Department of Self Services
Willrich, Michael
Department of Self Services Marion Barry’s new boy network of cronies in the Department of Human Services didn’t help Washington’s downtrodden. They helped themselves. by Michael...
...Yeah,” Clyburn answered...
...Clyburn emphasized that he was a silent participant in the AAS deal...
...In June 1989, employees from D.C.’s Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) called about 40 topranking city officials to invite them to a $25-a-head party to benefit Rivers’s legal defense fund...
...One classic example, reported by the Post, was a snow removal contract that a Clyburn firm won in 1982...
...On July 16, Mayor Barry took a break from his own federal drug and perjury trial to rejoice in his friends’ acquittal and hail the decision as a vindication of his administration...
...DR: I do...
...department heads and a “power broker...
...Naturally, the plan included a subcontract to Barge’s firm, Federal Door and Window...
...He remained employed as a $79,500-a-year special assistant to DPW Director John Touchstone“Touch...
...Since the early eighties, allegations have arisen again and again that the Barry machine uses the minority contracting system as a spoils heap for its friends...
...LC: And every city contract, we’ll buy another little piece of this place over here...
...The champagne flowed in a room crowded with Clyburn’s friends from the new boy network...
...is on the level...
...Clearly, the approach worked for Clyburn...
...The jury ruled that Rivers did not accept any form of bribe from B&C, though no one argues that Carey wasn’t offering...
...The city’s downtrodden have fared little better under the black new boy network than under the white old boy one that ran the city before Home Rule, and the new boy network is somehow more insidious than its predecessor: Portraying themselves as champions of minority businesses, black insiders like Rivers and Clyburn stifle legitimate minority enterprises by keeping contracts within the network...
...I mean that’s the whole constituency...
...And for every contract B&C won, there was a possible computer subcontract for Clyburn’s Data Processing Institute...
...This fall, he and former HUD official James E. Baugh will answer to charges of bribery and conspiracy to steer HUD contracts to a Clyburn firm...
...We thought we could put the two together and, uh, there’s a hell of a lot of government buildings here in the District that we could, uh, could look at and offer you a program, uh, asbestos is something that’s not going to go away...
...government to gut the Barry administration’s successful partnership with the minority business community,” Barry said...
...See, if Warren or Lenny call, just take care of them...
...and I strongly suggest that you do that...
...But Barge had learned a surer way to finance his MercedesBenzes and vacation homes: the former auto worker tracts with government agencies...
...Expressing gratitude for Rivers’s help, Carey told him he planned to invest the profits from B&C’s future energy contracts in an office-condo development in booming Gwinnett County, Georgia...
...Right...
...MB would have to be the worst politician on Earth to go in and bring somebody in from out of town to head DHS,” he said...
...Maybe a little unethical, but nothing illegal about what we’re doing...
...but Barge, who is black, was designated the majority partner...
...I was born at night, not last night,” Rivers replied...
...A month later, as B&C began zeroing in on its second non-competitive DHS contract, Barge would joke with Carey about that first meeting with Rivers and their lightning-quick transformation from asbestos experts to energy auditors...
...He would have the firm critique the AAS proposal and then work with him to tailor a new one...
...connections to win contracts...
...Goddamn drug abuse thing and these drug arrests,” declared Rivers, a South Carolina native whose closely trimmed beard and thick glasses lend him the air of a political science professor, but whose manner of speech does not: “[Wle went from 4,000 arrests last year to 9,000 fucking arrests this year...
...Carey backpedaled...
...He showed Carey copies of confidential draft letters from DPW that AAS would receive about a week later...
...Hotel in Atlanta, where Rivers had gone for a fundraising meeting with officials of the Martin Luther King Jr...
...Either way, the little guy loses...
...For his sometime poker partner, Mayor Barry, Clyburn had two handles: “MB” and “Supreme...
...He was the arrogant king of all he surveyed...
...1 back off it, it is absolutely a dead issue...
...By the time Len Carey first appeared on Clyburn’s doorstep in the fall of 1986, the contractor, apparently worried about the increasing nosiness of the city auditor and the city council, was cooling off his direct contractual relationship with the District government...
...Ilt takes it out of Touch’s [Touchstone’s] hand and Duts it into the D.C...
...One of the men, Michael Davis, was placed by Rivers on a panel to evaluate proposals for an $850,000 substance abuse program in the D.C...
...We’ll laugh all the way down to the Bahamas...
...Heralded by Barry as one of the greatest accomplishments of his administration, MBOC works closely with the 600 certified firms that are competing for business in this city...
...Sold man Rivers Clybum’s most strategically placed listening post was Rivers, who had enjoyed a meteoric rise in the Barry administration...
...Legal standards being what they are, it may even be just that Rivers and Clyburn walked...
...law says city contracts should be awarded to the lowest qualified bidder...
...He was integrity personified...
...Carey laid that card on the table at the Channel Inn...
...They explained that they were sympathetic to Johnson because she had served a year in prison...
...Rivers and Clyburn got off...
...So you can get a lot of mileage out of that...
...Research assistance provided by Kierstan Gordon...
