Newsgroups: biz.americast.samples
From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
Organization: American Cybercasting
Subject: \HD House postal shortage quietly paid
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 09:14:26 EDT

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\SE A
\HD House postal shortage quietly paid
\BY Paul M.  Rodriguez
\CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Secret testimony before a task force that probed the House post office
scandal reveals that in January 1991 senior House Democratic leaders paid
$1,580 to cover a shortage at the facility that was never disclosed to
police.

The payment from a special Democratic "contingency fund" came three
months before police were called in to probe widespread criminal
allegations, including embezzlement and drug charges.

The $1,580 shortage was among many in recent years paid from the
contingency fund to prevent scandal within the House hierarchy, according
to the testimony and interviews with current and former federal officials.

The witnesses also said House post office problems such as embezzlement
and rumors of drug sales had gone on for years but went uncorrected because
of patronage and politics, according to the testimony reviewed by The
Washington Times.

The police probe that began in April 1991 culminated in guilty pleas
from five post office employees, including former stamp clerk Yvonne M.
Welborne, 42, of Oxon Hill, who was sentenced yesterday to two years'
probation, 100 hours of community service and restitution of the $13,121.80
she embezzled between November 1988 and July 1991.

A post office investigation by the U.S.  Attorney's Office is
continuing.

"Nobody wanted to change," said Robert V.  Rota, the 57-year-old
postmaster who was forced to resign in mid-March because of the scandal.

"It was all kinds of trouble and everything," Mr.  Rota said in one of
three secret depositions to the task force earlier this year.

"It was war," he said in recounting how he tried, but failed, to fire
people, including two who admitted last year to embezzling thousands of
dollars and selling and buying cocaine.

"I went to speaker after speaker about this, about there might have
been some drugs or something," Mr.  Rota testified.  "Whatever I did, I
felt I had no control.  I couldn't do nothing anyways," the former
postmaster recounted.

The secret testimony also confirms earlier reports that House Speaker
Thomas S.  Foley knew by at least July 1991 that money was being stolen
from the post office - fully six months before two oversight committees
learned of the thefts and cocaine sales from articles beginning Jan.  22 in
The Times.

Not only is the testimony missing from the task force's final 564-page
report issued in late July, but there is no mention of often conflicting
testimony from many of the 62 witnesses, including Heather Foley, the
speaker's wife and unpaid chief of staff.

Among major discrepancies in testimony that were never resolved:

* Mrs.  Foley said she did not learn of problems at the post office
until September 1991. Yet Mr.  Rota testified he spoke to her often within
a week of the April 1991 theft that sparked the investigation.

* Bernie Muller, director of the Democratic Patronage Committee that
fills 1,200 political jobs in the House, was never called to testify.  Yet
Mrs.  Foley testified he told her that Mr.  Rota had complained loudly
about post office problems for years.

* Steven R.  Ross, the House general counsel, said he never sought to
impede an initial U.S.  Capitol Police probe of the post office.  Yet,
former Capitol Police Chief Andrew F.  Kerrigan testified that a secret
tape recording he made shows that Mr.  Ross threatened the police with loss
of pay and pension benefits unless the investigation was transferred to the
U.S.  Postal Inspection Service.

* Mr.  Ross said he was casually involved in high-level discussions
about the post office.  Yet, Mr.  Rota and others testified that Mr.  Ross
was involved in an almost daily way.

* Mrs.  Foley said she barely spoke to Mr.  Rota and went down to the
post office only a few times.  Yet Mr.  Rota and others testified she was
in the post office at least two or three times a week.

The roles played by Mrs.  Foley and Mr.  Ross in the early stages of
the post office probe in the summer of 1991 are also still under scrutiny
by U.S.  Attorney Jay B.  Stephens, sources said, partly because of
discrepancies in testimony before the grand jury and the task force.

Mrs.  Foley and Mr.  Ross have denied any wrongdoing and have so
testified before both the grand jury and the House task force.

In their testimony before the task force, however, the Foley and Ross
statements contrasted, sometimes sharply, with testimony given by others,
including Mr.  Rota and Chief Kerrigan.

The discrepancies include when people said they learned of problems at
the post office and what, if anything, was done to stop the early criminal
probe.

