One of the most controversial powers the President of the United States holds is their ability to pardon or grant clemency to virtually whomever they choose. There are parameters, of course, pardons only applied to federal crimes. A pardon can't prevent an officeholder from being a peach nor can it expunge a conviction. In any event, it's a pretty awesome power,
one that's been exercised freely. There was George Washington's pardon of the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, President Nixon's commutation of Jimmy Hoffa's prison sentence, and of course President Ford's pardon of President Nixon. The reason I gave the pardon was not as to Mr Nixon himself. Presidents have pardoned draft dodgers and drug dealers. Their actions have been praised and criticized. It should be able to be done in
federal courts across the country. There is actually already wide consensus that certain kinds of pardons could be considered criminal acts. It does not convey any sense of guild or any correction to that. It is an old, old power given for the purpose of correcting injustice. Former President Bill Clinton was no exception. In August eleven, Clinton offered clemency to more than a dozen Puerto Rican nationalists, including members of the f A l En and several of the Macha
Terro's connected to the Wells Fargo heist. It came with conditions, however. The recipients were required to sign a statement renouncing terrorism. Some had to serve the remainder of a shortened prison sentence,
but still the message was clear. The President believed that while the insurgency group's methods at the time may have been flawed, their fight was just and freedom, or at least a version of it, was hovering right around the corner previously on White Eagle, the Taro's committing the Wills
far gldhist was one of the biggest mistakes they were made. Fundamentally, the Wells Fargo case was an attempt to criminalize the Porto Rican Arms Struggle independence movement, but to do so in a place where there would not be so many sympathizers to that movement. For some foods they were like but the men. For others they were heroes and you know, celebrated. My name is Zem William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalists
and author of more than forty true crime books. What you were about to hear is the true story of a heist, one that funded an international independence movement and sparked an investigation spanning nearly four decades. This is white eagle. Presidential pardons and clemency decisions typically lead behind a rumble of discontent. President Clinton's decision to grant clemency to twelve members of the f A l N and four members of the macha Ros left nothing short of an earthquake.
For years, powerful voices on the left, including Coretta Scott King, former President Jimmy Carter, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had been pushing for the move and yet everywhere you look someone was angry. I believe strongly that the decision the President made was the wrong one and may well have some terrible impacts down the line. Should we consider the freedom of Charles Manson. He wasn't there at the time that the Lobianco's were stabbed to death, oren Sharon Tate was killed.
They're not granting murderers and bombers of other kinds clemency. It's only days who claim they're doing something political Unlike a pardon, which essentially erases a conviction, clemency reduces a penalty without clearing the person's criminal history. In this case, the Macho Terros who had been given a conditional offer had already served time behind bars. Even with that, Clinton's move was unpopular. For one many questioned the timing, which
was seen as suspicious. I can't tell you who told me this, but the story goes like this, Hillary Clinton is going to run for state. Here's Hartford current reporter Ed Mahoney, and she knows she's gonna lose upstate New York, but if she gets New York City she can win. She sets up a bunch of meetings with the power brokers in New York, and she goes to see this guy named Hermann Badillo, who's the Puerto Rican guy who's
a Democratic Party boss. So she goes over and she meets and goes, well, you know, Mrs Clinton, very nice to see if I'm looking new for it, because I'm gonna run for the Senate and I want to know what I can do to get your support this And well, we needed a new subway stop at Yankee Stadium, and we need this, and we need that and we need the Bruckner Boulevard repaved. And she's taken in notes and said, okay, well that's good. Well I think we can handle all this.
