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00:00Good evening. The word abscam might not have the ring to it that Watergate had. It won't
00:09knock a president out of office, but it sure has some congressmen shaking in their boots
00:13and maybe even worrying about going to jail.
00:15I was raised during Watergate and the Vietnam War, so the concept of politicians being crooked
00:20and duplicitous was not a new one in the Tapper House. But the concept of politicians acting
00:26out of greed burst into my brain when I was just 10, and our congressmen in Philly, along
00:33with five colleagues and a U.S. senator, were busted for bribes.
00:38The story was wild. FBI agents dressing in cheap costumes to look like Arab sheikhs offering
00:44wads of cash for favors. It was comical. One exploding cigar away from Wile E. Coyote.
00:52More than 40 years later, I went back to look into abscam, and I came to wonder, when
00:56it comes to rooting out corruption, do the FBI's ends always justify the means? Is there
01:04a point where the quest to find it crosses over into entrapment?
01:23In August 2024, Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, resigned after he was convicted
01:30of 16 counts in a corruption case. He was later sentenced to 11 years in prison. Also
01:37that same month, Congressman George Santos, Republican of New York, admitted to filing
01:42fraudulent FEC reports, embezzling funds from campaign donors, stealing identities, obtaining
01:48unemployment benefits through fraud, and on and on. With each scandal, our distrust
01:53in government deepens. But believe it or not, there was a time when skepticism of our government
01:58ran even deeper than it does today.
02:03Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, fresh off Watergate, trust in government officials
02:08was at an all-time low.
02:10People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
02:15The operation totally fell off the cliff when Americans found out the FBI had conducted
02:19a sting operation on the nation's politicians that worked way too well.
02:25There is a new word in the American political vocabulary this morning. The word is abscam.
02:31Eight members of Congress are involved. Some sources say there might be a ninth.
02:35In the dawn of hidden video cameras, undercover agents offered cash bribes to members of Congress,
02:40which had these guys literally stuffing wads of hundreds into their pants pockets, all
02:46caught on tape. The FBI had tested the system, and our politicians had failed that test.
02:58No sooner were Americans finding out just how many politicians accepted bribes than
03:02they also found out the weird stuff the FBI had done to bribe them.
03:07Seven members of Congress were lured before hidden television cameras by undercover agents
03:11posing as representatives of an Arab sheik.
03:14The abscam story and the investigation is so ridiculous.
03:21Ridiculous enough to inspire a $40 million crime film that was mainly a black comedy.
03:26Put a camera in there, and then we can get a clear shot of the couch where we can put
03:30the congressman.
03:30That's right. That's the idea.
03:33Abscam was the real American hustle, with as many costume changes and as much dramatic
03:37dialogue as the Oscar-nominated film.
03:42Abscam was one of the most significant political corruption investigations and prosecutions
03:48in American history.
03:50It was an undercover operation in which the FBI made use of a con man who placed a number
03:57of public officials in situations where it became attractive to them to take bribes.
04:04The FBI survived Watergate, so it was time for the FBI to make a showing.
04:10Today, teams of FBI agents, numbering more than 100, confronted as many of the public
04:15officials as they could find with the evidence against them.
04:18This is going to be something. This is like, there's going to be a time in Congress before
04:22abscam and after abscam.
04:24It was huge. It was really, really huge, because the names that were being bandied about were
04:29people who were highly respected members of Congress.
04:32John Gen Redd.
04:33Congressman Ossie Myers.
04:35Congressman John Murphy.
04:36Ray Lederer.
04:37Frank Thompson.
04:39Senator Harrison Williams.
04:40Everyone was surprised about the scope of this.
04:44I had no intent, never had intent, to sell my office as a member of Congress.
04:49I know of no wrongdoing that I have done or the congressional office that I serve in.
04:53I deny any wrongful involvement with the FBI abscam operation.
04:58These denials would end poorly, because for the first time in American history, these
05:01bribes were all caught on tape.
05:04Give me your finger.
05:06If you want to throw another $50,000 in there for lying things up, I'll do it.
05:10That's your thing.
05:11Lying to us in this business in Boston, where it's the same way there in Washington.
05:15I got lashed in the blood, and I'll tell you in a goddamn minute.
05:20It was humiliating.
05:23It's an embarrassment for the country.
05:24When you really get into abscam, you come away with two feelings.
05:28On the one hand, you can be amused and befuddled at how on earth they were able to pull this
05:34off.