Mrs.  Foley, in an appearance before the task force April 2, said she
did not learn about problems at the post office until Mr.  Rota "got into
severe problems, say last fall [1991]. And not one minute beforehand."

But, in one of his three appearances before the task force, Mr.  Rota
said Mrs.  Foley knew of the thefts within a week of an April 1991
discovery that a postal clerk had stolen more than $6,000 and fled to
Puerto Rico.

That single theft ultimately led the Capitol Police and the Postal
Inspection Service into a much larger probe that includes the ongoing
criminal probe by Mr.  Stephens, the five-month probe by the task force and
now a separate review by a bipartisan, six-member panel of the House ethics
committee.

"I immediately went to the speaker's office [in the spring of 1991],
because it's the custom when you do something like this [an investigation],
you notify them, you keep them informed as to what is going on and what is
happening," Mr.  Rota told the House task force.

"I met with Mrs.  Foley and Steve Ross . . . and we worked continuously
until the day I left [on] all this stuff," Mr.  Rota said.  "Everything I
did from that [first] day on was by direction of the attorney."

And who was the attorney, Mr.  Rota was asked: "Steve Ross," he told
the task force.

Mr.  Ross's testimony, however, reflects a different version of the
events, including the timing of when he learned of the post office mess.
"I do recall, it was just occasional contacts on procedures and stuff like
that," Mr.  Ross told the task force.

In one of three appearances, Mr.  Ross also said he first learned of
the problems June 24, at the earliest, but other testimony and
contemporaneous notes from John Caufield, general counsel of the Capitol
Police, suggest Mr.  Ross knew things as early as June 6, 1991.

Chief Kerrigan testified he met with Mr.  Ross on June 19, 1991, when
the counsel told him the Capitol Police should "cooperate" with him on
discontinuing the investigation.

"Ross brought up the fact that we should not be dealing with the U.S.
attorney and then later on in the meeting he said that, you know, we should
cooperate with him on this because we were looking for a pay raise and
other benefits and that we needed Congress' help in obtaining these," said
Chief Kerrigan, a 25-year Capitol Police veteran who now lives in Florida.

"Well, you know, I had never come up against anything like that before,
that somebody telling me, you know, that you should cooperate with us
because if you don't you might not get our assistance," the chief
testified.

****BOX

HOUSE POST OFFICE SCANDAL

April 26, 1991: Edward Pogue steals more than $6,000 and flees to
Puerto Rico.  The Capitol Police are called in to investigate.

Late April 1991: The Capitol Police call in U.S.  Postal Inspection
Service agents to assist in what appears to be widespread criminal
activities at the post office.

Late April/early May 1991: Pogue fired from post office and was
sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to embezzlement.  House
Postmaster Robert V.  Rota is informed within a week of the Pouge incident
about the thefts.  He says in testimony before a House task force he was
glad it happened because the police - finally - could clean up the mess.

May 1991: Rota says he informed Heather Foley, wife and unpaid chief of
staff to Speaker Thomas S.  Foley, about the thefts and rumors of drug
sales.

June 6, 1991: John Caufield, legal counsel to the Capitol Police,
writes a note concerning a telephone conversation with Steven R.  Ross, the
House general counsel, about the post office probe and its transfer to the
Postal Inspection Service.

June 24, 1991: Ross testifies before House task force that this is
earliest date he learns about the embezzlements.

Late June 1991: Foley, according to Ross's testimony, is informed about
the thefts and a Democratic recommendation to formally transfer the
investigation from the Capitol Police to the Postal Inspection Service.

September 1991: Mrs.  Foley testifies that this is the month she first
learned of the problem at the post office, according to her testimony.

January: Chairmen and ranking Republicans of two oversight committees
first learn from reports in The Washington Times of embezzlement and gross
mismanagement at post office.

February: Foley admits that "we made, perhaps, inadequate consultation
with some of the departments of the Appropriations Committee [and the
Administration Committee]." He says: "It was one of these glitches in
information."  Federal grand jury convenes in connection with investigation
by U.S.  Attorney's Office.

Feb.  5: House task force created to probe post office scandal.

March 19: Rota resigns.

July 22: The House task force releases a 1,200-page report that blasts
the Democratic patronage system, lack of oversight and mismanagement; sends
all its records to the House ethics committee for follow-up and opens its
files to the Justice Department.


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