And finally some guy who's sitting in the back of the room goes, and they want the political prisoners free, and she goes, what do you who are you? What? What do you mean? Political prisoners? And but you know, the rest of doo't listen to him. He's nuts. He's always look with political prisoners, you know. So who are the political prisoners? She says, well, these are the freedom fighters, you know. But they'll listen to that. There's no way anybody's gonna get them out of g Also, don't even
concern yourself with it. Republicans in particular claim the clemency offer was an attempt to boost Hillary clinton Senate run in New York, which has a large Puerto Rican population. In fact, it became such a hot button issue that she event truly came out against the move, despite initial reports claiming she had supported it. The first Lady herself complicated matters over the weekend when she said that the
offer should be rescinded after initially supporting it. That drew fire both from Democratic Hispanics, who said that they felt that she had abandoned them, and from Republicans who claimed the First Lady was using her position to manipulate New York politics. In her statement condemning the move, Hillary Clinton criticized the prisoners for taking too long to formally renounce violence in exchange for clemency, saying their silence quote speaks volumes.
The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to condemn the clemency offers, as did the FBI, the U S. Attorney's Office in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. A series of hearings in the House and Senate were held on the matter, including one on September one, led by House Oversight Committee Chairman Indiana congress Sman Dan Burton. What we want to know is why did the President make this decision? What is the public benefit? Who advised him on this issue? Was
the FBI consulted the Bureau of Prisons. That's why we're holding us hearing today. Over the course of five hours, dozens of people spoke, including victims and family members of victims of the f a l n's attacks in New York and Chicago. The next. Indiscriminate bombing in this country will probably not kill me or anyone else in my family, but it may harm someone that you all know or love. Members of the FBI, not only by their name or
by their actions, by the crimes they committed. I think you could clearly associate the Los Macha Teros with violence and crime and congressional leadership, including Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, who read from a letter he received from President Clinton, who didn't appear at any of the hearings. The question of clemency for these prisoners was a very difficult one. I did what I believe equity and fairness dictated. I certainly understand, however, that other people could review the same
facts I did and arrive at a different decision. President Clinton refused to comply with the subpoena for documents related to his decision, though he did share more than a thousand letters written on behalf of the prisoners, including some dating back. He also spoke about it with members of the White House Press pool. My judgment was that, uh, these people should be offered a conditional of clemency for two reasons. One, none of them, even though they belonged
to an organization which had espoused violent means. None of them were convicted of doing any bodily harm to anyone, and two they had all served sentences that were considerably longer than they would serve under the sentencing guidelines which control federal sentencing. Now. Of the sixteen offered clemency, fourteen eventually accepted, and eleven were released within a matter of weeks.
Juan Zara accepted the clemency offer. He spoke about it in the Last American Colony documentary that am I sorry that I decided to fight fight for my country? No, I'm not. I mean could have done things differently? Yes? Absolutely do I now think that violence is not the means to achieve anything. Absolutely. Yeah, That's a lesson learned in life for me. In President Clinton's letter that was read by Congressman Waxman during the hearing, jan Cigara's commutation
was fully explained. I commuted the sentence of one and Riki Cigara Palmer so that he would be eligible for parole after serving nineteen years in prison, consistent at the time served by the Chicago petitioners. The timing of my decision was dictated by the fact that my former Council Charles Ruff, committed to many of those interested in this issue that he would console with the Department of Justice and make a recommendation to me before he left the
council position. Political considerations played no role in the process. President Clinton has always disputed the notion that the commutations were tied to any type of political bid. He noted that a number of high ranking people asked for the move well before he made it, including members of Congress, Puerto Rican and US church leaders, as well as seventy
five thousand signatures from citizens demanding the prisoner's freedom. As for his wife's Senate campaign, which he'd go on to win, President Clinton was firm with reporters she had no idea and the decision to grant clemency was a stun merritt nothing else. She didn't know anything about it until, as far as I know, until someone from her her office called and asked her for a comment. Because I did
not discuss it with her. I haven't discussed other clemency issues with or I didn't think I should discuss this one. So it was up to her and entirely appropriate for her to say whatever she wanted to about it. But I did what I thought was right, and that's what I'll continue to do. Wanzagara was released from prison in two thousand four after serving the remainder of his commuted sentence. He returned to Puerto Rico, where he lives today. Outcomes
different for other members of the Macha Teros. Of the seventeen people indicted in the Wells Fargo case, only ten ended up serving time in prison. Three were arrested after years on the run, including Norberto Gonzalez Claudio, a senior Macheterros leader who the FBI viewed as the group's public relations are. After twenty five years, police finally caught up with Norberto and Puerto Rico, where he'd been living under a fake name. Then, of course there's Philiberto Ojeda Rios,
the leader of Los Macheteros. He'd spend the next fourteen years on the run, popping up every now and then for interviews and to lend his name to communicates. That all changed in two thousand five. Civil rights lawyer round Kubi, who you heard in the last episode, was part of the Macheteros legal team. He doesn't believe for one minute the FBI wasn't aware of where Philiberto had disappeared to
after cutting off his ankle monitor. They insisted that they had no idea until they came upon his safe house through a lot of good luck. But when I would go down there, I knew who could give a message to to get to Philiberto. So I figured that if Frank Koby knows to give a message to Blank and it will get to Philiberto, really can the FBI really not know? On September two thousand five, FBI agents approached a farmhouse on a rural hillside in western Puerto Rico.