...First order: Rivers was hosting a campaign fundraiser in Atlanta for Barry’s reelection effort, and the businessmen had agreed to sponsor the event...
...I think knew-and didn’t carethat B&C Management Consultants was a minority front company...
...A former DISC employee testified that Clybum knew how much the District had budgeted for a 1985 summer youth program before DISC submitted its proposal to run the program...
...Tammany on the Potomac George Washington Plunkitt, an Irish ward boss who thrived in New York’s Tammany Hall at the turn of the century, frowned on blatant political chicanery like stealing or bribery...
...Posing as a moneybags consultant to AAS, Len Carey hit it off with Barge at the meeting...
...Wishful thinking...
...Is there something that you need done with that now...
...The new chums played bridge, partied at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, and did lunch at Joe & Mo’s, the nexus of Washington’s old- and new-boy networks...
...High DHS officials later informed the FBI that Clyburn had been able to secure DHS contracts because of his close relationship with Rivers...
...K Street lawyers, advertising executives, and media celebs like David Brinkley dine there, as do present and former White House insiders like Craig Fuller...
...The stunned executives agreed to a meeting with the stranger, but, unbeknownst to Barge, they also invited the FBI...
...DR: Hey, man...
...said Carey...
...He himself had drawn up the minority participation scheme and had told Barge to recopy the draft in his own handwriting...
...To the extent that minority contracting is controlled by the new boy network, it becomes a sad parody of the white-dominated “system” it seeks to correct...
...At least for a while...
...They cracked jokes, they talked real estate, and Clyburn lectured Carey on the ins and outs of the D.C...
...Instead, he let Carey talk on and on about offshore bank accounts and Georgia real estate deals, clearly understanding what his intentions were...
...In a wiretapped conversation with Len Carey, Clyburn echoes Plunkitt’s political lessons...
...At a Joe & Mo’s lunch with Carey, the contractor boasted that he had secured $27 million in new business over the past five or six weeks with the Defense Department...
...DISC errors During the trial, former Commissioner on Public Health Andrew McBride delivered the most explosive testimony of Clyburn’s influence at DHS...
...DHS is entrusted with one-quarter of the city’s budget and the formidable task of caring for D.C.’s neediest citizens-the homeless, the mentally ill, crack addicts, people with AIDS, pregnant teenagers, bedridden seniors-and in 1986, the agency was doing a miserable job of it...
...The secretary was also looking ahead to his own future, when he would leave D.C...
...Once you get some things landed and you know where you’re headed, he’s just gonna have to spend more time...
...I figure about three years I could do a little dealing . . . wheeling and dealing . . . and set up a whole lot of stuff,” he told Carey over beers at the Channel Inn in Southwest D.C...
...Billy” was an important man to know, Clyburn told Carey, and Joe & Mo’s was a good place to get to know him...
...JC: You can’t do shit...
...As with the Barry trial, the mayor’s defenders view United States v. Rivers, Clyburn as a racially motivated assault on a black city government...
...Uh, put, uh, Porter DR: Porter Bankhead...
...DR: C-A-R-E-Y...
...There’s nothing illegal,” Clyburn muses...
...Barge had no idea his partner was an FBI agent...
...There were no briefcases full of C-notes, no phony invoices, no dummy corporations...
...is on the level...
...As with old boy networks, there’s the usual orgy of denial: We’re all doing it, so how can it really be wrong...
...What I consider the central issue in this trial is that the federal government overreached,” says Lawrence Guyot, a longtime Barry aide and neighborhood activist...
...I had to deal with someone influential, and that was John Clyburn...
...Another tool for abusing the contract process is the change order, which is used to amend contracts when the city wants to expand a contract or a contractor finds he underestimated his costs in the original bid...
...spell . . . you can’t talk...
...Clyburn parlayed his contacts into contracts for his two firms, Data Processing Institute (DPI) and The firms’ remarkable array of city contracts included ones for teaching inmates to read, evaluating D.C.’s drug programs, and researching snow removal...
...JC: Now, this is a dude...
...When you get ready to get out, we’ll sell that thing and have our own money...
...DR: Carey...
...Three years later The Washington Post reported that Johnson said she had been given more than $20,000 in return for not testifying...
...As a show of new boy solidarity, Clyburn threw an arm around Donaldson...
...Clyburn and Roy Littlejohn, a fellow contractor, admitted giving Johnson money but denied that it was hush money...
...And the network continued to work for him...
...An old friend who had helped Clyburn get started in D.C...
...Bribe and bribegoon Rivers and Carey continued to meet after Barry promoted Rivers to secretary of the District in early 1987...
...What all are you going to be doing...
...Well, we’re . . . we’re gonna be project managers,” began Carey’s unpromising spiel...
...At the same time, the department was buckling under the weight of a public initiative mandating that the District provide guaranteed shelter for the city’s growing homeless population...
...Nor would he have been impressed with Alphonse Hill, another Barry deputy mayor, who was convicted in 1987 of steering roughly $300,000 in contracts to a friend’s auditing firm: Hill allegedly told one contractor that he routinely tacked on a fee for himself to city contracts that crossed his desk...
