Criminals, Clintons, Campaigns

What do these three Americans have in common?

John Deutch, the CIA director between May 1995 and December 1996, faced criminal charges for storing state secrets on his home computer.

David Herdlinger, a former Arkansas prosecutor and judge, pleaded guilty to mail fraud in 1986, having accepted bribes to waive charges against those accused of drunk driving.

Alfredo Luna Pharr Regalado failed to mention to a Customs official that he was smuggling into America more than the $10,000 permitted.

If your answer is "They are all free as a bird, having been given a last-minute pardon by President Clinton," you are right, though that is not the answer the examiners are looking for.

The correct answer is that all three, who were indeed pardoned at the last minute by Mr. Clinton, have made recent financial contributions to the presidential campaign coffers of Senator Clinton. Mr. Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave the maximum of $2,300. Mr. Herdlinger, who has relocated to Georgia and now describes himself as "a coach, catalyst, and facilitator helping people and companies discover and develop their potential," gave $1,000. And Mr. Regalado, an "insurance agent," gave $2,000.

The news that Mrs. Clinton has accepted money from three criminals who were pardoned by Mr. Clinton in highly contentious circumstances — or, more accurately, two criminals and Mr. Deutch, who was on the point of being charged by the Justice Department when he was let off the hook — is sure to prove hugely embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton's campaign.

It revives a deeply damaging controversy about the ethics of the Clintons at a time when Mrs. Clinton is already fending off accusations that a member of her campaign has been smearing her principal rival, Senator Obama, by suggesting to a top Democrat, according to the columnist Robert Novak, that they are sitting on scandalous information about the Illinois lawmaker that is so damaging, it would stop his campaign in its tracks.

It throws into doubt whether Mr. Clinton is a clear political asset to his wife's campaign, or whether the prospect of his return to the White House in an as yet unspecified senior capacity might not bring with it a return of the procession of scurrilous accusations that severely hampered his ability to govern.

And it casts doubt on what has thus far been the pre-eminent efficiency of the Clinton campaign. Mrs. Clinton's defense when she found out that a major donor, Norman Hsu, was still on the run, having failed to appear in court after pleading no contest to a charge of grand theft 15 years ago, was that it was difficult to keep track of the back stories of all those who gave her money.

But surely the Clinton campaign, which is credited with being the most disciplined and determined in modern history, might have foreseen that if someone granted a pardon by Mr. Clinton were to give even a cent to his wife, the fact would become a major political story?

You don't have to be part of Mrs. Clinton's "vast right wing conspiracy" to realize that such a donation, never mind three of them in a row, might be considered by even those without dirty minds as likely evidence of a quid pro quo. It is not as if the list of Clinton pardonees is hard to remember. After all, Mr. Clinton pardoned only 140 criminals and issued commutations to the sentences of 36 others on his last day in office, each one of whom attracted maximum publicity.

Now the whole "Pardongate" affair, which attracted its own independent special counsel, can be revived as a legitimate concern. Which grateful recipients of Mr. Clinton's beneficence have given money to his wife? It is what Mrs. Clinton might call a "gotcha question."

Which of the 15 pardoned cocaine dealers, including Mr. Clinton's self-confessed coke dealer brother, Roger, has given? Has she received cash from the newspaper heiress-turned-anarchist terrorist and bank robber Patricia Hearst? Or the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros, who misled the FBI during his appointment hearings about payments made to a mistress?

Just three checks and $5,300 later, immense damage has been done. Not that you could tell it from the official nonapology of Mrs. Clinton's campaign.

"We have raised over $65 million from over 200,000 people," her campaign manager, Howard Wolfson told the suitably named Jake Tapper, the ABC News reporter who first broke the story. "I appreciate your bringing the instance of this $5,300 and these three people to our attention."

There is nothing to suggest that anything illegal has taken place. Pardoned felons have had all their rights as a citizen restored, including the right to give money to the campaign of their choice. But the whole affair calls into question the motivation behind such donations — and whether gratitude played any part.

As Mr. Clinton argued in a spirited defense of his actions in the New York Times just a month after he left office, presidents are free to pardon whom they wish. "There is only one prohibition: there can be no quid pro quo. And there certainly was not in this or any of the other pardons and commutations I granted," he wrote.

nwapshott@nysun.com