Inside was the mandate sought for more than a decade, Filiberto Ojeda Rios. What happened on that day is detailed in an FBI after action report, though I should note some of the folks I spoke with questioned its accuracy. According to the report, FBI agents attempted to arrest Philiberto
just before four pm local time. What followed was quote a brief but intense exchange of gunfire between the Macha terrorist leader and three federal agents, one of whom was seriously in in the ninety minutes standoff that followed, Philiberto's wife surrendered and was arrested without further incident. The Bureau said it then engaged in a brief dialogue with Philiberto, during which he requested that a member of the press
be made available to him. Shortly after communications ended, then at six or eight pm, a refrigerator door inside the house was opened and a federal agent spotted Philiberto through a window, crouched down with a weapon in one hand. The agent then fired three shots, one of which hit above Philiberto's bulletproof vest. Several people at the scene admitted to hearing a loud cry in the sound of a person hitting the floor. After that, the agents waited for
eighteen hours, then they moved in. I spent the whole night hoping that he had some tunnel and had been able to take an know, you know. They kept saying that the place was surrounded, and then he hadn't come out and said it was only later that we learned that they had shot him and just refused to provide any kind of medical attention until after he was dead.
De Liberto Ojeda Rios was declared dead at two pm on September He was seventy two years old, and autopsy report revealed he'd actually bled to death the night before, a slow and painful process that would have taken anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours, meaning if he had gotten immediate medical care, Filiberto would have survived. Here's retired FBI agent Bob Hybel. It was not an execution. I guarantee you it was not not the where the bureau works.
Similar to debates over the life Philiberto lived, there was discourse over the way he died, and general tells what happened was extra usial kill. The FBI knew that he was living there for at least five years, and they choose September twenty three, which is the day of the Lattice Uprising, which is commemorated by Poo. Independence movement is important in Puerto Rico, and so the manpower and the gunpower use against Hiliberto was extraordinary and I think it
wasn't required. In two thousand six, Puerto Rico's Department of Justice sued the FBI for information about the raid and the bureau's various rates of Macha Tero safe houses. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear it. A United Nations Committee on Decolonization also called for an independent investigation into the quote assassination of Philiberto o Hey the re es that resolution we
should know was sponsored by Cuba. The Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General did eventually release the results of its own investigation, which cleared the FBI of any wrongdoing. It states that agents were in imminent danger, that Philiberto had readily engaged in a shootout with FBI agents in the past, and that there was concerned he'd booby trapped his house to prevent entry. I knew that Philiberto managed to do something that almost no one managed to do,
which was to survive a shootout with the FBI. One shootout. But I might know if anybody who survives to shootouts with the FBI. And while I know the popular narrative is that he was assassinated I just as a personal matter, out a political matter, or anything else, I disagree with that a little bit. He was armed and he was
shooting back. But this was a shootout, in my view, between two different groups of soldiers, one of them representing the occupying colonial authorities treading on occupied soil, and the other by a patriot and a freedom fighter who was resisting the occupation. Do I think that he wanted to die with a hole in his lung slowly bleeding out because the FBI was too terrified to go into the safe house. No, I don't think he wanted to die precisely that way, but I do think, to quote phil Oakes,
it was the life of a rebel. He lived in a rebel's life. He died. Philiberto was considered many things. To some he was a hero, a rebel, an artist, and a patriot. To others, he was a terrorist and a foreign agent. During the course of my research, I've seen him compared to the likes of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, and of course the del Castro. He was a truly, truly dedicated person. He was a patriot in his own view. He was single minded.
