Capitol Ideas/Neglected Scandals/Three Dangerous Democrats/The Honorable Diggs
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Neglected Scandals/Three Dangerous Democrats/The Honorable Diggs I surface here from my investigative mineshaft to survey the news briefly before ducking back down...
...It remains for Bob and his three co-workers to put the dynamite in place...
...Those who so testified included Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King, the Rev...
...Tunney, then up for re-election, asked if we could have lunch...
...Charles C. Diggs of Michigan deserved more attention than it received...
...He dug a tremendous pit under the General Services Administration, and that building now sags appropriately...
...And let's not forget Iran and Chile, two countries that were supposed to go Communist but somehow fell behind schedule...
...You know what he will say...
...Munitions expert Bob "Guy Fawkes" Woodward will see to it that the thing is done properly, efficiently...
...What I liked about Abourezk was that he had (and has) a great sense of humor...
...in California and I gathered that someone, perhaps the brother, had whispered into Tunney's ear that crime was a campaign issue worth considering...
...The CETA program, for which appropriations have quadrupled in the past two or three years, requires that 2 percent of the money be spent on the reservations...
...I'd demand a recount," said the senator, popping a cigar into his mouth...
...Try it out on one of the demolition experts at the Times or the Post and see if it's fit to print...
...So little danger is there of being "scooped" that I thus prematurely and fearlessly reveal my story...
...The recalcitrant Burger must therefore be prodded into action...
...And if it looked like I was going to win, I'd concede to my opponent...
...I believe the problem is that Chief Justice Warren Burger has signally failed to live up to the noble performance of his predecessor Earl Warren, especially with his (Burger's) retrograde view that if the country wants laws, then legislatures, not the courts, must get the job done...
...Now comes the news of Dick Clark's unexpected defeat in Iowa...
...But it is said that the pursuit of money is innocent compared to the pursuit of power, and doubtless that is true...
...We had lunch and it soon became apparent that neither Tunney nor (more surprisingly) his two staff members who accompanied us had a very clear understanding of the Bail ReformAct, which I had discussed in my article...
...In many ways the Burger Court has been scarcely less activist than its predecessor, and surely the time has come for the courts to realize that those who play judicial politics must expect the political treatment...
...Like all good reporters I have been digging away industriously at the foundations of society, hoping for a cave-in here, a collapse there, a landslide over yonder...
...As CETA gets bigger (now $12 billion), the government is reduced practically to desperation, casting about for ways to dispose of this ever-expanding mountain of guilt-edged cash...
...Oh, one runs into good old Ronald Kessler, who just never knows when to quit...
...taking the side of the black leader at the expense of the black victims, perfectly symbolizes this corruption...
...The American Spectator January 1979 chieftains...
...In November Causey pointed out that since mid-summer federal agencies in the Washington area have taken on "30 percent more new employees than is considered normal for the usually dull midyear period...
...In fact, these programs are worse than useless because in many instances they break up families and discourage work...
...But I think my social scientist friend may be right about Clark...
...How would we ever have nice things like busing and affirmative action if we had to rely on legislatures...
...Causey also reported recently that "chiefs here in Washington really do outnumber the Indians...
...One day to my great surprise Tunney wrote me a letter about an article I had written for the Washington Monthly suggesting that it was time to put dangerous criminals in jail and keep them there...
...I think the time has come to suggest, sotto voce, that the black leadership leaves a great deal to be desired, and is itself corrupt, though in a more subtle way than kickback receivers like Diggs...
...Hayakawa, and Abourezk had announced his retirement from the Senate...
...And Clark, unlike Tunney, was no lightweight...
...Senate: John Tunney of California, James Abourezk of South Dakota, and Dick Clark of Iowa...
...Now the aspect of this case that no one has paid any attention to is that Diggs' employees, the victims, were themselves in every case black, as an Assistant U.S...
...Oh dear, is nothing sacred...
...I therefore welcome his defeat...
...It was his considered opinion in 1976, he said, that there were three "dangerous" people in the U.S...
...I knew that his brother was a D.A...
...Ohhhhh...that's hardly important when you consider the magnitude of the abuses elsewhere in society...
...It anticipated President Carter's actual hiring freeze by nearly three months...
...Somehow that's considered to be an antediluvian view in Washington...
...Now Abourezk will open a law firm and no doubt will attract wealthy Arab clients...
...I shall now return hurriedly to my underground garage...
...I think he's looking for the V.P...
...The Diggs case, with Andrew Young et al...
...I refer to the appearance at the trial, on Diggs' behalf, of certain "black leaders" who testified as to Diggs' nobility of character...
...I should run for President for a couple of months so I can increase my lecture fees, too...
...Quite a good effort, that one, one has to hand it to Ron...
...Come to think of it, I'm rather looking forward to the Supreme Court explosion myself...
...It's called Investigative Journalism, otherwise known as Doing Away With the Old Order, and Bringing On the New...
...Let me record the following exchange, which took place in Abourezk's house at the time of the '76 presidential campaign...
