TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/80/80capabs.1

Text File | 1992-10-20 | 37.7 KB | 709 lines

                O,                                                            ╚February 18, 1980

COVER STORY

The FBI Stings Congress


A dismaying scandal--and difficult questions


"Everybody was laughing at what was happening. It was like
guys coming out of the bush, saying, 'Hey, give me some of the
money.' They'd pay one guy and the next day five guys would be
calling them, guys they didn't know. The tapes are hilarious."

So said a former federal prosecutor last week, but on Capitol
Hill no one shared the amusement. Too many of "the guys" were
members of Congress, and "the tapes" were both video and audio,
catching the sight and sound of them accepting money to perform
special favors. That, in any case, was the story being leaked
by sources within the Department of Justice, which said the FBI
had lured the lawmakers into the focus of hidden television
cameras in the most sensational undercover operation it had ever
conducted.

Dubbed Abscam, for Arab Scam, the 23-month investigation had
cost some $800,000 and involved about 100 agents in an elaborate
series of hoaxes and disguises. One of these dressed up in a
burnoose and posed as a sheik named Kambir Abdul Rahman, whose
millions were said to be "burning holes" in a Chase Manhattan
account. Other agents in pinstripe suits served as the sheik's
American emissaries, translating his gutteral commands and
seeking ways to invest his money in New Jersey gambling casinos,
East Coast port facilities and an American titanium mine. Along
the way, the phony sheik and his aides sought to protect his
investments by buying political influence in Congress, in New
Jersey's Casino Control Commission, the New Jersey legislature
and the Philadelphia city council. When the FBI sting ended,
its supervisors alleged that the honey pot of Arab money had
attracted one U.S. Senator, seven members of the House and two
dozen state and local officials or their corrupt cronies--all
stung by facing possible charges of accepting bribes or being
caught in an illegal conflict of interest.

Stunned and saddened, leaders of Congress demanded all of the
FBI evidence so they could conduct speedy investigations of
their own to discipline or clear their accused colleagues. Just
as adamantly, Justice Department officials insisted that grand
juries must examine the evidence first, decide whom to indict
for what, and send any criminal charges to trial. Simultaneous
probes would only get in each other's way and make both branches
of Government look inept, said Attorney General Benjamin
Civiletti, and in the end might let all of the suspects escape
punishment. The new scandal was hardly another Watergate, yet
the interbranch conflict was hauntingly familiar. So, too, was
the claim by civil libertarians that the investigators had
leaked their findings to an overeager press, irreparably
damaging the reputations of public officials before anyone had
even been formally accused of a crime.

Yet Abscam did introduce a new controversy. Had the much-
criticized FBI illegally or unethically enticed the lawmakers
into committing crimes they would normally not have considered?
"This smacks of a setup," claimed one leading Democrat in
Congress. "A lot of guys feel that the FBI has got it in for
this place." But why?  No legislator could quite explain this
"gut feeling" that, as another Congressman contended, the FBI
was out "to get us." On the other hand, the agency seemed to
have fearlessly bitten the hand that feeds it. The Congress
had appropriated about $3 million for FBI undercover operations
in the past year, and it now appears that the FBI, in an ironic
way, returned some of the money to a few greedy members of
Congress. Nevertheless, the "entrapment" issue and the massive
and apparently deliberate leaks to the press were all legitimate
topics of ethical concern and growing controversy.

One point was not in dispute: the badly battered reputation of
Congress, tarnished by numerous recent cases of individual
misconduct, had been dealt a major blow. "The institution has
been hurt," conceded House Speaker Tip O'Neill. "I'm very
disappointed, discouraged and shocked," said Senate Majority
Leader Robert Byrd. "I'm sick," declared Congressman Robert F.
Drinan, who served on the Judiciary committee that had voted in
1974 to impeach Richard Nixon. The actions of that committee
were so impressive that 48% of Americans, according to a Gallup
poll at the time, said that they approved of the way Congress
was performing. Assaulted by more recent charges, including
President Carter's repeated claim that Congress is a captive of
special interest groups, the legislature's approval rating fell
to a lowly 19% last summer. (Only big business generally ranks
lower than Congress.) Until the Abscam evidence is finally
evaluated in the courts--and no indictments are anticipated in
less than three months--cynics can say that their suspicions
have been justified: all too many legislators are heedless of
the national interest and also personally corrupt.