He wasn't allowed to have a family, he couldn't live with his children. He sacrificed his entire life for a cause. It's kind of a remarkable thing. Feliverto remembered as a fighter, also a musician, a lover of Puerto Rico, a lover of also the land of agriculture, you know, the memory of him finding refuge, you know, in the Puerto Rican
countryside and of being violently killed unnecessarily. One of the only narratives that Philiberto objected to that Philiberto was a Cuban agent, and he hated that, you know, he he had few objections as to how he's portrayed by the colonialist media. But Philiberto was not an agent of anybody. Philiberto was a Puerto Rican patriot and was subordinate to know foreign power, be a Cuban or American or Soviet
or anything else. I think we can't think about Los Marcetos as part of a historical process University of Illinois professor Dr. Jose Attilus. But they were part of a struggle for independent self determination and antic colonialism that it's really important so much as did some things that they probably shouldn't have done, but they were relevant in the transformation of Puerto Rico and also kind of maintaining Puerto
Rico as a different nation to the US. And as every political movement, they have their good teens under bad teens, which brings us to the final pieces of this story. What's left of the struggle and why Puerto Rico was still to this day seen as America's last true colony, and where in the hell is Victor Herrena. At the start of every episode, I refer to this story as one about a robbery that would go on to fund an international independence movement. What the robbery didn't do was
funded revolution. And while Philiberto is seen by many Puerto Ricans as a hero and patriot, the complete and total independence he advocated for never got the support he wanted. Here's Dr Yarimar Bonia Ramos, an expert in Caribbean politics. I think that there is a solid block of Puerto Rican's that want statehood, that consistently vote for statehood, and that number is increasing. What the rest of the population
wants is hard to explain, hard to define. For some of them, it depends on what's on offer, and you know, it's not clear to them what the possibilities are. In November, of voters participating in a non binding referendum said they were in favor of statehood, though I should note just over half of the island's population took part in that boat. Jennifer Gonzalez Cologne is Puerto Rico's non voting representative in Congress.
We cannot vote for our commander in chief. We do not have four members of Congress, yet Congress has all power overalls. For now. Puerto Ricans living on the island exists in a state of limbo. They are US citizens and can move freely to and from the mainland, but they can't vote in presidential elections, generally, don't pay federal
income tax, and have no voting member in Congress. Unlike Alaska and Hawaii, which became states after existing as territories, Puerto Rico has remained an unincorporated US territory, a commonwealth in charge of its internal affairs, but at the mercy of the US government when it comes to a number of things, including trade, the location and use of its military basis, foreign relations, telecommunications. The list goes on as the legal tax day. We belong to but are not
a part of the United States. We are a property or a possession, and indeed, the former president asked if he could sell us, so it left kind of no doubt about the relationship that we have. And then when Hurricane Maria came and federal aid was so slow to arrive, and we got paper towels instead of housing assistance. I think, you know, all of that cemented the idea that no, we are not part of the fabric of the United States. Puerto Rico has been in the dark since Hurricane Maria
slammed the island last week. Of the power lines have been knocked out and it may be months before they're repaired. It texted in a Brada. We get an A plus and I'll tell you what, I think We've done just as good in Puerto Rico, and it's actually a much comfort situation. Many people feel very bad about everything that happened with Trump, but there there are ways in which the policies that he enacted were just the application of
the political relationship that we have. And in many ways he just made clear what other politicians have just covered up with facades and pretty language and obscure rules and procedures. And in fact, it was under Obama that you know, this revelation of our lack of sovereignty began to become apparent with the imposition of the from Law, the Federal Oversight Board, our inability to declare bankruptcy or renegotiate our own debt. All of that happened you know, under a