...LC: So you’re going to have to simply trust me...
...government and cash in on his connections while the Barry administration was still in power...
...it’s a network that refers to city contracts as “pieces...
...Undercover FBI agents trailed Barge when he left the meeting for a rendezvous with John Clyburn at Clyburn’s K Street consulting firm, Decision Information Services Corporation (DISC...
...The management guy, OK, do a lot of other kind of stuff, like surveys, and looking at energy reduction cost savings, kind of shit like that...
...You ain’t gotta worry about a bunch of homelessness and pregnancy...
...Wait a minute . . . let me find out...
...office, don’t put too much money in the company bank account (“You want to be very modest with your financial statements”), and keep your minority partner as visible as possible...
...But on the stand, Rivers testified that Barge had agreed to reimburse Carey for the boots if Rivers covered a dinner check...
...It’ll probably take your stock up a little,” Clyburn had advised Carey...
...he asked...
...But during River’s tenure, the same firms received 10 contracts worth nearly $1.8 million from the department...
...that he’s a front...
...Neither did Rivers...
...Matched against the candid John Clyburn recorded by the FBI, the deferential witness-stand version is as ingenuous as Eddie Haskell sweet-talking Mrs...
...Leave those people [JMC] alone and give them the money that they want...
...it’s a network that refers to city contracts as “pieces...
...In November 1986, a Washington firm called Asbestos Abatement Services (AAS) bid on two D.C...
...In August 1984, Joanne T. Medina, a publishing executive, took ill after ingesting a deadly medley of cocaine, barbiturates, and booze at a party with top city officials...
...In one conversation, Rivers tells Carey to keep B&C structured the way it is, “as long as you control your boy...
...In the South, money, he’s got to have the help of a white boy, you understand me...
...DR: Porter B-A-N-K-H-E-A-D...
...Who’s got AIDS . . . and all this kind of bullshit...
...He had come seeking city contracts, and he had come well recommended...
...Clyburn knew “almost everything” about the AAS contract, he said...
...Which presents a greater threat to minority business, a white network that keeps business in its own circle, or a black network that does the same...
...You ain’t gotta worry about a bunch of homelessness and pregnancy...
...Listening to Rivers, Len Carey fit the part of the Atlanta businessman with deep pockets and a disarming good-01’-boy charm...
...In 1984, City Auditor Otis Troupe protested that the District could not justify $200,000 in contracts awarded to Barry aides and former politicians...
...Who’s got AIDS . , . and all this kind of bullshit...
...Cleaver in the kitchen...
...Warren is my minority front...
...JC: Hold . . . hold the talking . . . y’all can’t DR: Oh...
...I don’t want no trouble, y’all,” Barge joked as he joined Rivers and Carey in the DHS director’s office...
...Men with political pull to spare, Rivers and Clyburn made the best of grand opportunities and, according to a jury of their peers, never stole a cent...
...You know that he’s gonna be in Joe & Mo’s pretty much every day,” said Clyburn, “and, uh, keep the access going is just a hell of an advantage, and show up one evening and send a drink or get a drink, you know, that kind of thing...
...Okay...
...Rivers asked...
...And Barge extracted $6,50&the first of his AAS payments-from Carey...
...The case grew out of a 17month undercover operation and a two-year grand jury investigation, which, according to U.S...
...Even with his new responsibilities, Rivers kept lobbying DHS officials on B&C’s behalf...
...Barge being familiar with construction and rehab industry, and me being a certified asbestos, uh, manager...
...He claimed to have obtained a contract for the accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand to advise the department in asbestos-related matters...
...A siren wailed outside as Rivers shared his woes with a visitor to his Northeast D.C...
...And even the prosecution conceded that United States v. Rivers, Clyburn lacked the trappings of a conventional city corruption case...
...Warren barges in During the trial, the defense team repeatedly suggested that the case was pure politics, that the federal government went fishing for Marion Barry and mistakenly hooked Rivers and Clyburn...
...When he returned, the talk shifted abruptly to B&C Management Consultants Inc., Barge and Carey’s new firm...
...After learning that two city agencies were under pressure to update snow removal plans, he put his firm to work researching the plans and drafting a 5 l-page unsolicited proposal to study the plans in greater depth...
...Just wanna come over there and kinda talk about that company and what kinda stuff they’ll be doing,” Clyburn had told Rivers...
...Carey had connections...
...Legal standards being what they are, it may even be just that Rivers and Clyburn walked...
...government...
...As the conversation winds down, the office-condo development comes up again...
...In 1986, DHS was presiding over the city’s transfer of St...
...He instructed Carey to send copies of B&C invoices to his personal secretary for speedy processing, and he introduced the agent to senior DHS officials...
...The jury itself concluded, as its foreman told the Post, that “the law was somehow violated, but the prosecution failed to seal tight the evidence...
...Even so, federal prosecutors have produced a rich mine of documentation-including thousands of pages of FBI “wire” transcriptsthat illustrates how a “new boy” network of black businessmen and Barry politicos manipulates contracting...
