BILL PARDONED TERROR - FALN CLEMENCY ENCOURAGED KILLERS

Terrorists killed 17 Americans in the USS Cole attack

The Clinton Response: Pardoning 16 CONVICTED TERRORISTS.

----Then he complains about how serious Condi was about terrorism.

What a first-class me-first doofus.

Hi Joe, wow is that really you? Believe me, if there is anything Clinton did during his whole time in office that enrages me more, it has to be that pardon more than anything. It just drives me nuts how this is never talked about in the press and I half flipped when I read your article in the Post, just fantastic that you took the time to remind the public what a bum this Clinton is and how he literally risked the lives of the people of New York all so his wife could play Senator (so much for Hillary doing "all she can for the people of New York".. Her first order of business before even stepping one foot in office was to unleash terrorists upon them!)

I can`t even imagine the hell you and your family must have went through with the loss of your father, but if it is of any condolence my father as well was almost taken out by the FALN. He was a cop with the emergency services in the `70`s (Patrick "Paddy" O`Conner who was killed in 1972 helping a stranded motorist was his partner and best friend) and one day they were investigating a bomb planted by this FALN (in midtown I believe), when my father stepped out of an elevator and turned the corner walked a few steps and the bomb went off. Any second earlier he would have been killed and like you I could have been fatherless at such an early age.

That this bum Clinton should years later pardon these TERRORISTS and then now boast and lie about his record is beyond disgusting and anything that can be written to expose this bum for what he is can only help to serve the public (that seems to be largely misinformed) today.

I wish you the best of luck, hope your family is doing well and hope you get more articles to write in the Post.

Welcome to Freerepublic. It's an honor to have you as a Freeper and participate in this forum. I hope you will find time to join us often in the future. You have our admiration for your contribution to today's New York Post and you will always have our support.

He'd sell his dead mother's corpse for twenty bucks.

That much? Huh? Somehow I thought it'd be less.

Clinton pardoned terrorists to help Hillary ping!

I usually avoid any article regarding Clinton, but I think it is good to be reminded how evil this man really is.

Oh please..............................

Fox got what it wanted...............

controversy

and therefore ratings.

you've been played.

"....Clinton wagged his familiar finger in the face of the American public - which he clearly takes for fools ...."

The American public elected him President , then re elected him President, and would, if yhey could, elect him President again.

I would say that he has a good reason to take the American public as fools.

Nothing about Clinton shocks me anymore but now I'm, finally convinced. After typing this reply, I'm heading straight outside to rip all the "Hillary '08" bumper stickers off my car and when I get home, all the yard signs are going too! I mean it this time.

Ok seriously tho' - the fact he in his shortsightedness and willful ignorance, used the USAF as it was the KLA branch of the mujahadeen air force in the Balkans (some of our troops there soon figured out we were bombing the wrong side) would have been enough for me.

But what else would you expect from a guy who spent years sucking up to one of the godfathers of modern terrorism, Yassir Arafat, and could not differentiate between a campaign of global jihad from an isolated crime.

Yes, its me. I have gotten great feedback from friends and you all. The mainstream media does not seem too interested.

The FALN was (are) indiscriminate killers. Thank God fate was on your dad's side that day. As we know, a few seconds or a seemingly simple decision can mean the difference between life and death. Let's keep bringing the truth out about the Clintons. As I said in 1999, "Its hard to think that your father's life is worth less to the president than some political agenda." To the Clintons we are pawns in their ambitions.