different president. So I think it's important to not pin it all on one president, and in some ways he did as a favor in saying the quiet parts out loud. Efforts for Puerto Rican statehood on Capitol Hill if move forward and stops and Starts, and two thousand twenty one, lawmakers introduced two bills aimed at changing Puerto Rico status as a commonwealth, the Puerto Rico Self Determination Act and the bipartisan Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Act. As for Puerto
Rico's future, Dr Bonilla says she's optimistic. I think Puerto Rico in the past decade and certainly in the decade to come, has been going through the most rapid historical
transformation in its history. The way in which they imagine our political possibilities, I mean the fact that we topple the governor and for the first time came together across political divisions and have been coming together to protest austerity, to demand increase in salary for public workers, to also demand the end of gender violence and demand greater inclusivity.
I see a Puerto Rico that is under great threat, including the threat of climate change, but I also see a Puerto Rico that is very much invested in dealing with those threats in new ways, and while independence is an option, many of the experts I spoke with, including Dr Bonia and Dr Jose Attila's, say the armed independence movements of the past have taken a back seat to the island's main political parties. After the assassination of Filiberto
Trios in two thousand five kind of disappear. There have been some communityis by some branches of the Matos, but I think we can say that they are no longer present nor alive. There certainly is not armed struggle to the extent that there was in a previous era, but there are still groups that operate in the tradition of clandestine movements, who sometimes do things without necessarily, you know,
identifying themselves. As for the man who started this whole story, Victor Harrina is the last fugitive from the Wells Fargo robbery case who was still at large. He remained on the FBI's ten most Wanted Fugitives lists until two thousand sixteen. That's thirty two years longer than any other fugitive in history. I've asked everyone where they think Victor is and if he's still alive. In my interviews with members of the much of that is I tried to kind of us,
but they never told me. I think he pretty well could be alive. I think there was a little about anybody's mind he was in Cuba. I remember hearing he was probably down there, you know, in Cuba with the money, and became a uld for the clause. I mean, you think there could be at Hartford right now. I mean, who knows where it is. He could be anywhere. Oh, I think everything he knows where Victor is, or at least I think everybody is firmly convinced that Victor is
in Cuba. I mean, he was a young man at the time, so I don't have any reason to think he's shuffled off this mortal coil. I asked my mache terre source of Victor is still alive? Quote, well, he's like ten years younger than me, so I do not see why he wouldn't be end. Quote. Victor is the only one I know of who carried out a seven million dollar robbery. You have to be trained in finance by the Cuban government, so maybe was treated different. And
if the health gods have been good to him. Victor is still alive around sixty four and living a life of solitude. For the most part. I do believe the US government, meaning the FBI and CIA, know where he is, keep an eye on him, and feel at this point it would be too big a political hot button to push if they grabbed him. There's still a warrant out for Victor's arrest, as well as a one million dollar reward in the case. Maybe one day authorities will catch
up to him. My best guess is that he's still alive and living in Cuba. My hope that he managed to listen and he reaches out someday to tell me his side of the story. White Eagle is written and executive produced by me Em William Phelps and I Heart executive producer Christina Everett. Additional writing by our supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our associate producer and script supervisor is Darby Masters.
Audio editing and mixing by a Christian Bowman. Our series theme forms Regal or grand As written by Aaron Kaufman. Thanks to Arlene Santana and Will Pearson at I Heart Radio, and a very special thank you to Northern Light Productions, and Bester Cram for allowing us to use clips from the documentary The Last American Colony, which is available to
stream on demand. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows to bol