Why Smith Can't Recant

[joeybee12]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2092153/

Why Smith Can't Recant
They've got him on tape.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Saturday, Dec. 6, 2003, at 11:32 AM PT


A taped interview with a Kalamazoo radio station virtually proves that Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich, has morphed from a whistleblower into an uncooperative witness in a potential bribery investigation.

To review: Late last month, Smith said that "bribes and special deals were offered to convince members to vote yes" on the Bush administration's Medicare prescription benefit bill. Smith is retiring from Congress at the end of this term, and his son is running for the GOP nomination to succeed him. Smith said that somebody—he wouldn't specify who, but an Associated Press report said it was "House GOP leaders," and a Smith press release issued the day after the vote seemed to hint it was House Speaker Dennis Hastert or Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson —"made offers of extensive financial campaign support and endorsements for my son Brad who is running for my seat." Smith, a fiscal conservative, resisted the offer (or offers) and voted against the Medicare bill. A few days later, Robert Novak wrote—in a column that Smith, speaking via his chief of staff, told Chatterbox was "basically accurate"—that Smith had been told Brad's campaign would receive $100,000 from "business interests" if Smith voted yes. If that really happened, then Smith was the recipient of an unambiguous attempted bribe, punishable under federal law.

Until this past Thursday, Smith stood by his accusations, but declined to identify the person (or persons) he was accusing, except to say that it wasn't Hastert, Thompson, or Majority Leader Tom DeLay. For his part, Hastert is quoted saying in the Dec. 6 New York Times (in a beat-sweetener by Carl Hulse about Hastert's emergence as a forceful legislative leader), "e didn't give away a dime."

[DeepModem Mom]

1. The article's Corleone comparison is right-on... nt

[alfredo]

2. Folks, this is a pass around article.

I will make sure it is in the in boxes of my friends, and on various BBS's.