Word: scandalous
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Pierce's fraying reputation suffered a more serious blow last week, when one of his former top aides implicated him directly in the scandal. Though Pierce had told a House subcommittee last May that he had never been personally involved in HUD program grants, Shirley McVay Wiseman told the panel that her boss had directly ordered her to approve $16 million in federal subsidies for a housing project in Durham, N.C., proposed by Pierce's former law partner. She refused, she said, so Pierce signed the papers...
...multibillion-dollar scandal during the Reagan years is now front- page news. Where was the Washington press back then? -- Time Inc. will start ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY...
...bucks. Heaps of hypocrisy. Influence peddling by prominent Republicans. The unfolding scandal at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is the kind of story that guarantees front-page play. It is also the kind of story that could guarantee brilliant future careers, perhaps even Pulitzer Prizes, for enterprising journalists. So reporters have pounced on Washington's latest example of sleaze. There is just one hitch: it's yesterday's news. All that murky bureaucratic back scratching and buck passing happened during the heyday of the Reagan Administration. Where was the ever vigilant press back then...
...Washington-based national press missed the warning signs altogether. In July 1988 Multi-Housing News, a trade publication, ran an extensive story on influence peddling in HUD's Moderate Rehabilitation program, spelling out, with almost every detail except the malefactors' names, the $2 billion scandal that has since emerged. Reports from HUD's own inspector general sounded similar tocsins. But none of Washington's investigative journalists seemed to be listening. Part of the reason was that news organizations had tired of HUD after reporting the massive Reagan budget cutbacks at the agency in the early 1980s; once most...
While sources went uncultivated and leaks dried up, the capital's best reporters were caught by other stories, like allegations against former Attorney General Ed Meese and the Iran-contra scandal. HUD remained the gulag of Washington journalism, a backwater with an obscure chief administrator they dubbed "Silent Sam" Pierce. There was a distinct lack of glitz and glamour about the HUD beat. "We were looking elsewhere," explains syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. "We don't have enough eyes to look at HUD. The very name HUD says dullness, dullness, dullness...