Uneasy Thoughts About Abscam

...D.-N...

...This inviting prospect attracted various businessmen, honest and otherwise, who reportedly led the undercover operatives to people like Mayor Errichetti of Camden and Criden, the lawyer from across the river in Philadelphia...

...Justice Department officials are adamant that none of the public officials ultimately indicted were selected in advance as targets of the investigation...

...Yes, the jurors had relatively little trouble arriving at a decision, taking only 10 hours to sift through the three weeks of testimony, arguments and fine legal points, and needing not even a single night to sleep on their conclusions...

...To those who sat through the trial, one question constantly nags: Was the immigration scam legitimate bait snapped up by minds predisposed to it, or was it an illegitimately implanted conspiracy that would not have existed or been pursued but for the government agents' initiation and abetment...

...rather, as Weinberg put it in one of his characteristically colorful comments, "We put out the word that the honey pot was available, and the flies came...

...In return for aid in getting a three-year prison sentence changed to probation in an unrelated case, Weinberg, a 55-year old man who has a thick New York street accent and a persona given to cream-colored suits, dark-tinted eyeglasses and pinky rings, put his years of experience as a confidence man to work for "the other side," helping the FBI set up and carry out Abscam...

...Yes, the evidence, including furtively made videotapes showing Myers taking an envelope stuffed with $50,000 from an Abscam operative, and later seeking even more money, had added up to a dismal picture of greed-driven public officials making a mockery of every civics textbook ever distributed to American school children...

...Frank Thompson Jr...

...When he meets Yassir, just tell him to come on strong, the stronger the better," Weinberg told the two men on August 7, 1979, describing how Myers should behave when he was brought together with one of the "sheiks" at a planned meeting two weeks later...

...In casting the Abscam net, FBI and Justice Department officials have said, the word was simply circulated that fabulously wealthy Middle Easterners were looking to invest hundreds of million of petrodollars in the U.S...

...Thus any contention that prosecution victories in jury trials vindicated the investigative techniques used in Abscam is premature at best...

...D.-S.C), and Richard Kelly (R.-Fla...

...For example, did the Congressman really mean it when he told Abscam operatives he would introduce private immigration bills and take other steps to help the rich Arabs they supposedly represented enter and stay in the United States...

...They are undeniably riveting and powerful pieces of evidence, but do they truly tell the story they purport to tell...

...But they are not questions which should affect your determination of the facts in this case and the guilt or innocence of the defendant s. Your concern must be with what the defendants did or what they thought...

...Or did they adhere to ruses not only legitimate but unavoidable if crimes such as political corruption, difficult to detect in most circumstances, are to be rooted out and punished in line with public demand...

...The dispute over the legality and propriety of the Abscam investigative methods involves issues of law that are yet to be determined-by the trial judges in the first instance and, ultimately, by the appeals courts, probably including the United States Supreme Court...

...To rule on entrapment, an essential question the courts will have to answer -after close scrutiny of the specifics in each case-Is whether the defendants were induced to perpetrate crimes they didn't originate and would not on their own have engaged in...

...The flies, officials say, were fat with schemes of their own for taking huge bites out of the ostensible Middle East fortune, notably through different bribery and kickback arrangements that would accompany investment projects such as the construction of Atlantic City gambling casinos and a Philadelphia hotel...

...All those indicted have vigorously protested the charges against them, generally holding themselves to be victims of an illegal and unethical government plot...

...For the quesJoseph P. Fried, a new contributor to these pages, is a New York Times reporter who regularly writes about Federal and local court proceedings and covered the initial Abscam trial...

...Those are questions which must be decided by me at an appropriate time...

...That the controversy over the Abscam techniques will not be settled by jury verdicts was underscored by Judge Pratt, who presided over the Myers trial...

...tion of whether the FBI and its parent Justice Department employed permissible tactics in carrying out Abscam-a question raised not only by the targets but by numerous observers without any ax to grind-does not fall within the purview of the juries determining the specific matters related to guilt or innocence at trial...

