Clemency Offer Draws House Panel Inquiry

A House committee subpoenaed all administration records Wednesday related to President Clinton’s decision to offer clemency to 16 Puerto Rican militants.

Subpoenas issued by Rep. Dan Burton’s Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, which were obtained by the Associated Press, seek records from the White House, the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also requested information from the Justice Department in anticipation of expected congressional hearings on the matter.

In a letter to Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, Hatch (R-Utah) said he was troubled by published reports indicating the Justice Department had not made a formal recommendation to the White House on clemency, despite law enforcement officials’ vigorous objections. He also said he was bothered by reports that there were Bureau of Prison recordings of the inmates in which they plotted to use violence again.

“I would hope that, on a matter of such importance, the Department of Justice--and the attorney general in particular--would make its views known to the White House,” Hatch wrote.

The Bureau of Prisons has declined to confirm or deny existence of the audiotapes, but a spokesman did say that inmates’ social calls are monitored routinely by officials.

Clinton announced last month that he would commute the sentences of the 16 Puerto Rican nationalists if they disavowed the use of violence.

Most of the 16 are members of the FALN--the Spanish initials for Armed Forces of National Liberation--which carried out about 130 bomb attacks on political and military targets in the United States from 1974 to 1983. The attacks killed six people.

Human rights officials argued that the sentences, ranging from 15 years to 90 years in prison, were too harsh because none of the 16 was convicted of involvement in any deaths.