05:35And on the other hand, it truly is depressing.
05:37You get the feeling that, you know, how far would this go?
05:40There's no one uncorruptible.
05:42I think there's a third important question when it comes to abscam.
05:46Politicians are public servants, expected to forego higher salaries of the private sector
05:51that they might think they deserve, but also required to raise campaign money.
05:56Does that, combined with a hefty dose of ego and ambition, pave the way for corruption?
06:03How are we doing?
06:06Freshman Republican Senator Larry Pressler of South Dakota was approached as part of
06:10Operation Abscam, but he has the rare distinction of turning those bribes down.
06:15$50,000 is no problem putting that kind of money out.
06:18I don't care what you want to call it.
06:19You want to call it a campaign contribution, you want to call it, I don't, you know.
06:23You can't make a commitment to do anything in these campaigns, and I would feel intellectually
06:28honest doing that.
06:31Did you ever think to yourself, whew, glad I didn't take the bait?
06:33I have said, whew, once or twice.
06:38Politicians need money.
06:39That's the nature of the game.
06:40A United States senator has got to raise money, and that's where the difficulty comes in.
06:46Before the Abscam bribe was offered, or after, were there times that you were offered money
06:53that you felt uncomfortable about it?
06:54Well, I was constantly being offered campaign contributions, or people would say to me,
07:00you know, we can raise a lot of money if we get this bill through, or stuff like that.
07:04It wouldn't be a direct offer, but it would be a suggestion that there was a lot of money
07:08out there to be had.
07:11Looking back on it now, do you think that what the FBI did was a legitimate sting operation,
07:18or do you think it was entrapment?
07:20I am kind of offended that as a United States senator, without any suspicions, that my government
07:25tested me.
07:26On the other hand, I did the test right.
07:30My theme when I first ran in 74 was clean up Congress.
07:35Washington is viewed very negatively in my home state of South Dakota and in the Midwest.
07:40It is viewed as a kind of a sin city, corruption-filled city, and to some extent it is.
07:49But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
07:51Before we can discuss whether Abscam was a necessary test on our elected officials, we
07:55have to understand Operation Abscam itself, and the first thing to know is Abscam was
08:02not planned.
08:04The FBI fell into the ruse following a bizarre series of events that came out of a chance
08:08encounter with a very strange character.
08:12Melvin Weinberg, a convicted swindler who served as the FBI's undercover informant.
08:18They walked in to receive their money.
08:19I mean, they didn't have to walk in.
08:21They could have walked right out again.
08:22I kind of describe Mel as an Erdewell con man.
08:27He was balding and had an unapologetic comb over, patent leather shoes.
08:31He was pretty well portrayed in the movie, frankly.
08:34I told you Mel was a character.
08:37Christian Bale's performance of a character based on him in American Hustle was Oscar
08:41nominated, coming as it did with additions of girth and a pliable quaff.
08:46Without his sort of machinations, there never would have been Abscam.
08:51Mel Weinberg, he was sort of a natural born con man.
08:54His father was in the glass business.
08:56As a young man, Mel Weinberg would go late at night and break the windows of storefronts.
09:03The only way to sell glass is to people need it.
09:07He was a scammer from the get go.
09:10And then later on, turned it into his career and his identity.
09:15But after decades of successful scamming, he eventually did get caught and charged with
09:19fraud, which is when Mel made the FBI an offer they couldn't refuse.
09:25He said, I'll tell you what, there's a lot of fish out there and I'm small fish.
09:30But he said, I can help you reel in some big fish.
09:33You can't investigate and convict criminals with angels.
09:38So the FBI takes a gamble.
09:40They'll let this con man try to earn his freedom by conducting stings on white collar criminals.
09:45But they had no idea how far that would go.
09:48It started in a very humble way.
09:50The object was only to recover stolen art and securities.
09:54And to everyone's amazement, he was involved in the investigation.
09:59Three years later, it resulted in the conviction of six United States congressmen and the United
10:06States senator.
10:12It's the late 1970s and Washington, D.C. is still reeling from Watergate.
10:16The FBI is desperate to restore public trust.
10:22That's when Stanley Brand took the job of general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives.
10:28What was D.C. like at the time?
10:30This is the post Watergate era.
10:32So as I tell my law students when I'm teaching so-called political law ethics, I tell them
10:39that Watergate is like the fall in the Bible.
10:45Everything after the fall is different and everything after Watergate is different.
