President Bill Clinton ended his tenure on Saturday by pardoning 140 Americans, erasing the criminal records of his brother, Roger, Whitewater business partner Susan McDougal and 1970s kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst in a mix of personal and historical acts of clemency.
The orders Clinton signed two hours before leaving office also cleared the cloud of scandal from two former Cabinet confidants -- ex-CIA director John Deutch and ex-housing chief Henry Cisneros.
Deutch had been discussing a possible plea deal with Justice Department prosecutors to settle allegations he mishandled classified government information.
The list also was notable for those it did not include:
Webster Hubbell, a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton convicted in the Whitewater investigation, had not sought a pardon; Jonathan Pollard, a former Navy analyst imprisoned for spying for Israel; one-time Wall Street financier Michael Milken; former senator and Abscam figure Harrison Williams; and Leonard Peltier, convicted of killing two FBI agents on an Indian reservation in 1975.
Clinton, himself spared from indictment in a deal on Friday with prosecutors, also commuted the prison sentences of 36 people.
Clinton and his staff labored over the pardons -- some intensely personal, others more traditional -- for several hours in his final days. They settled on a list in the wee hours on Saturday, but the president asked to sleep on it before signing the orders.
One of the final decisions left to be made concerned McDougal, the former business partner who went to prison rather than give testimony about the president sought by Whitewater prosecutors. Whitewater is the name of an unsuccessful land deal in Arkansas in which Clinton and his wife invested before he became president. McDougal was convicted of fraud along with her ex-husband in a 1996 trial.
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