The FBI's dramatic undercover attack on white collar crime also
left no doubt about a shift in priorities since the death of its
first and legendary director, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover liked to
put emphasis on the showy crimes of his youth: bank robberies
and kidnapping. In the political area, he concentrated on spies
and groups that he considered leftist. He did not at all mind
his agents picking up scandal, mostly sexual, about members of
Congress; but he filed it away to use as a club over
legislators' heads, sometimes even informing the Congressman of
what he knew (promising as a favor to keep it quiet). In
undercover work, he relied heavily on paid informants, he did
not want his agents to be sullied by posing as other than what
they were: clean-cut types in impeccable white shirts.

In the post-Hoover era, Hoover's successors have sought to
reform the agency. They banned such routine FBI tactics as
illegal break-ins. First Clarence Kelley and then the current
director, William Webster, steered the FBI away from such simple
federal offenses as bank robbery into the more complex areas of
white collar crime. This meant going undercover--and enduring
the attacks that such operations can bring. Over the past two
years, the FBI has been engaged in nearly 100 separate
undercover operations--and with impressive results. Last year,
these investigations produced 2,817 arrests, 1,372 convictions
and the recovery of $381 million in stolen property.

These operations began with the FBI joining local police in
setting up phony fence operations--often in storefronts. There
stolen goods were readily purchased, and at the proper time the
unsuspecting sellers were stung. The scams ranged from
Operation Tarpit in Los Angeles, where the expenditure of
$450,000 bought some $42 million in hot goods, with 256 arrests,
to Operation Lobster in Boston, where agents recovered 17 huge
truckloads of stolen goods that were stuffed with $3 million in
loot. As a result, Boston area hijackings dropped from about
50 a year to only two since this sting ended in March.

It was through the recovery of stolen goods that Abscam started.
It grew out of a rather routine undercover scheme in the New
York area to recover stolen securities and paintings. In return
for a favorable recommendation to reduce his sentence, FBI
agents persuaded Mel Weinberg, a convicted swindler, to help
them get thieves to resell their loot to the FBI's fake fences.
The agents used the ruse of claiming to represent a Middle East
sheik interested in purchasing the stolen goods.

Informer Weinberg, however, held out a bigger prospect. He
named two associates who, he claimed, had arranged shady deals
with the mayor of Camden, N.J., Angelo Errichetti. The
undercover agents now sought guidance from their superiors on
whether to follow Weinberg's leads into the complex field of
political corruption.  Neil Welch, the FBI's top man in New
York City, readily approved. He had long wanted to press harder
against white-collar crime. But Welch also needed higher
approval, first from Francis M. ("Bud") Mullen Jr., a Washington
superior in charge of all FBI investigations into white-collar
and organized crime. Finally, Director Webster's approval was
needed. In March 1978 both officials gave their go-ahead.

With top level approval and ample funds now available, the FBI
scam grew ever more elaborate. A swarthy agent, still
unidentified, was picked to play the fictitious sheik, Kambir
Abdul Rahman. Variously portrayed as being from Oman, Lebanon
or the United Arab Emirates, the impostor set up temporary
residence in a 62-ft. yacht that docked in several posh Florida
marinas. As the flag vessel of the FBI's secret fleet, the
cruiser, seized by customs officials from marijuana smugglers,
was first named the Left Hand and later the Corsair. "It
gleamed with the predictable varnished parquet decks, teak
paneling--and a wide variety of eavesdropping and recording
devices. The landlubberly FBI crew who manned it, however,
promptly blew out one of its engines--and thereafter pretended
to be in great fear of punishment from the all-powerful sheik.

