With just hours to go in his presidency today, Bill Clinton issued pardons to 140 people, including John Deutch, a former director of central intelligence; Henry G. Cisneros, a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development; and Susan H. McDougal, a onetime Clinton business partner who was jailed in the Whitewater scandal.
Others receiving presidential pardons in one of Mr. Clinton's last official acts were his half-brother, Roger, who pleaded guilty to distributing cocaine in Arkansas, and Patricia Hearst Shaw, the heiress who robbed a bank in 1974 after being kidnapped by a small band of political radicals that called itself the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Aides to the president said those on the list fit no pattern. Some, in Mr. Clinton's view, had been victims of overzealous prosecutors. Others had made a convincing case in their written petitions that they had already paid their debt to society.
The offenses of those on the list varied widely. There were white-collar criminals and drug offenders, killers and an accused spy. Arnold Paul Prosperi, a fund-raiser for the former president, had been convicted of embezzling money from a law client. David Ronald Chandler, who long insisted he was innocent, was the first person sentenced to death under the federal drug kingpin law. Both had their sentences commuted. Norman Lyle Prouse, who received a pardon, was among the first commercial pilots to be convicted of flying while intoxicated. Witnesses testified that Mr. Prouse had consumed 15 to 20 rum-and-colas at the Speak Easy bar in Moorhead, Minn., the night before a 6:30 a.m. flight.
Just as significant as the pardons the president issued were the ones he did not hand down. Without explaining his decisions, Mr. Clinton declined to issue pardons to the onetime Wall Street financier Michael R. Milken; Leonard Peltier, the American Indian who was convicted of killing two F.B.I. agents in 1975; the former Justice Department official Webster L. Hubbell, who was a close Clinton friend and a former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton's; and the spy Jonathan Pollard.
The pardon of Mr. Deutch spares the former spy director any criminal charges for mishandling secret information on his home computer. Mr. Deutch, who resigned in 1996, has already had his security clearance stripped. He had been considering a deal with the Justice Department in which he would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of keeping classified data on home computers.
Mr. Deutch's lawyer, Terrence O'Donnell, declined to comment.
Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor count of lying to F.B.I. agents about payments to a former mistress while he was being considered for a job in the Clinton cabinet. By agreeing to the plea deal with the independent counsel David M. Barrett, he avoided a trial on 18 felony charges.
The pardon of Ms. McDougal came just as the independent counsel Robert W. Ray agreed to close his investigation of Mr. Clinton's misstatements during his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. When the original investigation began in 1994, it focused on whether the Clintons had received special treatment from Ms. McDougal and her husband, fellow investors in the Whitewater land venture.
Ms. McDougal spent 21 months in jail for refusing to testify about Mr. Clinton to Mr. Ray's predecessor, Kenneth W. Starr.
"She's absolutely delighted," said her lawyer, Mark Geragos. "She is speechless for once in her life. And I think it is especially poignant that it was one of the last acts of Bill Clinton's administration."
Mr. Clinton's half-brother, Roger, served time in prison after pleading guilty in 1985 to a charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He had tried to sell the drug to an undercover state trooper in Hot Springs, Ark. The former president has said in the past that the conviction, while unfortunate, helped straighten out his brother's life.
Mrs. Shaw's bank robbery conviction has been challenged for more than two decades. Former President Jimmy Carter commuted her seven-year jail sentence in 1979 but she continued to pursue a full pardon. She participated in the holdup of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco on April 15, 1974, but said from the start that her kidnappers coerced her.
Others who were pardoned by Mr. Clinton today included the former Arizona governor Fife Symington, a Republican, who was convicted in 1997 on six of counts of bank and wire fraud. The convictions were overturned on appeal but prosecutors asked for a rehearing.
Also pardoned was Peter MacDonald, a former Navajo chief convicted of conspiracy and burglary in a 1989 riot in Arizona that left two of his followers dead. He also served a six-year sentence for bribery.
The conviction stemmed from an unsuccessful five-month struggle by Mr. MacDonald to reverse a 1989 decision by the Navajos' Tribal Council to suspend him as chairman after he was accused of corruption at hearings before a Senate committee.
Departing presidents often issue pardons, though Mr. Clinton's latest batch was unusual in that it came just hours before the inauguration of George W. Bush as his successor. Christmas Eve is a traditional date for White House pardons. On Dec. 24, 1992, former President George Bush pardoned six officials from the administration of Ronald Reagan, including Caspar W. Weinberger, the former secretary of defense; and Robert C. McFarlane, the former national security adviser.
Mr. Weinberger had been accused of misleading Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, and Mr. McFarlane had pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress about the affair.
The latest pardons brought the total number issued over the course of Mr. Clinton's presidency to nearly 400 — a smaller number per year than his recent predecessors issued.
Mr. Clinton, who was barraged with pardon requests in recent weeks, left more than a thousand petitions pending for the new president. As for commutations, which reduce the punishment doled out, Mr. Clinton issued 36 of those today, bringing his total to 61.
Four of those on the president's list were caught up in the investigation of the former agriculture secretary Mike Espy, an inquiry that resulted in the acquittal of the ex-cabinet member himself.
Ronald H. Blackley, a former aide to Mr. Espy, was convicted in late 1997 of making false statements about $22,000 in outside income he received while serving as the secretary's chief of staff. He was sent to prison for 27 months, a sentence Mr. Clinton commuted.
John J. Hemmingson, a former chief executive of a Kansas crop insurance company, was convicted in 1997 of laundering a $20,000 campaign contribution to Mr. Espy's brother, Henry, who was trying to win Mike Espy's old Congressional seat. Mr. Hemmingson received a presidential pardon.
Richard Douglas, the former head of a fruit cooperative, was convicted the same year of giving $7,000 in illegal gifts to the agriculture secretary. He also received a pardon.
Alvarez Ferroulliet, who also received a pardon, was a lawyer for Henry Espy. He pleaded guilty in 1997 to conspiracy and making false statements to a bank in connection with a $75,000 campaign loan.
Others who received pardons or commutations from Mr. Clinton: