SKIPPING STEPS IN PETITIONING FOR A PARDON

When Tom Bhakta, an Arkansas businessman, decided in the fall to seek
a presidential pardon for his 1991 tax evasion conviction, the odds
seemed long. Thousands of other felons had been jockeying for
executive clemency for as much as a year, with more applications
arriving at the Justice Department each day.

Their requests followed a routine: inquiries by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, review by the relevant prosecutors, and recommendation
to the White House by a Justice Department office that works full
time on pardons.

Mr. Bhakta's plea for clemency traveled a different route. In the
last hours of the Clinton administration, his was one of nearly two
dozen rushed to the head of the line without the customary scrutiny.
The process was so hurried that his name was misspelled on the
official announcement and on the executive order President Bill
Clinton signed.

Mr. Bhakta is hardly a political insider. But he did have some
connections, although it is not clear what role, if any, they played
in the outcome. Records show that on a single day in October, just as
he became interested in getting a pardon, he, his wife and his three
college-age children contributed $1,000 each to the New York Senate
campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Bhakta's business partner and
lawyer, Kenneth Mourton, had also represented the broker who in the
late 1970's handled the commodities trades that brought Mrs. Clinton
nearly $100,000 in profits. An associate of Mr. Bhakta's knew a
senator who could be approached to help him obtain a pardon, Mr.
Bhakta said on Friday in a brief interview. He did not identify the
senator or associate.

In the nine days since Mr. Clinton issued 176 pardons and clemency
orders, attention has focused on some of the most controversial
recipients, particularly Marc Rich, a fugitive billionaire who fled
the country after his indictment on charges of tax evasion, fraud and
racketeering. The president's power to pardon is absolute, without
legal constraints, but current and former government officials said
that Mr. Rich's case is just one example of how Mr. Clinton ranged
further from a system whose established procedures were more closely
adhered to by his predecessors.

In many of these cases, government officials say, Justice Department
lawyers and the F.B.I. had no idea that pardons were being considered
until late on the night before George W. Bush's inauguration, on Jan.
20. Federal agents, who had scrutinized the other names on the list,
could conduct only the most cursory of investigations of the late
arrivals from the White House.

Government officials said the Justice Department had no knowledge
that the White House was compiling its own list. But many felons with
Washington connections did. Beginning last fall, the notion began to
circulate among potential applicants that the White House might be
receptive to direct proposals for pardons, said current and former
government officials, pardon applicants and lawyers. The result,
these people said, was a mad search around the country for lawyers
with contacts in the Clinton administration. Some of these lawyers
were offering their services at a steep price. The spouse of one
applicant said that a former congressman was willing to help her, if
she agreed to pay as much as $500,000.

Even those going through the traditional process joined those going
straight to the White House in reaching out to people with influence.
The heavyweight lawyers who represented recipients of Mr. Clinton's
clemency orders included Jack Quinn, a former White House counsel;
William Kennedy III, a former White House aide who has returned to
Mrs. Clinton's former law firm; and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, who was
attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Mr. Clinton has defended the pardon of Mr. Rich, saying it was
granted on the merits of his case, but he has declined to discuss his
other pardons. Senator Clinton has said that the pardon decisions
were strictly the president's. Her spokesman, Howard Wolfson, said
there was no connection between contributions to her Senate campaign
and the decision to issue Mr. Bhakta's pardon.

At least one of these pardon cases is still stirring within the
government. Yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney said the Justice
Department may be exploring the possibility of blocking Mr. Rich's
pardon.

Hoping to Be Heard

Over all, Mr. Clinton's granting of pardons and commutations is
comparable to that of his predecessors: over two terms he awarded two
more pardons than President Ronald Reagan did in his two terms. And
other presidents, notably George Bush, handed out controversial
pardons in the waning hours of their administrations. But several
legal experts said the midnight rush by Mr. Clinton was deeply
troubling.

"There is always a certain amount of slippage in this process," said
Margaret Love, a former head of the Justice Department's pardon
office who remains in contact with lawyers there. "But here the
slippage was massive."

The results have been particularly disturbing for the applicants and
family members whose hopes were dashed by their omissions from the
list. After months of work - following the rules, working through the
complex process and gaining respect for the professionalism of the
government's pardon lawyers - they now believe that they were
unknowingly playing on an unlevel field.

"It's not fair," said Ginger Whitacre, whose husband, Mark, hoped to
have his prison sentence for fraud and price-fixing commuted because
of his cooperation with federal investigations. "It's supposed to be
equal. And it comes down to whether you have money or not."

There is, of course, no such presumption of equality in presidential
pardons, and the ground rules that have been established over the
years serve merely to organize the process.

Throughout much of his presidency, pardons did not seem high among
Mr. Clinton's priorities. By the end of 1998, he had granted only 77
pardons and clemency requests out of nearly 4,000 submitted.

But about that time, government officials said, the number of
applications for clemency began to climb. The officials speculated
that the increase was an unlikely side effect of the Monica Lewinsky
scandal. As Mr. Clinton asked repeatedly for public forgiveness, the
officials said, some might have believed he would be more likely to
grant a little forgiveness of his own.