...the ones you can do...
...After Clyburn opened David Rivers’s door to Carey for that first meeting in October 1986, the door stayed open...
...The city awarded the firm a $200,000 contract...
...Another door-opener for Carey was that his business partner, Warren Barge, was a buddy of Rivers and Clybum’s...
...During a conversation in December 1986, Carey laid out an arrangement whereby Clyburn would receive a percentage of every contract he helped bring to B&C...
...Davis kept Clybum apprised of DHS contracts and acted as Clybum’s messenger in the agency...
...government and his close associates both within the government and in private business...
...Marion “Supreme” Barry made a splashy appearance, as did Elijah “Baby” Rogers and Ivanhoe Donaldson, who had walked after serving three years of his seven-year sentence and was now back with his old friends...
...A conversation Clyburn had with a friend in 1986 affirms DHS’s reputation as a feeding trough for Marion Barry’s allies...
...But David Rivers was no ordinary private citizen...
...Since the early eighties, allegations have arisen again and again that the Barry machine uses the minority contracting system as a spoils heap for its friends...
...The power broker continued working with Carey and Barge after the AAS contract fell through...
...JC: You just let me handle this motherfucker...
...He was eloquent and charming,” McLean enthused...
...The sponsors Clyburn mentions are all contractors who have or want business with DHS...
...knew that his AAS because he asked to see Carey’s driver’s license, saying, “I don’t wanta run into no problem, uh, like this Abscam case...
...JMC’s contract was expanded and later renewed...
...No, no, that’s an excellent choice of words talking to me,” Clyburn reassured him...
...The contract ultimately was a dead issue, anyway...
...law also stipulates that 35 percent of each agency’s contracts be awarded to minority-owned and -controlled firms...
...Proprietor Mo Sussman had promised Clyburn a party when he was acquitted, and Mo made good...
...One of the reasons conspiracy cases are so difficult to prosecute-besides the mountains of paper evidence-is that accused white collar criminals are often impressive people...
...When Rivers actually did help a genuine minority business, the Clyburn-favored JMC Associates, one can’t help but wonder whether the firm deserved any help at all...
...According to testimony, two men Clyburn helped get DHS jobs were assigned by Rivers to oversee DISC contracts...
...Rivers, in particular, showed great insensitivity to the people he was supposed to be serving as head of DHS...
...The regular clientele has also included prominent members of Barry’s “kitchen cabinet,” such as attorney Lloyd Moore and banker William Fitzgerald, the man who created the Barry administration’s first major scandal in 1979 by giving the mayor a low-rate mortgage while Fitzgerald was bidding on a parcel of city-owned land...
...He cut a respectable figure-a family man with a house in the suburbs and a Jaguar in the garage...
...At the time, Rivers was being promoted to secretary of the District, and Clyburn had strong thoughts about how Barry should fill Rivers’s old post...
...Throughout his 17-week federal trial, Rivers continued to work for the network...
...Barge was a big talker, but he could also dePortraying themselves as expert’s hand, and nobody questions that expertise...
...Rivers, in particular, showed great insensitivity to the people he was supposed to be serving as head of DHS...
...Just be cool about it and then right after you get out, you don’t give a fuck what they say...
...Under a court order, DHS was also compelled to find new homes in the community for many of the hospital’s 1,400 patients...
...In addition to the passel of consulting contracts his two firms had pulled in from city and federal agencies, he was (and is) involved as a minority limited partner in lucrative development deals with the city...
...He was unapproachable...
...See, for the realistic view, this is John and I on the side,” said Carey...
...Naturally, McBride concluded that Clyburn was a force to be reckoned with, and during McBride’s tenure DISC received $1.5 million in contracts from the commission...
...government to gut the Barry administration’s successful partnership with the minority business community,” Barry said...
...But Len Carey hadn’t ventured to Rivers’s office to ponder urban problems...
...As proof, he rattled off details from the confidential proposal...
...Rivers loved the boots-“Man, I tell you, you done got me going cowboy crazy,” he told Carey...
...Tlhey keep sending these motherfuckers through the system...
...Barry touts the city’s set-aside program as one of the most progressive in the nation and a cornerstone of his administration...
...That’s where all the favors get done...
...To protect the taxpayers, D.C...
...That’s the political base...
...Contract budgets are typically kept confidential in order to encourage low bids...
...Rasheeda Moore, Barry’s former girlfriend and co-star of the infamous Vista Hotel videotape, ran a summer youth program for three years at a total cost to the city of $180,000...
...It’s a network that cuts deals at power eateries like Joe & Mo’s on Connecticut Avenue downtown...
...You’ll just choose that project that you’re on right now [energy audits] . . . expand it citywide and you’ll be there for life...
...But it would be a mistake to conclude from the jury’s decision that minority contracting in D.C...
...Barge told the AAS executives that with his connections the Public Works contract was in the bag...
...liver...
...That same year, reports surfaced that a campaign worker named Karen Johnson had sold cocaine to the mayor...
...Warren’s my front man,” Carey told Clyburn...
