Holder pardon critic no longer objects to him as Obama's AG

Roger Adams, the former Justice Department pardon attorney who told The Times his former boss, Eric H. Holder Jr., had pressed him to soften opposition to a controversial 1998 clemency request, said Tuesday he wouldn't object to Holder's confirmation as Barack Obama's attorney general.

Adams made headlines last week when he said Holder, then Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, initially tried to persuade him to support commuted sentences for at least half of the 16 members of two Puerto Rican nationalist groups. That despite recommendations from the department's pardon attorneys against clemency.

And, Adams also claimed, when he balked, Holder sought a neutral options paper that gave no recommendation on the pardons, which, critics say, paved the way for Clinton to grant clemency in 1999 to the 16 men and women who were members of the FALN, or Armed Forces of National Liberation, and a splinter organization known as Los Macheteros.

Adams retired from the Justice Department last year. Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked him to testify at Holder’s confirmation hearings later this week before Obama's inauguration Jan. 20. Adams declined, saying he stood by his comments and had said "everything I have to say.”

Late Tuesday, Adams said he still strongly opposes the FALN clemency, as in 1998, but his concerns wouldn't lead him to oppose Holder's confirmation. He said he now believes Holder's learned his lesson. "He'd be a fine attorney general," Adams concluded.

-- Tom Hamburger and Josh Meyer

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Photo credit: Associated Press (Eric Holder, Obama's pick as attorney general).