10:51It was a different FBI.
10:53You had a new generation of much more aggressive, ambitious FBI agents looking to do things
10:59a little bit differently.
11:01And therefore the idea was, hey, we're no longer just worried about bank robberies.
11:06Now we're really worried about white collar crime.
11:09They need somebody to help them put it all together.
11:13And that's where they connect with Mel Weinberg.
11:16Originally, this mission had nothing to do with politicians.
11:20His charge was to retrieve stolen art.
11:23Mel told the FBI they needed some compelling bait to lure in art thieves.
11:28And he had the perfect, if culturally insensitive, character in mind.
11:33Mel mentioned to me that one of his con schemes that he was thinking about was representing
11:38a wealthy Arab.
11:39In the late 70s and early 80s, we saw the oil embargo.
11:46These prices, in our judgment, are unworkable.
11:50The Arab oil producing companies had launched an oil boycott of the United States that sent
11:55the price of oil skyrocketing and made Arab officials and oil producers fabulously wealthy.
12:02And so there was an impression that, yeah, these people have a lot of money.
12:07The main depiction of Arabs was this wealthy, very rich sheikh.
12:13Sheikh essentially translates to a wise elderly person.
12:17But if we looked at pop culture, Hollywood, that's not exactly what Americans thought
12:22of when they heard the word sheikh.
12:24No, they were probably more likely to think of something like this from The Bionic Woman.
12:31Where our hero is forced to belly dance for a tyrannical sheikh.
12:36This game relied on playing to people's prejudices.
12:39Definitely not the most sensitive strategy.
12:43So we created Abdul Enterprises.
12:47The ruse was that he was the representative of a fabulously wealthy Middle Eastern sheikh.
12:54That he had money to spend on buying stolen art.
12:58But the FBI knew they needed the sheikh himself in a room with the art thieves to seal the deal.
13:03I looked around the office and I said, I don't see any Arab-speaking people anywhere here.
13:09So I went to Mike Dennehy and I said, hey Mike, how would you like to do an undercover
13:13stint as an Arab?
13:16The first agent that they got to play the Arab sheikh spoke not a single word of Arabic.
13:20He was just making grunting noises to replicate that he was speaking Arabic, which was particularly
13:26outrageous.
13:27He had a beard already, so he said, let me go over to the west side and see if I can
13:31find some Arab garments or something like that.
13:35He went out and bought a $37 robe and headdress from a theatrical company.
13:41They end up with a costume that doesn't fit the guy.
13:45And they put some sunglasses on him and said, yeah, he's a sheikh.
13:49Casting a bearded Irish guy from New Jersey as a fake Arab sheikh inspired the Hollywood
13:53version of the story.
13:54He's not a real Arab.
13:55No, I'm Mexican from Tucson.
13:59Yes, sometimes the truth is even stranger than fiction.
14:04It just looked like a lot of bumbling around.
14:07They didn't know what they were doing.
14:10They may not be ready for prime time, but the roles were cast and the plot was in place.
14:14And the FBI was ready with their first mark.
14:18At the first meeting that we had, there was an attorney trying to be somebody among organized
14:23crime figures.
14:24The first meeting was so crazy.
14:26The entire scene is out of a bad movie.
14:29They were at the plaza.
14:30It was a corner room overlooking Fifth Avenue and Central Park.
14:35Mel Weinberg wanted to order these, you know, very fancy foods, you know, get some champagne
14:40and alcohol.
14:42But the FBI's budgets didn't allow for it.
14:44Sitting on the table was several items to eat, including stuff from a Jewish deli.
14:51And Mel, you know, he said, what the hell?
14:54Why would you have Jewish food at an Arab meeting?
14:59Mel Weinberg lead into it.
15:00He decided to justify it and said the sheikh or the emir would never be able to eat these
15:07foods back in his homeland.
15:08And therefore, when he comes to New York City, he has to have New York deli.
15:12The whole thing was so comical that we had to take turns going to the men's room and
15:15laugh it out.
15:16So if we could come back and act normal.
15:20It's so chaotic that you can't help but laugh.
15:23It's like the Three Stooges or something.
15:27So that was our debut for bringing out the Arab.
15:32And thank God we had an idiot there who thought it was great.
15:37You know, I came away from that thinking that was possible.
15:41We can go out and do that.
15:42Miraculously, the dress rehearsal succeeded from the FBI's perspective.