...There were still the appeals courts, the 37-year old Philadelphia Democrat said...

...Given this chronology, the men who planned and executed Abscam argue, one can hardly speak of public officials being trapped by "overreaching" government operatives...

...The officials concede that Justice Department personnel-So far unidentified-were responsible for news leaks, but they maintain those were unauthorized...

...They argue that the Abscam agents first sought to "entrap" them in criminal situations and then, through a series of massive and well orchestrated news leaks, worked to brand them guilty in the public mind and create a prejudicial pretrial atmosphere that would assure their indictments and convictions...

...Yes, the jury had found Myers and his codefendants guilty of all counts in the criminal bribery plot they had been charged with...

...Several minutes later the prosecutor in the case stood before the same reporters...

...Nevertheless, the Supreme Court held there had been no entrapment because the defendant was clearly predisposed to committing the offense...

...This man, Anthony Amoroso Jr., told the court that in the summer of 1979 he suggested to Errichetti, Criden and Philadelphia Councilman Johanson that the sheiks he purported to represent might want to come to the United States and were eager to avoid problems with American immigration authorities...

...John Jenerette Jr...

...In still another conversation before the payoff meeting, Agent Amoroso suggested to Errichetti, in regard to how Myers might help the sheik with his immigration problems: "He'd have to introduce some kind of legislation, right, some kind of bill or something...

...The prosecution had charged that the words and actions of the defendants, captured on the secretly made videotapes and on tape recordings of telephone conversations, were prima facie evidence that Myers' office was sold and the accused shared in the proceeds...

...Errichetti, according to Amoroso, said "time was no problem...

...At this writing, Jenrette's trial is nearing completion in Washington, and two leaders of the Philadelphia City Council have been found guilty in that city...

...But the fact remained that the basic issue of the FBI's conduct in "getting the goods" on Myers, and on all the others indicted as a result of the two-year Abscam operation, was not settled by the jury's verdict...

...The evidence showed the defendant could not have carried out the crime without the chemicals...

...How Abscam actually evolved will be of critical importance...

...The code name, a contraction of "Abdul scam," or swindle, is a reference to Abdul Enterprises, the phony investment company Weinberg and his government cohorts established as a front for their high-level "sting" operation...

...In charging the jury before sending it out to deliberate the evidence against the Congressman and his codefendants-mayor Angelo Errichetti of Camden, New Jersey, Philadelphia City Councilman Louis Johanson and Howard Criden, Johanson's former law partner-pratt stressed to the jurors: "You are not to be concerned with whether the prosecution or the FBI agents or Mr...

...Subsequently, the evidence revealed, the Camden Mayor, Criden and Johanson, encouraged by Amoroso and Weinberg, recruited Myers and some of the other congressmen later indicted on charges of taking bribes in return for promising to help the bogus sheiks when the time came for them to emigrate...

...And the government attorney, Thomas Puccio-who in addition to prosecuting the Myers case, was one of the supervisors of the overall Abscam operation-told the jury: "The television picture and sound will not only capture for you the words and actions, but the atmosphere and nuances of what happened...

...In one instance, a Federal agent provided the chemicals used to produce an illegal drug that was then sold to another agent...

...J.), Raymond Lederer (D.-Pa...

...The videotapes raise doubts, too...

...They, in turn, also unwittingly acting as "middlemen," recruited some of the congressmen who dealt with the Abscam agents...

...In defense of Abscam, Philip Heyman, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, has said, "There can be no mistake about guilt or innocence because of the videotape...

...Rather, the defense lawyers said, their clients merely followed a "script" set out by Weinberg, who claimed Myers would not actually have to do anything in return for the money, except "come on strong" in making the sheiks and their representatives think that he could wield influence on their behalf...

...What the Myers jury basically did when it returned the guilty verdicts, therefore, was answer yes to relatively limited "questions of fact...

...Weinberg acted, or whether the Abscam investigation was conducted, legally or illegally, properly or improperly...

