Panel Criticizes L.A. Officials’ Role in Drug Dealer’s Pardon

A congressional committee concludes that key Los Angeles leaders helped a businessman’s son--convicted drug dealer Carlos Vignali--win early release from prison after they reaped political contributions and other support from his father, according to a congressional report to be released today.

The document by the House Government Reform Committee describes a system in Los Angeles that permitted Vignali’s well-heeled father not only to gain access to civic leaders, but to get letters from them on his son’s behalf, “even though they knew little about the case and had mixed motives” in helping the felon.

The 476-page report is the committee’s final and most comprehensive account of its yearlong investigation into the pardons scandal that erupted as President Clinton left the White House.

It reveals for the first time that law enforcement authorities were investigating the father, Vignali, for drug dealing as well, and that an aide to former Rep. Esteban Torres of Los Angeles was the go-between for the Vignali family and Clinton’s brother-in-law in securing the commutation.

Horacio Vignali could not be reached for comment on the report’s allegations. Two attorneys who have represented the senior Vignali said they had not seen the report and could not respond.

The congressional report also says Clinton and his White House, in the last moments of their administration, took at face value the word of Los Angeles officials without hearing from the prosecutors and judge who strongly opposed any early release of Carlos Vignali from his lengthy prison term.

“In his rush to grant pardons and commutations in the waning hours of his presidency, Bill Clinton ignored almost every applicable standard governing the exercise of the clemency power,” the report concludes. “Carlos Vignali satisfies none of the appropriate grounds for commutation.... As a large-scale drug dealer, Vignali was not eligible for clemency.”

Clinton has maintained that he did nothing improper in granting 177 pardons and commutations on his last day in office. Indeed, he has said that he was striking out against a federal judicial system that he claimed harshly punishes young drug offenders with long prison terms.

“This report is very explosive, and the Burton committee is very partisan,” Julia Payne, spokeswoman for Clinton, said Wednesday about Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, the Republican chairman of the committee. “It’s a vicious partisan attack, and they never found any quid pro quos.”

The report ends one of the final political squabbles over ethics in the Clinton White House. The Burton committee went into great detail about the Vignali case to show how easily someone could ultimately succeed in getting what he wanted from the Clinton administration.

Horacio Vignali began a seven-year campaign to free his son in 1994, giving and raising money for a host of California politicians. The campaign ended in 2001 with a payment of $204,200 to Clinton’s brother-in-law Hugh Rodham, a lawyer, who successfully convinced the president that Carlos Vignali had served enough time: five years of a 15-year sentence, the report said.

Carlos Vignali was arrested in Los Angeles in 1994 and tried in Minneapolis as the prime defendant in one of the largest cocaine rings in Minnesota. He was convicted in December 1994.

From then on, the report says, “Horacio Vignali, a successful Los Angeles-area businessman, apparently used every tool at his disposal to see that his son would not fully serve out his prison sentence.”

He “cultivated political contacts over time through substantial campaign donations, fund-raising activity and civic involvement, and directed his considerable resources to a concerted effort to lobby President Clinton for an 11th-hour pardon of his son.”

Horacio Vignali, in an interview with The Times when the scandal first broke, suggested that he was merely a small businessman eager to help his wrongly accused and unfairly sentenced son.

The committee report, however, portrays him as a puppeteer getting everything he wanted for his son.

Horacio Vignali contributed more than $160,000 to state and federal officeholders after his son was incarcerated, and many of them also lobbied the White House for his son. They included Archbishop Roger M. Mahony, cardinal of the Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles, former U.S. Atty. Alejandro Mayorkas, former California Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa, former Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alatorre and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca--many of whom rued the negative press they received for their roles in supporting Vignali.

The report singles out Baca as instrumental in securing the commutation, and says he “took a number of actions that could be seen by the White House as supporting a grant of clemency.”

Report Strongly Criticizes Baca

An internal White House note indicates that Rodham told White House assistant Dawn Woollen that Baca “is more than happy to speak with you about [Vignali] but is uncomfortable writing a letter offering his full support.”

