Empires of the Sons (and the Friends, and the Mistresses.. .)
Konigsberg, Eric
Empires of the Sons (and the Friends, and the Mistresses.. .) Not every political appointee’s a Dean Acheson-or even a John Dean. Here’s where the Kbite House buries the bad ones by Eric...
...And low-level political types are most likely to end up doing the feeding-a situation ripe for influence peddling 2t la HUD...
...And a trek through the federal government’s primary political landfills suggests that America may be losing a lot more, and a lot more often, than you think...
...As USIA’s number of political appointees grew from two under Carter to more than 60 by the mideighties, congressional investigators began to call the trend Kiddiegate...
...If you have a government appointment, for instance, you have to sell your stocks and sever all your business relationships for what might be a short-term career...
...Load up an office with incompetent appointees, and discontent radiates from the GS-15s to the clerk-typists...
...Unfortunately, not every political appointee is a Dean Acheson-or even, for that matter, a John Dean...
...For among those appointees were Caspar Weinberger Jr...
...The Cation affair wasn’t brought to light until March 1990, when Austin’s nomination to become administrator of GSA came before the Senate...
...So few real people can sometimes mean real troubleas in the Wedtech scandal, which had several of SBA’s political appointees at its nexus...
...In other words, if we dump on this cabinet member, can he complain directly to the president...
...Constance Horner, who held a similar position under Bush, received 600 a day...
...Cation, a lawyer, was recovering from mental problems aggravated by alcoholism, but favors are favors...
...Under Bush, perhaps the most famous of these is Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP...
...Second, is the agency head personally outside the White House power loop...
...A USIA public affairs liaison making $45,000, young Cap was eventually forced to resign after receiving a $4,800 merit pay raise without the knowledge of his supervisor, missing an appointment to meet a foreign dignitary at the airport, charging the government $200 a month in taxi bills, and telling the The Atlanta Constitution that he represented the CIA and the National Security Council at USIA...
...Most interested groups-at least those without personal OJP contactswere unable to get their act together in time, and there wasn’t a single applicant for many programs...
...The students got a weekend of moral guidance at Liberty Baptist College from Jerry Falwell...
...He’d been sponsored by a wealthy Nebraska Republican after heading an organization for young black conservatives...
...Political connections breeding political jobs is no scandal in itself...
...Other agencies, from the Peace Corps to the Department of Agriculture, are picking up the rest of AID’S slack...
...Repayment here also would be on a sliding scale based on post-education income (or even better, through national service, a plank Bush didn’t have the courage to pilfer...
...By the time the deal was sealed, the larger share of the contract had been turned over to Sprint...
...Unhappily, the only question White House personnel seems to be asking lately is, “Can you take a friend of...
...The problems besetting OJP aren’t much different from those facing GSA, HUD, and other agencies whose main function is to dole out money...
...Take the SBA, which Ronald Reagan twice sought to eliminate altogether, but not before loading it up with appointees -a tradition that his successor continues to honor...
...Not that Strauss was stupid...
...GurulC’s appointment to head the OJP in Thornburgh’s Justice Department marked the conversion of that office from a career-run enterprise into a political one, although its chief responsibilities- monitoring statistics and grants-should have no political importance...
...Sometimes it’s government’s saving grace...
...Dick Armitage at the State Department is in charge of aid to the Soviet Union, while Lawrence Eagleburger runs assistance programs for Eastern Europe...
...In every federal agency there’s a “turkey farm” (or two, or ten) chock-full of incompetent civil servants-folks who can’t be fired because of civil service rules...
...Instead it chose to repay a campaign favor by appointing to the agency’s top spot a pharmaceutical executive and Bush fundraiser, Bruce Gelb, who was at Andover and Yale with George...
...Bond’s firm, Bond and Donatelli, was lobbying GSA on Sprint’s behalf...
...In other cases, like AID and HUD, the hostility is primarily ideological: We shouldn’t be throwing money at the Bangladeshis or subsidizing housing in the first place, so who cares who we put in charge of the program...
