Examiner on Dan Hanks

At the Washington Examiner, Diane Diamond is encouraging President Obama to take a break from pardoning turkeys and grant a pardon to her "friend," Daniel Joseph Portley-Hanks. She says Hanks "has conducted undercover investigations for our government, specifically the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation" since the 1980s. She says he also "helped the feds crack a multitude of major cases that put away dozens of career criminals." These opportunities, however, were the by-product of multiple arrests for "auto and property theft, burglary and for being in possession of stolen checks" and a change of direction while serving out a prison sentence.

After he was released from prison, Hanks and some others formed Backstreet Investigations. Says Dimond:

They first worked for the DEA and were later recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the bookmaking arm of the Gambino crime family, a four-year case that led to the arrest and convictions of more than 80 people.

It became important to Dan that he clear his record. He went after getting his own California P.I. license, and in 2004 a court finally ordered he be awarded one. Hanks' petitions for both a state and presidential pardon have never been answered, however. For eight years he's heard nothing from the government he's worked so hard for as a crime fighter.

Dimond wonders why Hanks waits and has to witness pardons granted to 16 members of the domestic terrorist FALN, Jimmy Hoffa, Richard Nixon, although the disgraced president had never actually been charged with a crime. She asks, "Dan Hanks, who's spent 25 years diligently working for the DEA and FBI, can't get a pardon?" See full editorial here.