Clintons on clemency: Appearances damning

Where there’s smoke there’s fire, except that in this case, the indicator is olfactory.

It reeks.

The revelations about some of the last-minute pardons and clemency orders issued by Bill Clinton on his way out of the White House are beginning to weave a pattern that can’t have a benign explanation.

First we’re asked to believe that Marc Rich’s ex-wife had no influence in obtaining his pardon by Clinton, despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars she sent Clinton’s way.

And now we have Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother, Hugh Rodham; her campaign treasurer, William Cunningham III; and Clinton’s longtime adviser and Cunningham’s law partner, Harold Ickes, all receiving payments from criminals for their help in obtaining clemency.

None of these three gentlemen, they assure us, ever tried to contact either the president or his wife in behalf of their clients. Well, perhaps they didn’t need to.

Why would any convict pining for clemency think these three men would be any more effective than any of the thousands of attorneys listed in the Yellow Pages?

Stench aside, why do we think the parade of revelations about the Clinton pardons is far from finished?

Because, of the 238 people to whom Clinton granted clemency during his final days as president — including 176 in his last hour in office — so far we’ve only heard a handful of them.

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