TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010890/01081011.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.2 KB | 207 lines

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z                                                          NATION, Page 48

Seven Sorry Senators


A tidal wave of ethics cases may boost campaign-finance reform

BY MARGARET CARLSON -- Reported by Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles
and Nancy Traver/Washington


    It may be unique in the annals of excuses for leaving the
bride at the altar. California Senator Alan Cranston, 75,
indefinitely postponed his Christmas Eve wedding to real estate
broker Cathy Pattiz, 49, on account of the turmoil caused by
his receipt of $850,000 from Charles Keating, the former owner
of Lincoln Savings and Loan. "When the press pounced upon us
before we filled out the marriage-license forms, it became
clear to me that this is not an appropriate time to start a
marriage," said Cranston, who has started two marriages before.
"It would not be fair to Cathy to bring her into the middle of
a stressful situation."

    Cranston's love life is the latest casualty of the Keating
Affair, named for the high-flying owner of Lincoln S&L. Federal
investigators charge Keating with looting his bank of millions
of dollars while driving it $2.5 billion into debt. When
Cranston returns to Washington next week, he will be one of an
unprecedented seven Senators -- the so-called Keating Five plus
two others -- facing investigation by the Senate ethics
committee. If the past session of Congress was a nightmare for
the House of Representatives, with the resignations of Speaker
Jim Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho and the launching of
twelve other ethics investigations, this session promises to be
even worse for the Senate.

    For company, Democrat Cranston has the four other colleagues
who with him received a total of nearly $1.4 million from
Keating: Democrats John Glenn of Ohio, Donald Riegle of
Michigan and Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, and Republican John
McCain of Arizona. The two other Senators mired in their own
scandals are Republicans Dave Durenberger of Minnesota and
Alfonse D'Amato of New York.

    Durenberger's transgressions involve much less money than
those laid to the Keating Five, but they are just as seamy. In
1985 Durenberger found himself strapped for cash. His marriage
was breaking up, and he had four sons to send to college. That
year and the next, he collected a total of $100,000 through the
book-promotion deal, more than double the Senate's $46,000
limit on honorariums. His aides told groups to send their
checks to Piranha Press, the Minnesota publisher of his two
books. Piranha passed the money along to him as a "stipend" for
promotional work.

    At the same time, Durenberger was drumming up speaking
engagements in Boston to coincide with visits there to a
marriage counselor, so he would not have to pay for the trips
out of his pocket. Although these arrangements were disclosed
last year, Durenberger still fought his way through a
re-election campaign, refusing to discuss his finances. He won
with 56% of the vote.

    But allegations continued to trickle out. Last month the
Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that since 1983, Durenberger
had charged the Senate nearly $10,000 for rental of a
condominium he had owned, which he used while in the state. To
justify the reimbursements, Durenberger transferred title on
the condo to a partnership he set up with a local businessman;
the partnership billed the rent. The new deed was drawn up in
mid-1984 but backdated to July 1983, when Durenberger began
claiming the expenses.

    Senate rules are intentionally as expandable as a hot-air
balloon. Nevertheless, there is a point of rupture, and
Durenberger must have sensed he was getting close with the
latest disclosures. Over the Christmas recess, Durenberger
broke his yearlong silence on his financial sleights of hand.
"I have let you down," he told constituents in a radio address
apologizing for "the disappointment and embarrassment I have
caused." Abiding technically by the Senate rules, he admitted,


    It may not be the end of his obligation to the Senate
either. Skirting the limits on outside income through a
publishing deal was a major factor in Wright's resignation from
the House last June. The other charges against Durenberger are
embarrassing to the Senate because they reveal some of the many
ways in which a Senator can play by different rules from those
for the rest of the citizenry.

