Early Retirement [of Politicians]
By James R. Norman
Ain't it amazing!
One after another in recent months, big-name U.S. senators and representatives have announced they are "retiring." Since the last election, a record 45 members of congress have decided not to run for relection -- or have outright resigned from office. Not in a hundred years has there been such an exodus. And it is not over: dozens of other lawmakers and powerful government leaders are privately hinting they may be leaving office soon.
Nor are these departees the obscure back-benchers. They are among the most powerful people in the most powerful government that has ever existed on earth, with egos to match. Take a look at the list. Look at all the committee chairmen, or ranking minority members -- who would be committee chairmen if the Democrats regained control. Look at the powerful committees or subcommittees they are on: appropriations, rules, armed services, agriculture.... Look at the startling last-minute withdrawal of retired Gen. Colin Powell as a potential candidate for president -- a job for which many pundits had him pegged as a shoo-in.
Common sense and history teach that people with this kind of power, pay and perks don't give it up easily or without good reason. But what are the lame excuses we get?
Senators Sam Nunn and Alan Simpson claim they just don't have that ol' "fire in the belly" any more. A tearful Rep. Jack Fields of Texas, Republican chairman of the House Telecommunications and Finance committee, held a press conference to say he wants to spend more time with his kids. Veteran Democrat Rep. Patricia Schroeder says she wants to give up her $133,600 a year job to be a writer. GOP Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, chairman of the Senate Labor Committee and the daughter of GOP legend Alf Landon, wants to go back to her little farmhouse on the prairie.
A common complaint the new retirees bemoan is the high cost of running for political office in this country. Without a doubt, campaign spending levels have been going off the charts: in 1992 the average House incumbent spent almost $1 million on campaign expenses. Senate incumbents averaged almost $2 million with some contenders, like Huffington squandering almost $20 million in his losing bid in California. Simpson whines that he has to raise $10,000 a day for re-election. "Retiring" Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ) outspent his last rival by 10:1 with a $10 million budget and still only narrowly won re-election.
But these are crocodile tears. The reality is that federal incumbents CAN raise $10,000 a day easily, with just a few phone calls and meetings -- far more than their challengers can hope to garner. And the record shows that loose enforcement of campaign spending rules and creative accounting have allowed incumbents to run a myriad of personal expenses through their campaign accounts, from cars and plush office space to posh vacations. Only a third of what they raise actually goes for advertising. Then there are the fat "honoraria" and expense-paid trips for speeches, which can be turned into valuable PR as charitable gifts if they exceed $20,000 a year. And as Newt Gingrich has vividly demonstrated, huge payola from bogus book contracts is exempt from outside income limits.
We are supposed to believe these retirees are getting off this gravy train VOLUNTARILY? Riiiiiiight. Schroeder already had her re-election bumper stickers printed. So had rakish Charlie Wilson (D-Tex.), who had already begun booking air time and newspaper ad space for his re-election campaign when he suddenly announced retirement to become a "consultant." Rep. Ron Coleman (D-Tex.), the up-and-coming young ranking minority member of the powerful House Appropriations subcommittee on telecommunications, stunned his supporters by announcing his retirement at what was supposed to be his re-election kickoff party. His excuse: To spend more time with his family. No definite plans. Uh huh.
At best, these excuses are disingenuous half-truths. They utterly strain credulity. And given the sheer number of these "retirements," you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize there is a pattern here. Something else is afoot. Nevertheless, the lazy, gullible, lap-dog mainstream media swallow this swill and regurgitate it, imbuing these transparent falsehoods with legitimacy. In recent weeks "60 Minutes," Time, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times -- the big-deal media outlets that set the news agenda for the rest of the nation's wire services, newspapers and broadcast outlets -- have noted the unusual level of retirements, but then have explained it away as just a symptom of the nasty tone of public discourse these days. Especially now that those mean Newt Gingrich Republicans control Congress, it's no fun any more, the fawning press seems to say. Awwwwww!
