Pardoned By Bush, But Still In Court

She added: "There was no cocaine involved."

Maj. Bryan Watson, a spokesman for the Air Force judge advocate general's office at the Pentagon, said Harley was convicted of wrongful use and distribution of marijuana and cocaine. On April 17, 1985, Harley was sentenced to eight months of confinement and dismissed from the service. His sentence was ultimately reduced to 90 days.

Harrington said her son was shaken. All his life, she said, Harley wanted to emulate his older brother Stuart, an Air Force Academy graduate and pilot who she said died on duty while based in Japan. "I don't like to talk about it," she said.

After his dismissal, Harley, then known as Andrew F. Smith, transferred to California Polytechnic State University, where he earned a social sciences degree in 1990. He received a master's degree in social welfare from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994.

He later married and has two children, 6 and 9 years old.

On April 27, 2005, Harley applied for a presidential pardon, according to the Justice Department.

Harrington said she learned about the application the day after the announcement of the pardon. "I received an e-mail . . . from Andrew with a copy of the article in the paper. He didn't make any comments. I was surprised. There is something about having a presidential pardon -- it sounds impressive," she said.

Several months ago, Harrington said, her son received security clearance for his job in the District with the government contractor Computer Sciences Corp. "Now, we laugh at [the drug conviction]. We refer to it as the stupid mistake."

At some point this year, troubles between Harley and Durham began escalating. Harley, according to his court filing, had become romantically involved with Durham's estranged wife, Teresa Buchanan Durham. During the summer, Harley filed a criminal complaint against Ronnie Durham, claiming that Durham was harassing him with angry e-mails.

In response, Durham filed a lawsuit seeking $16,000, alleging that Harley had defamed him with a "false" criminal complaint and that Harley had spread falsehoods about Durham to co-workers.

A Fairfax judge awarded Harley a peace bond barring Durham from contacting him. Durham's 19-year-old son, Nathan, filed an affidavit that states: "On June 16, 2008, Andrew Harley offered me marijuana to help me 'relax.' Andrew Harley said he could sell me or my mother as much as we wanted. I told him I was not interested."

Harley's attorney, Robert Zaniel, said he had not known about the drug accusation. "It's not even an allegation made by a party to the case," he said. "It sounds like some affidavit by some third-party witness who is obviously very biased and is the son of Ronnie Durham. . . . The trick is to distinguish allegation and fact." Hearings on the peace bond and defamation lawsuit are scheduled for next year.

Harley may never know why Bush chose him out of so many pardon applicants. He is one of just eight people in Maryland, the District and Virginia who have received a pardon or sentence commutation from Bush since he took office in 2001, according to an analysis by P.S. Ruckman, a political science professor at Rock Valley College in Illinois and author of the blog Pardon Power.

But Harley's friend and former boss, David Colvin, 35, a project manager at a Fairfax-based consulting firm, has a hunch about what made the difference for Harley. Colvin, who once hired Harley and admired his transparency about his past, was one of three people who wrote a supporting letter for the pardon application.

"I think," Colvin said, "that I wrote a pretty good letter."