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- THE WEEK, Page 19NATIONTokens of Gratitude
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- A powerful Republican Congressman is charged with accepting
- bribes
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- There aren't many congressional bodies more powerful than the
- House Appropriations Committee, a fat channel through which
- billions of dollars in federal contracts flow. A federal grand
- jury charged Representative Joseph McDade, a 15-term
- Congressman from Pennsylvania and the committee's ranking
- Republican, with greasing that channel for some special friends
- in return for $100,000 in bribes.
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- The indictment states that, during a five-year period in
- the 1980s, McDade accepted money, air travel, use of vacation
- houses, even a golf umbrella from five manufacturers in exchange
- for help in obtaining defense contracts. Among the companies
- seeking favors were Sperry (now Unisys), Grumman and United
- Chem-Con, a now defunct contractor based in Lancaster, Penn.
- McDade -- who ran unopposed for his party's renomination two
- weeks ago and won the Democratic nomination as well on a
- write-in vote -- denied the charges, saying the investigation
- had turned his life into "a living nightmare."
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