...Jury foreman Thomas McLean told the Post that Clyburn’s demeanor on the witness stand helped sway the 12 citizens in the box...
...That’s the strategy,” Clyburn explained...
...Clyburn had influence over Mr...
...When JMC Associates, a firm owned by friends of Clyburn’s, was in danger of losing its contract, Clyburn asked Davis to speak with Gladys Baxley, a top DHS official who administered mental health programs...
...If...
...And Clyburn was chumming bigger waters...
...office...
...After some small talk about women, the men got down to business...
...Other incentives included an apartment that B&C would rent for Clyburn from attorney Lloyd Moore...
...The best thing they could have done would have been to leave that job to D.C.’s Minority Business Opportunity Commission (MB0C)-the bureaucracy established for that purpose...
...LC: And at the end of, you know, end of the time that you’re in the government, I know, I know you can’t get involved in it right now...
...He wasn’t talking about the severely retarded people who depend upon DHS for hot meals and places to sleep, or the addicts who crowd the waiting list for drug treatment...
...Rivers, and I could get about anything I wanted done if I brought it to Mr...
...In one conversation, Carey thanked him for influencing the award of a second $108,000 energy audit contract...
...One of the informants said Rivers had personally intervened to secure for Clybum’s company a $200,000 contract to prepare a financial management handbook for the commissioner on public health...
...Attorney Jay Stephens, revealed a “seamy web of corruption, concealment, manipulation, and self-dealing by one of the most senior officials of the D.C...
...purchasing officer Jose Gutierrez lost his job after complaining that the city was paying millions of dollars too much for goods and services provided by minority contractors with ties to Barry...
...Well, I’ll just be bringing the deals and DR: Right...
...John Clyburn faces two more juries...
...Always on the lookout for a fast buck, Barge had landed himself in prison in 1987, convicted of mail fraud in a scheme that involved selling water instead of chemicals to General Motors...
...Change orders are not competitive and, unless they dramatically alter the original contract, are subject to an abbreviated review process...
...Just . . . just . . . the only thing you really need to be careful of is not to give anybody the impression in the District that...
...Those “little GS-9” employees at public works were trying to kill the contract, Clyburn cautioned, but he was counting on the intervention of DPW Director John Touchstone: “Touchstone, who is ’ Clyburn boasted, “As you and I talk, I am sitting here in complete control of that process at DPW...
...Davis asked Clyburn on the phone one afternoon...
...Plunkitt wouldn’t have thought much of Ivanhoe Donaldson, the former Barry deputy mayor who pleaded guilty in 1986 to looting about $190,000 from the city coffers...
...Instead, Rivers picked up the phone and hailed a subordinate...
...DR: Lynn, L-Y-N-N...
...The jury itself concluded, as its foreman told the Post, that “the law was somehow violated, but the prosecution failed to seal tight the evidence...
...JC: All right...
...As allegations of mismanagement at DHS surfaced weekly in The Washington Post and The Washington Times, Mayor Marion S. Barry’s political advisers reportedly urged him to fire his DHS director...
...JC: C-A-R-E-Y...
...When our boat comes in, you gonna get one of the dinghies that goes with it,” Carey had assured Clyburn...
...With an $840 million budget and roughly 700 contracts a year, DHS could buy a lot of fancy cars...
...Uh, I’m gonna get a couple more white boys’ names from this white boy...
...LC: We’ll just build it up a little more...
...In each case, Rivers overrode his staff and extended the contract...
...Clyburn wasn’t giving Carey all this advice for free...
...He is a fool...
...A former budget aide to Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, Rivers was then working in the Carter administration, where he was assigned to help minority businesses navigate the federal contracting system...
...If I hear some of this again, I’m gonna have to deny it and then I’ll never talk to you again...
...Equally suspicious was the scheme Carey proposed to Rivers over breakfast at the Colony Square Inhuman disservices Few are the individuals (especially in Washington) who would come off as saints if their private conversations were monitored for a year...
...Clyburn garnered plenty of both by getting himself entangled in two particularly sordid chapters of the Barry era...
...The beauty of a $24,000 contract, Rivers explained, is that he personally could authorize it-no competitive bids, no contract review committee, no hassle...
...Today, hangover and all, Rivers would again face the press and respond to the latest disheartening dispatches from Washington’s poverty and drug wars...
...He clearly champions of minority like Rivers and Clyburn businesses, black insiders shakedown was illegal, stifle legitimate minority longstanding relationenterprises by keeping contracts within the network...
...The high-profile life had its drawbacks, including scrutiny and publicity...
...There,s nothing that to be champions of minority enterprise are patently phony...
...Johnson was cited for contempt of court and sent to jail...
...But the firm didn’t open its facility until June, and its costs were higher than those of any other firm providing transitional mental health care beds...
...The two hit it off, and kept up their friendship when Rivers joined the Barry administration as a DHS deputy director in 1981...
...In addition to his virtual hotline to the director, Clyburn had exceptional access to DHS contracting officials, which meant quick contract processing...
...They met over coffee in Clyburn’s office, taking in the view of the White House and the Pentagon beyond...
