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Thursday, Feb. 15, 2001

The source said that the U.S. attorney's office in New York had begun an inquiry aimed at establishing whether there was any connection between the pardon - one of a flurry granted by Clinton in the dying moments of his presidency - and the large contributions made by the fugitive's ex-wife, Denise Rich, to Democrat causes, including the Senate campaign of Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton Presidential Library Fund.

Rich and his partner, Pincus Green, were indicted for their involvement in tax evasion and commodities fraud cases in 1983. They never returned to the United States to face trial.

No one at the U.S. Attorney's office in New York, or the Justice Department in Washington, was able to comment on the probe. However, the House Government Reform Committee confirmed Wednesday night that they had been asked by the Justice Department to delay any decision on whether to grant a key witness immunity from prosecution. A Capitol Hill source who asked not to be named told UPI, "Justice does not want immunity offered to someone who could be indicted as the result of a criminal probe."

Members of the committee, which last week launched a probe of the affair, had asked Ms. Rich to answer written questions about her role in the campaign for her husband's pardon, and about the more than $1 million that she gave to Democrat causes. Denise Rich refused to answer questions, citing her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

As a result, the committee began exploring the possibility of granting her immunity from prosecution - a move that would effectively annul her Fifth Amendment claim. Traditionally, all such requests are checked with the Justice Department.

The Committee chairman, longtime Clinton foe Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., said in a statement issued Wednesday night: "It will take at least one week for the Justice Department to arrive at a final conclusion on this matter, therefore the committee does not anticipate taking any actions with respect to Mrs. Rich for at least a week."

Clinton Bypassed DOJ Rules

The development came at the end of a day in which witnesses told Senate investigators that the campaign to secure the pardon bypassed the established Department of Justice guidelines for such applications.

"With respect to the pardon of Marc Rich and Pincus Green, none of the regular procedures were followed," Roger Adams, a department pardon attorney, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Former White House Counsel Jack Quinn, who directed the pardon campaign for Rich, also testified about repeated contacts he said he had with the Justice Department on the pardon issue. But former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who Quinn claims was aware of the efforts, disputes that the Department of Justice was closely following the pardon.

Adams, the Justice Department pardon attorney, also explained that no one had requested any formal investigation into the status of the indictments against Green and Pincus until a few hours before Clinton left office.

Quinn repeated his testimony - which he also delivered to the House Government Reform Committee last week - that he had been in contact with Holder about the pardon and that any allegations that the pardon effort had intentionally tried to avoid involving the Justice Department were untrue.

Congressional investigators have accused Quinn of attempting to circumvent the Justice Department because of concerns that the agency would object to granting a pardon to a fugitive who had refused to return to the United States to face trial.

Holder admitted that he had been made aware of the effort to obtain the pardon, but strongly denied having paid close attention to it. He told the committee that he regretted not having examined the matter closely, but also said that in his view, Rich's status as a fugitive made a pardon too unlikely to warrant his involvement. Holder was the No. 2 Justice Department official and was acting attorney general for a short time after Clinton left office.

"I wish that I had ensured that the Department of Justice was more fully informed and involved in this pardon process," Holder testified.

"Let me be clear about one important fact: Efforts to portray me as intimately involved or overly interested in this matter are simply at odds with the facts. In truth, because the Marc Rich case did not stand out as one that was particularly meritorious, and because there were a very large number of cases that crossed my desk that similarly fit into this category, I never devoted a great deal of time to this matter and it does not now stick in my memory."

In his testimony, Quinn detailed contacts he had with Holder and other Justice employees. He said that when he first started to work on the case in 1999, he met with Holder to explain why the government's case was weak. He contacted several members of the agency and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mary Jo White, whom Quinn failed to convince to drop the charges against Rich.

Quinn said after this approach failed, he began to petition the White House legal team, other administration officials and the president himself to consider a pardon for Rich. But while this campaign focused on the political appointees in the White House, Quinn denied any attempt to cut Justice out of the talks.

To prove this, he argued that Holder had congratulated him on the eventual success of the effort. Quinn produced records that showed he met with Holder several times, as well as letters to Holder on the issue.

Holder did not dispute that the contacts took place, but repeatedly stressed that because he had no strong objection to the pardon and because he thought it would not be granted unless positive foreign policy goals could be achieved, he did not act to investigate or subvert the effort.

Quinn acknowledged that he made the formal pardon petition directly to the White House, but insisted that this was not uncommon and only reflected his experience, as a lawyer to the president, that pardons can be and are granted without the normal Department of Justice review.

He tried to defend the pardon itself, claiming that Rich was treated unfairly when he was charged and that the case should have been resolved in civil, not criminal, court.

Hearings by the House Government Reform Committee are expected to resume in about two weeks. The committee this week issued extensive subpoenas to determine the extent of Denise Rich's lobbying of Clinton and the role that campaign contributions might have played in the pardon effort.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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