Holder was badly burned by the Rich affair, and Podesta testified he opposed the pardon. | AP Photos Echoes of Rich in Snowden case

Top Obama administration officials facing high-profile calls for clemency or a plea deal for Edward Snowden have life experience that counsels extreme caution: the political explosion they witnessed after President Bill Clinton pardoned financier Marc Rich more than a decade ago.

Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director James Comey and new Obama White House counselor John Podesta all played roles in the Rich saga, wrestling with the complex questions of what tactics and compromises officials should consider when an American is holed up overseas, beyond the reach of the U.S. justice system.


In recent weeks, the New York Times and Britain’s Guardian newspaper have both called on President Barack Obama to grant Snowden — currently living in Russia under a claim of asylum — a pardon for any crimes he may have committed in disclosing details of the National Security Agency’s telephone call tracking database, along with a trove of other secrets about U.S. surveillance practices. A web petition urging such a pardon has received more than 144,000 signatures, making it the third most-popular active petition on the White House site.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama on NSA: A reluctant reformer)

The Times and a top NSA official have also publicly discussed the possibility of a plea bargain or amnesty that might prompt Snowden to return in exchange for an assurance that he wouldn’t leak any more NSA secrets. The computer expert faces three felony counts in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., last year.

In Obama’s speech Friday announcing “concrete and substantial reforms” to U.S. surveillance practices, he conceded Snowden’s role in the series of events that led to a global uproar about American spying. The president lamented “damage done to our operations” and warned about the dangers of leaking classified information, but he steered clear of the debate over whether the ex-contractor is a whistleblower.

“I’m not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or his motivations,” Obama said.

And in a newly published interview, the president deflected a question about the possibility of amnesty for the NSA leaker.

( Also on POLITICO: Mike Rogers: Russia may be behind Snowden leak)

“I do not have a yes/no answer on clemency for Edward Snowden. This is an active case, where charges have been brought,” Obama told The New Yorker in November, while adding that “the benefit of the debate he generated was not worth the damage done.”

As with Snowden’s case, Marc Rich’s involved not just calls for some form of presidential clemency, but a debate about the possibility of cutting a plea deal with a defendant on the lam. The Rich case triggered disagreement within the Justice Department about the wisdom and propriety of negotiating with someone prosecutors considered a fugitive, after he failed to return from Switzerland to face charges of tax fraud, racketeering and violating the embargo on Iran.

After Clinton, Holder — then deputy attorney general — was the most seriously burned by the Rich affair. Holder gave a memorable “neutral leaning towards favorable” recommendation on the pardon and was also involved in the drive by Rich’s lawyers to reopen talks with prosecutors even though he was avoiding arrest by remaining overseas.

( WATCH: Obama's NSA speech in two minutes)

Holder has described the white-hot controversy over the Rich pardon as one of the most searing political experiences of his life — one that he thought for a time had effectively ended his government career.

Asked whether Holder would have to consider the Rich episode when contemplating a pardon or plea for Snowden, one ex-prosecutor involved with the Rich case said: “Absolutely.”

“There’s no way he could have forgotten [Rich], because that almost derailed his nomination. He wound up thanking his lucky stars he ended up being the attorney general he wanted to become,” said the former prosecutor, who asked not to be named.

Former House Counsel Stan Brand, who’s known Holder for decades, said the Rich fiasco is sure to play a role in the approach Holder and others take to the Snowden predicament.

( Also on POLITICO: Assange calls Obama 'embarrassing')

“That was one of the Republican mantras for why [Holder] shouldn’t be attorney general,” Brand said. “What all of that did was scare George Bush and Barack Obama to become the stingiest givers of pardons in history. … I can understand what the acute sensitivities are to that episode and why it would cause them to be so fearful of anything that would even give the appearance of negotiating with Snowden.”

Holder said in interviews late last year he saw no grounds to grant clemency to Snowden. He does not appear to have addressed publicly the possibility of cutting a plea deal with the NSA leaker.

The NSA official in charge of the response to Snowden’s leaks, Rick Ledgett, said in December that he was open to the idea of amnesty for the former NSA contractor — if future leaks could be averted.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama hits Snowden over NSA leaks)

“My personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about. I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high,” Ledgett told CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

However, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander told the show he opposes such a tradeoff because it could encourage others to follow in Snowden’s footsteps.

Some lawyers closely following the Snowden case believe Obama and his aides are unlikely to cut a deal with the leaker now, as the maelstrom he caused continues to unfold on Capitol Hill and in the media. But the odds of resolving the matter could grow as Obama’s second and final term winds down, these attorneys say.

A senior Justice Department official argued earlier this month that the parallels between Rich and Snowden are weak, at least for now, because the admitted leaker has shown no interest in such a deal — and because administration officials believe he should face serious punishment for his actions.

( Also on POLITICO: NSA plan triggers telecom questions)

“The comparison isn’t apt,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Nobody at this time is even considering leniency for Mr. Snowden, so the theoretical discussion about talking to a person on the lam is not applicable in this case.”

While there are parallels between Rich’s case and Snowden’s in terms of the calls for clemency and for plea talks, there are also significant differences.

Rich and business partner Pincus Green were indicted in 1983 on charges of tax evasion, racketeering and fraud, as well as trading with the enemy for allegedly buying oil from Iran. Despite the overtones of dealing with Tehran, the alleged crimes were primarily economic in nature. The pair declined to return from Europe to fight the charges, remaining in Switzerland, which lacks an extradition treaty with the United States. They won pardons from Clinton in 2001, on his last day in office.

Snowden is behind the most significant breach of classified information in U.S. history, beginning with the disclosure in June that the NSA has been secretly collecting data on huge numbers of telephone calls made from, to or within the U.S. He was charged that month with theft of government property, unauthorized disclosure of national defense information, and disclosing communications intelligence to an unauthorized person. The complaint is a preliminary one that could be revised or expanded in a formal indictment.

