NOT EVERYONE SEES PARDON AS POSITIVE

Washington - The 141 Americans pardoned by former President Clinton
as he left office included an Omaha man who police say helped
organize one of the first crack cocaine rings between Los Angeles and
Nebraska.

For Kevin A. Williams, now a youth counselor at a west Omaha group
home, Clinton's last-day-in-office pardon provided a surprising end
to a legal ordeal that began with a 1990 guilty plea to conspiring to
distribute cocaine.

Williams, now 33, admits to selling illegal drugs as a teen-ager and
keeping company with drug dealers as a young adult. But he denies
participating in the cocaine ring that led to his indictment and
prison sentence.

"I never considered myself a criminal," Williams said recently. "I
knew what I did for a period of time was wrong, and I corrected it on
my own."

Even so, Williams' pardon is not without its detractors.

Police who helped prosecute Williams wonder how he came to be among
those pardoned by Clinton. And while they don't begrudge Williams a
fresh start, police say they're troubled at the notion of a convicted
drug dealer winning a pardon from the president of the United States.

"He was part of a ring that changed the whole complexion of Omaha,"
said Douglas County Sheriff Tim Dunning, a former lieutenant in
charge of the Omaha Police Department's narcotics unit. "It brought a
lot of crack into the area."

According to court documents and police, Williams was a mid-level
dealer in a drug operation run by a friend and fellow Omahan, Kenny
Blue. Police alleged that Williams regularly sold cocaine in Omaha
and helped Blue expand operations to Lincoln over a one-year period
beginning in August 1987. Williams was 20 years old at the time.

In a 1990 plea agreement, Williams pleaded guilty to conspiring to
distribute a small quantity of cocaine. He served about 14 months of
a two-year sentence, most of the time in a boot camp in Pennsylvania.

Williams admits to knowing of Blue's drug dealing and to selling
cocaine in small amounts, but not in Omaha and not for Blue.

Those who know and work with Williams these days say he leads a model
life. He recently earned a graduate degree from Bellevue University
and counsels youth and oversees daily operations at Rockbrook Family
Support Center in west Omaha.

Married with two sons, Williams is working to become a licensed therapist.

Unlike some others pardoned by Clinton, Williams claims no connection
to Democratic fund raisers, Clinton relatives or former White House
employees. And unlike Clinton's most controversial pardon recipient,
fugitive financier Marc Rich, Williams served his prison sentence and
returned to Omaha to begin building a new life, one that was burdened
by a felony record.

Two years ago, his attorney filed an application for a pardon,
seeking to give Williams back his right to vote, to run for public
office and to own a firearm. Supporters say Williams' pardon
represents a success story, both on a personal level and for the
criminal justice system.

"He had a tremendous uphill battle to put his life back together and
go beyond that to educate himself," said William Reay, president of
the nonprofit organization that operates the group home run by
Williams.

Marty Kauffman, dean of boys at Westside High School in Omaha, said
Williams helped build community support for the group home. He called
Williams a "wonderful" counselor who employs a mixture of compassion
and street smarts to steer kids back on track.

"That's what I've always assumed (pardons) were for," Kauffman said.
"Not only has he turned his life around but he's dedicated himself to
working with youth."

Born in Omaha in 1967, Williams was raised by his mother and
stepfather. The family moved to Oakland, Calif., when Williams was 7,
but he returned periodically as his mother's marriage hit rough spots.

Williams attended Benson High School but graduated from a school
outside Oakland.

In 1985, Williams moved back to Nebraska for his freshman year at
Peru State College, where he studied, played basketball and buddied
up with a teammate named Kenny Edward Blue.

By Williams' account, Blue dropped out of Peru State that same year,
while Williams transferred to Iowa Western Community College in
Council Bluffs.

Looking back, Williams says, his biggest mistake was remaining
friends with Blue.

While hesitant to speak about his involvement with drugs, Williams
admits to buying and selling cocaine in small quantities while living
in Oakland, Calif. He insists that he stopped dealing before the
period during which police say Blue began arranging shipments of
cocaine from Los Angeles into Omaha.