    Different rules have long applied to Alfonse D'Amato, whose
political strength in New York made him seemingly invulnerable
to a string of allegations about influence peddling. Now some
20 possible ethical violations are being looked into by outside
counsel at the Senate's behest. The counsel will look at
telephone calls D'Amato made to then U.S. Attorney Rudolph
Giuliani in 1984 and 1985. D'Amato reportedly urged Giuliani
to review the charges or sentences against two convicted
mobsters, Paul Castellano, reputed head of the Gambino family
(since  murdered), and Mario Gigante, brother of the reputed
boss of the Genovese family. The committee will also look for
D'Amato's fingerprints on numerous grants awarded by the
Department of Housing and Urban Development in New York and
Puerto Rico.

    The Durenberger and D'Amato affairs have yet to hit the
public like the Keating Five, who have become symbols of the
nation's $300 billion savings and loan crash. In 1987 the five
Senators met in secret with Federal Home Loan Bank Board
chairman Edwin Gray to urge him to conclude an investigation
of Lincoln S&L. Gray later called the meeting "tantamount to
an attempt to subvert the regulatory process." It has become a
scandal everyone can understand and get angry about: a
taxpayer could get a feel for what the government bailout of
Lincoln alone will cost him by taking a $10 bill out of his
wallet and tearing it up.

    The five Senators are busy offering explanations and
excuses, even when that means pointing fingers at one another.
McCain has accused Riegle of trying to "throw reporters off his
scent" by pointing the finger at McCain. So wary is Riegle of
McCain, the Wall Street Journal reported, that he burst into
McCain's mail room in November to retrieve his misdirected
response to the Senate ethics committee, which presumably would
have given away his defense strategy.

    Initially, Riegle's strategy was to claim he had no ties to
Keating -- until he was confronted with them. Riegle failed to
disclose, for instance, that he had made a solo visit to
Keating's empire, including a helicopter ride to survey the
Phoenician Resort in Arizona in 1987. The Senator's
stonewalling has hurt him enough (the Grand Rapids Press, which
endorsed him in 1988, has been blasting him) that he embarked
on a whirlwind of talk shows and town meetings in Michigan over
the Christmas recess.

    Glenn will always have his Mercury space flight to fall back
on. Polls in Ohio show that his popularity remains high,
despite what he calls "the toughest, most vexing thing I've
ever gone through in my life." He broke from the pack on a
television talk show in November, saying, "We're not five peas
in a pod." He claims that when he learned during the meeting
with bank-board chairman Gray that Keating could be criminally
charged, he backed off. "I folded my tent. I did nothing more,"
Glenn told TIME.

    McCain's strategy has been to apologize again and again,
perhaps because he has more than campaign contributions to
apologize for. He had to reimburse Keating for $13,000 for
trips he and his family took, including vacations to the
Bahamas, on Keating's corporate jet. He was the only other
Senator to appear with Glenn on This Week with David Brinkley
and, like Glenn, he broke off relations with Keating once he
learned of the criminal investigation. Arizona's other Senator
seems to be in more trouble: in congressional testimony, Gray
identified DeConcini as the host of the 1987 meeting and the
Senator who made Keating's case for him.

    Cranston has fared worst in the scandal, in part because
elderly investors in California have publicly blamed him for
having their life savings wiped out by questionable Lincoln
bond sales. Cranston also took the most money from Keating and
maintained contact with him after learning of the criminal
investigation. At an appearance in Santa Ana, frail, diabetic
bondholder Shirley Lampel bored in on the Senator: "Keating
said he bought something from you for all his money. What do
you think you sold him?" A Mervyn Field poll shows a striking
reversal of Cranston's popularity, from a 64% approval rating
pre-Keating to 33% now. Moreover, 62% told Field they are not
inclined to vote for Cranston if he should seek re-election in
1992.

    Finally, Congress may be sufficiently worried about its
reputation to consider reforming the way money buys access on
Capitol Hill. Campaign-finance reform, always a tough sell, has
even attracted the support of so unlikely a backer as D'Amato.
Still, no one is holding his breath. In November, with the
seven Senators already sliding toward ethics investigations,
the Senate refused even to join the House in accepting new
restrictions on outside income.