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FBI decries freed Puerto Rican prisoners as terrorists

News/Current Events News
Source: Fox News
Published: 9/22/99 Author: By Shannon Mccaffrey, Associated Press
Posted on 09/22/1999 07:14:09 PDT by Lance Romance

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top FBI official told Congress he regards Puerto Rican militants freed in a grant of clemency by President Clinton as "terrorists'' who continue to represent a threat to the United States.

The description by Neil Gallagher, the FBI's assistant director for national security, came Tuesday as President Clinton tried again to explain why he granted clemency, this time in a five-page letter to a Democratic congressman.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported in today's editions that an unsigned letter prepared for FBI Director Louis J. Freeh stating the FBI was "unequivocally opposed'' to the clemency offer was among thousands of documents sent to Congress.

The Times quoted senior law-enforcement officials as saying Freeh read the letter before it was forward to Congress with other background documents and that the letter accurately reflected his position.

Clinton's own letter said the offer was motivated not by politics, as critics have charged, but out of concern for the "extremely lengthy sentences'' the separatists were serving.

"No form of violence is ever justified as a means of political expression in a democratic society based on the rule of law,'' Clinton wrote. "Our society believes, however, that a punishment should fit a crime.''

Most of those who had their sentences commuted were serving between 35 and 90 years for seditious conspiracy and possession of weapons and explosives.

Clinton wrote the letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, which was holding a hearing on the clemency Tuesday. Waxman read the letter at the hearing's start.

The explanation from the president came just days after the White House announced it was invoking executive privilege to block Congress from access to documents and high-level testimony pertaining to the clemency. The House panel hearing testimony Tuesday had issued subpoenas to get that information.

Clinton defended that decision in his letter, noting that the granting of clemency is an exclusive power of the president.

"In vesting the pardon power to the president alone, the framers of the Constitution ensured that clemency could be given even in cases that might be unpopular and controversial,'' he wrote.

Gallagher's testimony marked the first time that federal law enforcement officials have testified on the issue. Also on hand were officials from the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons. They were barred from answering direct questions about the clemency, because of the White House executive privilege.

Gallagher described the activities of the FALN - the violent organization to which most of those offered clemency belonged. Afterward he was asked by the committee's chairman Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind, if they should have been freed.

"Do I think they should be out on the street? I think these are criminals and that they are terrorists and that they represent a threat to the United States,'' Gallagher said.

The FBI was one of several law enforcement organizations opposed to the clemency.

Asked about the continuing threat of the FALN and its sister group in Puerto Rico, Los Macheteros, Galllagher ticked off a handful of more recent bombings in Chicago and Puerto Rico believed to have been conducted by the groups.

Clinton's offer of clemency has come under fire from some who have accused him of making it to boost first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's popularity among New York's 1.3 million Puerto Ricans. Mrs. Clinton is considering a bid for the Senate from New York in 2000.

Clinton said in his letter that "political considerations played no role in the process.''

The FALN — the Spanish abbreviation for the Armed Forces of National Liberation — is responsible for a wave of bombings of U.S. civilian and military targets in the late 1970s and early 1980s that left six dead.

thx for the post!

Clinton's offer of clemency has come under fire from some who have accused him of making it to boost first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's popularity among New York's 1.3 million Puerto Ricans. Mrs. Clinton is considering a bid for the Senate from New York in 2000.-- piasa

WASHINGTON -- Two Norwegian public-relations executives and one member of the Norwegian Parliament say they were contacted by the White House to help campaign for President Clinton to receive this year's Nobel Peace Prize for his work in trying to negotiate peace in the Middle East.

Clinton Lobbies for Nobel Prize: What a Punk
White House Lobbied For Clinton Nobel Peace Prize
Updated Friday, October 13, 2000
By Rita Cosby

There's been speculation in the last few months that Clinton was pursuing a Mideast peace accord in an effort to win the prize and secure his legacy as president.

AIDES PUSH CLINTON FOR THE NOBEL

At the time, clinton observed: "I made more progress in the Middle East than I did between Socks and Buddy." Retrospectively, it is clear that clinton's characterization was not correct.

Buddy Death Report Raises More Questions Than It Answers

ADDENDUM 12.13.03:
As for pathologic self-interest, check out Richard Miniter's C-SPAN interview; the interview is contained in my latest virtual hillary movie (below), hillary talks:ON TERROR; it is absolutely devastating for the clintons. Miniter lays out in sickening detail the clintons' monumental failure to protect America.

Note in particular Madeleine Albright's shocking reason given at the time of the USS Cole attack why the clinton administration should not respond militarily. It tell us everything we need to know about the clintons. It tell us why clinton redux is an absolutely suicidal notion.
Notwithstanding their cowardice, corruption, perfidy and essential stupidity, the clintons, according to Albright, made their decision not to go after the terrorists primarily to enhance their own legacy and power. The clintons calculated that such inaction would MAXIMIZE THEIR CHANCES TO RECEIVE THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE. No matter that that inaction would also maximize the terrorists' power, maximize America's danger.

The Democratic Party's Problem Transcends Its Anti-War Contingent2

The Nobel as clinton Pavlovian stimulus--a timeline
(In this season of gift horses and attack dogs, let us not forget the good clinton dog, Buddy...)

To this day, clinton seems not to understand that bin Laden is -- and was in 1996 -- an enemy of the state, not a simple criminal.
Clinton does not get it: the same terrorist --the terrorist he refused to take--hit the same building in '93.(To be sure, clinton cluelessness is only part of the explanation for this monumental blunder; other critical components include clinton cowardice, criminality, rapaciousness and, that which permeates everything clinton, concern for his/their noxious legacy.)

Notwithstanding this, to hear clinton tell it, his disastrous decision not to take bin Laden when offered up on a silver platter by Sudan, (arguably the worst decision ever made by a president), derived from his scrupulous avoidance of abusing power and trashing laws...

Yeah, right.

Left-Wing Talk Radio--'It's the terrorism, stupid'.

he clintons' malfeasance-malpractice constellation was both a necessary and sufficient cause of 9/11. That is to say, had the clintons (BOTH of them--it was a "co-presidency," remember?) competently and honestly and courageously and selflessly done their job, bin Laden would be but a footnote today; 9/11, and perhaps even more important, the exponential growth of al Qaeda, would not have happened. It's really that simple.

hillary talks:ON TERROR
(reinstalling the clintons in the White House has one advantage over suicide)

(viewing movie requires Flash Player 6, available HERE)

missus clinton's REAL virtual office update
http://hillarytalks.blogspot.com
http://virtualclintonlibrary.blogspot.com
http://demmemogate.blogspot.com
http://www.hillarytalks.us
http://www.hillarytalks.org
fiendsofhillary.blogspot.com
fiendsofhillary.us
fiendsofhillary.org
fraudsofhillary.com