15:47You know, this trope was so easily accepted by everyone in the room, so much so that they
15:52continue to use this plot line for other things to come and eventually work their way
15:57from other hustlers to politicians.
16:01The turning point was when the undercover operatives for the FBI met Mayor Angelo Arricchetti,
16:09the mayor of Camden, New Jersey.
16:12A target himself of the sting, Arricchetti fell so hard for the ruse, he became an inadvertent
16:18assistant to the FBI.
16:21And they gave the undercover operatives a list of political figures who could be bought.
16:28Why did Arricchetti want to be in that position?
16:31Because he got a cut of all these deals.
16:34It was in his own interest to bring in politicians.
16:39That's when they realized, wait, this is something else altogether.
16:43Hang on to your seatbelt.
16:48The FBI's Operation Ab Scam was designed to catch white collar criminals, but it took
16:54a turn into politics when conman Mel Weinberg met a man who had been called corrupt to his
16:59bones, Mayor Angelo Arricchetti of, where else?
17:04New Jersey.
17:05In 1976, New Jersey voters vote to allow gambling within the borders of Atlantic City.
17:14Atlantic City's first casino opened its doors.
17:17This was a huge deal.
17:19Everybody's trying to get a foot in the door.
17:21Mel came to me and said the mayor of Camden would possibly be interested in helping the
17:26Arab gain some business opportunities in New Jersey.
17:31Arricchetti is a prominent figure in New Jersey.
17:33He knew every politician in New Jersey and many beyond that.
17:37He was an example of an urban boss political machine.
17:43The mayor had handed the fictional shake a list of politicians who might be interested
17:48in his illicit investments.
17:50But in reality, Arricchetti was unwittingly handing the FBI a list of potential targets
17:56for their new political bribery stamp.
17:59So finally, Ab Scam goes into politics, but not to catch politicians who had accepted
18:05bribes to try to sting everyone.
18:08Arricchetti thought might be open to bribes with the right conditioning.
18:12And given that serpentine relationship between money and Congress, that started to look like
18:17it might be pretty much everyone.
18:21This is Special Agent Anthony Amoroso, Jr., Federal Bureau of Investigation.
18:26In front of me is $50,000 in $10,000 packets each.
18:34And with that, the stakes began ratcheting up for the whole operation.
18:37It was a bit of a change in cast.
18:40That's when they brought in Anthony Amoroso.
18:42They swapped out Mike Bennehy for an actual Arabic speaking agent.
18:46The Ab Scam team was able to get a hold of a townhouse on W Street.
18:51It's a brick house, two story.
18:53You would never guess what was going on was going to change Congress.
18:56Hey, why don't you sit over there?
19:00It would be more comfortable.
19:01They don't give us desks like this at work.
19:04Huh?
19:05We don't get sofas like this at work.
19:06We used to sit in them.
19:10This was really an evolution.
19:11It started out where they were targeting people that they had suspicions, but pretty soon
19:16they thought just everybody in Congress was crooked.
19:21In order to get congressmen, they created a crime for a congressman to break.
19:25We represent two Arabs, and the problem is we have certain people who want to bring a
19:31denouncement to the country.
19:33The storyline that they had built was that the Sheikh wanted to essentially buy off these
19:39politicians in exchange for immigration favors.
19:42A congressman could introduce something called a personal relief bill.
19:47That would give legal residence to the name on the personal relief bill.
19:52And it was something that made sense at the time because of all of the political turmoil
19:56that was happening back in the Middle East.
19:58It became, hey, this Amir is worried about revolution in his country.
20:03We need to get somebody into the country.
20:05Can you help us?
20:06And we're prepared to make it worth your while.
20:08Give me a figure.
20:09If you want to throw another $50,000 in there and line things up, I'll pay you.
20:13That's your thing.
20:16One of the things that's interesting about corruption cases is that it exists within
20:20this context that politicians constantly need to be raising money.
20:25Yeah, the construction of the ruse was to entice members of Congress into the trap with
20:33something that they were always very interested in, which is how can we bring business to
20:37our districts?
20:39The objective was to secure evidence of bribery.
20:44That objective was hardly mission impossible.
20:47Soon congressmen began filtering through the townhouse, declaring their loose morals on
20:51camera as if no one was watching.
20:54But of course, someone was.
20:57Spend it well.
20:58It's a real pleasure.
20:59It's a real pleasure.
21:00Okay.
21:01How's Myers from Chile?