...To Engleleiter, who, like Saiki, had never run a small business, the answer was usually yes...
...That argument is a little disingenuous, especially in a recession...
...One of those Turks was Pierce’s executive assistant and top aide, Debra Gore Dean, a former bartender and waitress...
...With the administrator and deputy administrators above this level always political, and the associate administrators below often political appointees as well, today’s SBA is hack heaven...
...One of these appointees was Mitch Crusto, a former general counsel at the St...
...The agency’s last three administrators represent a category of must-hires distinct from campaign rainmakers and kids-of...
...The impression out there is that these are high-risk jobs, ethically speaking,” says one former administration official...
...First, they offer good salaries-better than those of their civil servant counterparts, because the jobs don’t have the advantage of career security...
...Even on purely economic grounds, political appointments are attractive...
...when it implemented a massive program to standardize telecommunications services for all government agencies in the first year of Austin’s reign...
...In doing so, you may also be giving up the chance for government to do some good...
...And second, there’s often a heap of cash to be made on the private side of that revolving door...
...And on three recent occasions, the federal government has required Roskens to reimburse private organizations, two of which are AID contractors, for honoraria or travel expenses he accepted illegally...
...The real scandal is that the White House agreed to give Cap Jr...
...The OJP, with only 325 employees, has seen its political appointments jump from six to thirty in the past four years, including the key positions of Enera1 counsel and director of legislative affairs...
...Throughout Gurult’s time at OJP, its grant guidelines and application forms for discretionary funding have been published so late that two weeks before the deadline, they weren’t available...
...While there’s not always direct correlation between bad appointees and bad governance, under Roskens’ leadership AID seemed to specialize less in international development than in the development of personal wealth...
...Still, the White House whines, those applicants include few people with real-world experience...
...Kemp and Alexander’s crews have a lesson to teach the winner of the 1992 campaign...
...Larry McDonald, a member of the John Birch Society from Georgia...
...OJP is responsible for awarding discretionary funds to local jurisdictions and nonprofit organizations for things like additional police training programs, prosecutors, and policemen...
...administration and Republi- How serious...
...If he couldn’t run a university, why should he be entrusted with a $7.5 billion government agency...
...so will we...
...Ile arrived at HUD fresh from being fired from his post at the Department of Justice...
...After his involvement in the Wedtech affair, but before the scandal had come to light, the younger Negria had moved his way up the SBA ladder to a post in Washington as an assistant to Administrator Jim Sanders...
...The must-hires are typically not the cream of the crop, or else they’d have gotten jobs on their own...
...Fortunately, Congress got wind of the decision at the last minute and forced GSA to reverse it-but not until the wrong system had been installed for the entire U.S...
...Unburdened by those rules, White House personnel doesn’t have that excuse for hiring and keeping the unqualified or incompetent...
...Last month, Bush unveiled his education plan, saying he’ll put the issue at the top of his domestic agenda (again...
...Dan Fenn, JFK’s personnel assistant, received 500 letters a month from people seeking high-level government jobs...
...Pierce got even if they’re mental cases, rabid ideologues, callow White House personnel un- justified in bringing in tant SI:cretary Dubois children of big donors, or loaded up on him a group of simply incompetent...
...But some political appointees don’t come in to rocket-fuel their careers...
...Here’s where the Kbite House buries the bad ones by Eric Konigsberg If George Bush is famous for his thank-you notes to valuable campaigners, House Mi- nority Leader Robert Michel is better known for thank-you jobs...
...Spend an hour hand-holding his friend or cousin or splendid son...
...It’s little wonder, then, why Bush feels pressure to minimize the Clinton advantage here-but a footnote crediting his source would be nice...
...Insurance man Sanders, who preceded Abner at the agency’s top post, had earned his own appointment by being an old friend of Michael Deaver’s...
...Well, look at what happened to U.S...