At the same time, the FBI provided its' sheik with a phony
business front called Abdul Enterprises, with offices in an
undistinguished modern office building on Long Island. More
imaginatively, the agents acquired an expensive two-story
colonial brick house in a fashionable area of Washington, D.C.
It was rented, for $1,200 a month, from a reporter for the
Washington Post who had been assigned temporarily to New York
City. The agents furnished the first floor with expensive
antiques borrowed from the Smithsonian Institution and spent
some $25,000 on renovations. These included an elaborate alarm
system (to protect the antique furniture, the reporter-landlord
was told), new chandeliers, other lighting fixtures, and a false
ceiling in the basement--presumably to conceal TV cameras and
microphones. On a visit, the reporter found a locked door off
the basement recreation room. The key, explained one of the new
tenants, had been left at his office. In fact, the room
contained television cameras and recording equipment. Neighbors
on the quiet street were puzzled by the new tenants. Said one:
"We thought it was a bunch of gays--all these good-looking
young men, who kept changing."

Other operational sites were lined up: hotel suites at the
Hilton Inn and the International Hotel, both at New York's
Kennedy International Airport; an elegant suite at
Philadelphia's Barclay Hotel; a condominium in the Regency
Towers, along the seashore in Ventnor, N.J. For flexibility,
another sheik was created, Yasser Habib. He claimed that he
might one day have to flee his home country and seek asylum in
the U.S. That asylum could be provided if a member of Congress
would introduce a private bill, granting him special status to
bypass normal immigration procedures. The sheik would, of
course, generously reward any legislator willing to sponsor such
legislation. (In past years as many as 7,300 private
immigration bills had been introduced in the House, and such
mere introduction could indefinitely postpone any deportation
proceedings against an alien already in the U.S. After this
rule was eliminated in 1971, the number of these bills dropped,
to 662 last year. Full passage by both chambers of Congress is
now required for admission of an alien to the U.S. outside of
quotas.)

With the actors and stage sets in place, Abscam went into
action. According to Justice Department sources, events
unfolded as follows:

The agents sought out their first quarry, Camden Mayor
Errichetti, 51, who is also a New Jersey state senator.
Errichetti listened attentively as the undercover agents
explained that their sheik was interested in investing money in
the Camden seaport and might like to open a casino in Atlantic
City as well. Television cameras put the scenes on tape as the
mayor said he could help the sheik with his investments--for a
fee of $400,000. Errichetti accepted $25,000 in cash as a down
payment for his services, according to Government sources. To
get a casino license, Errichetti said, Kenneth MacDonald, vice
chairman of the Casino Control Commission, would need $100,000.
When Errichetti and MacDonald later visited the Abdul
Enterprises office on Long Island, the two officials picked up
a payment of $100,000--an act duly recorded on video tape.

Errichetti soon escalated the level of action. He showed up
last March at the Corsair, now docked in Delray Beach, Fla., to
meet the legendary sheik Kambir Abdul Rahman face to face. This
time he had with him New Jersey's four-term Democratic Senator,
Harrison ("Pete") Williams, 60. Meeting in the yacht's salon,
the visitors spoke to the sheik through an interpreter, a
dark-complexioned agent who conveyed their words to the sheik
in something approximating Arabic. Nodding and smiling under
his burnoose, the sheik, who claimed to speak little English,
managed to express his uncomplicated desires: he wanted to
invest in land and casinos in Atlantic City, as well as in a
U.S. titanium* mine in Virginia; but he was unfamiliar with
the ways of politics and finance in the U.S. and needed the help
of his experienced guests.

The Senator raised his voice to convey his clear concurrence and
told the interpreter: "You tell the sheik I'll do all I can.
You tell him I'll deliver my end." The deal that began that
day took at least three more meetings over several months to
complete. In Manhattan's Pierre Hotel, the sheik's aides agreed
to invest $100 million in the titanium mine and to give Williams
an undisclosed share of the mine's stock without charge. At a
rendezvous in Arlington, Va., the Senator said he would talk to
high officials in Government to seek military contacts to help
the mine prosper. As he was about to catch a plane to Europe
from Kennedy Airport, Williams accepted the stock certificates.
They had been made out to a longtime associate of the
Senator's, Alexander Feinberg, a New Jersey lawyer who had
endorsed the stock, making it transferable to Williams.
According to the Justice Department sources, all of Williams'
transactions with the sheik's agents were filmed.

