Word: abscam
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...Dubbed Abscam, for Arab Scam, the 23-month investigation had cost some $800,000 and involved about 100 agents in an elaborate series of hoaxes and disguises. One of these dressed up in a burnoose and posed as a sheik named Kambir Abdul Rahman, whose millions were said to be "burning holes" in a Chase Manhattan account. Other agents in pinstripe suits served as the sheik's American emissaries, translating his gutteral commands and seeking ways to invest his money in New Jersey gambling casinos, East Coast port facilities and an American titanium mine. Along the way, the phony...
...Abscam did introduce a new controversy. Had the much-criticized FBI illegally or unethically enticed the lawmakers into committing crimes they would normally not have considered? "This smacks of a setup," claimed one leading Democrat in Congress. "A lot of guys feel that the FBI has got it in for this place." But why? No legislator could quite explain this "gut feeling" that, as another Congressman contended...
...activism in probing more sophisticated crime might lead-and whose white collar might be smudged-remains a great concern in Washington. Rumors persist that despite the leaks, not all of the Congressmen entangled in the Abscam net have yet been publicly identified. Thus, though all but one of the members of Congress pinpointed so far were Democrats, most Republicans cautiously refrained from making the new scandal a partisan political issue. An exception was Pennsylvania Republican Bud Shuster, chairman of the House Republican policy committee, who claimed, "History teaches that when one party is in power a long time, corruption increases...