...As Deputy AssisGilliam explained to Cong- Jody Ann Zolinski, a ress several years back, Sam derstands, those favored have to be put somewhere, Pierce’s agency was a leg- cashier in a deli he endary 1,andfill...
...It’s a good idea, but it comes months after Bill Clinton proposed an almost identical plan-a government trust fund that would lend money to anyone wishing to attend college...
...Probably because his sponsor was Dick Herman, a Republican National Committeeman from Nebraska whose South Bay Beer Distributors company in Los Angeles, one of the largest Anheuser Busch distributors in the country, has listed James Baker and Bob Strauss as shareholders...
...But it in their campaign chits for one of Washington’s 3,000 probably wasn’t a painless decision...
...So frequented, as the cultural Young Turks who were very where can administration of- politicall and on a [Whitk ficials best bury this political affairs officer for Haiti...
...But they do have a few other excuses...
...A charismatic agency captain can actually transform a dump into a plum...
...Happy Kempers Clearly, a political appointee can set the tone for thousands of workers beneath him...
...Still, influence peddling isn’t the worst thing bad political appointees can do...
...And as starters...
...It remains to be seen whether this reinvigorated Education Department will actually do anything to solve the nation’s grim education problems, but one thing’s certain: Now, at least, it’s got some brainpower to work with...
...SBA’s current head, Pat Saiki, a former congresswoman from Hawaii, was recently defeated in a Senate bid...
...One reason, of course, is that Weinberger’s kid might turn out to be a disaster...
...To spread its $25 billion in contracts around, GSA arranged to do 60 percent of its business with one phone company and 40 percent with another, the greater share of the deal going to the company with the lower bid, which happened to be AT&T...
...He can arrange a political appointment in the Bush administration for anyone he wants, and most of the time it’s in the General Services Administration (GSA), where his friend Dick Austin has worked as a high-level executive for years...
...And then there was “consultant” Kermit Hansen, a regent at the University of Nebraska...
...Sometimes, you have to go five levels down before you get to a real office,” says a House staffer who works with the SBA...
...Consider Ronald Roskens, director of AID, who arrived there in 1990 after being fired as president of the University of Nebraska...
...Today, in addition to GSA, the Small Business Administration (SBA), the Agency for International Development (AID), the Department of Agriculture, the Office of Personnel Management, and certain divisions within the departments of Commerce and Justice are the most expansive dumping grounds for marginal Republicans who want to cash list, and we had no housing skills whatsoever,” he complained...
...In fact, throughout his career as governor, Clinton has placed education reform at the top of his political agenda...
...And if that person turns out to be lousy in the position...
...Whichever the case, when the White House unloads, Americans lose-either as recipients of government services or as taxpayers who make those services possible...
...But wasn’t that Austin wanted a some garbage isn’t buried bunch of ne’er-do-wells on setting the standard, it’s no deep enough to prevent serihis staff...
...to then-Rep...
...His father, the one-time head of the Republican Party in Brooklyn, asked a friend to ask Lyn Nofziger to set up young Peter...
...She was given her post as a favor to Lee Atwater...
...Louis investment house Stifel, Nicolaus, whose CEO is George Bush’s cousin Bert Walker...
...For instance, he awarded $100,000 to Young Americans for Freedom to introduce young European journalists to political figures ranging from Jesse Helms (on the lej...
...Not everyone wants to put themselves on the line here, and the middle-aged group is at risk...
...It With the White House Idaho set trade policy...
...As Pendleton James explains, when White House personnel comes knocking with its dreaded list of must-hires, “the agency heads with clout say, ‘No way...
...His previous work experience had included running a bunch of nursing homes and arranging scores for orchestra leader Tommy Dorsey...
...Bush isn’t going to be asked a lot of questions about efficiency at GSA...
...Throw a party...
...The interest and repayment schedules are to be determined on the basis of income...
...Send flowers...
...it had to be dismantled and done over...
...and Daniel Wattenberg, son of the popular conservative, Ben...