The ubiquitous Mayor Errichetti also introduced the sheik's pals
to Howard Criden, a relatively obscure Philadelphia lawyer who
had made big profits in real estate. When he learned of the
sheik's desire to spread his vast wealth, the soft-spoken Criden
was far from quiet. He passed the word to four members of
Congress, all of whom succumbed to the FBI's sting.

One by one, Congressmen turned up at the FBI's rented house on
Washington's W Street, often with Criden at their side, to
learn about the largesse of the second FBI sheik, Yasser Habib,
the one who was hoping to find asylum in the U.S. Habib
welcomed his visitors under lights so bright that the lawmakers
squinted. These lights had been installed to facilitate the
secret video-taping, but the sheik's aides explained that he
kept them bright because he missed the blazing sun of his
homeland. To each Congressman, the pitch was the same: the
sheik feared trouble from radicals in his homeland and wanted
assurance that he could find permanent sanctuary, if needed, in
the U.S. He did not, of course, expect anyone to help him for
nothing.

To the dismay and, indeed, the later disbelief of his colleagues
on Capitol Hill, one of the legislators Criden got interested
in the sheik was New Jersey Democrat Frank Thompson, 61, a most
admired and respected member of the House. Although Thompson
was not photographed picking up any cash, Criden accepted a
satchel containing $50,000--and, according to Government
sources, he was taped saying he was doing so for the
Congressman. Thompson's own words of willingness to help the
sheik had been recorded earlier.

As a middleman expecting to be generously rewarded for his
efforts by the sheik, Criden also brought Pennsylvania Democrat
Raymond Lederer, 41, Pennsylvania Democrat Michael Myers, 36,
and New York Democrat John Murphy, 53, into Abscam. Myers and
Lederer were filmed accepting $50,000 each. Murphy, who has
been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, was more
wary. In an almost comic scene, he sparred with Criden over who
would pick up the suitcase of bribe money in a Kennedy Airport
hotel; Criden lost, and walked out with the cash. Pennsylvania
Democrat John Murtha, 47, went to the Washington house at
Criden's urging and was taped agreeing to split $50,000 with
other Congressman, but never picked up any money.

Two Southern Congressmen found their way into the Abscam web
through other intermediaries. South Carolina Democrat John W.
Jenrette, 43, apparently was tipped off by a businessman-friend,
John Stowe of Richmond. According to Government sources, Stowe
was filmed accepting $50,000, and Jenrette was recorded later
acknowledging receipt of the money. The only Republican tagged
so far is Florida Congressman Richard Kelly, 55, one of the
House's most erratic legislators. Kelly apparently learned of
the available cash from a chain starting with a convicted stock
swindler and leading through an accountant and an East Coast
mobster, all three of whom had expected to acquire $50,000 each
from Sheik Habib. Only Kelly, however, received a delivery.
The cameras in the W Street house caught him stuffing
$25,000--200 $100 bills and 250 $20 bills--into his suit, coat
and pants pockets and asking: "Does it show?"

As greedy politicians at lower levels of government rushed to
get their share of Abscam's bribe money, the FBI's operation was
getting too complex and expensive. The agents had promised to
hand over more money in bribes than they could deliver. At some
point the spigot had to be turned off. "We found people
climbing all over each other to get some of the action," claimed
one FBI official. "We were mystified."

The FBI decided to shut the operation down on Saturday, Feb. 2.
The agents knew that a number of news organizations had heard
rumors about the sting and were about to break the story. They
asked reporters for these organizations to hold off until some
100 agents could complete a rush of windup interviews on that
Saturday.

NBC-TV had been dogging the story for two months--setting up
two Winnebago vans near the FBI's W Street hideaway,
photographing visitors through tinted windows. The crews could
not turn heaters on in their vans because that would fog up the
windows. "It was so cold the orange juice froze on a couple of
nights," said one benumbed NBC reporter. Neighbors had called
police about a suspicious vehicle, but a quick-witted reporter
shooed officers away by protesting: "What's the matter with
you guys?  You're screwing up our investigation." An NBC van
was parked near Williams' home in Washington even before the FBI
agents came to inform the Senator that he was a subject of
investigation, so the Senator's look of surprise and dismay
appeared on prime-time television.

