The truth -- as anyone who glances back into the history of the first Bush administration can quickly learn -- is that Clinton hasn't done anything that his predecessor didn't do first and, in some cases, worse.

The widely and justly criticized pardons of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-Contra defendants by George Herbert Walker Bush should have been just the beginning of that story. Yet, for reasons best known to the incorruptible watchdogs of the Washington press corps, Poppy's self-interested mercy upon Weinberger instigated no searching examination of the other pardons granted by the departing president. Indeed, the final dozen pardons given by Bush -- including the unexplained release of a Pakistani heroin trafficker -- received virtually no coverage at all.

The elder Bush delivered a few highly questionable pardons well before his last days in office. The very first of his presidency went to Armand Hammer, the legendary oilman best known for his relationships with Soviet leaders dating back to Lenin. In an investigation that grew out of Watergate, Hammer had pleaded guilty in 1975 to laundering $54,000 in illicit contributions to Nixon's reelection war chest. By the summer of 1989, when Bush gave Hammer what he wanted, the aging chief of Occidental Petroleum had been pestering government officials on his own behalf for several years.

Considering his original offense, it was ironic that Hammer won what he called the "vindication" of a presidential pardon only months after he poured well over $100,000 into Republican Party coffers, and another $100,000 into the accounts of the Bush-Quayle Inaugural committee. (In author Edward Jay Epstein's excellent biography of the oilman, there is a photograph of Hammer, his girlfriend and President Bush together at the White House in April 1990. Such visits were perks for members of Bush's "Team 100," as the GOP's most generous donors were known.)

At the time, Hammer's pardon made news, partly because his request had been turned down by President Reagan several months earlier. But nobody seemed to notice the nexus between the oilman's generosity to Bush and the new president's mercy upon Hammer.

The only hint of Hammer's influence-buying came from former Watergate prosecutor Henry Ruth, who wasn't consulted by the White House before Hammer's pardon was granted. "My view of the pardon process is that it should be given only in extraordinary circumstances, and I haven't heard of any" in Hammer's case, Ruth told the Los Angeles Times. Ruth thought the undeserved favor had been given only because Hammer was "rich" and "powerful."

Another intriguing fact went almost unnoticed back then, too. Hammer's team of attorneys included not only a close friend of Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, but also a very close friend of Bush's new White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, whose job included passing on pardon requests to the president. The Gray pal hired to help Hammer was a former Reagan Justice Department official named Theodore B. Olson. Now that Olson has been nominated as Bush's solicitor general, perhaps he will offer insights on the history of presidential pardons during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Surely Olson would testify that campaign contributions and insider influence should have nothing to do with the process.

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