Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 2, 1994 TAG: 9406020084
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: NATL/INTL EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
With the indictment Tuesday of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, criminal proceedings involving members of Congress are growing in number.
Two former lawmakers are in federal prison for financial misdeeds, another is free pending appeal of a bribery conviction last fall, and still another is awaiting sentencing on charges of misusing public funds. Three other former legislators recently served time for bribery and related offenses.
In addition to Rostenkowski, two other senior legislators are under indictment, and at least two more appear to be the targets of FBI investigations.
In this century, only in the late 1970s - when Congress was rocked by the Koreagate and ABSCAM bribery scandals - have so many members been in prison, just out of prison or facing the prospect of prison.
Even that accounting does not include ethical lapses that did not lead to criminal prosecutions: the House Post Office and banking scandals, which implicated dozens of members, the sexual misconduct allegations against Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., the exertions to protect savings and loan owner Charles Keating by five senators, or the questionable financial transactions that forced the resignations of Democratic leaders Jim Wright and Tony Coelho in 1989.
Some attribute this confluence of scandal not to declining ethics but to intensifying scrutiny from the news media, public and prosecutors that has made behavior criminal that once was tolerated, if not endorsed. Others insist that the climate on Capitol Hill is encouraging legislators to confuse incumbency with immunity, and power with license.
``There is a clear environment up there that the rules aren't to be enforced,'' said Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause, which monitors government ethics.
Over the years, congressional scandals have covered the gamut of human misbehavior. Almost all the prosecutions of sitting legislators in recent years, however, have involved bribery, tax evasion or misuse of public funds. The list includes:
New York Democratic Rep. Mario Biaggi served 26 months in a medium-security federal prison for an extortion conviction in a case involving Wedtech Corp., which spent lavishly in its search for defense contracts. Fellow New York Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia also was convicted of extortion, but the verdict was overturned.
Former Rep. Lawrence Smith, a Florida Democrat, served three months last year for tax evasion and lying to the Federal Election Commission about using campaign funds to pay off a gambling debt.
Pat Swindall, a former Republican representative from Georgia, is scheduled to remain until February in the minimum-security U.S. penitentiary camp in Atlanta after a perjury conviction in a case involving a personal loan. Undercover agents told him the loan involved the proceeds of laundered drug money.
Former Democratic Rep. Nicholas Mavroules of Massachusetts is to be confined until September at a medium-security federal institution after pleading guilty last year to bribery and tax evasion charges.
Albert Bustamante, a former Democratic representative from Texas, was sentenced last fall to 42 months in prison for accepting a bribe but is free on bond while appealing his conviction.
Carroll Hubbard Jr., a former Kentucky Democratic congressman, pleaded guilty in April to falsifying campaign reports, using public employees to work on his wife's campaign for Congress and obstructing justice. He awaits sentencing.
In addition to Rostenkowski, two other legislators are under indictment: Sen. David Durenberger, R-Minn., on charges of fraudulently billing the Senate for use of a condominium he secretly owned, and Rep. Joseph McDade, R-Pa., who was indicted in 1992 on charges of accepting bribes and illegal gratuities from defense lobbyists.
Published reports also have indicated that the FBI is investigating at least two other legislators: California Republican Rep. Jay Kim, on charges of illegally funneling money into his 1992 campaign; and California Democrat Walter Tucker, as part of an investigation of corruption in Compton, Calif., where he served as mayor.
In 20 years, about three dozen members of Congress either have been convicted of criminal offenses or censured.
Compared to historical standards, today's Congress might not look so bad. Throughout the 19th century, and even well into this century, Rostenkowski might have had considerable company in the activities for which he was indicted - allegedly padding his payroll and diverting official accounts to his personal use.
Attorney Stan Brand, who has represented more than two dozen legislators in 10 years, attributes the rising number of cases not to deteriorating ethical standards but to a ``higher level of scrutiny, more rules, less tolerance for old ways - not illegal ways, but mores - and more aggressive prosecutorial theory, taking peccadilloes and violations of House rules or Senate rules and making them into criminal cases.''
To most reformers, the real measure of Congress' ethical problems are found not in such noted examples of misconduct, but in the workaday trading of money and favors permitted under campaign finance and gift laws.
For these critics, the workings of Congress testify to journalist Michael Kinsley's maxim that in Washington the real scandal almost always involves behavior that is legal.
by CNB