The most detailed early reports were in Long Island's Newsday
and the New York Times, the latter's report apparently based on
an internal--and normally secret--Justice Department document
called a prosecution memo or "pros-memo." That is a
prosecutor's chronological summary of a mass of FBI evidence,
and copies are sent to relevant FBI officials. The published
details of the Justice Department's information brought howls
of protest from Congress and also from the American Civil
Liberties Union. Attorney General Civiletti was outraged too;
he promised a thorough internal investigation to find the
leakers. The flood of pretrial publicity could jeopardize any
prosecution the Justice Department tries to bring. But one
veteran of such internal Government probes called them "fools'
errands."

The leaked prosecution memo later turned out to be unfair in
making no distinctions of any type among the potential bribery
cases. Civiletti told the Senate Ethics Committee that some of
the cases were sure to be prosecuted, while others might require
more investigation and a few might prove too weak for
indictments. Other Government sources later broke the cases
involving the eight members of Congress into similar categories.
The evidence was termed strongest against Williams, Jenrette,
Kelly, Myers and Lederer;  that against THompson and Murphy was
called weaker but still strong. Murtha's case, it was said,
might possibly be dropped.

Regardless of the degrees of evidence, most of the accused
members of Congress rushed to deny any wrongdoing. A few
offered novel defense. Jenrette said that when he met the Arab
impostors, his memory was hazy because he had been drinking.
"I was in bad shape," he recalled. "It was a full moon, and I
had three drinks. Or I had three drinks and it was a half
moon." His wife was somewhat supportive, adding: "Maybe they
gave him so much to drink he said 'Oh yeah' to everything they
asked, but he didn't come home with the $50,000." A New Jersey
state senator, Joseph Maressa, on the other hand, readily
admitted taking $10,000 in what he called "legal fees" and
added: "It was like the Arabian Nights, the Ali Baba situation.
The portrait that was painted was so convincing. It almost
became patriotic to take their money. You know, let's take some
of that OPEC oil money. It's our tax dollars."

The most disingenuous denial was given by Congressman Kelly to
NBC's David Brinkley in a televised interview. Kelly agreed
that he had stuffed the money into his pockets, all right,
explaining: "Ten thousand dollars in new hundred-dollar bills
is little more than a half-inch thick." He said he put all of
the cash, $25,000, into the glove compartment of his car. Then
he placed it in a file cabinet in his office and spent $174 for
small purchases like lunches. Finally, he gave all the rest
back to the FBI. But why had he taken the money in the first
place?  The Congressman said he had done so as part of his own
"investigation" of "the gangsters and gunmen" he had met in the
W Street house who obviously were doing something "crooked."
He said of the FBI investigators: "When they blew the cover on
their case, they blew the cover on mine."

News of the FBI's ploy inspired several other politicians to
proclaim that they had been enticed into the lawmen's game but
had refused to play. Most of these had been approached by
Joseph Silvestri, a New Jersey real estate dealer whose pushy
tactics aroused the suspicions of some of his intended clients,
including three New Jersey Congressmen.

Among his other maneuvers, Silvestri told a wealthy socialite
in Washington that, as he apparently believed, the sheik in the
Washington house would be willing to contribute to political
campaigns. Quite innocently, it seems, she passed the word to
South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler, whose forlorn try for the
Republican presidential nomination was then still alive but in
need of cash. Silvestri drove Pressler to the sheik's house,
where the candidate assumed he was to meet some men who had
formed a legal political action committee, but when Pressler
asked about their PAC, he was astounded by a counter-question:
"What's a PAC?" When they offered to donate money anyway,
Pressler backed off, saying: "Wait a minute, what you are
suggesting may be illegal." Pressler quickly rejected any idea
of a donation and walked out of the house. Later, FBI Director
Webster called the Senator to say he had performed "beautifully"
on the FBI's video tape. Commented Pressler: "I find it
somewhat repulsive that I'm on tape, but now I'm called a hero.
It's a sad state of affairs when it's heroic to turn down a
potential bribery situation." The fallout from Abscam was
indeed a serious matter. Along with the further erosion of
public confidence in Congress, opponents of legalized casino
gambling felt vindicated in their long-held cynicism about the
ability of public officials to keep such high-stakes operations
honest. Not only had one member of the New Jersey casino
control commission apparently been caught taking a $100,000
bribe to help the FBI's sheik get a casino license, but the FBI
promptly notified the four remaining members that it wanted to
interview them too about just how free the commission is from
criminal influence.

