-Caveat Lector- <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41644-2001Feb7.html> Access to the White House Opened Door to Clemency By Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 8, 2001 Page A14 Adolph Schwimmer doesn't know former president Bill Clinton. But his friend Brian Greenspun does. During a Thanksgiving gathering at Camp David, Greenspun asked the president to pardon Schwimmer, who violated the U.S. Neutrality Act in the late 1940s when he ferried aircraft to Israel during its war for independence. Clinton listened to the story and told Greenspun, a former Georgetown University classmate and loyal campaign contributor: "Give me something in writing." Eight weeks later, in his 11th-hour list of 176 pardons and commutations, Clinton restored Schwimmer's civil rights. "When I recognized an opportunity to do this, there was no question but this was absolutely the right thing to do," said Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. "If ever there was a reason to get a pardon, it would be for a guy like Al Schwimmer. What he did was an act of selflessness and bravery and heroism." Clinton's pardons of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, Whitewater compatriot Susan McDougal and herbal remedy magnate A. Glenn Braswell have made headlines. A House committee is scheduled today to begin examining why Clinton pardoned Rich. Although overshadowed, many of the other 173 felons -- some notorious, others anonymous -- fit categories that offer clues about how the pardon process worked in the final busy days of the Clinton administration. To win a pardon, it helped most of all to have access to the Oval Office. For example, Clinton said he was persuaded to help Rich by former White House counsel Jack Quinn, who represents Rich. It helped to be from Clinton's home turf. The list includes 27 Arkansans, more than from any other state. It helped to be the president's brother: Roger Clinton was pardoned for a 1985 cocaine conviction. And it helped to be a low-level drug felon sentenced to a long prison term. It helped to be prosecuted by an independent counsel who targeted Clinton or his colleagues. It helped to be close to Jesse L. Jackson. The president pardoned the activist's former attorney, John H. Bustamante, and commuted the sentence of former Chicago representative Melvin J. Reynolds, who was soon hired by Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. Some pardon beneficiaries, including Schwimmer and former secretary of housing and urban development Henry Cisneros, never sought Clinton's mercy. Others worked for years or hurried to cobble together a petition on short notice. Still others dispatched paperwork to the Justice Department and all but forgot about it. "I don't know how it happened, but I'm glad it happened to me," said Arthur David Borel, convicted of rolling back automobile odometers. The proprietor of the Little Rock Auto Clock and Speedometer Service said he dispatched his request to the Justice Department several years ago. Clinton he knew only by sight. "When he'd come to Little Rock, he'd jog and he'd pass right by my shop. I don't know if he'd seen the speedometer shop, and when he went through the paperwork in D.C., he just put two and two together," said Borel, 65, who wants his hunting license back. "When I heard that Clinton was in the process of pardoning a number of people, I thought of it, but this was one chance out of a lifetime that my name would be there." The pardon list was also studded with people who had individual claims to infamy. One was Braswell -- convicted of tax evasion, fraud and perjury in 1983 -- even as federal prosecutors conducted a separate tax-evasion and money-laundering investigation of him. Another was disbarred Washington lawyer William A. Borders Jr., convicted in 1982 of conspiracy to bribe a federal judge. A Justice Department document lists two members of Congress and the dean of the Howard University Law School as character witnesses. His lawyer was Harvard Law School professor Charles J. Ogletree. "It's a lobbying thing. You have congressmen, senators lobbying on behalf of various people," a former Justice Department official said. "It tends to cut across party lines. "The interesting part is it becomes parochial as opposed to political. You have people from a state, the senators and congressmen, lobbying on behalf of a candidate." Kansas Lt. Gov. Dave Owen, a Republican campaign chairman for former senator Robert J. Dole, spent seven months in prison in 1994 for tax fraud. Owen drew support for his pardon from a former Democratic governor of Kansas, reported his D.C. attorney, James Hamilton, who has vetted job applicants for the Clinton administration. He said Owen has lived "an exemplary life" since his conviction. "He has taken a leadership role in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and was instrumental