Freed Radicals Didn’t Aid Fugitive Hunt, Senators Told

Under tough questioning from angry Republican lawmakers, a top Justice Department official acknowledged Wednesday that the White House offered clemency to 16 radical Puerto Rican separatists two months ago without first seeking the prisoners’ cooperation in apprehending several dangerous cohorts, including one fugitive on the FBI’s most wanted list.

Moreover, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno herself warned last month that the Puerto Rican terrorist group with which the prisoners were affiliated in the 1970s poses an “ongoing threat” of terrorism and that the release of violent members of the group could increase that threat, according to a Justice Department report made public at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Reno’s top deputy at the Justice Department, Eric H. Holder Jr., defended the Clinton administration’s handling of the controversial Puerto Rican clemencies in the face of relentless challenges from Republicans on the panel. The Constitution, he said, gives the president “absolute” power to free prisoners for a wide variety of reasons.

But committee chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and his colleagues said that President Clinton’s decision to grant the Puerto Ricans clemency has become even more indefensible in light of new evidence about the renewed danger they pose to society and the administration’s failure to enlist their help in catching several wanted terrorists.

“The most heinous thing about all this,” Hatch added, was that administration officials never bothered to consult with any of the victims of the group’s terrorist assaults or their families. The prisoners’ representatives were allowed to make their case to the administration repeatedly.

That lapse drew criticism even from the sole Democrat at the hearing, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, and Holder said that the Justice Department wants to correct the problem.

“We could have done a better job,” he acknowledged. “Certainly it would be better--it would certainly make this hearing more pleasant--if we had the ability to say victims were contacted.”

The 16 federal prisoners offered clemency by Clinton in August were affiliated with a militant Puerto Rican independence group called Armed Forces of National Liberation (known by its Spanish acronym of FALN), which was blamed for 130 bombings in the late 1970s and early 1980s that left six dead and scores wounded.

Eleven of the separatists granted clemency now have been freed after nearly two decades in prison. Clinton administration officials, following pleas for the prisoners’ release from South African cleric Desmond Tutu and other high-profile civil rights leaders, asserted that their sentences on weapons and explosives convictions were excessive.

Republicans, however, argued Wednesday that the prisoners would have been given lengthier sentences had they been convicted today and that--despite pledges to renounce violence as part of the clemency agreements--they still harbor radical philosophies.

The committee released a transcript of a prison phone call made by one of the Puerto Rican prisoners six months ago, in which Adolfo Matos said that he reveled in the memory of his 1970s activism because he had the chance “to give my life for something I believe in . . . for the justice of my people. In this manner I get involved. And my desire has gotten stronger.”

The clemencies were opposed by a broad faction of federal law-enforcement authorities. Justice Department officials have refused to make public their stand on the matter, citing the president’s claim of executive privilege in deciding the issue. But a memorandum that was apparently sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee by mistake among a batch of other Justice Department documents shows that the department also recommended against clemency.

Several Republicans said they were mystified that administration officials did not make the clemency offers contingent on the prisoners’ pledge of cooperation in tracking down several fugitives in Cuba and elsewhere still wanted in connection with open terrorist investigations. One of the fugitives, 41-year-old Victor Manuel Gerena, is on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list in connection with a $7-million Wells Fargo robbery in Connecticut in 1983.

“To my knowledge, those kinds of requests were not placed,” Holder acknowledged.

Without such assurances, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) said: “These criminals should have remained in prison.”

Holder was asked whether it would have been wise to seek such cooperation.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “The president exercised his power here. . . . It’s not my position to disagree with that.”