The Abscam tapes allegedly also record Senator Williams boasting
that he had used his influence with the commission to save one
group of hotel developers $3 million, apparently by getting the
commission's approval to renovate rather than rebuild a
structure housing its casino. The company Williams had helped
had employed his wife Jeanette, first as a director, then a
consultant, paying her $18,000 a year. At the same time, Mrs.
Williams served full-time at a $33,000 salary on the staff of
the Senate Labor Committee, of which the Senator is chairman.

The events in Abscam's aftermath will certainly stretch out for
months, probably even years. First the relevant Justice
Department prosecutors must decide just which of the roughly 30
cases to pursue by seeking grand jury indictments. The
department's plan seems to be to split up the cases, rather than
consolidate them, and then present evidence to grand juries in
New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Any
trials of indicted officials would be months away--and there
could be lengthy legal clashes over the admissibility, for
example, of the FBI's video tapes.

Meanwhile, committees in both the Senate and the House may well
continue to demand that evidence against the members of Congress
be yielded by the Justice Department. There is not much
likelihood that they will succeed--and without such cooperation
they have little or no case against their suspect members.

Actually, some of the Abscam victims might prefer to be judged
by their colleagues in Congress rather than by criminal trial
juries. Declares Leon Jaworski, who has been on both sides of
such interbranch conflicts, as special Watergate prosecutor and
special counsel to a House committee probing the Korea bribery
scandal: "Congress has never done a very good job of
investigating itself. The House committee should defer to a
speedy and thorough investigation by the Justice Department."

Was Abscam an operation in which the FBI's actor-agents got
carried away by openly offering bribes and urging their
acceptance?  Justice Department attorneys admit that a few
leading questions by agents might turn up on the many tapes, but
they insist that the entire procedure was too closely supervised
to be seriously tainted. For one thing, the first tapes were
quickly reviewed by officials at the department's highest levels
to see if the tactics used by the actor-agents in the field
were proper. Moreover, each actual cash payoff was witnessed
by a Justice Department attorney, who sat in an adjoining room
and watched a closed-circuit TV monitor. In some instances, the
attorney would telephone one of the agents serving the sheik,
if the bribe suggestions were getting too bold. The agent
picking up the telephone would be advised to ease the pitch.

Even as one House subcommittee announced plans to investigate
the FBI's internal ground rules for its sting operations,
Director Webster expressed his belief that the FBI and Congress
as a whole have compatible interests. Said he: "It's been my
experience that public officials--say in Congress, for
instance--want to get the rotten apples out. They're proud of
what they are doing, and they are angered by anybody that is
bringing discredit upon them by association."

He suggested that Abscam had not targeted individual public
officials "just to see what they are up to, but grew instead out
of investigative leads." That, he said, is "proper."

Abscam is not the only FBI operation to lead into higher levels
of political corruption. TIME learned last week that another
FBI sting called Brilab, for "bribery labor," had fooled the New
Orleans Mafia boss, Carlos Marcello, into believing that two FBI
agents actually were insurance brokers seeking a cut of the
lucrative fees that they would acquire by selling health and
welfare insurance contracts for state employees in Texas and
Louisiana, as well as municipal workers in Houston. Marcello,
who claimed to have great influence in arranging such insurance,
told the agents which politicians could be bribed--and readily
accepted a $5,000 payment for his advice.

