Word: abscam
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...rare drama last week: seeing and hearing Democratic Congressman Michael ("Ozzie") Myers of Philadelphia accepting $50,000 from an undercover FBI agent posing as an intermediary for a fictitious Arab sheik and, in return, promising to sponsor a bill to enable the sheik to settle in the U.S. The Abscam tapes were first aired in short segments on all network evening newscasts, then in their 3½-hour entirety on the Public Broadcasting Service...
...month, the Federal Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that, like any court records, the video tapes be available to the public for inspection. Wrote Judge Jon Newman: "We do not believe the public at large must be sanitized as if they all would become jurors in the remaining Abscam trials." Myers appealed, arguing that broadcasting the tapes would "severely undermine" his appeal. But the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his argument last week...
...word rolled through a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., 72 times last week as twelve jurors were asked for their verdicts on six charges against the defendants. Once again, as in the conviction in August of Democratic Congressman Michael ("Ozzie") Myers of Pennsylvania, the FBI video tapes from the Abscam investigation had proved persuasive. Shaken by the barrage, Defendant John W. Jenrette Jr., a three-term Democratic Congressman from South Carolina, lowered his head and sobbed. Still red-eyed later, Jenrette told reporters in a trembling voice, "I can look at my two beautiful children and my gorgeous wife...
...jurors believed the tapes and not the Congressman, who was the second to be tried of six House members charged with bribery in the Abscam operation. "It was all pretty clear in every one's mind," said Joseph D. McDonald, a member of the jury that took only 4½hours after a five-week trial to convict Jenrette, 44, and a longtime friend, John R. Stowe, of bribery. Added McDonald: "One picture is worth a thousand words." The video and telephone tapes showed Stowe accepting $50,000 from an undercover FBI agent and Jenrette agreeing to back legislation...
That accumulating impression, though false, is what takes such a toll of social faith. The abuse of trust has become so commonplace that one must wonder whether society's very capacity to believe is not being gradually undermined. It has taken a drubbing in recent decades. Watergate yesterday, Abscam today (see NATION). In between, the people's credulity has been hounded by far more than the usual con games and rackets. The pathetic fact is that Americans seem to be resorting more and more to preying, with methodical duplicity, on other Americans...