For what it is worth, I attach my 1999 Senate testimony and a previous piece in the NYPost.

http://www.nypost.com/index.shtmlhttp://www.nypost.com/index.shtml LIFE AFTER TERROR By JOSEPH F. CONNOR YOU sometimes hear how the first World Trade Center attack was a warning that the city ig nored. But it wasn't the first: Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the New York terrorist attack that killed my father, Frank T. Connor — the Jan. 24, 1975, bombing of Fraunces Tavern. The killers struck on a warm, clear and pleasant winter's day. My dad, a 33-year-old officer of Morgan Guaranty Trust, was having lunch with clients. The bomb killed him and three others in unspeakably gruesome ways. One of his colleagues was decapitated; silverware from the table was lodged in the torsos of the others. This is the grotesque reality of terrorism. A man goes to work one day, and out of nowhere his life is taken from him and his family. I was 9 years old, my brother Tom, 11. The cowardly attack was meant to kill many more than those four innocents but immediately before the blast the bomb was kicked out of the way by an unsuspecting restaurant employee — shifting the brunt of the explosion away from the main dining area and directly into my father's table. All these years later it is still hard to accept that his lunch party actually moved to "a better table" only minutes before the explosion. This is the inexplicable randomness of terrorism. The attack turned out to be the deadliest of the 130-plus bombings by the FALN, terrorists who claimed Puerto Rican independence as their cause. In due course, the group's members were caught or driven into hiding. Those were different times. Our family never received so much as a phone call offering help from our state or federal representatives or the Red Cross. There were no lawsuits. When a family acquaintance offered his legal services, we dismissed him as an ambulance chaser. But in many ways, we were better off "forgotten." We had friends, family, faith and each other for support. We cried together alone and focused our energies on looking ahead — doing all the things that my dad would have wanted for us. My Irish-born mother Mary earned her GED and went on to graduate from college in 1986. Grandma Connor, through the grief of losing her only child, dedicated herself to my mother in raising my brother Tom and me. The first question I remember asking the day of my father's death was, "Is grandma still our grandmother?" The definitive way in which my mother answered, "Yes, of course she is" reassured me that our family would stick together. That set the tone for our lives going forward. We never felt like victims. Like my mother and grandmother, Tom and I were pushed to self-sufficiency, and rose to the challenge, focusing on school and sports, graduating grade school, high school and college, beginning careers, marrying and having children. We are driven by never letting my father's memory down. Not to overcome the obstacle of his death would have diminished the meaning of his life and we loved him far too much for that. We put the notion of terrorism aside — until August 1999, when the wound was reopened. That's when President Bill Clinton offered executive clemency to 16 core members of the FALN. Hillary Clinton was then eyeing the Senate seat soon to open up in New York, and pardons for the FALN were a longtime priority for many prominent city Democrats. We were outraged — our father was being betrayed for cheap politics. We "went public" as a family for the first time. Enlisting the same energies that saw us through the previous 24 years, we fought to keep those thugs in prison. We failed there — 14 of the 16 accepted clemency and were released that September. We were successful in that we did not back down; the issue should haunt the Clintons in the years to come. Because times have changed in many ways — the next time terror hit our family, it hit the entire American family. Like our father 26 years before us, Tom and I commuted every day through the World Trade Center. On 9/11, we were horrified eyewitnesses to the planes hitting the towers — and to working people just like us falling or jumping to their deaths. I thought I might die that day — only blocks from Fraunces Tavern. But I managed to get home to Danielle and the kids. They would not grow up without their dad, like I did. Tom and I got out — but our closest cousin, and our father's godson, did not. Steven Schlag worked on the 104th floor of the North Tower. Killed at 41, he left a wife and small children — like our father. Like so many who waited with us in hope for word on our father that January evening in 1975, Tom and I sat in vigil at Steve's house that horrible September 2001 evening, waiting for word from him. I remember staring bleary-eyed at Steve's father Donald (my father's first cousin and as close to a brother as he could have been), suffering through this nightmare yet again. Through my own tears and shock I tried to lend hope, while knowing there was none. Our family has endured and learned from the effects of terrorism for 30 years. We know there are no magic