Comey, who took over as FBI director in September, was the line prosecutor overseeing the Rich case in New York for six years. Comey has said he was “stunned” by Clinton’s pardon of Rich.

The veteran prosecutor, who had responsibility for the Rich case from 1987-1993, is generally viewed as having taken a hard line toward the wealthy financier. Comey regarded Clinton’s pardon as a huge mistake and, as U.S. attorney in New York, took over an investigation into whether laws were broken during the events that led to that pardon and others. That probe ended without any charges being filed.

However, when Obama tapped Holder to be attorney general, Comey stepped forward to say Holder’s handling of the pardon issue shouldn’t disqualify him.

“I was stunned when President Clinton pardoned” Rich and Green, Comey wrote in a letter to the Senate in 2008. “I have come to believe that Mr. Holder’s role in the Rich and Green pardons was a huge misjudgement, one for which he has, appropriately, paid dearly in reputation. Yet, I hope very much he is confirmed. … He has learned a hard lesson about protecting the integrity of that great institution from political fixers.”

Podesta, who started back at the White House this month as a counselor to Obama, was chief of staff to Clinton at the time the Rich pardon was debated and granted. That resulted in him and other top Clinton aides being called before a congressional hearing in 2001.

“We all opposed it,” Podesta told the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. “I was against this. … We argued that, given his status as a fugitive, if you will — we can go back and forth on that a little, but I think we viewed him as a fugitive in at least a common sense — that the proper forum to raise those was before a judicial tribunal.”

The Clinton aides also said they knew or believed that federal prosecutors were refusing to negotiate with Rich’s lawyers about the charges because of a general policy against such talks with fugitives or their lawyers.

“The U.S. attorney’s office … their position was that as long as they remained fugitives, there would be no discussion of any of these matters,” Clinton adviser Bruce Lindsey testified. (Rich’s lawyers took the position that he technically wasn’t a fugitive because he was already outside the country when he was charged.)

Some current and former law enforcement officials say they favor an across-the-board ban on negotiating plea bargains with fugitives and that such a policy has been the status quo — at least during much of recent history.

“I think the Department of Justice’s policy is, and at least used to be when I was last in the business, and it’s one I agree with — that we don’t negotiate with fugitives, except to arrange their surrender,” Comey said earlier this month during a roundtable with journalists. “I’ve been involved personally in cases where fugitives wanted to plea bargain from afar outside the jurisdiction or argue the case ought to be dropped, and my response always was: No way. Come back here. Subject yourself to the jurisdiction of the court, and we’ll listen in good faith to any arguments you have.”

Other former officials agree. “When I was at the Department of Justice, the policy was [that] the only thing we negotiated was where you wanted to surrender,” said Howard Safir, who served as a top official at the U.S. Marshals Service as it chased after Rich in the 1980s. “It’s just like the policy against negotiating with terrorists: Once you start negotiating with them, they basically have won. In my view, my personal view, we should never negotiate with fugitives, because a fugitive has flaunted the authority of the courts.”

However, some defense lawyers say prosecutors’ talk of a firm policy against negotiating with fugitives is just that: talk.

“The Department of Justice will not negotiate with a fugitive — unless they want to. That’s the way it works,” said Larry Urgenson, who served for a time as a lawyer for Rich. “When they’re not inclined to talk to someone, they won’t. And they will, when they have a reason to do so.”

Holder did not share the view that prosecutors should never talk with absent defendants or their lawyers. Rich lawyer Jack Quinn said Holder told him it was “ridiculous” that prosecutors in New York were refusing additional meetings with Rich’s legal team.

“In candor, if I were making the decision as the U.S. attorney, I probably would have held a meeting,” Holder told the House panel in 2001. “In my view, the government — and the cause of justice — often gains from hearing about the flaws, real or imagined, cited by defense counsel in a criminal case. But my only goal was to ensure that the request for a meeting was fully considered,” he added, denying that he ever “pressed” prosecutors in New York to meet Rich’s lawyers.

Comey did back several attempts to arrest Rich, but he also took part in an unusual meeting that could have fueled the appearance that prosecutors are open to plea talks with fugitives.

In 1992, then-U.S. Attorney Otto Obermaier and Comey met with Rich and his lawyers over lunch at a Zurich hotel.

“Otto Obermaier thought he was so charming he was going … to convince him to surrender,” one former prosecutor involved in the case told POLITICO. “He brought Comey, but I’ve come to believe he [Comey] was actually against the trip.”

However, Rich reportedly left disappointed after the pair declined to deal — despite agreeing to the European tête-à-tête.

Like Snowden’s case, Rich’s also demonstrated that national security concerns sometimes enter into discussions about criminal matters, including clemency. Clinton has said that Rich’s financial support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s backing for Rich’s pardon influenced his decision.

Holder also said that the thought that made him tell the White House that he was “leaning” in favor of a pardon for Rich was the idea that it might reap “foreign policy benefits.”

There are other contrasts. Rich had the money to live a life of luxury in Switzerland but wanted to return to the U.S. for family reasons, including to visit a gravely ill daughter who later died. Snowden has no pressing need to return to the U.S. but has few financial resources and is facing the prospect of a modest life in Russia.

And while the Times’s editorial page now supports a pardon for Snowden, it suggested in 2001 that those who went abroad to avoid justice should not be eligible for pardons. “There is a huge difference between pardoning someone who has already paid all or part of his debt to society and pardoning someone who has avoided adjudication,” the paper wrote then.

Last June, Rich died in Switzerland at the age of 78 from a stroke, his family said. Despite the pardon, he never returned to the United States.