Bush Gives First Pardons to 7 Men in Minor Cases

President Bush granted his first pardons Monday when he excused seven men for minor offenses from long ago, including an Indiana man who stole $10.90 from the mail in 1971 and a Tennessean who made some untaxed whiskey in 1962.

The chief executive’s action wipes away the criminal records of the men, who have served their time behind bars or paid fines for their offenses.

Bush’s sparing use of the pardon power stands in sharp and quite deliberate contrast to President Clinton’s rush of last-minute pardons for 176 criminal offenders, including fugitive financier Marc Rich.

Administration officials stressed that all the men pardoned Monday had applied for a pardon and were screened by the Justice Department. And none were said to be personal friends of the president or political donors.

“These men were convicted of minor offenses, admitted their crimes, completed their sentences and have gone on to lead exemplary lives,” said Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman. “They all went through the normal review process. The president’s pardon power is a wonderful thing, but it must be exercised with great care and great caution.”

Bush signed off on the pardons, but the names were announced by the Justice Department.

“What all these cases have in common is that each pardon recipient committed a relatively minor offense many years ago, completed his prison sentence or probation and paid any fine, and has gone on to live an exemplary life and to be a positive force in his community,” said Ashley Snee, a White House spokeswoman.

In his last days in office, Clinton decided to go ahead with pardons of several friends and political allies, in some instances without a full screening by the Justice Department.

They included his brother Roger Clinton; Susan McDougal, who spent time in jail for refusing to testify in the Whitewater investigation; and onetime fugitive and newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst Shaw. The former president’s pardon of Rich proved to be the most controversial because he had fled to Switzerland after being indicted on tax charges.

The first President Bush set off a controversy when he issued Christmas Eve pardons in 1992 to seven Reagan administration officials who were accused of lying about the Iran-Contra affair. One of them, former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, faced a possible perjury charge when it was revealed that he had kept a secret diary during that time, but denied having any notes on the matter.

While the current President Bush has avoided controversy when issuing pardons, he raised eyebrows earlier this month by bringing back into his administration one of those who was pardoned by his father.

Elliott Abrams, a former assistant secretary of State during the Reagan administration, pleaded guilty in 1991 to two counts of withholding information from Congress about the secret diversions of money to the Nicaraguan rebels, in defiance of a congressional ban on such aid.

He was pardoned along with Weinberger. In early December, he was appointed to lead the National Security Council’s office that oversees Arab and Israeli affairs.

The men pardoned by Bush on Monday were:

* Kenneth Franklin Copley of Lyles, Tenn., who served two years’ probation for manufacturing untaxed whiskey;

* Harlan Paul Dobas of Oregon, who was jailed for three months for conspiracy involving the sale of grain stolen from his employer;

* Stephen James Jackson of Mississippi, who was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $500 for altering an odometer;

* Douglas Harley Rogers of Wisconsin, a Jehovah’s Witnesses minister sentenced to two years in prison for failing to report for military induction;

* Walter F. Schuerer of Iowa, fined $15,000 for making a false statement to the Social Security Administration regarding his employment;

* Paul Herman Wieser of Washington, sentenced to 18 months’ probation for stealing $38,000 worth of copper wire;

* Olgen Williams of Indianapolis, a postal worker sentenced to a year in jail for stealing $10.90 from the mail.