BY VIVIAN SAHNER  
“I certainly owe the Gipper one,” said Edward Miller when he heard the news.

“I feel very excited and just so pleased that I can hardly contain myself,” commented W. Mark Felt.

What was the big news? The two ex-FBI burglars had just heard about their presidential pardons.

Last November jury members, after listening to seven weeks of testimony, found them guilty of authorizing illegal break-ins into the homes of friends and relatives of the Weathermen in the early 1970s.

The two, both former high-ranking officials in the FBI, admitted to the jury that they had authorized the burglaries. They insisted, however, that they were justified on grounds of “national security.”

The jury said no. Constitutional rights are constitutional rights. The two were fined $8,500 for breaking the law.

Ronald Reagan didn’t agree and he used his executive privilege to get them off the hook.

According to acting White House press secretary Larry Speakes, Reagan “clearly felt…that the decision of the jury and the decision of the court was not correct.”

John Nields, the former Justice Department attorney who lead the case against Felt and Miller, said he was shocked by the pardon.

“Whoever is responsible for the pardons,” he said, “did not read the record of the trial and did not know the facts on the case.”

Nields said the trial was held to establish “the central proposition of democracy: that the government is second to the people and its powers are limited by the Constitution.

“The jury and the court collectively affirmed this proposition,” he said.

But “the executive branch pardoning the executive branch for violating the rights of the people strike at the heart of this proposition.”

In his opinion, Nields added, “the pardons, done in secret, are trivial in comparison with the jury verdict, which was done in a court of law.”

He said they “send out a terrible signal—that the government can violate the Constitution and then forgive itself.”

Felt and Miler got the signal too. “This is going to be the biggest shot in the arm for the intelligence community for a long time,” crowed Felt.

Miller called the pardons “a very fine thing for the present FBI” because they would erase any reluctance that agents might have to “do their job 100 percent.”

Lock up the spoons!
 
 
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