...Still, she was slightly more qualified than 24-year-old Reagan campaigner Joseph Strauss, who was shunted off on Pierce as a special assistant...
...The difference with Kemp is that he can say, ‘Okay, I’ll take these five [appointees] you’re giving me, but I also want these two of my own.’ ” A similar transformation is in the works at one of Reagan’s favorite dumps, the Department of Education...
...Unfortunately, failure didn’t exactly chasten Roskens...
...While bad political appointments can destroy agency morale, foster scandal, and cost taxpayers millions, good appointments are potent weapons, capable of infusing new life into even the most jaded bureaucracy...
...It wasn’t until Cation was actually sentenced to six years in prison in January 1989 that Austin forced his assistant to give up his political plum...
...After all, where there is a trough, there is pork...
...Patron taint Certain “prestige” departments-State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury-tend to have more success than SBA and GSA at keeping the dumpees away...
...But the director has also had some help from the White House...
...For decades, GSA has been one of the federal government’s preferred landfills, with 17 administrators in 22 years and a breakneck parade of lesser officials spinning through the revolving door of one of Washington’s worst administered and most wasteful agencies...
...It is probably no coincidence that union members on the OJP staff, who filed no unfair labor practice charges with the Federal Labor Relations Authority between 1975 and 1988, have filed 14 such complaints since Guru16 took over in 1988...
...The arrangement made some fiscal sense...
...Well, say cynics, that’s an inevitable consequence of the declining appeal of the public service job...
...they come in to resuscitate them after a crash...
...As Bush’s people argue, if a guy is good in the campaign, he should be good in government...
...When strong presidents, cabinet or department heads, and congressional leaders inspire smart loyalists to take up public service, government benefits enormously from fresh blood, dedication, and new ideas...
...Monica Clark, daughter of Deputy National Security Advisor Bill Clark...
...You always have to take some tron was another one-man job corps: Senator Phil turkeys, and Washington can afford to carry them,” Gramm...
...Of course, someone could have stopped that wasteful contract-someone like Tom Bucholz, an associate administrator at GSA and another political appointee...
...Even after he was disbarred and arrested, Cation was allowed to keep his job, and even had it after he was convicted on 15 counts of lying about his indebtedness to obtain large loans, thereby defrauding five banks of more than $500,000...
...Instead, appointee deferred to appointee, and the deal went through...
...The SBA administrator for the New York region, Peter Negria, who was convicted of taking bribes from Wedtech, boasted no work experience in small business, but did come from an old family of New York Republicans...
...A point man on the phone project, he is now paid more than $100,000 a year to oversee the agency’s Information Resource Management System program and its staff of 1,600...
...Laurette Conkling, daughter of the Voice of America director at the time...
...The way Dean Acheson went back and forth between government and private sector would be prosecutable today...
...In the eighties, some top posts were held by conservatives who didn’t even believe in public schools-“homeschooling” by concerned Christian parents was preferred...
...Spoils of lore Federal trashologists know that one of the best places to look for political garbage is in an agency the president has promised to abolish...
...But it was promptly overturned, largely because it fell into the hands of GSA’s deputy administrator, Rebecca Johnson, a young Bush fundraiser...
...Of course, in either case, loading up an agency with bad apples only exacerbates its root problems instead of addressing them...
...Some [appointees] view these posts as stopping grounds, their first job in public service, and a start at building their resumbs,” says Pat Ingraham, a political scientist at Syracuse University...
...Because of this, she notes, many political appointees take whatever post is offered them, regardless of their experience or interest in the agency’s field...
...Nobody good wants to work in government, anyway-so why not make Cap Weinberger’s kid happy...
...Johnson was handed her GSA post after working as a special assistant in White House personnel-a job she’d gotten through now-RNC Chairman Rich Bond...
...Then that agency should be abolished, saving taxpayers millions, even billions...
...Silent Sam Pierce had to take on all the Debra Gore Deans the White House shoved his way, says a former Bush administration official...
