Last-minute deal sets Clinton free

By MARY DEJEVSKY

WASHINGTON - President Bill Clinton brought down the curtain on the scandals that marred his presidency after reaching an 11th-hour agreement to end all risk of prosecution for past crimes.

Clinton agreed to admit that he "knowingly misled" the court when he gave evidence in the sexual harassment case brought against him by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones.

In a bitter parting shot, however, he sacked Pentagon employee Linda Tripp, whose recorded telephone conversations exposed his relationship with White House trainee Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton had faced the possibility of prosecution after he left office for allegedly lying under oath about his relationship with Lewinsky.

That threat has been lifted, as have all other judicial investigations.

The terms of the agreement were believed to include financial sanctions in addition to the $US800,000 ($1.79 million) damages he paid to Jones. He was also expected to accept a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law licence.

White House sources said Clinton had not admitted "lying" under oath, just as his settlement with Jones two years ago included no admission of wrongdoing.

Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998 for his conduct in the Lewinsky case, but found not guilty in the Senate trial that followed.

The agreement between Clinton and special prosecutor Robert Ray ends a seven-year investigation that began with the Whitewater land investment scandal.

Judicial forgiveness was not a one-way affair, however.

Ninety minutes before leaving office, Clinton pardoned Whitewater scandal figure Susan McDougal and one-time revolutionary and kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst Shaw.

But after lengthy discussions with advisers, Clinton decided not to pardon financier Michael Milken, Native American Leonard Peltier, former Justice Department official Webster Hubbell and convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

All told, Clinton pardoned 140 people and commuted the sentences of 36 others.

One of those pardoned was Clinton's 44-year-old half-brother Roger, a musician who served a year in jail on a drug offence. Roger Clinton says he has kicked his cocaine habit.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and former CIA director John Deutch also received pardons.

Cisneros pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge of lying to the FBI about how much he paid a former mistress. He remains one of the most popular Hispanic politicians in the United States.

Deutch had reportedly been negotiating with the Justice Department about pleading guilty to a misdemeanour for keeping classified information on his home computers.

Deutch, who was CIA director from May 1995 to December 1996, was stripped of his CIA and high-level defence intelligence clearances in August 2000 for mishandling classified information.

Among those getting commutations was Mel Reynolds, a former congressman who was sentenced in 1997 to 6 1/2 years in prison for fraud and campaign finance violations.

Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, convicted in connection with a bombing plot that included an attack on the US Capitol in 1983, also received commutations.

A presidential pardon - providing official forgiveness for criminal wrongdoing - gives convicted criminals benefits enjoyed by full citizens, including the right to vote.

Patricia Hearst Shaw, an heiress to the Hearst fortune, was kidnapped by a terrorist group called the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974 and forced to rob a bank. She maintains that she committed the crime after being mistreated by the group, including being brainwashed and spending more than 50 days in a closet.

When found, she was put on trial for grand theft and convicted. She served nearly two years of a seven-year prison term before being released with help from then-President Jimmy Carter. She later married her bodyguard and sought a full pardon, which a Clinton aide said Carter also supported.

McDougal was convicted in connection with an improper loan to pay the debts of Whitewater Development, the Arkansas land company in which Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, were partners.

McDougal spent 21 months in jail for refusing to testify about Clinton to independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

Hubbell, a former top Justice Department official and longtime friend of Clinton, was convicted of defrauding his Little Rock law firm, where he was a partner with Mrs Clinton.

Milken, a Wall Street financier who made billions in the junk bond industry before pleading guilty to securities fraud in 1990, attracted high-profile support for a pardon.

A prostate cancer survivor who served two years in prison, Milken has earned a reputation as a philanthropist after raising large sums of money for cancer research and education.

After the pardons and attending George W. Bush's inauguration, Clinton left the Capitol by motorcade - his last helicopter ride scotched by bad weather - heading for Andrews Air Force base and then his new home in New York.

- HERALD CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS

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