in sending medical supplies worth $11 million to Mother Teresa," Hamilton said. "His pardon was granted solely on the merits and was well-deserved." Among the well-connected who received pardons were former Arizona governor John Fife Symington III, charged with bank fraud. Also getting pardons were the son-in-law of former education secretary Richard W. Riley, convicted in a drug case, and the brother-in-law of former representative Sam Gejdenson, guilty in a gold and silver options case. Clinton commuted the prison term of ailing swindler Arnold Paul Prosperi, his Georgetown University student government campaign manager, who donated $45,000 for White House refurbishments. Prosperi's appellate lawyer was Theodore B. Olson, chief constitutional lawyer for George W. Bush during the Florida recount. The president pardoned four people convicted in the Whitewater case and six convicted during the independent counsel's investigation of former agriculture secretary Mike Espy, who was acquitted. Three prominent Chicago residents connected to Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition received presidential dispensations. One was Bustamante, a Harvard-educated lawyer who represented Jackson. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud after borrowing $275,000 to drill for oil and using the money for personal expenses. Thanks to Clinton, Reynolds will be permitted to finish his term at Freedom House -- the same halfway house used by convicted former representative Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, who was pardoned by Clinton last year. Reynolds was convicted for initiating a sexual affair with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer and misusing campaign funds. Dorothy Rivers, a former member of the PUSH oversight committee, saw her prison term commuted after a conviction in Chicago for stealing $1.2 million in federal money intended for homeless families and pregnant teens. Prosecutors said Rivers bought furs, fancy clothes and a Mercedes-Benz for her son. Clinton commuted the death sentence of David Ronald Chandler, an Alabama marijuana grower and the first person sentenced to die under the federal drug kingpin statute. Chandler was convicted of ordering an associate's murder, but the admitted killer has since declared that Chandler knew nothing of the assault. Schwimmer, 83, who has lived in Tel Aviv since 1951, never sought a pardon. He was convicted for acquiring airplanes from the United States and arranging for their flight to Israel to help in the 1948 war effort. He later founded Israeli Aircraft Industries at the behest of the country's founding prime minister, David Ben Gurion. The idea for the clemency application came from Greenspun, whose late father was convicted of shipping munitions to Israel. A dear friend of Schwimmer's, Hank Greenspun was pardoned in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. Presidents also may use their unfettered pardon authority to make policy statements. Clinton commuted 21 prison sentences given to drug defendants convicted under strict federal sentencing laws. Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said she forwarded a list of about two dozen such prisoners to the White House via Rolling Stone magazine editor Jan Wenner. Stewart's fledgling organization chose first-time lawbreakers who had no history of violence or use of guns. They typically had served at least five years. About a dozen had also sought commutations from the Justice Department. When Clinton's list of 40 names emerged, 17 cases had been drawn from the FAMM list. "I think they underscore," said Stewart, "that a lot of nonviolent drug prisoners are sitting in prisons for decades and don't need to be." No one was more thrilled than Loretta Fish, sentenced in 1994 to 19 years in prison for supporting her boyfriend's methamphetamine operation. He received a shorter prison term, while the admitted leader of the Allentown, Pa., organization -- who cleared $500,000 in six months -- testified for the prosecution and drew a five-year sentence, Stewart said. When news of Clinton's 40 commutations was reported on television Jan. 20, Fish's cellmate relayed word that there were no names yet. "I just kept praying, 'Let me be one, let me be one,' " Fish recalled. Then someone said her name was on the list. "I kept saying there could be other Lorettas. I thought, 'No, nothing ever happens to me.' " Then a corrections officer told her to pack. "Unbelievable," Fish said. "The greatest day of my life." Staff writers Robert O'Harrow in New York and Lee Hockstader in Jerusalem, special correspondent Jeff Adler in Los Angeles, and researchers Lynn Davis and Margot Williams contributed to this report. ================================================================= 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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