Who’s Sorry Now?
As the feds get tougher, power players on Capitol Hill and K Street worry that the cozy is becoming criminal
By Silla Brush
1. It was, no doubt, the most lavish bribery scheme Washington has en in recent years. Among the $2.4 million in gifts Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham took in: $1 million in checks; a $200,000 down payment on a condominium near Washington; cash to help him buy a Rolls-Royce; $9,200 for two Lar Shot shooting simulators; $7,200 for two 19th-century commodes; and access to a 42-foot yacht named Duke-Stir. It all came courtesy of two New York financial companies and two small-time defen contractors looking for a leg up in the capital. Cunningham, a former Navy ace, was ready to help. He ud his powerful at on a defen appropriations subcommittee to steer millions of dollars in contracts to the firms once the bribes began in 2000. But however crooked the eight-term California Republican’s ways, his guilty plea last week is only the latest indication that Washington’s w一览众山小上一句
heelings and dealings are no longer just business as usual.
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2. Only a week before, a former top aide to indicted Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay acknowledged bilking veral Indian tribes of over $80 million and providing gifts to public officials in exchange for favors. Michael Scanlon’s partner: Jack Abramoff, the kingpin lobbyist at the heart of Washington’s most ominous federal probe. At least a dozen public officials and many more current or former aides are under investigation, and Scanlon’s testimony could help unravel a web of corruption.
3. Beyond the most egregious examples of bribery, like Cunningham’s, there are numerous indications--the ongoing investigations, the public’s low approval rating of Congress, and calls for reform--that too much money is now flowing in Washington’s backroom deals between lobbyists and lawmakers. The questions now mounting aren’t new, but they’re getting louder: Where should the line be drawn on the role of money in politics? And when does campaign cash for “access” turn into bribery? Justice Department procutors may be signaling in their recent cas that they’re drawing that line more tightly, creating new anxiety for lawmakers and lobbyists alike.
4. “There is nothing about today’s system that gives you confidence that the public interest is being rved,” says Rep. Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat who has pushed for reforms to the lobbying laws. “It’s an institutional problem, and we need an institutional solution.”qq皇冠
5. 世界第三高楼Scandal cycle. Fueling the current climate is a surge in campaign contributions and lavish gifts to both parties. But of particular concern is the tightknit relationship that DeLay and a cadre of Republicans built with lobbyists as they assumed a rare level of power in Washington.
6. Stretching back beyond the Teapot Dome episode that rocked the Warren Harding White Hou in the mid-1920s, bribery scandals are nothing new in Washington. “It’s like the locusts; they come every 15 years,” says Stan Brand, a Washington lawyer who reprented Hou Democrats. In the 1970s, South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, with Korean intelligence officials, helped funnel money to lawmakers in an effort to gain support for South Korea. Park faced more than 30 counts of conspiracy, bribery, and frau
知识产权案件d (charges later dropped as part of a plea agreement). Several members of Congress were hauled before ethics committees, and some were charged in criminal proceedings. In the early 1980s Abscam affair, six reprentatives and a nator were convicted of bribery, conspiracy, and other charges after videotapes showed the lawmakers accepting cash from FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks. A decade later, Charles Keating gave $1.4 million to five lawmakers in order to dissuade the Senate Banking Committee from investigating his savings and loan.
7.农民工劳务合同Hill truce. Congress itlf showed some teeth when ethics abus led to the eventual toppling of Democratic Speaker of the Hou Jim Wright in 1989 and eight years later to ethics reprimands for Newt Gingrich, then Republican speaker of the Hou. That 1997 episode prompted a ven-year truce between Democrats and Republicans over investigations by the Hou Ethics Committee. The current cas come not from congressional investigators but down Constitution Avenue at the Justice Department. “I think Justice has woken up and en what a mess Congress is,” says Melanie Sloan, a former federal procutor and director of Citzens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washing
刑法269条ton, a watchdog group. “And Congress has made it abundantly clear that they aren’t going to police themlves.”
8. K Street, lobbyist row in Washington, is worried that the Scanlon ca may signal a change in the rules of the game. The Justice Department is now looking not only into personal bribes, like the gifts in the Cunningham ca, but also campaign contributions. In Scanlon’s plea agreement, procutors identify $14,000 in campaign contributions given on behalf of Rep. Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican, allegedly in exchange for acts by the congressman, such as submitting statements for the Congressional Record.
9.“The concept of even putting a political contribution in the list of benefits conferred on a public official in a plea agreement is highly unusual,” says Ken Gross, an expert on congressional ethics. “There are cas going back years where political contributions are simply not considered as bribes or official benefits. Unless you saw some hard-core, heavy evidence of criminal conduct, it didn’t enter the realm.”
10. Every night in Washington, some lobbyist is raising money--sometimes big money--fo
r congressional friends. “Lobbyists give money to guys [reprentatives and nators] who help them,” says one prominent lobbyist, “but I don’t believe in most cas that there is a quid pro quo.” But, he quickly adds: “Everybody is biting their nails over this nonn. My worry is that procutors will now say, ‘You made a contribution to this congressman, and he did something that benefits you. I am going to charge you, and let’s e what a jury says.’ “