...a government job at all, especially when applications for political jobs are soaring...
...For Clinton, Perot, and Bush, the implications of that lesson should be fairly clear...
...His work at Pacific Power and Light, he wrote upon Senate confirmation to the GSA post, included the supervision of “zero” people...
...Former SBA head James Abner began his stint in 1986 after losing a Semate race to Tom Daschle...
...Information Agency (USIA) head Charlie Wick, who proved in the eighties that even being a pal of Reagan’s wasn’t enough if White House personnel had your number...
...The effect of the agency’s nevi cachet isn’t limited to the quality of the folks coming in...
...That gives Kemp a measure of leverage...
...And then there was the handsomely paid Deputy Assistant Secretary Janice Golec, whose previous work had included a secretarial stint in the ’White House and a job as an airline stewardess...
...Among the appointees were several persons GSA considered security risks because of severe personal financial problems, but who were hired nonetheless...
...In 1988, Jack Kemp’s convictions about tenant management and enterprise zones, among other things, attracted scores of qualified and devoted conservatives to HUD...
...There He Goes Again v President Bush’s campaign kleptomania continues...
...As if to prove the point, Bush has continued the effort...
...New hack city While every presidency has its own idiosyncratic criteria for deciding where to dump the marginally qualified, there are two central questions members of White House personnel usually ponder...
...Godfrey’s pa- political jobs...
...Unfortunately, taxpayers are still paying AID to .keep out of the way...
...But don’t give away the job...
...Unfortunately, many political appointments go not to the star campaigner (who may have better offers), but to the star campaigner’s brother/son/friend/girlfriend...
...In January 1989, he was succeeded by Susan Engleleiter, a friend of Presid1:nt Bush who lost a Senate run in Wisconsin...
...That SBA has held its landfill Istatus so long raises the question of whether Reagan .and Bush are right...
...there, she earns $90,000 a year as a deputy assistant administrator...
...No one’s going to let a ton political appointments fringe fundamentalist from than it does about him...
...But who was Wick to complain about the unqualified...
...As assistant attorney general in charge of OJP, Jimmy GurulC, a Utah prosecutor and associate of Orrin Hatch, has consolidated all contract-making to his office, which is now responsible for $80 million in discretionary grants and 10 times that in block grants...
...With the White House setting that sort of standard, it’s no wonder that USIA Deputy Director Gil Robertson felt justified in bringing in Jody Ann Zolinski, a cashier in a deli he frequented, as the cultural affairs officer for Haiti...
...To White House personnel staffer Tom Kranz, AID was a safe and profitable place to dump Sally Montgomery, a friend and former stewardess...
...House p,:rsonnell garbage...
...While bureaucrats may be naturally inclined to dislike the political appointees who strut in every few years and upend their working lives, they’re also able to distinguish the committed and competent from the ticket-punchers...
...In addition to the kids, there were the zealots who helped Reagan win the fundamentalist vote...
...Barbara Haig...
...Austin hired him as a $35,000a-year “confidential assistant...
...a daughter and two nieces of Robert McFarlane...
...First, is the given agency’s mission peripheral to the president’s program...
...Perhaps Sanders was sympathetic to the youngster...
...If you want government to run as well as you’ve promised, send a thank-you note to that great campaigner...
...The lasting harm from dumping comes when civil servants see how little interest the White House has in their agency’s public service role...
...And indeed, that’s often true...
...That’s the ultimate depository for losers-unless, of course, the president doesn’t follow through...
...USIA’s grants program, for instance, was run by a rightwinger named Bob Reilly, who made sure USIA money served his causes...
...In some cases, like SBA and GSA, the agency hasn’t been much good at fulfilling its mission for decades, and personne1 staffers are rightly cynical about its necessity to the republic...
...Favors still being favors, Austin kept him on the payroll the next year, although the FBI had notified GSA that Cation was under investigation for bank fraud...
...Toss a whole bunch of those “must-hires’’ into one agency, and it can also be terribly frustrating for the taxpayer...