...She was found after the party in an apartment rented by Clyburn, and she died four days later...
...How did Rivers view his agency’s gritty world and the people who lived in it...
...That’s cool, too,” Clyburn answered...
...It didn’t bother Clyburn that B&C was a minority front for the white Atlanta fat cat...
...Fuck if I know,” said Rivers...
...DPW rejected AAS’s bid...
...After hearing that and other conversations played back ad nauseam, the federal jury decided that Rivers did not accept a bribe from Carey...
...But like Clyburn, Rivers knew B&C was only nominally a minority enterprise...
...That’s very, very much the way you see us operate...
...Johnson pleaded guilty to charges of using and selling cocaine, but she refused to testify before a grand jury investigating allegations that Barry and other city officials used cocaine...
...I’ll just plug you guys into some shit . . . start small, then grow big, all kinds of stuff...
...The truth is far simpler: Warren Barge’s big mouth led the FBI straight to his friends...
...I ain’t gotta worry about all of the welfare shit no more, man...
...I want them,” he told an assistant...
...How did Rivers view his agency’s gritty world and the people who lived in it...
...He was talking about his buddies, the new boy network...
...Former D.C...
...As director of DHS from 1982 to 1986, Rivers presided over an $840 million budget and some 9,000 employees...
...DR: Uh huh...
...but if these political descendants of George Washington Plunkitt were not legally corrupt, the evidence leaves no reasonable doubt that they were morally corrupt...
...With all those pricey contracts, you’d hope DISC would at least do good work...
...But the mayor stood by his old friend, and the pressure continued to build...
...I’m gonna have you meet my facilities management guy,” he told the businessmen...
...DHS staff members twice told Rivers that JMC should be dropped from the agency’s roster of contractors because of weak performance and high costs...
...And according to a Washington Post essay by Juan Williams, sources told the paper that in 1986 the Barry administration squelched a preliminary report on minority contracting that showed 80 percent of city money paid to minority contractors found its way to a handful of firms with close ties to the mayor...
...No doubt it was a demanding job...
...The busy director made time to meet with Carey and chart B&C’s bright future...
...It’s a network that cuts deals at power eateries like Joe & Mo’s on Connecticut Avenue downtown...
...DHS’s real constituency couldn’t have been farther from John Clyburn’s mind...
...One product, a survey of drug abuse programs in four cities, bore a striking resemblance to a monograph previously put out by the National Institute for Drug Abuse...
...And from his new vantage as D.C...
...Tell Baxley to be smart,” Clyburn responded...
...Lo and behold, DISC was awarded the contract...
...Hle’s my minority partner, and salt and pepper, we do ’em to death...
...C-A-R-E-Y...
...In the end, the absence of a smoking gun meant acquittal...
...I had assumed that...
...They wear nice suits, they earn more than the jurors, and they exude confidence-as do their high-powered attorneys...
...telling you what they are,” he said, awed by his own power...
...Department of Self Services Marion Barry’s new boy network of cronies in the Department of Human Services didn’t help Washington’s downtrodden...
...As director of DHS, he was the appointed caretaker of thousands of Washingtonians who depend on city services for their health and survival...
...When Clyburn recommended that McBride hire Mike Davis as an aide, the commissioner acquiesced, though he thought Davis was not qualified...
...Officials justified the pricey, noncompetitive contract with the bizarre logic that since Clyburn had taught the city so much about its own snow removal plans, it would be “infringing” on his firm’s work to draft a request for competitive bids...
...Warren Barge testified in United States v. Rivers, Clyburn, but he was not indicted in the case...
...With the grand opportunities all around for the man with a political pull, there’s no excuse for stealin’ a cent...
...The businessman played tennis with top city officials and called Barry’s cabinet members by nicknames like “Touch” (Touchstone) or “Baby” (former City Administrator Elijah Rogers...
...To advance minority businesses, D.C...
...Let’s do it...
...AAS would resubmit the bid, and Coopers & Lybrand, acting as consultants for the department, would quiz AAS with softball questions about the contract...
...Elizabeths, the nation’s largest mental hospital, from the federal government...
...When Marion Barry gave him his big promotion he expressed his relief to have those unfortunate people out of his face: “I mean I was ready...
...Tlhey are going to be doing a lot of stuff with us...
...I’m talking with you now because you have a ship with Warren,” he confided...
...Carey, who is white, would be the money behind B&C...
...but if these political descendants of George Washington Plunkitt were not legally corrupt, the evidence leaves no reasonable doubt that they were morally corrupt...
...The completed handbook was mainly a compilation of information already available to the commissioner...
...Right...
...Former D.C...
...Ilf I tell Touch to go jump off that motherfucking thing over there, he’s gonna,” Clyburn boasted to Carey...
...And Clyburn and Porter Bankhead are charged with conspiring to steer a city computer contract to Bankhead’s Systems and Applied Sciences Corporation...
...Even if that’s true, Rivers had a duty as a public official to report Carey’s attempted bribes...
...Two former DHS officials testified that DISC received $360,000 for work that was virtually useless...