21:02He was the one who notoriously said, oh, you're going about this the right way, you know.
21:07Let me just say this to you.
21:08You're going about it the right way.
21:09I'm going to tell you something real simple and short.
21:10Money talks in this business and bullshit walks.
21:11It works the same way back in Washington.
21:12Money talks in this business and bullshit walks.
21:13Money talks, bullshit walks.
21:14Money talks, bullshit walks, I believe.
21:15And that became almost, you know, almost one for the ages.
21:29Of the seven people from Congress, five of them were from Philadelphia and New Jersey
21:35and New York.
21:36And Democrats were in charge there.
21:39There's only one Republican, Representative Kelly from Florida, stuffed the money in his
21:43pants.
21:44I'll tell you what, don't put that in there.
21:45Pat it down, says, does it show?
21:46I mean, it was it was almost a kind of a buffoonery.
21:57You have Congressman Ozzie Myers saying money talks, bullshit walks.
22:00You have Congressman Kelly stuffing cash in his pants and asking if it can be seen.
22:05I mean, it's pretty damning.
22:06Right.
22:07It was damning.
22:09But they get drawn into this.
22:12And you think they just got a raw deal?
22:14Yes.
22:15But how do you keep the sleazy people out of Congress or that?
22:18I'm not sure you do.
22:19I mean, when people rob the bank, they don't say we need new laws to stop people from robbing
22:25the banks.
22:26They prosecute the people who rob the bank under existing law.
22:30Spoken like a true lawyer for Congress.
22:32But is he right?
22:34Even if good politicians are one offer away from the dark side, when does enticing them
22:39become entrapment?
22:49As Operation Abscam continued, the FBI had undercover agents offering cash bribes to
22:53members of Congress in exchange for legislation.
22:56How are you doing?
22:59Good to see you.
23:01John Genrette was a liberal Kennedy guy who got elected from South Carolina.
23:07His base was African-American and a lot of poor white farmers.
23:13So a lot of working class basically looked out for the little people.
23:18They approached John Genrette, said, we're going to put a defunct factory back to work,
23:23put 400 people back to work in his district.
23:26And we want your help because this Arab sheik wants to get permanent residence.
23:30And will you help us?
23:32All that was perfectly legitimate.
23:33And John Genrette said, yes.
23:35What is not legal is then accepting money.
23:39We're talking about $50,000 now, $50,000 when this thing is introduced.
23:46John Genrette grew up very poor.
23:49They owned a mule and not a car when he was a child.
23:53He was determined to not ever go back to that kind of poverty.
23:58And remember, $50,000 in 1980 is worth more than $180,000 today.
24:05The lure was so attractive and purposely constructed that way that I think John thought, well,
24:13I don't want to turn this down and have my constituents think I'm not in favor of doing
24:19these kinds of projects in the district.
24:21John Genrette turned them down four times.
24:24If I take it, I'm going to take it as a—or have a lawyer take it for the cover of my ass.
24:31And then accepted a loan from an intermediary later on.
24:36The line that John Genrette was famous for was—
24:40I understand why you—
24:41I've got larceny in my blood.
24:43I'd take it in a goddamn minute.
24:45I've got larceny in my blood.
24:51Were they too aggressive in your view?
24:53Yes, very aggressive.
24:55In a way that you think was unfair?
24:57I think it was almost bordering on unconstitutional.
25:02There was no evidence that any member had or would commit a crime.
25:09And yet they set up this elaborate ruse to see if they could lure members of Congress
25:14into the trap.
25:16The assertion is, if these seven had been out there collecting bribes, developing a
25:22reputation, then have at it.
25:25Exactly.
25:26But this wasn't that.
25:27This was—
25:28It was a setup.
25:29Throwing a wallet on the sidewalk and seeing who grabbed it.
25:31Right.
25:32Well, it was more than that.
25:33It was more insidious than that.
25:34They set it up in a way that would be the most attractive to members of Congress.
25:40But we shouldn't forget that not everyone tasted the biblical fruit.
25:46So, it's 1979, you're a first-term senator.
25:50Why do you think that they went after you?
25:52Well, I didn't have much money, and I was an easy target, and I don't know for sure.
26:00He's the worst fundraiser on the planet.
26:04He hated it, and hates it with a passion.
26:07He had no personal money, and his campaign was in debt.
26:12The FBI informant figured, God, if anybody's gonna take $50,000, it's gonna be this guy.