...At AID, he promptly ushered in friends like Katherine Morgan, his new head of the foreign aid policy office, whose resumt included no work in government or international development, but stints as a nun, patent lawyer, and dean of college admissions...
...Perhaps America doesn’t need a separate agency to help small business...
...Navy...
...He has continued to do so throughout the campaign, and unlike Bush, he has a record of success to match his good ideas...
...Even The Washington Times poked fun at it...
...That’s what seems to have happened to the federal government’s landlord, GSA...
...He was simply ous human and economic holding the bag for the Bush wonder that USlA Deputy damage...
...They’re all failed Republican candidates whose fall the Republican Party wanted to soften...
...Debra Weissman...
...Crusto was then given his own deputy-another political appointee, Mitch Stanley...
...Roskens himself was forced to pay back more than $3,000 from an AID subcontractor for violation of ethical standards...
...The nomination hearings also revealed that during Austin’s year and a half as acting administrator, the number of political appointees at GSA had increased 40 percent...
...And that’s not always bad news...
...But Lamar Alexander, something of a favorite of the “education president,” has been able to woo former Xerox CEO David Kearns, respected academician Diane Ravitch, and other credible education experts to his office...
...At the heart of his new program is the promise of a $25,000 line of credit for any American seeking further education...
...Within any administration, there’s always a certain number of ‘must-hires,’ sponsored by political clout,” explains Pendleton James, one of Reagan’s personnel chiefs...
...Let’s look can Party leaders who had Director Gil Robertson felt at the IlUD scandal for favors to repay...
...Austin eventually forced one of these appointees, Chief of Staff David Godfrey, to resign after more than $1.5 Eric Konigsberg is a Washington write,: million in judgments accumulated against him...
...Let’s say the White House’s distaste for the agency is on target...
...But let’s not forget Gilliam himself, who was sent to prison for taking between $100,000 and $1 million from a developer...
...The ones without that clout...
...Career bureaucrats say department morale is higher than it’s been in a decade...
...Any administration will have a certain amount we’ll have to dump, and it’s terribly frustrating...
...Baker and Bush now bypass AID on all significant foreign aid activities...
...says a former top official in both the Reagan and That Dick Austin was confirmed anyway, and that Bush administrations-that is, if you put them where he still holds his post, tells us more about Washing- they can’t do much harm...
...Dumping of this sort reflects, more than anything, White House contempt for the agency it dumps ona contempt that has one of two sources...
...Engleleiter apparently didn’t relish dealing with rank-and-file civil servants, so she created a new layer of “associate deputy administrators” to serve as a buffer zone between herself and her program managers...
...He stuck around just long enough to make contacts and then split to set up a consulting firm that pulled in $1.7 million in fees from developers interested in HUD...
...The Bush administration had its opportunity in 1988 to change the tone at USIA...
...perhaps small businesses might receive more help through programs under other, more serious auspices...
...Two months ago, The Washington Monthly noted Bush’s uncanny knack for proposing “new” ideas just weeks or months after they’d been put on the table by leading Democrats-namely potential presidential opponents [“Is the President a Plagiarist?’ April...
...But if the White House is wrong, the agency’s important purpose is being perverted...
...Of course, dumping isn’t the sole province of White House personnel...
...She became something of a household name when she was charged with steering funding for projects to prominent Republicans and other friends...
...But probe a bit and you’re sure to hit a vein of lesser appointees: some farflung office like congressional relations, or most any department’s “special assistant” posts, reserved for must-hires...
...Since Roskens’ appointment, an impressive number of AID contractors and administrators have been sent to prison for rigging contracts, accepting bribes, and padding expense accounts...
...Thus it was business as usual one day in 1987, when Michel asked Austin to help out his longtime campaign manager, Paul Cation...
...Under Reagan, that hostility extended to the whole government-except the military...
...All the bright ones want to work in Education now,” says a member of White House personnel...
Vol. 24 • June 1992 • No. 6
