Word: vesco
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...selects a capable deputy to take care of the details that he prefers to shun. But first Casey must survive a tough grilling by Senators on accusations of misconduct as SEC chief, including an old charge that he tried to thwart an SEC inquiry of Fugitive Financier Robert Vesco in 1972. Casey, with typical bluntness, professes no concern. Says the CIA nominee: "I've been confirmed by the U.S. Senate four times. I don't think there's any question I'll be confirmed again...
From his palmy refuge, Vesco has been busy spinning an elaborate web of bribery plots that he hopes will somehow enmesh the Carter Administration and result in getting the charges against him dropped. The Justice Department, the FBI, the SEC, a Senate subcommittee and a federal grand jury in New York City are investigating his activities. Vesco's goal, says a high Justice Department official, "is to embarrass the Administration so that he can come back home with immunity from his legal problems...
Federal investigators divide Vesco's schemes into two phases...
...first, dubbed Vesco I by Government lawyers, he offered four Georgians $10 million in late 1976 if they could persuade the incoming Carter Administration to fix his legal problems. The group in turn paid W. Spencer Lee IV, a lawyer from Albany, Ga., $10,000 to talk with his longtime friend and Carter confidant Hamilton Jordan about Vesco's plight. Lee met first with Carter Aide Richard M. Harden, who, claims Lee, persuaded him not to see Jordan. Lee says he then dropped the scheme entirely. After investigating Vesco I for 18 months, a federal grand jury in Washington...
...Vesco claims he is so eager to tell his side of the story that he proposed to the U.S. Attorney's office in New York that if it allowed him to testify before a Senate subcommittee investigating Vesco II, he would stand trial on at least some of the federal charges against him. Said Vesco to TIME last week: "The time for games has come to an end." Justice Department lawyers scoff at the offer. His real motive, they insist, is to trick the committee into giving him immunity from prosecution for whatever he says in the hearing room...