26:19They said they had some friends in Saudi Arabia, and they wanted to come to the United States.
26:23And they offered you money?
26:24They held out the prospect of money.
26:26And what did you say?
26:28I said, no, I would not want to do anything illegal.
26:32I can't promise that I would introduce X bill for X person if something happens.
26:37I mean, that would be something that you wouldn't want either.
26:40Washington, D.C. is a town that gets a lot of money, and the problem is getting it legally.
26:46Right.
26:47He did have that Boy Scout, not just image, but feel to him.
26:53When you're in the room with him, he looked like an innocent in a den of politics.
27:02Senator Pressler and then-New Jersey Congressman and later Governor James Florio aced their
27:07ethics tests.
27:08But how did these other guys fail so spectacularly?
27:12After all, it does not take a genius to sniff out a fake shake in a cheap costume.
27:17It was this almost unholy combination of overwhelming greed and overwhelming amounts of money that
27:22just blinded them to what might have been an easily detectable undercover operation.
27:31At some point, I think it just became overwhelming for the FBI.
27:35They were constantly getting calls about the sheik's money.
27:38We want to introduce you to this person.
27:40Would you meet with that person about this deal?
27:43And they were reaching a point of exhaustion that they made a decision to to bring it to
27:48a close.
27:49With enough bad behavior on film to release C-SPAN after hours, the FBI was confident
27:54they could get the crooked congressman to confess.
27:57They just needed to confront each one individually before word of the operation spread.
28:02This is what we've been doing.
28:03We've got you on tape.
28:06And the bet was that at least some of them would want to come in and plead guilty.
28:12The FBI was about to arrest six congressmen and one senator at the precise moment when
28:20one of the FBI agents came to the office and said the story was playing on the front page
28:25of The New York Times.
28:27On Groundhog Day, 1980, my colleague said he had received a call from a reporter who
28:35was writing a story that involved John Genrette accepting bribe money from an Arab sheik.
28:42We played a lot of jokes on each other back in those days and I thought he was pulling
28:47at my leg.
28:49We called John Genrette's house and John Genrette's wife Rita answered and said, I can't talk
28:55right now, FBI agents are here.
28:58More than 30 people got a visit from an FBI agent over the weekend.
29:01It's already being called the biggest scandal since Watergate.
29:04People were stunned, not so much that congressmen were corrupt, but that they had been caught
29:09being corrupt.
29:12I think members of Congress thought they almost enjoyed a kind of immunity.
29:17People on the Hill were completely outraged.
29:20The argument was that the FBI was going out and seducing people into illegal behavior
29:27that they would not otherwise have been doing.
29:30And that would be the main question presented in the many public court battles to follow.
29:36Did the FBI go too far?
29:38Were members of Congress coaxed or enticed or entrapped?
29:42But those were not the only questions on the public's mind.
29:45What would have happened if the undercover operation had just kept going?
29:50Who else would they have caught?
29:52Tom Puccio, the prosecutor who was overseeing Abscam, he sort of joked he was afraid that
29:58if it just kept going and going, they'd wind up with half of Congress.
30:08Today was just the windup of the undercover phase of the Abscam investigation.
30:13Once the story of Operation Abscam broke, the whole world learned that white FBI agents
30:18had been cosplaying as cash-rich Arab sheikhs.
30:21It provoked what was almost a diplomatic incident, because the press reported that Abscam-
30:29Stands for Arab Scam.
30:32They later said that it was not Arab Scam, but it was called Abdul Scam, Abdul based
30:36off of the name of the sheikh that was created.
30:39Nonetheless, it still had the same impression.
30:43Abscam provided like a litany of content.
30:47SNL put out this one parody.
30:51And they're just making noises as if they're speaking Arabic.
30:56We're now mocking cultures and traditions.
31:00The FBI was doing it in the highest level of government and was doing it and TV could
31:03do it.
31:04That's disheartening.
31:05But the question remained, was this entrapment?
31:09Those Abscam trials continue today.
31:11Williams pleaded not guilty on nine counts.
31:14As the trials of members of Congress began, many claimed entrapment as their defense.
31:20I'm sure that the American people will not stand still for what the FBI did to me and
31:25what the Justice Department has done to this country.
31:28What they had to show was the quid pro quo.
31:31This money is for this piece of legislation.
31:35Temporal proximity between the campaign contribution and the official act is not enough.
31:41You have to show an explicit quid pro quo.
