In the 16 years since his release from prison, disgraced junk-bond king Michael Milken has beaten prostate cancer, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research and reshaped an image tarnished by a 1990 conviction for securities fraud.
One thing he's been unable to do is win a presidential pardon, despite the support of some of the country's most influential people.
Before he left office Jan. 20, President Bush declined to grant Milken's pardon application, just as President Clinton had eight years earlier.
One of those disappointed by Bush's decision was outgoing Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach, who said Milken's philanthropy had transformed medical research, raised awareness of prostate cancer and saved lives.
"Forgiveness is something that's an important part of our culture," Von Eschenbach said. "Here's a man who is really serving society."
To push his latest bid for a pardon, Milken retained Theodore B. Olson last summer. Olson, a partner in law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Washington, D.C., office, served as solicitor general under Bush and was his lawyer in the Supreme Court case that stopped the Florida recount, assuring his 2000 election.
In the final months of Bush's term, "many prominent people from a wide range of fields in business, government, education and medical research" wrote letters supporting a pardon, Milken spokesman Geoffrey Moore said in an e-mail to The Times.
Support for Milken's pardon was not universal, however, with resistance from some within the Justice Department and some on Wall Street.
Bill Seidman, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Resolution Trust Corp., said it would be a mistake to minimize the economic damage that Milken wrought in the 1980s.
Milken's junk bonds became favored holdings of some huge savings and loans that later failed, causing some to blame him for that crisis. It's a charge Milken and his supporters have denied.
"If you add it all up, he cost the government more money than any person in the S&L debacle," said Seidman, now CNBC's chief commentator and publisher of Bank Director magazine.
"The crimes for which he was convicted were one thing. But the cost to the government of his operations in the S&L industry was hundreds of millions of dollars."