Marcello dined, drank and traveled with the disguised FBI men,
laying out a trail of corruption that led to the staff of
Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards. Various state officials
in Texas and local officials in Houston are also under
investigation. Marcello further revealed to the agents a plot
to bribe a federal judge in Los Angeles with up to $250,000 to
fix a racketeering-murder trial of five Mafia figures. The
judge was tipped by the FBI before he was approached by the
plotters. The Brilab scam was shut down last week.

Apart from its covert schemes, the FBI's new interest in
political corruption has concentrated on at least one other U.S.
Senator: Nevada Democrat Howard W. Cannon. A court-authorized
FBI wiretap on the telephone of Allen F. Dorfman, a former
Teamster consultant who had long maintained influence over the
huge pension funds of the various Teamster unions centered in
Chicago, led agents to question whether Dorfman might have
enticed Cannon into shaping a bill deregulating the trucking
industry into a form more acceptable to the Teamsters. As
chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Cannon was a key
figure in any such legislation. Cannon's suspected payoff was
to get Dorfman's help in purchasing valuable land owned by the
Teamster pension fund in Las Vegas, where Cannon also has a
home, but the deal was never consummated. Says Cannon: "I've
never heard anything more absurd in my life."

Just where the FBI's new activism in probing more sophisticated
crime might lead--and whose white collar might be smudged--
remains a great concern in Washington. Rumors persist that
despite the leaks, not all of the Congressmen entangled in the
Abscam net have yet been publicly identified. Thus, though
all but one of the members of Congress pinpointed so far were
Democrats, most Republicans cautiously refrained from making the
new scandal a partisan political issue. An exception was
Pennsylvania Republican Bud Shuster, chairman of the House
Republican policy committee, who claimed, "History teaches that
when one party is in power a long time, corruption increases.
This is the result of one party's being in control of Congress
for 25 years." Protested a Democratic House leader,
Washington's Thomas Foley: "He wasn't saying that about
Watergate." Insisted New York Republican Congressman Barber
Conable: "There's no plus for Republicans in this. It's a bad
show, and we're all going to lose from it."

* Titanium is a high-strength, lightweight metal especially
useful in aircraft construction. Demand for its use has been
growing and it is now in particularly short supply in the U.S.
and Great Britain.

Among the Accused

Of the eight legislators implicated by the Abscam investigation,
several have had noteworthy careers:

Richard Kelly, a third-term G.O.P. Congressman from Florida, was
once a state circuit judge who was impeached by the state's
house for harassing lawyers and fellow judges (the senate
subsequently dismissed the charges). Later ordered by the
Florida judicial qualifications commission to undergo
psychiatric examination, Kelly visited a hospital on his own and
earned a clean bill of health. That enabled him, on entering
the House in 1975, to claim: "I'm the only member certified to
be sane."

In Congress, he has forcefully attacked labor unions and
bureaucrats while opposing aid to New York City. So staunch a
champion of fiscal responsibility is Kelly that he refused in
1976 to pocket a congressional pay raise and donated the more
than $1,000 to churches and the U.S. Treasury. He and his
fourth wife, Judy, 28, his former secretary, whom he married in
1978, live relatively frugally, but Kelly managed to spend about
$12,000 more for his office account last year than the $290,000
allowed him;  he had to get a bank loan to pay back the amount.

John Murphy, a New York Democrat who has represented a Staten
Island district for 17 years, is an honors graduate from West
Point and a veteran of World War II and Korea, where he won the
Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and six
battle stars. He is also no stranger to charges of corruption.
He has been accused of using his powerful chairmanship of the
House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee to solicit
political contributions. The House Ethics Committee and the
Justice Department have been separately investigating Murphy for
failing to register as a lobbyist for foreign interests. House
Ethics Committee staffers claim to have proof that Murphy
accepted money from the Iranians for favors under the regime of
the deposed Shah. Murphy keeps in his office desk a device that
tells whether a visitor is wired to record him.

