President Bush grants pardons to 11 people

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Court-martialed a half-century ago over $50, George Anderson Glenn was among 11 people pardoned Tuesday by President Bush.
Glenn was a 19-year-old Army private when he accepted the money to ride herd on a shipment of goods destined for the black market in South Korea.
"It's sort of like a big stone been taken off my shoulders," Glenn, now 69, said in a telephone interview from his home in Alexandria, Ala., after he received word he had been pardoned.
Bush has issued 82 pardons and sentence commutations during 63 months in office, mainly to allow people who committed relatively minor offenses and served their sentences long ago to clear their names.
Despite the court-martial in 1956, Glenn served 20 years in the Army. He retired in 1977 as a sergeant after spending time in Vietnam, then worked at nearby Fort McClellan as a civilian. Glenn said he handled classified material in that job.
He thought his name had been cleared because of his long military and civilian service. But when he went to renew a permit for his gun a few years ago, an FBI records check turned up the court-martial.
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