...They gabbed on the phone about sex, the Redskins, and the internal politics of the D.C...
...His price: $50,000 for himself and $100,000 for his “people,” whom he later said included two D.C...
...They also grilled each other for information about DHS contracts...
...Clyburn,” McBride explained...
...JC: Put, uh, Len Carey...
...purchasing officer Jose Gutierrez lost his job after complaining that the city was paying millions of dollars too much for goods and services provided by minority contractors with ties to Barry...
...Both men could ever be linked...
...I think if two Caucasians were involved in the same kind of relationship, there wouldn’t have been a trial...
...Bottom line is, these are my boys,” Rivers told his deputy director...
...Rivers claims altruistic motives for his dealings with Carey: He wanted only to help a fledgling minority business get on its feet...
...Barge so trusted Carey that he lined up a meeting for him with the “power broker...
...But United States v. Rivers, Clyburn offers a rare window on how the new boy network undoes the program’s avowed goals by trading on inside information and connections...
...In mid-July, Rivers and Clyburn were acquitted on federal charges that they conspired to steer millions of dollars worth of DHS contracts to firms owned by Clyburn and his friends...
...I want to start with a . . . a . . . 24,000 piece,” Rivers said, “then I’ll simply look at and amend them as we go along...
...While they were awaiting word from the city, AAS executives received a call from a stranger who identified himself as Warren Barge and claimed he had been “tipped off’ about AAS’s bid to the Department of Public Works (DPW...
...What I’m saying is that if you’re gonna be here more than he’s gonna be here, you have to be kind of careful with your visibility out there...
...But suppose Rivers and Clyburn really did want to ’ advance minority firms...
...The same loose talk about women and the same wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach to business...
...Clyburn gave Carey step-by-step advice on how to get B&C Management Consultants certified as a minority business enterprise, entitling the company to bid for “sheltered market” (minority set-aside) contracts: Establish a D.C...
...public schools...
...And according to a Washington Post essay by thinly veiled attempts by the US...
...Taciturn and lightly bearded, with deep-set eyes, 47-year-old John Clyburn made quite an impression on the jury...
...When McBride was interviewing for his job at the DHS commission, Rivers asked him to meet with Clybum as part of the selection process...
...The city medical examiner resigned soon after the event, charging that Rivers had exerted “political pressure” on the examiner’s office to “reevaluate” the case...
...Rivers and Clyburn’s claims to be champions of minority enterprise are patently phony...
...I’m just glad it’s over...
...Special orders don’t upset us Clyburn introduced the FBI secret agent to D.C.’s inner circle of businessmen and city officials...
...In addition to sponsoring the Barry fundraiser, Carey bought Rivers two pairs of iguana skin cowboy boots and a third pair made from boa skin...
...Clyburn’s access also meant information...
...In 1984, City Auditor Otis Troupe protested that the District could not justify $200,000 in contracts awarded to Barry aides and former politicians...
...If I didn’t deal with DISC, it would have been difficult to get some things done...
...Brothers in the same lodge,” he declared...
...But the acquittal was no small victory for Clyburn, and that evening he received a hero’s welcome at Joe & Mo’s...
...The politician who steals is worse than a thief,” Plunkitt once lectured...
...The extra $100,000 would be generated from “change orders,” routine amendments to the contract that would be based upon fraudulently inflated costs...
...Michael Willrich is a Washington writer...
...Many of those were “sole source” noncompetitive contracts, awarded at the discretion of Rivers or his subordinates...
...DISC won the $724,000 contract...
...But Carey stayed on the case, and the FBI did some checking up on John Clyburn, thinking perhaps that they had something big on the line...
...In February 1986, JMC won a $216,000 DHS contract to provide beds and case management for mentally ill outpatients...
...he gave Carey handwritten documents detailing the minority participation plan AAS should use in its revised contract proposal...
...As with the Barry trial, the mayor’s defenders view United States v. Rivers, Clyburn as a racially motivated assault on a black city government...
...Oh, no question, no question...
...contracts to inspect asbestos in city-owned buildings...
...Now, he probably ain’t spellin’ motherfucker . . , no, Lynn, huh...
...But Rivers and Clyburn would have been Plunkitt’s kind of people...
...On the stand, Rivers admitted that he had signed a form indicating that a contract review committee had approved a $36,750 amendment to a DISC contract, although he knew the committee had not evaluated the proposal...
...Several prosecution witnesses who testified they used cocaine with the mayor had also worked on city contracts...
...contracting system...
...Tlhe jury showed that Washingtonians are too sophisticated to be fooled by thinly veiled attempts by the US...
...Rivers and Clyburn contended that they had only engaged in Washingtonstyle networking to advance local minority businesses...
...B&C had already applied for certification as a minority business enterprise, Carey told Rivers, which would entitle the firm to bid for minority set-aside contracts and ensure it extra evaluation points when it competed for non-set-aside contracts...
...Not surprisingly, some people who worked directly with the city’s needy sensed Rivers’s lack of commitment...