The signs that Mr. Clinton might be changing his use of the power
emerged about a year later, in August 1999, when Mr. Clinton granted
clemency to 16 imprisoned members of a Puerto Rican nationalist group
known as the FALN, for Armed Forces of National Liberation. It was a
decision that Republicans said was motivated to help Mrs. Clinton's
Senate bid. At the time, the White House denied that Mrs. Clinton
played any role in those pardons, and ultimately Mrs. Clinton
publicly opposed them.

Government officials say they believe that felons read the FALN
decision as another signal that the president was unsheathing his
clemency power. Applications to the pardon office climbed rapidly in
the months that followed, with the total number that fiscal year
growing 30 percent, to 1,300.

Then, this past July, the president commuted the sentences of four
women jailed on drug charges in separate cases. Around the country,
others sentenced for drug violations thought their prospects for
release had brightened. The July commutations "made us realize
Clinton was likely to do more," said Julie Stewart, president of
Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

The Ears of Influence

In the months that followed, clemency applications from people
convicted of drug crimes and other felons poured in to the Justice
Department at a rapidly increasing rate. The lawyers in the Justice
Department's pardon office began loading up on cases to review, ready
for some staggering months of work.

At the same time, applicants and their family members were beginning
to jockey for position. Garry Mauro, a longtime friend of the
Clintons and the Texas chairman of the Gore presidential campaign,
said he received more than 300 calls starting in November from
Democrats asking for help on behalf of a relative or friend who
wanted to obtain presidential clemency. He helped out in only a few
cases by sending a letter of support, Mr. Mauro said.

Martie Jobe decided to do everything she could to help her husband,
Stanley, get a pardon for his 1994 bank fraud conviction. Ms. Jobe, a
lawyer from El Paso, obtained the nine-page application form from the
pardon office and answered all of its detailed questions. She sought
letters from politicians, business people and other professionals to
attest to her husband's character. She compiled hundreds of pages of
supporting material in a notebook. Still, she wanted to push harder.

She asked for help from a former Democratic congressman from Dallas
with contacts in the administration. The former congressman was
willing to join in the effort, Ms. Jobe said, for a payment of
$200,000 up front, with a $300,000 bonus if he met with success.

Despite her eagerness to clear her husband's name, Ms. Jobe balked.
"That was close to buying a pardon," she said.

In an interview, the former congressman, John Bryant, now a lawyer
and lobbyist, said that his fee, which he said might have been less
than Ms. Jobe remembered, was to cover the extensive work that would
be required.

"It's not like you get a check and walk over to the White House and
say, `How about it?' " Mr. Bryant said. "The fee I quoted was for
three different people working on the matter. It was not that I had a
friend in high places to go to. You had to convince people at Justice
and then get over to the White House to make sure it happened."

Many applicants have no legal representation. Lawyers who do
represent pardon applicants said their standard fee ranged from
$2,500 to $5,000 for 8 to 20 hours of work.

Ms. Jobe said she sought another person with administration
connections, who in turn made contact with a White House official.
"It was all kind of mysterious," she said.

Her husband won his pardon this month.

At the White House, the lobbying on behalf of felons stepped up. Mr.
Rich, through his lawyer, Mr. Quinn, the former White House counsel,
began pushing for a pardon, something that former pardon lawyers said
was exceptional, since he remained a fugitive.

The Last-Minute List

On Dec. 22, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton met in the Map Room at the White
House with a group seeking clemency for four New York men who were
serving sentences for stealing $40 million from various government
grant and loan programs. The president eventually granted their
request.

At the same time, an assortment of other candidates for pardon were
pressing their case at the White House, either directly or through a
representative. They included Michael R. Milken, the former financier
who was convicted of securities fraud, and Webster L. Hubbell, a
longtime friend of the Clintons and a former Justice Department
official who had engaged in financial fraud involving his former law
firm and clients. Mr. Clinton ultimately declined to grant either man
a pardon.

A few blocks away, officials in the pardon office thought they were
wrapping up their work, government officials said. Their
recommendations had been completed, and sent on to the deputy
attorney general for review and approval before they were passed to
the White House counsel's office.

On Jan. 19, the last day of the Clinton presidency, an announcement
of pardons was scheduled for 5 p.m., government officials said. But 5
came and went. The announcement was rescheduled for 9, but that
passed as well.

In the pardon office, lawyers stayed waiting for word from the
president's staff. Late that night, it arrived: the White House had
more names it wanted on the list. As the hours passed, more and more
new names came in, until they finally totaled close to two dozen. And
the pardon lawyers had never investigated any of them.

With no time to conduct the usual in-depth inquiries into pardon
applicants, F.B.I. agents instead just ran the names through bureau
computers in search of other possible felony convictions. By 3 a.m.,
lawyers from the deputy attorney general's office decided to head
home, knowing that the pardon lawyers would be working through the
night.

By 5 a.m., an anxious lawyer awaiting word on his client's fate
phoned the pardon office. Roger Adams, the head of the office,
answered the phone, sounding dazed, the caller said. "Still waiting,"
he told the lawyer.

As the hours closed in on the Bush inauguration, the pardon office
staff was rapidly typing out information sheets for each clemency
recipient, governmental officials said. Most of the sheets listed an
array of details for each case: the statute violated, the sentence,
the lawyers and the names of character witnesses.

But more than 20 of those information sheets mentioned nothing more
than the pardoned felon's name.

It was, a government official said, the only information that the
pardon office had.