words to make it better. But I want to offer some words of hope to those families more recently affected: Even now, more than three years after the fact, you are on a lifelong, daily struggle. It may feel overwhelming at times, but you can overcome by drawing on your lost loved one, each other and your faith in God for strength. Thirty years after Fraunces and a grown man, I still grieve every day for my father, but push on — as our whole family has since his death, never letting him down and always keeping his memory alive. I can think of no better way for my father, Frank Thomas Connor, to be remembered than as a symbol of hope for those facing the struggle we began 30 years ago. Joseph F. Connor works in the financial services industry. Did you know that 3.8 million visited New York Post Interactive at www.nypost.com making it the 5th most popular online newspaper nationwide?* *Nielsen Netratings November 2004 To sign up for Daily Newsletter Alerts, please visit http://www.nypost.com/php/newsletter/classify_newsletter_clicks.php HEARING STATEMENT OF JOSEPH CONNOR > BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, PEACE > CORPS, NARCOTICS AND TERRORISM OF THE > COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS > > SEPTEMBER 14, 1999 > > >My name is Joseph Connor and I appear before the Committee as a person forever affected by an FALN terrorist act that killed my father, Frank Connor, at Fraunces Tavern 24 years ago and by the recent unconscionable and immoral decision by the President to grant clemency to 16 FALN terrorists. >For the reasons I will explain, I request that the Committee formally investigate the following aspects of President Clinton's clemency grant to the FALN terrorists: > > Why the President disregarded the recommendations by the FBI, Justice Department and Bureau of Prisons that the terrorists not be released? > > Why the victims and their families were neither given proper notification of the clemency nor a meeting with Janet Reno, as pro clemency supporters were granted? > > The impact of granting of clemency to the FALN terrorists will have on future terrorist acts and whether the possible clemency request by William Morales should be granted? > > Why the President initiated the clemency process without a formal request from the terrorists themselves? > > Whether Hillary Rodham Clinton's political aspirations in New York State played a role in the clemency grant? > >Contrary to the disingenuous claims of those who sought the terrorists' release, there is nothing non-violent about these FALN members and there has been no remorse. Four of them were videotaped making bombs just prior to their arrests. Just this past weekend, one of the now released terrorists explained there is no need for him to feel guilt for the Fraunces bombing. Incredibly and shamelessly, he argued that the establishment where people were killed did not take proper precautions to guard against such an attack. My father was killed while eating lunch in a restaurant! These are the people our President has released on society. > >The bombings only stopped when these terrorists were put in jail! The FALN killed real people and devastated the lives of many others. Our family has had to live with the aftermath of their "non-violence" for almost 25 years. It was a beautiful winter's day, Friday, January 24, 1975, when my family was shattered by the bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New York City. My father, Frank Connor, was brutally murdered in the attack; an attack for which the FALN proudly claimed responsibility. Our mother, Mary, had spent much of the day preparing a special meal which we planned to have that night to celebrate my brother's and my recent 11th and 9th birthdays, respectively. (Mourners ate that meal after my dad's funeral.) Shortly after coming home from school that day, we learned that our father had been with clients at Fraunces for lunch. After an agonizing vigil, his colleagues at Morgan Guaranty Bank delivered the final, devastating news to my mother, brother, grandmother and me. > >My father was only 33 years old when he was killed. The only child of an elevator operator and a cleaning lady, he was born and raised in Washington Heights, a working-class section of Manhattan, attended City College (where, ironically several of the FALN terrorists also "studied"), graduated from Farleigh Dickinson University, and worked his way from the ground floor up to a successful career at Morgan. Now at 95 years of age, my grandmother, like the rest of my family, has never recovered from his death. Although my mother has remarried and my brother Tom and I now have families of our own, not a day passes without feeling the void left in our lives. We miss him deeply. My father's death has become a part of me; an indescribable, intangible wound that has been opened and aggravated by this preposterous and disrespectful clemency grant. > >These terrorists took away my father's life; never allowing him to see his sons play sports in high school, never allowing him the pride in seeing his boys graduate college, and get married. They took from him the joy