-Caveat Lector-
New York Times-October 21, 1999
Records Show Puerto Ricans Got U.S. Help With Clemency
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department took extraordinary steps to
enhance the chances of clemency for a group of imprisoned Puerto
Rican nationalists after receiving regular expressions of
interest from the White House, according to documents released
Wednesday. In one instance, the department's top officials
repeatedly urged the prisoners' supporters in Congress to
persuade them to fashion a statement of repentance to help their
chances of release.
The documents released at a hearing by the Senate Judiciary
Committee also show that the Puerto Rican nationalists did not
apply for clemency personally, as is usually required, but
department officials processed an application anyway. Under
department regulations, a personal application is usually
required to start the process, because such a move is taken as a
sign of remorse for the criminal acts.
The documents suggest that the prisoners did not apply for
clemency themselves as a symbolic demonstration of their
political credo that they have not accepted the authority of the
U.S. government. Department officials acknowledged in internal
memos that it was highly unusual even to consider clemency in
cases in which the prisoners themselves declined to file their
own applications.
President Clinton offered clemency to 16 of the prisoners on Aug.
11 after supporters applied on their behalf. The prisoners were
convicted of crimes on behalf of the F.A.L.N., a militant Puerto
Rican independence group, more than two decades ago.
The details and sequence of events leading up to Clinton's
clemency offer have remained murky because the White House and
Justice Department have declined to release much information,
citing executive privilege. Because the Constitution explicitly
gives the president the sole authority to issue pardons,
administration lawyers have argued that the president's
discussions with subordinates over the issue of clemency for the
Puerto Rican prisoners is privileged and need not be disclosed.
But the documents disclosed Wednesday give a partial picture of
the unusual way in which the issue was handled. Applications for
clemency are typically generated when a prisoner presses the
issue. In this case, it appears that the White House and Justice
Department were interested in keeping the issue of clemency alive
even after the department's pardon attorney recommended that
clemency be denied.
A letter in July 1997 from Margaret C. Love, the pardon attorney,
to White House counsel Charles F.C. Ruff showed that she
recommended against clemency. But her successor, Roger Adams,
filed a second report this year that contained no explicit
recommendation for the president, as such reports usually do. but
instead offered Clinton a range of options, law-enforcement
officials have said.
The committee's documents show that Adams and Eric Holder, the
deputy attorney general, met with Democratic Reps. Luis Gutierrez
of Illinois, Jose Serrano and Nydia Velasquez, both of New York,
on Nov. 5, 1997, to discuss the case of the Puerto Rican inmates.
According to Adams' notes, Holder told the three members of
Congress that because the prisoners had not applied for clemency
themselves, this could be taken that they were not repentant and
he suggested that a statement expressing some remorse might help
their chances.
On April 9, 1998, according to Adams' notes, he contacted a staff
aide to Gutierrez and said the department had not received any
statement of remorse. The notes show that Adams counseled the
staff aide as to how the statement should be worded for maximum
effect and he added that the department's new report would await
the statement.
In the end, the prisoners provided a long ambiguous statement,
with no explicit statement of regret. While some people had been
hurt, the statement said, "innocent victims were on all sides."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is the Judiciary Committee
chairman, also noted that just a month after Clinton's clemency
offer, Attorney General Janet Reno said in a report that the
nationalist groups the prisoners had been aligned with posed an
"ongoing threat" to national security.
"Factors which increase the present threat from these groups
include ... the impending release from prisons of members of
these groups jailed for prior violence," Reno wrote in the
Justice Department's Five Year Interagency Counterterrorism and
Technology Crime Plan published last month and made public at
Wednesday's hearing.
The F.B.I. and the federal prosecutors in Illinois and
Connecticut, where many of the convictions had been obtained,
flatly recommended that the president refuse clemency. After he
did so over their objections, Clinton was widely criticized by
law enforcement groups, families of the victims of some of the
crimes committed by the F.A.L.N. and both Republican and
Democratic members of Congress.
Clinton denied speculation that he had granted clemency to help
the candidacy of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, a likely
Democratic candidate for the senate from New York, which has a
large Puerto Rican voting population.
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont was the only Democrat to appear at
the hearing. After saying he was disturbed by the decision to
grant clemency but that it was Clinton's prerogative, Leahy
departed leaving the Republicans to take turns grilling the two
Justice Department witnesses, Holder and Adams.
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