-Caveat Lector-
Web published at 2:15 p.m. PT, Friday, February 23, 2001
Exclusive: Roger Clinton Promised 6 Friends They Would Get
Pardons
Investigation: President's failure to grant any of the requested
pardons "sort of caused a rift," Roger Clinton said. "My
feelings were hurt. I was a disaster."
By RICHARD A. SERRANO and STEPHEN BRAUN
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON--Roger Clinton said today that he promised a
half-dozen of his closest friends, including people he had served
time with in prison, that his brother, former President Clinton,
would grant them pardons before leaving the White House.
Insisting that he never solicited money or accepted any, the
former president's brother said he compiled a list of six names,
wrote down reasons why they should be pardoned, and placed the
list in a convenient place in the White House that his brother
would be sure not to miss.
"I put it into a stack of papers on a table in the White House
where he would see it," Roger Clinton said in an exclusive
interview with The Times.
"I put the names on it. I put down their relationship to me.
And I said they had all gone through the Justice Department and
they were deserving."
Then, about a week or 10 days later, he said, just as his
brother's term was coming to an end, Roger Clinton asked the
president what he thought of the list. He said the president
told him he "would look into it."
On Jan. 21, reading the newspapers, Roger Clinton said he
learned to his dismay that his brother had decided against
pardoning any of his friends.
Dejected, Roger Clinton did not talk to his brother for two
weeks. "It sort of caused a rift," he said. "My feelings were
hurt. I was a disaster."
"I couldn't understand why none of my requests for pardons for my
friends were granted. I thought they all deserved it."
He said he also helped connect his friends with lawyers, assisted
his friends in filling out pardon applications, and made sure all
the paperwork was filed "timely and properly" with the Justice
Department.
"I worked hard around my brother," Roger Clinton said, explaining
that he was busy getting his friends lined up for pardons through
normal channels before he finally approached the president with
the list in the White House.
"I went through the proper way. I sent it all in. I made sure
that they had all their paperwork filled out through their
lawyers and that it all had been sent into the Justice
Department.
"I did everything legitimately," he added. "I took no money."
He declined to identify his friends, or to say whether he had
been involved with any clemencies that were granted.
Former President Clinton granted 140 pardons and 36 commutations
on his last day in office, and since then a growing controversy
has swirled around why he decided to help certain of the
applicants - most notably with a pardon for fugitive commodities
broker Marc Rich.
In addition, the president's brother-in-law, Hugh Rodham,
accepted $400,000 for pushing through two clemencies--$200,000
for a commutation for convicted drug dealer Carlos Vignali of Los
Angeles, and $200,000 for a pardon for herbal marketer Almon
Glenn Braswell of Florida.
The president and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
(D-N.Y.), have said they did not know Rodham was working on
behalf of those applicants. Rodham has since returned the money.
But two congressional committees are ratcheting up separate
investigations to determine whether improper influence was
brought to bear on the former president, or whether he benefited
from a quid pro quo.
Roger Clinton said he was surprised to learn that Hugh Rodham
took money.
"I'm in shock. I had no clue. I had no clue. But I do know one
thing:
Hugh is a great guy and we all are human, and people should let
it go once he's corrected it" and returned the money.
On Thursday, the House Government Reform Committee sent Roger
Clinton a letter asking for detailed information about his work
on behalf of anyone for presidential clemency. The letter also
stated that the committee "had received reports that you were
involved in representing individuals seeking pardons from
President Clinton.
Also Thursday, a spokeswoman for former President Clinton
revealed that Roger Clinton had presented a list of his "friends
and acquaintances" to his brother for pardons. She said the
president sent the list to the Justice Department for review, and
she confirmed that all were denied.
At the same time, Senate Judiciary Committee investigators have
opened a review of three cases--the Vignali and Braswell
clemencies and one of the pardons that was handled by Sen.
Clinton's campaign treasurer.
William Reynolds, a spokesman for Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.),
who is spearheading the investigation, said the committee would
also look "into the circumstances regarding the payments that
Hugh Rodham received for his actions in the Braswell and Vignali
pardons.
"We are continuing to look into irreguarities in the pardon
process," he said.
An official familiar with Judiciary's probe said the committee
will also try to determine if investigators should look into the
clemency efforts of Roger Clinton. "The nepotism connection is
clearly worth exploring," said one investigator.
Roger Clinton was reached by telephone inside his home in
Torrance. He was at first reluctant to talk, noting that there
had been a large group of reporters outside since the news broke
that he too had been pushing for presidential pardons.
"I've got a yard full of reporters like buzzards out here," he
said.
And, he quickly added, without first being asked, "I didn't get
any money for any kind of pardons. Nobody on my list, which
consisted of only my best friends I've known for 20 years or
more. Not only did I not get any money, but the none of them got
pardons."
Insisting he was only innocently trying to help friends, he said
that in hindsight he should not have promised that he could
deliver, and he realizes now that his brother might not have been
able to come through.
"I didn't foresee what was going to happen," he acknowledged.
Nevertheless, he said, "I couldn't understand why none of my
requests for pardons were granted. I thought they all deserved
it."
Roger Clinton said that he put together the list as the
culimination of an effort that he began when his brother first
became president in 1993.
He said he wanted to help his friends from the outset--many of
whom he has known from the time he was sent to prison in the
1980s on drug charges.
"They weren't bugging me," he said. "You've never been in prison
and in need of a pardon. But you want it for your namesake, for
your children, for your record.
"I was just in the hopes that if I put these six people on my
list and if I waited and didn't bother my brother the entire
eight years and didn't question him or even bring it up, and
dotted my I's and crossed my T's, I could take it to him, tell
thim it's all done, and that they were all qualified.
"I assumed wrong."
The day his brother left office, Roger Clinton said he expected
to soon have good news for his friends. But, he said, "Nobody
was more surprised than me when I got up the next morning. I
read the list in the newspaper. And when I heard 140 pardons, I
counted them all.
"And my friends' names were not on it....I put my heart and my
soul into this."
He said he could not face his friends, decided not to call them,
and in the month that has passed only one of the friends has
called him.
"They certainly had asked me about it over the eight years my
brother was in office," he said.
"Everybody wants a pardon. When you get out of prison and you've
done your time and all the paperwork and you've been a
productive, beneficial part of society and you've obeyed the law,
you're entitled to it."
But, he said, "I told them all along. I told them all along,
that I never had the pen" to sign the pardons.
"They were angry. They were disappointed. They were hurt.
They were everything that I was.
"I cried about a couple of days, I was in an emotional funk. I
didn't know how to feel."
Roger Clinton added that he told his brother that he would forgo
a pardon himself if the president would grant clemency to his
friends.
"It was so important to me that these people on the list, that
they get it and not me. I guess he didn't think so."
Also today, Rodham emerged for the first time in days from his
first-floor apartment in Coral Gables, Fla. He has remained
hidden since revelations surfaced about his fee work in the
Vignali and Braswell clemencies.
Clad in a black polo shirt and dress pants, Rodham hurried from
his apartment to a dark maroon Sedan de Ville, saying only,
"You've got my statement" before driving off.
In his statement on earlier in the week he said he was giving
back the $400,000 at "his family's request to return legal fees."
--- Staff writer Mike Clary in Florida contributed to this
report.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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