Man pardoned by Clinton not talking

WASHINGTON - A California businessman, pardoned by former President Clinton for a 1983 fraud conviction, refused to testify yesterday at a Senate hearing investigating his dietary supplement business.

Almon Glenn Braswell and the editor of his Journal of Longevity magazine, Ron Tepper, both asserted their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging.

Scott Mulhauser, press spokesman for the committee, said there were no plans to pursue an effort to grant limited immunity to Braswell and Tepper. The committee chairman, Rep. John Breaux, D-La., would rather concentrate on better government regulation of diet supplements that fail to produce their promised miracle cures.

Committee members had sought to question the two men on whether their products actually improved memory, increased sex drive and slowed aging as advertisements promised.