...Posing as rich Arab sheiks and their representatives who were seeking to buy political favors in the United States, these operatives consisted of fast-talking, flamboyant FBI agents and a convicted swindler, Melvin Weinberg, a figure who appears to be straight out of a Damon Runyon menagerie...

...Among other things, said the smiling government lawyer, Thomas Puccio, the guilty verdict had "vindicated" the methods used in the undercover operation called Abscam -the search for political corruption that has been a subject of widespread controversy since its disclosure last winter...

...Not surprisingly, the first thing Myers stressed at the August 22 session was his ability to introduce private immigration bills...

...And so the central question persists: Did the Abscam agents stray over the fine line between permissible undercover strategems and tactics of entrapment that can not be permitted in a democratic society governed by constitutional guarantees of due process of law...

...Struggling to contain his emotions, Representative Michael Myers of Pennsylvania told the pack of news reporters pressing in on him that although he and three other men had just been convicted of a $50,000 bribery scheme, the case was far from over...

...If Weinberg and the FBI agents merely enhanced the opportunity for those who were ready and willing to commit the crimes, entrapment did not occur...

...Justice Department and FBI officials insist that Abscam was a legitimate undercover effort...

...and 11 other individuals have been charged with bribery, racketeering and additional crimes for allegedly having accepted, helped arrange or shared in payoffs from the Abscam operatives...

...Laymen tend to see it taking place whenever law-enforcement bodies employ the artifices that characterize undercover operations, but this does not happen to be the legal view...

...The verdict on Abscam is still to be delivered...

...Besides Myers, five members of the House of Representatives-john Murphy (D.-N.Y...

...The defense conceded that the two-term Congressman had taken the money and boasted of the power he could muster to aid the "sheiks," but it argued that the bribery and conspiracy crimes charged were not committed because there had been no "intent" to commit them...

...That encounter, at a hotel near Kennedy Airport in New York on August 22, 1979, was the videotaped session where Myers bragged of the influence he could wield to help with immigration problems and received the $50,000 he subsequently shared with his code-fendants...

...A REPORTER'S REFLECTONS Uneasy Thoughts About Abscam By Joseph P. Fried Shortly before one o'clock on a recent Saturday morning, a United States congressman emerged from the Federal Courthouse in downtown Brooklyn and into the glare of television lights on the muggy sidewalk outside...

...As the testimony at the Myers trial revealed, however, the idea for one of the major Abscam capers-the immigration-bribery scheme that led to the charges against the Pennsylvania legislator and the other indicted congressmen-originated entirely with an FBI undercover agent...

...The testimony and evidence at the Myers trial indicate the difficult decision facing the courts in determining whether convicted Abscam defendants truly are culpable criminals, or investigative targets whose Fifth Amendment rights to "due process of law" were so violated that their indictments and convictions must be set aside...

...Yet other evidence demonstrated that how Myers acted in the secretly videotaped meetings-an important factor in the jury's guilty verdicts-was attributable, at least in part, to the coaching he had indirectly been given by the Abscam operatives through Errichetti and Criden...

...It was this "play-acting" defense that the jury rejected...

...Indeed, the courts have permitted fairly extensive involvement by undercover agents in criminal activities without finding entrapment...

...Although the recollection of witnesses may change, what happened as captured in picture and sound does not change...

...And one issue he insisted had not been resolved, despite the jury's verdict, was whether the FBI investigation that resulted in his trial was conducted in a manner which egregiously violated his constitutional rights, making his indictment invalid to begin with...

...To someone like myself, who had sat through every day of the three week-long trial-the first of at least eight expected to emerge from the Abscam investigation-It was easier to agree with the convicted congressman on that early morning of August 30 than with the prosecutor...

...Its verdict, as Judge Pratt's instructions show, offered no comment one way or the other on the roles played by the Abscam operatives...

...It reflects the FBI's new emphasis on politically connected and white-collar crime, they say, a departure from J. Edgar Hoover days when the agency focused on bank robberies, political dissidence and the like...