But at least Gambino В— the former owner of Valentino's Supper Club of Garden City, N.J. In Bill Clinton's final days in office last January, a White House lawyer included Rosario Gambino on a list of pardon candidates to be screened by the Justice Department, documents show. The Department refused, but that investigation petered out anyway. Members of the Clinton-appointed Parole Commission are said to have asked Justice Department officials to nix the FBI probe. Suspicious of his motives, agents wanted to set up a sting operation. More than a year ago, sources told TIME, the FBI learned of Clinton's efforts with the parole board. Parole Commission for Rosario, who is serving a 45-year sentence for heroin trafficking. Committee documents show that Rosario Gambino's daughter wrote a $50,000 check to one of Roger Clinton's companies in September, 1999, some months after Roger sought leniency from the U.S. Last week, the House Government Reform Committee wrote him asking about his role in clemency pleas made by six convicted felons, including Rosario Gambino, a jailed New Jersey restauranteur reputed to be a soldier in the Gambino crime family.

Though he always seemed to be the slacker Clinton, Roger now appears to have been a very busy man after all.ДЇor Clinton investigators, Roger is the gift that keeps on giving. Now Roger is sweating under the hot lights as questions pile up about whether he had a role in an outrageous array of slippery and ill-fated schemes ranging from Mafioso pardons to Chinese scooter imports to Venezuelan coal mines. While Bill Clinton ran the nation for eight years, his half brother, Roger, lived in Bill's shadow. Follow him the brother who couldn't shoot straight.

Roger clinton