Frank ("Thompy") Thompson, witty, irreverent, profane, debonair,
has been sent to Congress by his New Jersey constituents since
1954. On Capitol Hill, he soon became an intimate of the
Kennedys and a hero to organized labor. He co-founded the
liberal Democratic Study Group and, as chairman of the House
Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations, has pushed for
federal financing of jobs for urban youths. He also helped
create the National Endowment for the Arts. Though he took
campaign contributions from the South Korean lobbyist Tongsun
Park, Thompson has been regarded by his fellow Congressmen as
an honest politician. In fact, he enthusiastically advocated
public financing of election campaigns. "The House," he said
not long ago, "needs to be taken off the auction block."

Harrison ("Pete") Williams, has been a Democratic Senator from
New Jersey for 21 years and one of the state's biggest vote
getters. In that time he has faithfully and consistently backed
organized labor. Aid to mass transit has been another favorite
Williams cause. But for all his seniority (he chairs the
important Labor and Human Resources Committee), the New
Jerseyite is widely regarded as a weak Senator. He is shy and
occasionally self-effacing. His colleagues--and the voters--
respect his having defeated a serious drinking problem and
talking publicly about it.

Questions about Williams' finances have been raised before
Abscam. During his 1976 senatorial campaign, he was criticized
for accepting some $28,000 from the banking and securities
industries just before a Senate vote on securities legislation.
Some observers feel that Williams, who has bought a Georgetown
house valued at nearly $375,000, might be living beyond his
means. Just last month he let it be known that he was thinking
of running for Governor.

Rogues' Gallery

"A Congressman is a hog!" Henry Adams once wrote of the
legislators of the Gilded Age. "You must take a stick and hit
him on the snout!" Less dyspeptic observers argue that most
legislators are honest and dedicated, but the record of the past
few years has not been entirely reassuring:

February 1976. Representative Andrew Hinshaw, 56, California
Republican, was sentenced to one-to-14 years in jail for
soliciting and accepting bribes during his 1972 election
campaign.

May-September 1976. Representative Wayne Hays, 68, Ohio
Democrat and chairman of the House Administration Committee, was
investigated by the House Ethics Committee and the Justice
Department on charges of financial improprieties as well as
keeping his mistress, Elizabeth Ray, on his official payroll.
He resigned in September 1976.

June 1976. Representative Henry Helstoski, 54, New Jersey
Democrat, was indicated for taking bribes from Chilean and
Argentine aliens to introduce bills blocking their deportation.

July 1976. Representative Robert Sikes, 73, Florida Democrat,
was reprimanded by his colleagues for "financial misconduct"
involving conflict of interest.

December 1976. Representative James Hastings, 53, New York
Republican, was convicted and later sentenced to up to five
years for taking kickbacks from congressional employees.

August 1977. Tongsun Park, a Korean businessman, was indicted
for bribery and later testified that he had made payoffs to 31
legislators. Eighteen-month congressional investigations of
"Koreagate" led to little action. The only man actually
imprisoned was former Congressman Richard Hanna, 65, California
Democrat, who was sentenced to a 2 1/2-year prison term. Otto
Passman, 79, Louisiana Democrat, was brought to trial but
acquitted. Charles H. Wilson, John McFall and Edward Roybal,
all California Democrats, were reprimanded by the House, but
Wilson and Roybal are still there.

September-October 1978. Representative Daniel Flood, 76,
Pennsylvania Democrat, was indicted for taking more than $50,000
in bribes. His trial ended in a hung jury. Flood, who has
suffered a variety of illnesses, resigned his seat. A federal
judge last week ruled him mentally competent to face retrial
later this month.

October 1978. Representative Joshua Eilberg, 59, Pennsylvania
Democrat, was indicted for receiving illegal compensation. He
lost his re-election race that fall and changed his plea to
guilty at his February 1979 trial. He got a $10,000 fine and
five years' probation.

November 1978. Representative Charles Diggs Jr., 57, Michigan
Democrat and founder and former chairman of the Black Caucus,
was sentenced to up to three years for taking more than $60,000
in kickbacks from his employees. He was re-elected that same
year.

October 1979. Senator Herman Talmadge, 66, influential Georgia
Democrat, was officially "denounced" by the Senate for
misappropriating office funds and campaign donations for
personal use. A federal grand jury is still investigating.