"People would hand me envelopes..."
"People would hand me envelopes..." For a handful of remaining stalwarts, the pardons are nothing. Next year, if security cameras capture Bill Clinton robbing a bank with a sawed-off shotgun, James...
...They're both from Arkansas and they both somehow know another man from Arkansas, television producer and presidential sycophant Harry Thomason...
...Or you decline to listen to it altogether: "David Geffen will barely talk to mel" a despairing Clinton has been heard to moan—and this because Leonard Peltier didn't get a pardon...
...It's all about "setups" and "overzealous prosecutors" and "unfair legal cases that never should have gone to indictment," sighs one person who recently received such a harangue...
...And "I did not have any involvement in the pardons that were granted or not granted, you know...
...Thomason, of course, knows Clinton consigliere Harold Ickes, whom he approached on behalf of Manning and Fain a week or so before Inauguration Day...
...A few short months ago, after all, half the college-educated world would have respectfully echoed Lan-ny's little yips and yowls...
...And Roger, it turns out, did wind up directly appealing to that someone, in the waning days of his administration, for about ten such pardons...
...Moreover, Hillary Clinton was an ignorant and therefore innocent bystander throughout the entire affair: "You know, it came as a surprise to me...
...Never once while successfully wheedling for these clemencies, Bill Clinton now urges us to understand, did Rodham specifically mention he'd taken any kind of fee—and the money has since been returned...
...Such "people would hand me envelopes" and "I would just pass them on...
...Word around prison," Vignali later told his lawyer, "was that it was the right time to approach the president...
...Because Joe Smith's clients, with no hope whatever of purchasing the favor of a presidency conducted from start to finish like some medieval court of intrigue, would still be sleeping behind bars...
...You get tired of listening to it...
...Jimmy Carter calls his fellow ex-president "disgraceful...
...And if her brother Hugh were, "you know, Joe Smith from somewhere who had no connection with me, we wouldn't be standing here, would we...
...We are meant to take their word for it, apparently...
...After eight long years, we think we're fully entitled to disbelieve such denials—and we suspect that the rest of America, brutally if belatedly disabused of its credulousness about the Clintons, might at last be prepared to share our doubts...
...David Geffen is a billionaire...
...James Manning and Robert Fain are two guys convicted of tax evasion in 1982...
...Friends of Bill complain to the New York tabloids that he has—sacrebleul—lied to them...
...It is not...
...And Weingarten, along with former Clinton aide David Dreyer, who is related to Weinig by marriage, then went to work on the West Wing...
...The president's January 20 pardon of Mitchell Couey Wood, for the crime of having once procured cocaine—from Roger Clinton...
...In "a half-furnished Dutch Colonial in New York," attended only by the "former White House valet named Oscar" who brings him fresh cans of Diet Coke, our retired president spends his days on the phone, Time magazine reports, "calling to justify himself to his friends...
...Ickes shares a legal practice with Hillary Clinton campaign treasurer William Cunningham III, who then drew up the requisite pardon paperwork...
...And so he did...
...American Indian "activist" Leonard Peltier had also applied for presidential clemency, Davis has lately reminded us...
...Poor John Podesta will subject himself to another 15-minute Meet the Press humiliation: "Well, I think that the—Tim, the truth is that over the course of that time, it was sort of a—you know, we were—we had to—it was under consideration," this bank-heist thing, but lookit, can't we please talk about "medical privacy" legislation instead...
...Roger, Newsweek's invaluable Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman recently revealed, was last year under serious FBI investigation for having solicited cash payments from various underworld types on promises that he could arrange to have a certain presidential someone wipe clean their criminal records...
...Which is pretty much all it took, as a careful reading of last week's news stories, each one better than the last, suggests...
...After which—and with just days to spare before all the friendly faces there would disappear—another Ickes law partner, Janice Enright, delivered the Manning and Fain petitions to the White House...