31:44Did you think any of the Abscam defendants were explicit enough that it was actually
31:51bribery?
31:53No.
31:55In a lot of these cases, there was no direct evidence of the receipt of the money.
32:01Does the presence of Larry Pressler and what he did and what he said not undermine your
32:06argument?
32:07His saying, I can't do that, that would be illegal.
32:09Does that not suggest that there was a different path?
32:13I believe it was a different path.
32:15Said Senator Pressler, I turned down an illegal contribution.
32:19Whatever have we come to, if that's considered heroic.
32:23So Walter Cronkite called you a hero, but you kind of rejected the hero label.
32:27Yes, I said, you cannot be a hero for turning down a bribe.
32:32It's just too low a bar for the hero stature.
32:35That's right.
32:36The hero stature, I rejected it.
32:38Pressler has a point.
32:40Celebrating public officials for not committing crimes seems a rather weak standard.
32:45When you do a legitimate sting operation, you're catching someone already committing
32:49a crime and you're just getting them to step into it.
32:53In this case, the FBI was creating a crime that did not exist.
32:58And that, in my book, would be entrapment and I think a very poor use of taxpayers'
33:07money.
33:08Jenrette's lawyer says the FBI knew the congressman had a drinking problem and they took advantage
33:13of that when they tried to get him drunk before offering the money.
33:16I wish I hadn't been there.
33:18I wish I hadn't had the drinks.
33:19The question in all the trials where entrapment was asserted as a defense was, is this something
33:26they wouldn't have done?
33:27The problem they faced was when those tapes were played in court.
33:32You came back with $15,000.
33:35I like drugs.
33:36I like to gamble.
33:37That's one reason.
33:38That's a good reason.
33:39That's a good reason.
33:43The tapes belied those defenses.
33:45And when people got a look at the tapes, they said, what is this?
33:50And ultimately, no one, but no one, could defend them.
33:55Video was new.
33:57This is the 70s.
33:58By today's standards, it probably would come across as pretty primitive.
34:03But it accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish.
34:05In certain circumstances, I think there is overreach and there's over-criminalization
34:10of politics.
34:12So you know that the public, probably, if polled, would disagree with a lot of what
34:19you're saying, right?
34:20The juries disagree.
34:22The first verdicts in the so-called ab-scam cases.
34:25Guilty on all three counts.
34:27Guilty.
34:2818 convictions.
34:29Congressman Myers indicted in the ab-scam case.
34:31Each received three years in prison.
34:33Angelo Aracheti also received prison terms.
34:36Ed Rett's attorneys intend to appeal his verdict.
34:38Every single person who accepted a bribe on video was convicted.
34:43And every single conviction was upheld on appeal.
34:47As Ben Civilletti said, the attorney general at the time, he said, a picture's worth a
34:50thousand words.
34:52You show a picture of members purportedly accepting briefcases with cash in them on
34:57grainy videotapes, that's really tough evidence in front of a jury.
35:03Are they wrong?
35:04Because, I mean, I think the impression might be, there are a lot of people in Washington
35:09who get away with a lot, and are very sleazy, and misuse and abuse their power, and do favors
35:15for money, and the FBI's probably just scratching the surface.
35:20Do you disagree with that?
35:21I disagree with that.
35:22I think anybody put in a tempting situation, as Justice Frankfurter said, you can't expect
35:26legislators to be people of uncommon courage.
35:28They have to get elected.
35:34We have a great country, but we want to keep it an honest country.
35:37And we have to have some unpleasant little checks on people to keep everybody on the
35:42straight and narrow.
35:44And I may not like the flavor of this, but it's a necessary thing in a democracy with
35:49a lot of people like myself floating around who might be looking for a bribe.
35:52I wasn't.
35:53But I think it keeps the whole place a little more honest.
35:57It's the only thing the FBI can do to catch some of the high flyers.
36:01We just had another conviction for corruption charges, Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey.
36:07So it keeps going on and on.
36:10Yes.
36:13As much as I respect Senator Pressler's hope for a more honest country through more checks
36:18and balances, I'm not sure the reality of that is even possible.
36:22And even if it is, how far will we go to achieve this idealized vision?
36:28Do we want to live in a country where our behavior is secretly being monitored, even
36:32if we haven't done a thing to arouse suspicion?
36:40I'll be right back up.
36:41Okay.
36:42Bye.
36:43See you later.
36:44When the FBI worked with a lifelong con man in a sting operation called Abscam, dangling
36:48cash in front of members of Congress, most of them took the bait.
