Industrialist Armand Hammer, pardoned by President Bush for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon's 1972 campaign, says the president's action reinforces his faith in the American legal system.
White House spokesman Bob Hall confirmed Monday night that Bush had pardoned the 91-year-old Hammer and nine other people whose names were not released. The White House usually does not announce its action on pardons.Hammer, who pleaded guilty to the charges in 1976, released news of his pardon in Los Angeles.
"Having spent my lifetime fighting injustice, this vindication reinforces my abiding faith in the American system of justice," he said in a statement issued Monday through his Occidental Petroleum Corp. "I deeply appreciate President Bush's action in clearing my name."
Hammer spent several years seeking a pardon, and there had been speculation that President Reagan would grant one in his last days in office.
Hammer originally pleaded guilty in Washington to a criminal information filed by the Watergate special prosecutor to three misdemeanor charges of making $54,000 in illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign.
But the judge threw out the plea after Hammer wrote a 20-page letter to his probation officer blaming former Montana Gov. Tim Babcock, an Occidental Corp. vice president, for the contributions.
Babcock was convicted of concealing that Hammer was the true source of the money.
In 1976, Hammer left a hospital bed in a wheelchair and hooked to a cardiac monitor to enter another plea in a Los Angeles court.
"I'm pleading because I'm guilty," he told the judge at the time.
Hammer was sentenced to a year's probation and fined $3,000. The judge said he spared Hammer a prison sentence because of his precarious health.
Hammer was a self-made millionaire by the time he graduated from Columbia University Medical School at 23, having taken over his father's pharmaceutical business four years earlier.
After graduation, Hammer went to the Soviet Union to negotiate a business deal and wound up with a concession for an asbestos mine and a pencil factory.
Proud of having met every Soviet leader since Lenin, Hammer has devoted much of his fortune to collecting great art, research on cancer and promoting world peace.
Hammer's money sent American physicians to treat victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986.