liabilities," said C. Michael Green, another of Mr. Rich's lawyers. "I kept nobody in the dark," said Mr. Quinn. "Justice Department at the end of the day was not only consulted but in my view made comments to the White House that at least could fairly be interpreted by the White House as a green light." A former Clinton aide agreed today that the White House had contacted Mr. Holder's office before its review and that the response had been "neutral to positive." At no time, however, did Mr. Quinn send the pardon petition directly to Mr. Holder. Contrary to normal clemency procedures, Mr. Quinn filed the pardon application directly with the White House In another recent pardon case, Beth Nolan, the White House counsel, deflected an inquiry about a pardon by referring it to the Justice Department. "According to longstanding guidelines established by the Department of Justice, individuals seeking executive clemency must first file an application with the Office of Pardon attorney," Ms. Nolan wrote in January 2000 to the petitioner. Mr. Rich and his partner, Pincus Green, were indicted in 1983 on more than 50 counts of tax evasion, racketeering and trading with Iran. But their lawyers argued to the president that their clients should not be considered fugitives in the legal sense, according to the documents, because they had moved abroad before the indictments were issued. The lawyers acknowledge that they never told President Clinton that both defendants had renounced their citizenship. Michael Green, the lawyer for Mr. Rich who seemed most impatient to learn when Mr. Rich could travel freely, said that Mr. Rich would delay any travel plans until the final pardon was in hand. "Given the hoopla," he said, "we're certainly going to wait." One document not in today's pile was Mr. Quinn's billing records showing how much he has made or stands to make from his client. Representative Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, who heads the House committee investigating the pardon, had requested all such documents, but Mr. Quinn said none existed. Mr. Quinn said his former law firm, Arnold & Porter, billed less than $400,000 on the matter. He said he had put in 60 to 100 hours on the case since going out on his own in January 2000 and felt no need to bill Mr. Rich since he had been adequately compensated at the firm. He said he expected Mr. Rich to cover any expenses he incurred in representing himself before Congress. He also declined to say whether he would refuse any gifts or future pieces of business Mr. Rich might give him. "I have no understanding with Marc Rich about future payments," said Mr. Quinn. "If Marc Rich sent me a box of Godiva chocolates tomorrow, it would be more than he is obligated to do." According to Mr. Quinn's notes of a conversation with Mr. Holder a week or so before the pardon was issued, Mr. Holder said that he had "no personal problem" with the pardon but that the United States Attorney's office in New York would "howl." ### [The following is an interesting post from another list regarding the NYT article that follows, i.e., "Rich was railroaded." --MS] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2001 05:34:46 -0800 (PST) From: Chris Kevlahan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: USAT: Quinn: Rich was railroaded Note how he says "violent organized crime". I would contend that the spririt of Rico was to thwart all forms of organized crime, violent or otherwise. And yes, I lump corporate organized crime in there too and see little difference between a mafia organization applying the pressure of physical violence and corporations applying the pressure of legal violence. As a perfect example, take the Clinton campaign/election crew. Did they not act in spirit of an organized crime syndicate with their legal and public relations harrassment, the hiring of Private investigators to dig dirt and publicly smear individual obsticles with their teams of legal Capos? Rico was designed to attack crime orchestrated by well financed and well organized people who would otherwise simply use their deep pockets and organization to evade the law, with or without violence. Think anybody else agrees with me? Ask the DNC, they asked the Justice department to bring RICO statutes into play agains Tom Delay(GOP: Texas, House majority whip) and his strong fundraising organization. Chris K. ### http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010202/3039397s.htm Rich was railroaded By Jack Quinn Much of the history surrounding the 20-year-old Marc Rich case concerning complicated oil trades, as well as the merits for the Rich pardon, can be explained by one word: RICO, the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO). Designed to combat violent organized crime, prosecutors in 1983 misused the racketeering sledgehammer for the first time to attack Rich for what was no more than a regulatory dispute about price controls and taxes. In 1989, the U.S. Department of Justice finally put a stop to the use of RICO in cases like this, but by then Rich's companies had been coerced into pleading guilty just to survive, and Rich had been labeled a fugitive for not returning from his headquarters in Switzerland to be subjected to a patently unfair and grossly overhyped racketeering trial. And the prosecutors overlooked the key facts underlying the energy and tax case that the RICO charges overshadowed. The U.S. Department of Energy, the agency authorized to enforce the oil-price-control rules, investigated some of the very transactions covered by the indictment. The department directed its attention to a major oil company that actually developed the idea, and the probe was conducted in a civil regulatory proceeding, which is how everyone but Rich was treated. The department concluded such types of transactions should be viewed in a way entirely consistent with the way Rich's companies accounted for them, contrary to the indictment. Rich's defense team, consisting of both Republicans and Democrats, tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to convince the prosecutors to re-examine the charges in light of the contrary conclusions reached by the Justice and Energy departments, as well as the contrary views of leading tax experts of unquestioned integrity. The defense was rebuffed not on the merits but because of Rich's absence, which the prosecutors themselves caused through their now-discredited misuse of RICO. Given this intractable impasse, a pardon was sought to reduce this case to its proper proportions: a civil regulatory dispute. The process was never circumvented. Not only did I make the deputy attorney general aware of Rich's pardon petition, the White House consulted with the deputy attorney general, who had been personally aware of Rich's defenses for more than a year. The president resolved the stalemate by requiring Rich and his partner to waive any procedural defenses that could be raised to the lawful imposition of civil fines or penalties for their actions covered by the indictment. The president's actions were necessitated by the prosecutors' unreasonable refusal to correct the overzealous indictment that devastated Rich's companies and exposed him to more than 300 years in jail. This case should have been resolved as a civil matter years ago. Jack Quinn is a Washington lawyer and former White House counsel to President Clinton.Overzealous, faulty application of the law led to unjust conviction. ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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