36:53Fundamentally, Abscam is about greed.
36:56People who are desperately greedy will believe almost anything you tell them if they think
37:01there's a pot of gold at the end.
37:04This is what Mel Weinberg made a living as a government employee because he understood
37:11people were greedy.
37:13His name is Melvin Weinberg.
37:15He's the scam in the Abscam case.
37:18Mel Weinberg, I think, achieved the holy grail of any con man.
37:24This was the ultimate con.
37:26And he helped to pull it off.
37:28The notoriety, though, had one downside, which was his career as a con man was basically
37:35over.
37:36Before his retirement, Mel Weinberg found much success as a con man turned FBI informant.
37:42And for the ones that did not succumb to his elaborate scam, they did just fine.
37:47So one of the FBI agents came out and campaigned for you?
37:50Yes.
37:51John Good is his name.
37:52I felt like what I did was so clear cut that he, at his own expense, volunteered to come
37:57out to South Dakota to campaign for me.
37:58And he said, this is an honest man.
38:01That's pretty cool.
38:02Yeah, it was kind of cool.
38:04Did you see the movie?
38:05Yes, I did.
38:06What do you think of it?
38:07Well, I thought it was OK.
38:08I thought it was very good.
38:09Well done.
38:10Not enough Pressler.
38:11And you should have been played by by Brad Pitt, perhaps.
38:21Despite Pressler's integrity, notwithstanding, there remained legitimate reasons to question
38:24the abscam sting in November 1980, two of the abscam cases involving the Philadelphia
38:30City Council president and a city councilman were thrown out by a federal judge who ruled
38:34the case entrapment, though that judge was overruled by the Court of Appeals, which reinstated
38:40their convictions.
38:42Perhaps the best argument that abscam was entrapment came when the new attorney general
38:46civil eddy issued stricter guidelines in 1981 governing undercover operations before
38:53they were more general, like don't engage in entrapment.
38:57And after it, I think they started tightening it up substantively in terms of what threshold
39:03of suspicion was needed before an undercover operation could be mounted.
39:09It established a new review committee that would have to review potential bribes and
39:14must believe that the target of the sting is engaging, has engaged or is likely to engage
39:20in illegal activity.
39:22As for what the American people thought of abscam, that was a mixed bag.
39:26Law and order types were happy that crooked politicians had been caught on tape, but privacy
39:30advocates worried that hidden cameras were coming for their living rooms next.
39:35The only clear loser was Washington, D.C., where no one seemed to learn anything.
39:41You would think that abscam would be like the last time there would be corruption charges
39:46against a member of the House or Senate because it was such a big deal.
39:50But then, of course, not.
39:52Is it just the nature of because the campaign, because politicians need money, that this
39:58is just going to keep going on?
40:00I'm afraid it's just going to keep going on.
40:03And we still have the same problems today we had then.
40:06I think Washington, D.C. has a corroding influence on people who come here little by little.
40:11We've come to accept more and more dishonesty.
40:13Washington, D.C. is a cesspool of money because of all the power here.
40:19And if you want to get your portion of the pie, you got to tell people that you can get
40:24them their rightful share of the Washington, D.C. cesspool pie.
40:30Cesspool pie does not sound very appetizing.
40:32No, it doesn't.
40:35Look, the FBI is still the FBI.
40:40There are laws in this country.
40:42People violate the laws.
40:44And in recent years, we've seen people who can't resist that temptation.
40:50It's human nature.
40:51You're not going to stop it.
40:54These things are cyclical.
40:55They go on.
40:57People are always going to try to influence Congress.
41:01I think we haven't learned yet how to control the power of money with members of Congress
41:06who need the money to campaign and are not paid that much money to begin with.
41:11And that corruptive power, we still haven't found a way to control.
41:15As a kid, all I knew about Abscam was that our local congressman, Ossie Myers, was a
41:20crook.
41:21I wanted to interview him for the show, but I couldn't because Myers had gone back to
41:25prison, this time for stuffing ballot boxes on behalf of his political consulting clients.
41:31How many of today's elected officials might be successfully stung if the FBI attempted
41:35Abscam again?
41:37They might be too sophisticated to tell a fake operative or a fictitious sheik that
41:41quote money talks and bullshit walks, but that doesn't mean they don't think it.
41:47I guarantee we have not seen the last member of Congress go to prison for taking bribes.