But if that was the case, why would so many powerful Republicans be leaving as well. Such as Mark O. Hatfield, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, or Veterans Affairs Committee chairman Sen. Simpson, or Rep. Robert Walker, a close confidante and ally of Gingrich who was almost elected House Majority Leader. All hold safe seats, and though Hatfield is 73, he's still young by traditional Senate retirement standards. For that matter, why did veteran Oregon Republican Sen. Bob Packwood, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, up and quit after agreeing to turn over his diaries? Was it really just for kissing female staffers in the elevators?
Get real! There is a political hurricane brewing here and all of official Washington and the media are in an advanced state of denial. By the time Media Bypass published its early warning forcast in December, "The Still Before the Storm," a gale was already blowing. Before the magazine could be delivered, Colin Powell had battened the hatches and withdrawn from the presidential race, supposedly because of concerns about his wife's past mental condition. Since then, the pace of "retirements" has increased from a trickle to a steady stream.
What's going on? As we said in December, you could call it a coup d'etat of a mortally corrupt government by a handful of vigilante computer hackers, formerly affiliated with various U.S. intelligence agencies. After years and years of watching the top echelons of leadership tainted with kickbacks on drug and arms deals, insider trading and other payola -- with no agency and neither major party having the guts to stop it -- this "Fifth Column" team has effectively taken it upon themselves to clean house.
According to two reliable sources directly connected to this Fifth Column group, corroborated by multiple, credible, independent sources in or close to the CIA and other intelligence services, the clean-up began about two years ago. Phase One: Take away their marbles. Using the access codes and other data surreptitiously downloaded through "trap doors" in foreign bank computer software systems, the Fifth Column began wire-transfering money out of hundreds of supposedly annonymous foreign bank accounts held by U.S. government officials. The take so far is in excess of $3 billion. The money has all been repatriated to the U.S. Treasury, where it is said to sit in various regional Federal Reserve Banks escrowed for use by the CIA if and only if that heavily corrupted agency gets rid of its own rogue elements.
Among the prominent names nailed for millions of dollars each, according to Fifth Column sources: Nancy Reagan, Henry Kissinger, Oliver North, Caspar Weinberger, Elizabeth Dole, George Bush and his sons, Maggie Thatcher.... And don't forget Vincent W. Foster, Deputy White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton, who supposedly committed suicide shortly after his Swiss account was raided in July 1993 for $2.73 million paid into it by the State of Isreal for high-level codes and other secrets Foster was suspected of selling (See Media Bypass, August 1995:"Fostergate").
Now Phase Two of the program has begun: removing the bad guys from office. Beginning last fall, according to two Fifth Column sources, somebody started hand-delivering to each of these retiring "public servants" their own plain manilla envelope. Inside: detailed transaction records of the culprit's Swiss, Cayman or other offshore bank accounts. Then about a day after receiving the envelope, they get a phone call from someone we'll just identify as the Avenging Angel. The options offered are simple. Plan A: Promptly announce your retirement. Plan B: face immediate, widespread distribution of the information to news media, enforcement agencies or directly to the doorsteps of your constituents.
Oh, by the way, the minimum federal sentencing guideline on willful income tax evasion is 10 years in prison. Add to that possible jail time for bribery, money laundering and violation of federal financial disclosure rules. Any member of Congress sentenced to prison is subject to loss of his government pension, which acrues at the at the very rapid pace of 2.5% of yearly pay for each year served and vests in in just 5 years. For relatively young long-timers like Pat Schroeder that could be worth upwards of $4 million;almost $3.5 million for Rep. Gerry Studds (D-Mass.)
Go ahead. Take your time. Think about it. You have 24 hours to decide.
To a person, so far, these esteemed lawmakers have opted for Plan A. And from the Fifth Column perspective, a "retirement" announcement is about as good as an actual resignation. It immediately marks the culprit as a lame duck, not worth bribing any more and wielding much less power. And it does not preclude later prosecution or the eventual release of information. No promises are made. No deals.
Outrageous! Undemocratic! Extortion! You say. But the better adjectives would be: dramatically successful, cost-effective and entirely in the public good. When grilled about why anyone would go to all this effort and risk going to jail for breaking bank secrecy rules, the Fifth Column reply is: "BOC." Betterment Of Country.