...Finally, there is the partially resolved mystery of Carlos Vignali, highlighted in these pages last week...
...Why, Davis wonders indignantly, are so few people commenting on that...
...Two months from now, and over the vehement objections of the Justice Department, Harvey Weinig will go free...
...Presto...
...Bill Clinton is almost alone...
...Our leading editorial pages, for example, now proudly announce their discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun: The pardons, they declare on an almost daily basis, are "emblematic of a consistent contempt for the office of which Mr...
...And Bill says he didn't grant any of them...
...And, "You know, I don't have any memory at all of ever talking to my brother about this...
...He has a point...
...Clinton inadvertently admitted at her damage-control press conference last Thursday: "It became apparent around Christmas that people knew that the president was considering pardons...
...He should have bought the cop-killer a better connected lawyer...
...Is it entirely Clinton's fault that Leonard Peltier remains locked up...
...This much we learned when the Los Angeles Times reported it on February 11...
...Then there's Roger Clinton, the former president's trouble-magnet, ne'er-do-well brother...
...But continued Democratic control of the White House is no longer at issue—nothing practical any longer depends on Bill Clinton's image, that is—and unvarnished truth is suddenly back in fashion...
...Then a little birdie whispered in his ear...
...And how in the world could it have proved to be true...
...And the disgraceful man's own cabinet appointees hiss that "he's on his own" from now on, for they have come to regard him with "total disgust...
...No, indeed, we would not...
...For it is surely bad enough what Mrs...
...In the early 1990s, Manhattan attorney Harvey "The Wing" Weinig codirected a $19-million money-laundering operation for Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel...
...And the place was subsequently besieged by "many, many people who had an interest, a friend, a relative," or whatnot...
...Joe Lockhart will tell Larry King that Clinton's decision to rob the bank was made purely "on the merits," which decision is being misrepresented so as "to inflict political damage on the former president and on the Democrats as a whole...
...Yes, well, guess what...
...Except that in this last particular, as in every other, the president's fickle pals rather too easily exempt themselves from blame...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...But Peltier, who shot two FBI agents as they knelt before him, already wounded, and begged for their lives, was actually refused a pardon by Clinton—such is the awesome spine of our 42nd president...
...Clinton was temporary steward...
...Chalk that up to random chance...
...The question remained, however: Who in the world could have led Vignali to believe that Bill Clinton's absolution was his for the asking...
...The answer spilled out last Wednesday: Vignali and a second highly questionable pardonee named Almon Glenn Braswell paid the president's brother-in-law, Hugh Rodham, $200,000 apiece to grease their deals during an extended January visit to the White House...
...And Lanny "Fido" Davis, ever vainly attempting to retrieve his master's frisbee reputation, will tell CNN that the former president deserves credit for not robbing two banks...
...Imagine...
...In early January, Vignali was still less than halfway through a 15-year federal sentence for financing a major interstate cocaine trafficking ring...
...At his trial, federal prosecutors played tape recordings of Weinig boasting of his participation in a kidnapping and extortion plot—and scheming to steal a fortune from his drug-lord employers: "F—k 'eml F—k 'eml I'm taking a million dollars and let's see [them] get it from mel" Early last year, about a third of the way through his resulting prison sentence, The Wing secured the services of defense attorney Reid Weingarten, already familiar to the White House through his helpful representation of such Clinton-ambit sleazeballs as Charlie Trie, Teamsters ex-president Ron Carey, Pauline Kanchanalak, and Mike Espy...
...Not to worry, advises Julia Payne, spokesman for America's first family of corruption: Roger says he received no compensation for making these requests...
...Next year, if security cameras capture Bill Clinton robbing a bank with a sawed-off shotgun, James Carville will no doubt go on Hardball, just as he did earlier this month, and call him "the best president we've ever had...
...Whereupon the president—^here, too, over vehement objections from the Department of Justice—said okay...
Vol. 6 • March 2001 • No. 24