of being a grandfather. They took from my mother the promise of growing old with her first love. > His grandchildren will never know their grandfather. They look at pictures and ask who he is. My wife and I tell them he is in Heaven watching over us. But, when they ask why he was killed, what answer can we give? His life having been valued lower than the political agenda of the President of the United States. My father loved his country and in whose greatness he believed. Is this what he gets in return? > Not only was this grant of clemency immoral, but it violated several legal conventions. Under the Victim's Rights and Restitution Act of 1990, a "responsible official" was to provide victims with the earliest possible notice of the release from custody of the offender. The law reads at 42 U.S.C. Section 10607(c)(5): "After trial a responsible official shall provide a victim the earliest possible notice of. . .release from custody of the offender." My family read about the grant in the newspaper! We have never been contacted by Janet Reno or anyone at the Justice Department or the White House regarding our views on the clemency. Had we been properly notified, we would have requested the delivery of our opinion on the issue through a personal meeting with Janet Reno, as the pro clemency supporters were granted. God willing, if Ms. Reno had been fully informed, there is a chance, however small, given her own political nature, that she would have vehemently objected to the clemency offer from ever having being made by the President. Because no notice had been provided by the Clinton Administration, had the terrorists renounced violence and accepted clemency right away, they may actually have been out of jail before we ever learned of the offer. > >The process through which this clemency was offered was improper. Typically, those incarcerated express remorse and request clemency from the President through a standard process. He then reviews the claims. In 3,039 out of 3,042 prior cases, clemency was denied by the Clinton Administration. In this case, the terrorists did not express remorse or actually request clemency. It was petitioned on their behalf in 1993, and the request sat on the President's desk for 6 years. Was it a coincidence that when Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton decided to run for the Senate in New York State, the President suddenly, and without notice, took an interest in the clemency request and then granted it? Perhaps most telling, the clemency request was granted before the FALN terrorists themselves ever made their own request. > >Much has been written about the support given to the clemency request by luminaries such as Cardinal O'Connor, Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter. This is clearly part of a disinformation campaign. Cardinal O'Connor never supported clemency, but merely asked the Attorney General to review the case. a large difference. (I am attaching a letter from Cardinal O'Connor to me explaining this.) These lies have been proliferated by White House spokesmen since clemency was offered. > >Has anyone heard or read the opinions of Desmond Tutu or Jimmy Carter? Even if they had supported clemency, on what factual and legal basis did they do so? And, what is the value of their supposed opinions on this matter in any event, given that clemency was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Attorney's Office. History teaches us from the Iran hostage crisis that Jimmy Carter, whatever his virtues, is hardly an expert on how to deal with terrorists. In fact, Bureau of Prisons officials concluded that, if released, these terrorists might resume their criminal behavior. > >As recently as last year, the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice wrote to our family, describing the arrests and convictions of these people, referring to them in the Government's own reports as "terrorists." Perhaps the President should read this letter, which I am also attaching to this written hearing statement. > >Terrorism is one of the major problems facing the world as we enter the new century. While terrorism continues on from many foreign and domestic sources, the nation thought that the threat from FALN terrorists had been at least eradicated almost 20 years ago. Thanks to the President's callous disregard, the threat is now back and the world is a less safe place as a result. I keep hearing the President repeating that we have to protect our children. Is unleashing unrepenting, hardened killers on society the way to do so? It shouldn't "Take A Village" to see that trampling on the rights of victims, and ignoring proven prevention techniques in our criminal justice system for considering and denying clemency applications, is not the way to fight terrorism. > >Respectfully submitted, > > >Joseph Connor > >Attachment 1 -- Letter from the Archbishop of New York to Joseph Connor > >Attachment 2 -- Letter to Joseph Connor from the Deputy C >---------------------- Forwarded by Joe Connor on 05/16/2000 04:15 PM >---------------------------

Either you've posted to the wrong thread or you didn't read the article.