"Hanging out with Kenny was a bad decision because I was still
involved in that environment," Williams said. "That was pretty much
what got me to my conviction."

Two 1990 indictments of Blue, Williams and 23 others tell a different
story, though one that was never proven in court. Williams' plea
agreement ended his prosecution.

According to one indictment, Blue headed a yearlong conspiracy
beginning in August 1987 to import cocaine from Los Angeles for sale
at a variety of locations, including in Omaha's Fontenelle Park;
Carter Lake, Iowa; and a swath of north Omaha between 28th Street and
50th Street.

The indictment linked Williams to buying and selling cocaine on
dozens of occasions in Omaha. Citing electronic and police
surveillance, prosecutors accused Williams of being "closely
involved" with Blue and helping to set up meetings in which Blue
organized drug sales in Lincoln.

"He was an upper-level distributor in Omaha," Omaha Police Sgt. Mark
Langan said of Williams. Langan, who still works in the department's
narcotics unit, helped Dunning investigate Blue's operation.

Williams denies those charges, saying his involvement with drugs was
on a small scale and happened only in Oakland.

As Williams tells it, he was indicted because he hung out with Blue,
talked to him on the telephone and lent Blue a pager. Williams said
his ties to California also made him a likely suspect to police.

In 1988, Williams agreed to give Blue a ride to Eppley Airfield one
day when Blue was scheduled to rendezvous with a drug courier from
Los Angeles. Williams said he didn't know he was assisting in a drug
deal. When the courier was arrested, he said, it further linked him
to the drug conspiracy.

Williams concedes he used poor judgment.

"I'm saying that it was blown way out of proportion," he said. "They
blew it up bigger than it was."

After being indicted in 1990, Williams pleaded guilty to one count of
conspiracy to distribute 5 grams of cocaine. Faced with a possible
40-year prison sentence, Williams agreed to plead guilty and received
a two-year sentence.

Jesse Irvin, Williams' attorney, noted that Blue struck his own plea
bargain with prosecutors about three months before Williams.
According to court documents, Blue was sentenced to three years and
two months in prison.

After about seven months at a correctional facility in Duluth, Minn.,
Williams volunteered for a military-style boot camp in Lewisburg, Pa.
For seven months, Williams lived the life of an Army private in basic
training, awakened by bugles at sunrise for days filled with
push-ups, mandatory running and work at the camp's loading dock.

Eventually, Williams was released to a halfway house in Council
Bluffs. Working three jobs, he resumed his studies and in 1993
finished work on a bachelor's degree in sociology at Bellevue
University.

Williams later worked for a variety of mental health facilities in
Omaha, including Methodist Richard Young hospital, now called Richard
Young Center. There, he said, he was exposed to work in group homes
designed for young people in trouble with the law or struggling with
substance abuse, anger management or family problems.

In 1999, Williams earned a master's degree in human services from
Bellevue University. He tried unsuccessfully to start a business
catering to troubled kids and later settled into a job with a
nonprofit group called OMNI Behavioral Health.

Reay, president of OMNI, said Williams' past serves a need at
Rockbrook, the group home Williams runs for youth with serious
behavioral and emotional problems.

"He's able to help those kids a great deal," Reay said.

Reay said Williams should be commended not only for rebuilding his
life but also for dedicating his professional career to helping kids
who face similar problems.

"All it is is a pardon," Reay said. "I think it's a recognition that
he's done something with his life since then."

Langan and Dunning say they applaud Williams' progress. But a pardon,
they argue, sends a negative message.

"He got his break," Dunning said, noting Williams' plea bargain. "He
got a lighter sentence. I don't think he had anything else coming.

"The message to the youth of the country is that you can play hard
and screw up now and down the line you can be pardoned and everything
will be hunky-dory."

Williams disagrees, saying that he took the plea for fear of being
falsely implicated on more serious charges. He credits Irvin and many
others who supported him after he was released from the boot camp.

"You have to look at things on an individual basis," he said.
"Sheriff Dunning doesn't know me; he knows of a bad choice I made 15
years ago."