The congressional report adds that the White House note “supports the conclusion that Sheriff Baca’s actions have the effect of assisting Horacio Vignali’s effort to get his son out of prison but [he] did not want to create a paper trail showing that he helped a convicted cocaine dealer get out of prison.”

The report strongly criticizes Baca for continuing to insist he opposed the commutation once the letter-writing campaign became public.

Baca’s actions--including a letter and a telephone call to Washington--made it “difficult to conceive what he thought he was doing, if not assisting in the effort to get Carlos Vignali out of prison,” the report says.

In one letter he drafted, Baca wrote that this “will confirm my support for [Horacio] as a man of the highest integrity and trustworthiness.”

In contrast, other law enforcement officials were learning that Horacio Vignali allegedly had drug problems of his own.

The committee cited reports from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration dating back to 1976 that Horacio “smuggled heroin into the United States utilizing automobiles,” and that in 1993, he was “the source of supply for his son and functioned as a financial partner” in a local drug organization.

The report adds: “These charges have never been formally made in court, or substantiated by physical evidence. However, the mere existence of such allegations should have precluded senior law enforcement and political officials from supporting a commutation for Carlos Vignali on the strength of his father’s reputation.

“However, it appears that no one checked with the DEA prior to granting the commutation.”

Baca reacted sharply to the report Wednesday, saying that he is being scapegoated by the former White House administration and Congress.

“The whole thing stinks. Vignali stinks. The White House stinks, this report stinks,” Baca said. “I basically am not happy with the way this whole thing has evolved.”

He said he was told at the end of last month that federal authorities had allegations of wrongdoing by Horacio Vignali. As a result, Baca said, he returned $11,000 in campaign contributions from the elder Vignali earlier this month.

Meeting With Rodham Described

Horacio Vignali’s efforts to get his son pardoned were going nowhere until 1999, when the son-in-law of former Rep. Torres, James Casso, introduced the Vignalis to Rodham, the report found.

The report says the introduction occurred at the Barrangas restaurant in Los Angeles, where Rodham brought along others he was trying to get pardons for “as a way of marketing his services.”

Casso declined to talk to the committee, and he could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Horacio Vignali paid Rodham $4,200 at the outset. He handed Rodham a binder of materials regarding the case, and the president’s brother-in-law “indicated that he would review the matter, make some calls and get back to Horacio Vignali,” the report says.

Rodham was paid the other $200,000 when Carlos Vignali was freed.

But the committee said Rodham provided false information to the White House about Vignali, most critically that the prosecutors in Minnesota favored mercy for the young man.

“This was completely false,” the report says.

Villaraigosa, who received campaign funds from Horacio Vignali, later said he regretted not fully backgrounding the Vignali family. “I went with my heart ... not my head,” he said.

The report says Villaraigosa was apparently unaware that Vignali had a criminal record and had dropped out of military school.

Under those circumstances, Villaraigosa’s characterization of Vignali’s resume as “‘superior’ was, at best, hyperbole and, at worst, misleading.”

The episode eventually helped cost him the mayor’s race in Los Angeles last year, many believe, as fallout from the Clinton pardon scandal rocked all the way from Washington to the West Coast.

Alatorre also went to bat for Carlos Vignali, but he declined Wednesday to discuss his involvement. “I’m a private citizen now,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”

Mayorkas, in an interview Wednesday, said his “telephone call, as limited and peripheral as it was, could in no way have been a factor in a fair evaluation of the merits of the pardon application.”

Finally, the report faults the Clinton White House for accepting the opinion of “powerful Los Angeles political figures” and yet failing to consult the Minnesota prosecutors or judge.

“It appears,” the report concludes, “that key White House staff gave great weight to the input provided by Rodham, Baca and Mayorkas, even though they knew little about the case and had mixed motives.”

Times staff writers Rich Connell, Robert Lopez, Josh Meyer, Beth Shuster and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.

The report of the House Government Reform Committee on the Clinton pardons is available on The Times’ Web site. Go to latimes.com/pardons