Marc Rich Pardoned after Heavy
Political Contributions
In 1983, Marc Rich was charged with conducting
the largest tax evasion scheme in U.S. history. He fled to Switzerland
to avoid trial and has avoided extradition ever since. Over the
following seventeen years, Marc Rich’s ex-wife, Denise,
contributed over $1 million dollars to the Democratic Party and
$450,000 to Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock.
In addition, she pledged to raise $1 million for the library
when she spoke with Bill Clinton during one of her several calls.
However, these donations alone could not merit a pardon. Clinton
rationalized the pardon on the fact that Marc Rich’s guilt
lay in the importation of Iraqi oil, thus a pardon would promote
the peace process in the Middle East. (Fisher,
594) The way Clinton
acted after the pardon only worsened his case.Bill Clinton wrote
an op-ed piece for the New York Times and defended his pardons.
In his writing, Clinton made
two tactical errors; one was lie and the other was
a false justification. He wrote that three distinguished attorneys and his
White House Counsel all had reviewed and advocated for the pardons. “Within hours,
all three men denied this claim.” (Fisher, 595) Clinton’s blatant
lie fueled criticism of his work toward the peace process. This pardon had
no peaceful impact in the Middle East, especially because Israel lobbied for
the
pardon of a different man.
Marc Rich’s pardon avoided review by both the pardon attorney and the Department
of Justice by going directly through the White House. Despite seeming deceptive,
it was technically legal. The president maintains the pardon as an executive
prerogative; his decision is made to represent the law. While not illegal, Clinton’s
pardon does raise huge moral and ethical concerns.
Clemency
Offered to FALN Terrorists
Bill Clinton pardoned sixteen
members of the FALN organization. These men belonged to a Puerto
Rican freedom terrorist group, which was responsible for planting
over 130 bombs in public places in the U.S. They killed six people
and injured seventy. (Genovese
and Almquist, 83) The FALN represented the single largest
terrorism campaign in the U.S. “Yet Clinton’s clemency
released individuals from prison after serving less than twenty
years of terms running from fifty-five to ninety years.” (Fisher,
590) Again, President Clinton did not follow formal pardon procedures.
He skipped the Department of Justice and attorneys. The FBI did
not conduct any background checks and the FALN did not even execute
a formal request. These facts, coupled with the Department of
Justice’s 1996 denial of their clemency, make Clinton’s
motives highly questionable. (Fisher,
590) The fallout was terrible
for Clinton, receiving bipartisan condemnation and public fury.
The Houseof Representatives
later passed a resolution condemning Clinton’s pardon as an explicitly
illegal action. One person, however, may have benefited from this clemency grant.
Hillary Rodham
Clinton, the President’s wife, won her senatorial bid for New York in the
following election. She was elected senator in a state where 1.3 million Puerto
Ricans would vote in the election. (Corzo, 14)
Whether New York’s large Puerto Rican population voted on her behalf is
not clear in the literature, but speculation leads to few legitimate justifications.
Investigations were launched to find reasonable grounds for the clemency. However, “Congressional
efforts to learn more about the FALN matter came to an end when Clinton invoked
executive privilege to refuse subpoenas from congressional committee.” (Fisher,
593) As the critics raged, the White House maintained that the pardon power is
not subject to legislative deliberation.
No Pardon Jonathan Pollard
In an interesting counterexample,
former Naval Intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard has been
denied a pardon despite
three explicit promises made by Clinton himself to Israeli
Prime Ministers. Clinton first used Pollard as a bargaining
chip in his efforts toward Middle East peace with then Prime
Minister Yitzhak
Rabin. In the last minute he revealed his bluff. He thenpromised
Binyamin Netanyahu at the Wye Plantation Summit that Pollard's
release would be included if the Israelis
and Palestinians would sign the accord. Again, he was bluffing.
The basics of the Pollard case are the he passed along classified
military information to Israel which he believed was in the
interest of its national security. Pollard acted on ideological
grounds and received no financial gain for any of his actions.
For this, he was classified as a mercenary. Jonathan Pollard
was sentenced, without a trial, to life imprisonment with
no
chance
of parole
in
1987. "No one else in the history of the U.S. has ever received
a life sentence for passing classified information to an
ally - only Jonathan Pollard. The median sentence for this
offense is two to four years." (jonathanpollard.org)