...Even so, federal prosecutors have produced a rich mine of documentation-including thousands of pages of FBI “wire” transcriptsthat illustrates how a “new boy” network of black businessmen and Barry politicos manipulates contracting...
...The city’s downtrodden have fared little better under the black new boy network than under the white old boy one that ran the city before Home Rule, and the new boy network is somehow more insidious than its predecessor: Portraying themselves as champions of minority businesses, black insiders like Rivers and Clyburn stifle legitimate minority enterprises by keeping contracts within the network...
...A very different Clyburn emerges from conversations like the following: Rivers has just asked Clyburn whom he has rounded up to sponsor the Atlanta fundraiser...
...YOU all just do this,” Rivers said, referring to the fundraiser invitations...
...What I consider the central issue in this trial is that the federal government overreached,” says Lawrence Guyot, a longtime Barry aide and neighborhood activist...
...by Michael Willrich David Rivers was nursing a hangover on the morning of October 3, 1986, as he faced another rocky day at the helm of the beleaguered Department of Human Services (DHS), Washington’s largest city agency...
...An acquaintance of Barge’s once remarked that the fast-talking huckster from Flint, Michigan, could sell bikinis to Eskimos...
...What’re you gonna do with them...
...The two men met on a New York shuttle flight...
...DR: Uh huh...
...I ain’t gotta worry about all of the welfare shit no more, man,” he told Carey...
...Tell her to be smart...
...I think if two Caucasians were involved in the same kind of relationship, there wouldn’t have been a trial...
...United States v. Rivers, Clyburn is hardly the first time the Barry administration’s “partnership” with D.C.’s minority business community has come under attack...
...The FBI kept Len Carey on the case, and he became AAS’s liaison with the man from Flint...
...Using his friends in government as listening posts, Clyburn anticipated services that city agencies needed and then submitted unsolicited proposals to provide them...
...When the “facilities management guy” arrived, Rivers ordered him to give B&C an energy audit contract-pronto...
...Rivers and Clyburn got off...
...In a later meeting with the agent, for a black boy to make Barge said...
...During the 10 months before Rivers became director, Clyburn’s firms received roughly $100,000 in DHS contracts...
...At this point, a manager with the best interests of his department and his city in mind would have sent Barge and Carey back to the drawing board...
...There are the same dim rooms and fancy clothes...
...United States v. Rivers, Clyburn is hardly the first time the Barry administration’s “partnership” with D.C.’s minority business community has come under attack...
...But it would be a mistake to conclude from the jury’s decision that minority contracting in D.C...
...Once your eyes adjust to the light in that dim cellar room, you can count on seeing an overwhelmingly male crosssection of the Washington elite, sporting power ties and huddling around big tables in red-cushioned chairs...
...John Clyburn, a prominent local contractor and one of Rivers’s closest friends, had arranged this meeting with a phone call...
...DR: L-E-N...
...They are a perfect opportunity to gin up costs, as Warren Barge wanted to do with the AAS asbestos contract...
...Barge was 51 percent owner of B&C-the minimum percentage allowed for a minority business-but Carey would actually run the company while Barge roamed the country in search of business opportunities for himself...
...secretary, Rivers saw a world of new contracting possibilities for B&C...
...contracting, Davis was on DISC’S payroll during part of the time he was employed at DHS, and Clyburn often lent him small amounts of money...
...When Marion Barry gave him his big promotion he expressed his relief to have those unfortunate people out of his face: “I mean I was ready...
...It wasn’t his track record in city contracting that opened Rivers’s door-Carey didn’t have a track record...
...I thought his agency did a terrible job of bringing services to the people,” says Terry Lynch of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, a nonprofit group that runs homeless programs...
...The contractors who profited from the alleged schemes actually did some work...
...Rivers had printed invitations for them to distribute, and he left the office to retrieve them...
...But courtroom behavior is not real behavior...
...Davis said, “You got it...
...Len Carey has reassumed his real identity, Special Agent Roy Leonard Carol...
...The power broker laid out his elaborate strategy for winning the AAS contract...
...The Barry drug trial churned up further evidence that cronyism pervades city contracting...
...Bankhead...
...JC: (laughs) Uh, let me check this motherfucker, uh, Warren Barge . . . where’s that . . . Len . . . Leonard L-E . . . L-E-0-N-A-R-D . . . Leonard Carey...
...I’m talking ASAP...
...Center for Nonviolent Social Change...
...Brothers in arms On the day of his acquittal, an emotional David Rivers expressed his relief to the press and said he was “going to get away, take a vacation and reflect...
...No, I . . . that was a bad choice of words...
...Carey flat out told them...
...Over breakfast in an Atlanta hotel, the men forged what Barge good-naturedly called a “salt and pepper team” that would use his my man, and who is the only person there now trying to salvage this thing for Asbestos Abatement because I asked him to, and I know that was wise...
...Both men knew-und didn’t cure-that B&C Management Consultants was a minority front company...
...Rivers and Clyburn’s claims LC: It’s in, all in my name...
...We got a whole new fuckin’ career in seven minutes,” he laughed...
Vol. 22 • October 1990 • No. 9
