Bush's Pardons Break All the Rules : Clemency: With few exceptions, a President has never before pardoned former colleagues--and possible co-conspirators.

By William Schneider

Jan. 3, 1993 12 AM PT

William Schneider, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a political analyst for CNN

President George Bush doesn’t get it. A presidential pardon is supposed to be an act of forgiveness. You pardon your critics or enemies long after the issue between you and them has been resolved. It’s a way of putting the conflict to rest and erasing any lingering bad feelings. President Gerald R. Ford got the idea right when he pardoned “Tokyo Rose” 30 years after the end of World War II. He got it wrong when he pardoned Richard M. Nixon one month after Watergate ended.

On Dec. 24, Bush granted clemency to former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and five other figures from the Iran-Contra scandal. Three had pleaded guilty. One was convicted last month. The two others, including Weinberger, were under indictment and awaiting trial. That doesn’t exactly suggest a long-resolved issue.

Bush claimed that he was trying to “put bitterness behind us.” He said he was pardoning these people because they acted out of patriotic motives and had not profited from their actions. That’s a whole new principle of jurisprudence: You can be forgiven for committing a crime if your motives were pure.

Bush claimed to be acting in the spirit of other Presidents who had granted pardons to end divisiveness. He cited four examples: James Madison’s offer of clemency to pirates who attacked U.S. ships during the War of 1812; Andrew Johnson’s pardon of Confederate rebels after the Civil War; Harry S. Truman’s pardon of World War II draft evaders and Jimmy Carter’s granting of amnesty to Vietnam draft evaders.

All the examples Bush cited had to do with wars. Wars that had ended. And pardons were granted to people on the other side--an act of generosity, in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address (“With malice toward none, with charity for all.”). It’s hard to see how pardoning your former enemies justifies pardoning your former colleagues--and possible co-conspirators.

There are some exceptions, where Presidents have pardoned their allies instead of their opponents. Nixon commuted the prison sentence of Teamster Union boss Jimmy Hoffa in 1971, after the Teamsters endorsed Nixon for President. Ronald Reagan pardoned baseball owner George Steinbrenner III, in 1989, for making illegal contributions to Nixon’s reelection campaign. Bush pardoned industrialist Armand Hammer, in 1989, for making illegal contributions to Nixon’s campaign. And Ford, famously, granted a full pardon to Nixon after Watergate. Notice something? All of the exceptions have something to do with Nixon.

But there is no case where the pardoner was involved with the wrongdoing. That’s why Bush’s Iran-Contra pardons are in a class by themselves. Not only did he pardon his political allies, he pardoned them for illegal activities in which he himself may have been implicated.

Bush insisted that “no impartial person has seriously suggested that my own role in this matter is legally questionable.” Well, one has. Special Prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh characterized Bush’s failure to reveal his notes about the affair as “misconduct.” Walsh said, “In light of President Bush’s own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed official investigations.”

Bush’s defenders argue that the President’s failure to reveal his notes did not constitute a crime because the special prosecutor had not formally subpoenaed the notes. OK, but there is still the matter of Weinberger’s notes. His notes contradict Bush’s assertions that, as vice president, he had only “fragmentary” knowledge of the arms-for-hostages deal.

Bush’s defenders also argue that Walsh is not an “impartial person.” No, he’s not. He’s a prosecutor who has found what he calls “evidence of a conspiracy among the highest-ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.” As a result of Bush’s pardons, Walsh claims, “The Iran-Contra cover-up . . . has now been completed.”

Iran-Contra represents the culmination of two principles that continue to poison American politics. One is the Vietnam principle: In a conflict between absolute good and evil, extreme measures may be necessary. Anti-war protesters often resorted to extreme measures, including violence, to stop what they regarded as an immoral policy. That, in turn, drove the opposition to extremes. Nixon countenanced illegal activities during Watergate because he thought they were for a higher policy good. As Barry M. Goldwater once said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

But there was one big difference. The anti-war protesters were, for the most part, willing to face the consequences of their actions. Protest and civil disobedience are public acts, intended to dramatize a cause. The Watergate conspirators tried to cover up their illegal activities. They never tried to argue publicly that their actions were justified.

In his Inaugural Address four years ago, Bush denounced the Vietnam principle. He condemned the “divisiveness” of U.S. politics, the “hard looks” and “statements in which not each other’s ideas are challenged, but each other’s motives.”

“It has been this way since Vietnam,” Bush said. “That war cleaves us still. . . . The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory.”

But what was behind Iran-Contra except the memory of Vietnam? Congress, fearful that Reagan might turn Nicaragua into another Vietnam, outlawed U.S. military aid to the Contras. The Reagan Administration believed it was justified in defying the law because a higher good--opposing a Marxist regime--was at stake. And so, with the possible collusion of the President and vice president, they took the law into their own hands. And they did it secretly.

Rather than accept the consequences, they covered up, lied to Congress and obstructed justice. All for the highest patriotic motives, as Bush asserted. That’s the Vietnam principle in operation.

The Watergate principle is also in operation. Bush cited it last month when he defended the pardons. He denounced “a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences.”

That goes back to Watergate. Congress and the press went after Nixon for criminal activities. Maybe what they really hated Nixon for was Vietnam. But Nixon’s enemies could only get him for committing a crime.

Bush failed to note one crucial point, however, when he condemned “the criminalization of policy differences”: Nixon really did commit a crime. The evidence was strong enough that he resigned rather than face impeachment.

In the case of Iran-Contra, it wasn’t the Democrats or Congress who criminalized the issue. Members of the Reagan Administration really did commit crimes. Six of them have pleaded or been found guilty (two convictions were set aside on appeal and the other four have been pardoned). As Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Me.) put it, “If members of the executive branch lie to the Congress, obstruct justice and otherwise break the law, how can policy differences be fairly and legally resolved in a democracy?”

The Bush Administration was infuriated when Walsh indicted Weinberger four days before the election. Bush was moving up in the polls, and many Republicans believe he would have won if it had not been for the damaging information in the indictment.

So Bush retaliated with his own trick of timing. He issued the pardons on Christmas Eve, when they would receive the least attention. The news audience is light on Christmas. And by now, the pardon story has been overtaken by positive developments--the arms-control treaty with Russia and Bush’s visit to Somalia.

It worked. In last week’s CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, most Americans said they had not followed news coverage of the pardons.

But Bush’s attempt to disguise his motives did not work. Only 15% thought the main reason Bush pardoned Weinberger and the other defendants was “to protect people he felt acted honorably and patriotically from unfair prosecution.”

Fully half the public thought Bush’s real motive was “to protect himself from legal difficulties or embarrassment resulting from his own role in Iran-Contra.” In other words, Bush was trying to save his own skin.