Holder’s Role in the Controversial Clemencies for Puerto Rican Militants

[WSJ_law_blog]

Then-Deputy AG Eric Holder, left, and Roger Adams, then the Pardon Attorney for the Justice Department, appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct. 20,1999. Holder and Adams defended their work in investigating the pardon of FALN members who were released from prison recently. (AP/Joe Marquette)


In the run-up to next week’s confirmation hearing for Eric Holder, the nominee for Attorney General, much is being made over the Marc Rich Pardon.

But there could be another fly in Holder’s pudding: His push to support the 1999 grant of clemency to members of two Puerto Rican militant groups — FALN (it’s the Spanish acronym for Armed Forces of National Liberation) and Los Macheteros. Today, the LA Times takes a deep dive into the episode, which Arlen Specter, the Senator from Pennsylvania who’s the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, criticized earlier this week.

The LAT reports that, in 1999, Holder, then the deputy AG, “repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial . . . grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations. . . . And after Pardon Attorney Roger Adams resisted, Holder’s chief of staff instructed him to draft a neutral ‘options memo’ instead . . .”

“I remember this well,” Adams told the LAT, “because it was such a big deal to consider clemency for a group of people convicted of such heinous crimes.” He said he told Holder of his “strong opposition to any clemency in several internal memos and a draft report recommending denial” and in at least one face-to-face meeting. But each time Holder wasn’t satisfied, Adams said.

The 16 members of the FALN and Los Macheteros, notes the LAT, had been convicted in Chicago and Hartford variously of bank robbery, possession of explosives and participating in a seditious conspiracy. Overall, the two groups had been linked by the FBI to more than 130 bombings, several armed robberies, six slayings and hundreds of injuries. None of the 16 whose sentences were commuted had been convicted of murder, and most had already served lengthy prison terms.

Holder had no comment for the LAT. A spokesman for the Obama transition team said Holder’s actions were appropriate.