Is it legal? Is it "authorized" by some government agency? Well, no. But an army of honest civil servants long squelched from persuing this high-level rot are tacitly cheering from the sidelines. Attorney General Janet Reno is said to be fully aware of the effort, perplexed by it, but is keeping hands off so long as this Fifth Column team sticks to its commitment that there will be no deals cut and no favorites played. Besides, can you imagine a jury convicting any of these hackers of anything? They ought to get medals!
What about Bill and Hillary Clinton? Let's just say they've got their own problems to worry about and the dust speck called Whitewater that the mainstream media is finally latching on to is probably among the least of them.
Of course, from a journalistic perspective, what we'd like is full and complete disclosure with hard documentary evidence against these culprits. Above all, there has to be some assurance that All the bad guys get nailed with equal justice and that nobody will be able to "buy" their way out of a manilla envelope problem. But from the Fifth Column viewpoint, which holds the news media in justifiably low regard, it's the results that count. Not the PR.
Premature release of hard evidence would make it difficult for the crooks to gracefully step aside under the guise of retirement. If cornered in broad daylight, they would have to stand and fight. That would be messy. Witness the Packwood fiasco. And costly: the average federal white collar criminal prosecution nicks taxpayers for more than $1 million. If vigorously contested, the costs can quadruple quickly. So if the goal is to get bad people out of positions of power quickly and cheaply, the best way is through persuasion. And the more who are persuaded, the harder it becomes for the holdouts to play tough. We're talking method, not just madness.
There is, actually, a precedent for all this. It is called Bop Trot, perhaps this country's biggest and most successful effort at cleaning up public corruption. Focussed on state-level political corruption in Kentucky, the sweep used an elite task force of investigators drawn from various federal agencies, including the FBI, IRS, DEA and, yes, calling on the talents of some of the Fifth Column crowd. It began in the early 1990s and is still under way, having branched out to other states, including Illinois. In Kentucky, 65 public officials have been indicted and every single one has been convicted -- almost all of them by pleading guilty. Among those now in prison: the husband of former Kentucky Gov. Martha Lane Collins.
But before the Bop Trot indicting began, there were a raft of resignations and retirements eerily similar to what we are now seeing at the federal level. Another curious parallel: virtually no media attention. Aside from some regional news coverage, almost nobody has heard of Bop Trot. Partly that is because the local U.S. Attorneys -- themselves often corrupt political appointees noted for their grandstanding antics -- have been kept mostly in the dark with the cases handled by special prosecutors. And aside from Media Bypass, talk radio and the Internet, there has never been any mention of the Fifth Column by any major national newspaper, magazine or TV network. Which is fine by us! Let those sleeping dogs lie.
You have to be deaf, dumb and blind, though, not to see the other dramatic parallels looming all around us now, which further validate what our sources have been uncannily predicting for months and months. Consider:
MEXICO -- Somehow or other, the Drug Enforcement Administration has found out about hundreds of millions of dollars in accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg and England belonging to the family of Carlos Salinas de Gotari, the former president of Mexico, and DEA has apparently tipped the Federales. Salinas' sister-in-law was arrested recently when she tried to withdraw $84 million from a Geneva bank, believed to be a branch of Citibank. Was the DEA, not particularly known for its computer intelligence capabilities, itself tipped by the Fifth Column?
All told, Citibank may have helped move half a billion dollars of drug money and other graft for the Salinas clan. Could that have happened without the awareness or even paid-for complicity of top bank officers? What is a matter of public record is that Citibank insiders have been dumping shares of Citi's high-flying stock like mad in recent months, symptomatic of either an expected stock price plunge or high level management departures. And in mid-December Christopher Steffen, the chief financial officer of Citibank parent Citicorp, abruptly left amid a curious smoke screen of lame excuses by the bank's PR department. Next to go, according to a Fifth Column source: Citibank Chairman and Chief Executive John Reed himself, the top dog at America's biggest bank. Something about gold bearer bonds in another Swiss bank.... Hmm.
