Rodham Paid for Clemency Efforts

* Re “Clinton Brother-in-Law Was Paid $400,000 to Help Win Clemencies,” Feb. 22: Now the proverbial cat is out of the bag. Is it enough for our honorable leaders and elected officials to simply parrot statements of “apology,” “deeply disturbed,” “nothing illegal,” “not against the law,” etc., to placate voters? After the dots are all connected, indictments should follow to honor the dictum that “no one is above the law.” Cardinal Roger Mahony and the various elected officials can now sleep in peace, knowing that it was not their letters and/or phone calls that got the clemency for Carlos Vignali.

JACK G. SMITH JR.

North Hills

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* I am tired of the commotion that the Republican Party is creating about the so-called “questionable pardons” given by President Clinton. I know that the Republicans are still furious about Clinton beating them twice and then going on to clean up the mess left to him after 12 years of Republican mismanagement. They think that if they make enough noise, no one will notice what an atrocious job President Bush is doing. Well, they are wrong.

They are wrong because the majority of Americans did not want Bush to be the president in the first place and feel that he only attained office through fraud. Besides, many of us still remember the pardon Gerald Ford gave Richard Nixon in exchange for his presidency. We also remember the pardon George Bush gave to Caspar Weinberger for his treasonous involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. Because we remember these truly questionable pardons, we see the Republicans’ ploy for exactly what it is.

JOHN DARLING

Ventura

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* The Times reported that the Clintons were “deeply disturbed” by the report. Meaning? Damn--caught again.

JOHN R. SCHNEIDER

Oak View

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* For generations, we have known that drug kingpins in less developed countries have used bribery and corruption to escape the normal judicial process. Now we see the same thing in this country, only practiced in a more subtle form.

RON LESOVSKY

Huntington Beach

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* I did not vote for Clinton. He was not a bad president. Some of his positions I agreed with, some I did not. He was and still is a national embarrassment. To paraphrase an old soldier, “Just let him fade away.”

MAURICE STUFFMANN

Van Nuys