Though all of the evidence is not in, and though the prudent observer will refrain from assuming guilt until guilt is proven, after almost a year of intensive investigation into the doings of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, it becomes increasingly apparent that an unscrupulous politician whose ambition is out of control holds a pivotal position in the U.S. government.
There is no doubt that the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rostenkowski’s title since 1981, holds a pivotal position in the government. At this point, though, the chairman is not the one whose misdeeds are obvious. Jay Stephens is.
Stephens is the U.S. attorney for Washington, who since last spring has been looking into whether Rostenkowski may have diverted some government postage stamp vouchers into cash for his own use.
On the face of it, the investigation was not without merit. There was some prodigious corruption going on in the House Post Office, and Rostenkowski’s office used many more of the vouchers than did the typical representative.
But as crimes go, this one, if it is one, is not very complicated. If funds were in fact shifted about, they were not diverted through banks in far-off Araby, nor were they stashed in numbered accounts in some licentious Carribbean fiefdom. After all these months, a minimally competent investigation should have come up with enough evidence to charge someone were anyone chargeable.
Because no one has been charged, the reasonable citizen could reasonably conclude that no crime has been committed. But hold, said Stephens, just as quite a number of reasonable citizens were so concluding, there is more to this than postage stamps. The investigation, he (or “sources close” to him) said a few weeks ago, was “broadening,” and investigators were seeking access to Rostenkowski’s tax returns and bank accounts. So far as is known, at least, Stephens has not subpoenaed Rostenkowski’s neighborhood videocassette shop to see what the congressman’s favorite movies are.
At this point, the reasonable citizen could reasonably conclude that this guy is indictment-shopping, scrounging around for something, anything, that might constitute a crime. If Rostenkowski didn’t steal stamps, why maybe he cheated on his taxes, or wrote a bad check or printed money in the basement.
It is possible that Stephens is not running a minimally competent investigation. He is, after all, most famous for his less-than-competent 1990 prosecution of Marion Barry, then Washington’s mayor. Barry was convicted of only the most minor of the several charges Stephens brought against him after hiring one of the mayor’s ex-girlfriends to lure him to a hotel room, there to offer him crack cocaine in view of a hidden video camera.
The tape, as it turned out, was less incriminating than exculpatory because it showed that Barry first declined the drug, accepting some only after repeated invitations.
It is hard to arouse much sympathy for Barry, because he is an odious fellow. Still, he is a citizen, and less odious than the prosecutor who used sex as entrapment bait. There may be a few healthy males between the ages of 8 and 86 who can resist the suggestion to accompany a comely ex-lover to a private spot. But not many. And weakness of character is not a crime.
Not that Stephens is without talent. Then and now he displayed a real knack for self-promotion and self-aggrandizement, mostly by judicious use of selective disclosures to selected journalists. Well, to people who write for newspapers.
Among history’s more amusing judicial decisions was the one last month dismissing Rostenkowski’s claim that prosecutors have been leaking details of the current grand jury investigation. It is only necessary to be on friendly terms with a few newspersons here to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Rostenkowski’s claim was absolutely correct. Compared to Stephens, a collander holds water.
Happily unindicted in a separate matter, Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.) noted that a prosecutor can usually get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” Yes, and on the basis of chicken salad, too. A prosecutor with lots of energy and no scruples to speak of can probe and subpoena and leak his own version of information about Robb or Rostenkowski, or you or me, forcing anyone to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers, suffer a damaged reputation and fear for the future. Such men are dangerous.
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If Rostenkowski wanted money, he had both proper and improper alternatives to get far more than he would have by filching some stamp vouchers. That’s no proof of his innocence. But no one should have to prove his innocence. And if Rostenkowski turns out to be the biggest crook in American history, he would still not be nearly as great a threat to liberty and decency as Jay Stephens already has proven himself to be.