CANADA -- Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is under investigation by the Mounties over what appear to be kickbacks of C$50 million (US$37 million) on the sale of $1.8 billion worth of Airbus aircraft to Air Canada. The money apparently went into one or more Swiss accounts. Mulroney, who has tried to stymie the investigation by suing the Canadian government for libel for even asking provocative questions, may also be under investigation for much bigger payoffs from Columbia's Cali drug cartel, which had its computer data bases raided recently, according to a Fifth Column source.
PANAMA -- It now appears likely that former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega, now in a federal prison in Florida, will win a new trial on his conviction for drug trafficking. The reason: Somebody with apparent access to those Cali cartel computer records discovered that the Cali's paid $1.5 million to the star U.S. prosecution witness against Noriega, whose supporters have long claimed Noriega was "set up" for prosecution by the Bush adminsitration to silence and discredit his claims of CIA and U.S. involvement in the Central American drug trade. Makes you wonder what other palms the Calis have been greasing all these years to protect their cocaine trade into the U.S. Gee, maybe we'll all know soon.
SOUTH KOREA -- Both of the country's two past presidents are now in prison, accused of corruption. Chun Doo Hwan is charged with staging the 1979 coup that put him in power. He's also being questioned about a $133 million slush fund. His hand-picked succesor, Roh Tae Woo, is charged with running a $650 million slush fund of corporate "gifts." Translated to English, that's "bribes and kickbacks." If the money came from U.S. arms makers, like, say, Lockheed Martin, that's a crime for which corporate honchos can go to jail. Once again, the key was finding that money stashed in English and other bank accounts. Did the Fifth Column strike again? Gosh, that's hard to prove. It seems the Koreans just happened to get a plain manilla envelope with some very interesting bank records.
JAPAN -- Similarly, rumors are swirling that Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama will soon resign amid a financial scandal brewing in that country. You don't think it's possible that Japan's opposition party got a plain manilla envelope with foreign banking records in it do you? Besides the corruption of Japanese politicians, it will be entertaining to learn who in our government has been on the take from the Japan, which has for many years maintained a massive, well funded lobbying effort here.
Is it really plausible that both our neighboring countries, as well as our major Asian trading partners, could be so rife with high level corruption and yet the U.S. be somehow immune? Are our controls against corruption that much better than these other countries? Good enough to overcome the much greater incentive toward corruption here? Unlikely. It is only by willfully ignoring reality that we can pretend we are less suseptible to endemic corrption that other nations. And just as it appears those nations have needed help from the outside to root out their crooked politicians, so it is that the only way the U.S. government, polluted with drug and arms money, will be purged is by what amounts to vigilante, extra-legal citizen action. That's why we'd like to make our own modest proposal: Let's all become Fifth Columnists.
The fundamental truth here is that no government can truly police itself.
Whatever internal auditing mechanism that is set up can ultimately be intimidated and emasculated by whomever controls the purse strings (Congress) or does the hiring and firing (the chief executive). And forget about the press. They're whimps. If anybody's going to keep the bastards honest, it is US. You and me.
Here is how we can do it, by just applying the same back- to-basics gumshoe tactics the IRS uses against us but is too gutless to employ against Congress and the White House. Find out what they own when they enter office, and what they have after they've been there a while. Chances are they haven't bought that million- dollar DC condo, the Martha's Vinyard summer place and the two Volvos on just their federal paycheck.
First, write to the Federal Election Commission and ask for the required semi-annual financial disclosures of your senator or congresscritter. Then ask questions. Check real estate records, motor vehicle registrations, divorce pleadings. Stay tuned and we'll offer more ideas on becoming citizen sleuths. Then, if what you find doesn't match the official disclosures, send your findings to your local newspaper or TV station. Copy the FEC and the IRS.
If you don't see prompt action, SEND IT TO MEDIA BYPASS, and be sure to include the name of whomever you sent it to first.
As a certain Fifth Columnist is fond of saying: "If it is to be, it is up to me."
Let's make that "We."