Clumsy clemency

With his offer of clemency for imprisoned Puerto Rican nationalists, President Clinton has accomplished this: He put a major dent in his wife’s Senate bid; he turned a much-needed act of healing into an open wound; and, most improbable of all, he made terrorists into victims.

It’s a rare trifecta of bumbling by a president who, despite his character flaws, was once famous for his sure-footed political instincts.

The clemency offer was made on Aug. 11 to 16 members of the violent Puerto Rico independence movement, the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN in Spanish), who have been in prison since the early 1980s on weapons and conspiracy charges related to a series of terrorist attacks. None were directly involved in the 100 incidents of bombings, shooting and robberies that left six people dead, and the sentences, from 35 to 90 years, have long been viewed as excessively harsh. Twelve of the 16 accepted the clemency offer, which requires them to renounce violence and to end their association with FALN.

The outrage was immediate. Law-and-order advocates, including wounded survivors of the attacks, said there was no place for leniency when it comes to terrorists, even those who merely provided support services. The connection between the timing of the president’s rare use of his clemency powers and his wife’s potential candidacy in Hispanic-heavy New York was duly noted, especially by her putative opponent, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Even the Democrat Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose retirement creates the Senate vacancy, shredded the offer, calling it ill-timed and ill-conceived.

Supporters of the clemencies, including former president Jimmy Carter and South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu and many New York Hispanic political leaders, argued that the 19 years the FALN members already have served is longer than the sentences given to many murderers and drug lords.

Forced to chose between the two sides, Hillary Rodham Clinton went with law and order, saying the 12 had not renounced violence with sufficient sincerity and calling upon the White House to rescind the clemency offer. And thus, important issues of justice and the future of Puerto Rico were degraded into a marital spat.

Faced with multiple counts of political chicanery, the White House’s defense is astonishingly weak, the kind of defense in which answering one charge opens up another. The package of documents supporting the claim that the 12 are redeemed is selective, it omits signed statements rationalizing violence. The statements were made to a congressional panel more than two years ago, making the timing highly suspect. While a cursory examination of the president’s clemency record suggests moderate generosity — 111 pardons out of more than 3,000 requests — a closer look reveals that 108 were for people who already had served their full sentences. Only three times has Mr. Clinton let anyone out of prison early.

The tragedy here is not what it does to Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy or what kind of smirch it adds to Mr. Clinton’s already smudgy record. In a referendum just last year, only 3 percent of Puerto Ricans supported independence, the remaining 97 percent were fairly split between retaining commonwealth status or seeking statehood. The opportunity for a peaceful and sensible resolution to a nagging question was at hand. By this act of blatant political opportunism, that opportunity has been squandered.