...He's too unserious, for one thing...
...Jesse Jackson, and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young...
...And sometimes one bumps into the indefatigable Bob Woodward, shovel and pickaxe in hand, toiling away on the night shift...
...Clark seemed to take the view that if there was anywhere in the world a Marxist dictator who felt like hollering abuse at the United States, then it was no doubt our fault and we should just curl up and apologize...
...At last count, in the Washington area, there were 291 Grade 18 career civil servants (salary, $47,500) but only 275 Grade 1 newcomers (salary, $6,561...
...Incidentally, the underground parking garages are relatively deserted these days -so many of the reporters having switched over to less arduous and timeconsuming jobs within government itself...
...A word about this senatorial trio, two of whom I have met in Washington...
...It was an attractive quality in Abourezk that he was in the Senate and yet remained immune to the blandishments of power...
...A recent event at the trial of Rep...
...By the summer of 1978, of course, Tunney had been defeated by S.I...
...That is to say, they were compelled to "kick back" a part of their salary to their boss...
...CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Neglected Scandals/Three Dangerous Democrats/The Honorable Diggs I surface here from my investigative mineshaft to survey the news briefly before ducking back down again for further excavations...
...Attorney who tried the case confirmed for me...
...The main reason...was the federal bureaucracy's correct reading of the Washington rumor mill...
...He's a pro, as they say...
...And his Senate colleagues knew this...
...What one would like to know is: Why do black leaders so automatically take the side of the black leader, rather than the black victims...
...What do you think about Frank Church's campaign for the Presidency...
...That leaves us with Dick Clark, whom I never met...
...His former colleague Carl Bernstein has retired from the excavating business and is now out and about on the Beautiful People circuit-can't say I blame him for a minute...
...Last summer I met a fairly well known social scientist who lives on the West Coast and whose views are more sensible than one finds generally among members of his profession...
...And therefore, I believe, certainly not a dangerous man...
...Clark was trendily hostile to capitalism, and one for whom abortion was not merely a necessity but a cause...
...Back in July Causey wrote: "Like bears preparing for a long lean winter, some federal agencies are gearing up for a hiring binge in anticipation of an all-out freeze on federal hiring that could be only weeks away...
...I think I disagree with Abourezk on almost every issue (with the possible exception of public referenda on the ballot, which he has supported, and which I think is probably worthwhile, since we live at a time when the 47-year-old steel worker in Ohio, or whoever is the average citizen these days, is on most issues possessed of greater sense than our frequently benighted leadership), but by no stretch of the imagination can Abourezk be regarded as a dangerous character...
...A good story, no...
...He was not the kind of figure who could go around building powerful coalitions for his causes...
...someone asked...
...Diggs, who has been in Congress for 24 years, was accused, and convicted, of extorting $60,000 from his own employees...
...That the act only applied to federal crime, that all crime was equivalent to federal crime in the District of Columbia, but that this did not apply in Californiaall this seemed to be news to Tunney, who struck me as being a nice enough fellow, but (as was often said) a lightweight...
...What about the CIA, the FBI, Exxon, the multinationals...
...The federal government is now in the business of giving away money as fast as it can manage to do so to the tribal Tom Bethell is Washington editor of Harper's and contributing editor of the Washington Monthly...
...Jim Abourezk, funnily enough, is the only senator with whom I can honestly say that I have been on first-name terms since I arrived in Washington...
...Money-that may be different...
...Here are a couple of items from Mike Causey's excellent column in the Washington Post, "The Federal Diary," which is the best source on developments within the bureaucracy that I know...
...For some time now, the black leadership in this country has been joined in a long-playing lament of victimization calculated to engender guilt among whites, and thus to keep the money flowing steadily into black "programs" that benefit the black leadership mightily but do nothing for the black teenagers on the streets...
...In the past month I have been meeting clandestinely in underground parking garages, working on an expose which, for some obscure reason, the regular mining enterprises such as the Washington Post and the New York Times have shown little or no interest in exploring: corruption in American Indian programs...
...The explosion is due sometime in the spring or early summer...
...He could command a following in the Senate...
...The Carter administration, typically, has promised to take care of him...
...What if you won...
...Perhaps they should appoint him Ambassador to Mozambique, where, I gather from dispatches in the New York Times, the New Man, who has been so eagerly awaited all these years, may be expected to appear at any moment...
...The judicial activism of the past twenty years has been accompanied by a demure averting of the eyes by reporters (because it was all thought to be in a good cause) and on balance this neglect deserves to be ended-with a bang...
...Woodward has a very elaborate mineshaft under construction, and now nearing completion, with its terminal point directly underneath the United States Supreme Court...
...Either that or he's looking to increase his honoraria for lectures," said Abourezk...
...asked his son Paul (not the one who was reported to be living off food stamps on an Indian reservation in South Dakota...
...slot myself...
...Now those well-padded, well-paid bears can slumber through the winter without too much disturbance from the White House chipmunk...
Vol. 12 • January 1979 • No. 1
