RISING NUMBERS SOUGHT PARDONS IN LAST 2 YEARS

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.