'Very good reasons' for Marc Rich's pardon?

[Brad DeLong]

>[The following is from Gail Collins' column in yesterday's NY Times. 
>If anyone finds these "very good reasons" for Rich's pardon, please 
>forward them to the U.S. Justice Dept., which would like to know.]
>
>Worst of all [among Clinton's last-minute pardons], you had Marc 
>Rich, the billionaire who was indicted in 1983 for more than 50 
>counts of wire fraud, racketeering, tax evasion and trading with the 
>enemy. Ever since then, the aptly named Mr. Rich has been living 
>large in tiny Switzerland, resisting extradition and sending signals 
>that he was willing to cough up any amount of money to make the case 
>go away as long as he was assured he would not have to spend a 
>single day in prison.
>
>"Every U.S. attorney since then has told him he had to come back 
>first, and then we would talk," said Morris Weinberg, a Florida 
>attorney who was a prosecutor for the U.S. attorney's office in New 
>York at the time that Mr. Rich was indicted.
>
>In a press conference at a Chappaqua deli on Sunday, Mr. Clinton 
>claimed that he had given considerable thought to the Rich pardon, 
>although apparently none of it involved asking the opinion of the 
>U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, where prosecutors have been in 
>shell shock since they heard about the deal after the fact.
>
>Having said there were "very good reasons" to pardon Mr. Rich, Mr. 
>Clinton quickly ... [suggested] that reporters get the details from 
>Jack Quinn, Al Gore's former chief of staff, who is now working as 
>Mr. Rich's attorney. But since Mr. Quinn was not in the deli in 
>Chappaqua, nobody got to hear his excellent arguments.
>
>[Full text at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/23/opinion/23COLL.html]
>
>Carl

That's it. I'm formally getting off the train. I've had enough of 
this m*****f***** Clinton.

Brad DeLong