Looking for informants involved in white-collar crimes to help it make criminal cases, the bureau conscripted Melvin Weinberg, international con artist and convicted swindler, who was then facing a prison sentence for fraud. In exchange for a sentence of probation, Weinberg helped set up a phony company known as Abdul Enterprises, purportedly owned by a fictitious Arab sheikh. The cover story claimed that “Abdul” was a multimillionaire who wanted to withdraw his money from Islamic banks (which, by religious proscriptions, paid no interest) and invest it in profitable American business ventures.
Among the first notable figures caught in Abscam was Angelo Errichetti, the former mayor of Camden, New Jersey, and one of the most powerful politicians in the state. He acceptedpayoffs from “Abdul's representative” (Weinberg) in exchange for assisting the sheikh to obtain an Atlantic City casino license. Errichetti later introduced Weinberg to senior U.S. Senator Harrison Arlington Williams, Jr., New Jersey's best-known political figure, who, along with three partners, proposed a lucrative investment for the sheikh's money. His group would borrow $100 million from Abdul and buy the nation's largest titanium mine, located in Virginia. Williams, as one of the highest-ranking Democrats in the Senate, could channel government and defense contracts to his partners. He knew that his participation in the deal had to be hidden, since using his office to help obtain titanium contracts would be an obvious federal crime. He did not know that his meetings with Weinberg were being tape-recorded. In Weinberg's words, Senator Williams “had been left standing bare-assed in Macy's window.” In 1979, Errichetti was told that “Abdul” and an ersatz emir named “Yassir” were concerned about political unrest in their country and wanted to remain in the United States. Errichetti arranged meetings with two congressmen from Philadelphia, Michael Myers and Raymond Lederer, who pledged the use of their offices to help Abdul and Yassir obtain asylum. The price was $100,000 per congressman, which was later “marked down” to $50,000. The FBI set up hidden microphones and cameras in a hotel suite at New York's Kennedy Airport to record the transaction. In a scene that would become familiar to tens of millions of television viewers, Myers boasted of his congressional influence and accepted a briefcase containing the $50,000 payoff. Lederer's performance mirrored that of Myers. He promised to push a bill on behalf of Abdul and Yassir and calmly took a $50,000 bribe.
Representative Frank Thompson of New York was the next to be caught in the Abscam net, accepting the $50,000 bribe and promising to recruit more congressmen. John Murphy of New York followed and, after accepting the usual bribe, made a pitch for a $100 million loan so that he could secretly purchase a Puerto Rican shipping line. The next congressman to take the bait was John Jenrette, Jr., of South Carolina, who was a member of the important House Appropriations Committee. When asked by an undercover agent whether he would accept the sheikh's bribe, he declared, “I've got larceny in my blood. I'd take it in a goddamn minute.”
The final Abscam catch was Rep. Richard Kelly, who was accompanied by three intermediaries:
attorney William Rosenberg, who was reportedly looking for a cut of the loot; accountant Stanley Weisz, who claimed he could get Abdul forged gold certificates; and convicted gangster Gino Ciuzio, who claimed that he “owned” Kelly.
The sting operation ended shortly thereafter, to the disappointment of Weinberg. He lamented, “I wish we coulda done more . . . I think we coulda got at least a third of the whole Congress.”
When the Abscam tapes were shown publicly, seven members of Congress had disgraced themselves in front of a shocked and disgusted nation. Each would pay a heavy price for their crimes despite the excuses they offered for their behavior. Myers claimed that, although he accepted the money, it was not really a bribe, since he did not intend to do anything for the Arabs. Despite his additional claim that he was drunk at the meeting, he was sentenced to three concurrent 3-year prison terms. Lederer was the only one of the indicted House members to be reelected in 1980. Like Myers, he was convicted of bribery, received three 3-year sentences, and resigned his seat after the House Ethics Committee recommended his expulsion. Harrison Williams, after vociferously fighting the charges against him, became the first incumbent senator to be convicted of a crime since 1905. He received a 3-year prison term and, facing certain expulsion, resigned from the Senate. Thompson and Jenrette received 3-year and 2 year prison terms, respectively. In an odd postscript to Jenrette's case, his estranged wife, who recently had gained her own measure of notoriety by posing nude in Playboy, announced that she had found $25,000 stashed in a shoe in her husband's closet. Some of the hundred-dollar bills were traced to Abscam.
Of all the dubious defenses employed, none was more ridiculous than that offered by Richard Kelly, who maintained that he only pretended to take the money as part of a one-man undercover investigation of corruption that he was conducting, and self-righteously blamed the FBI for “blowing his cover.” One reporter asked Kelly whether he was planning to plead insanity. Kelly received the lightest sentence-6 to 18 months confinement. Despite its success, Abscam remains one of the most controversial law enforcement operations in recent American history, for at least two reasons. First, the central role of Melvin Weinberg, a career criminal, represented a troubling strategy on the part of the FBI. According to Weinberg, “There's only one difference between me and the Congressmen I met on this case. The public pays them a salary for stealing.” In a sworn statement, Weinberg's wife alleged that he had perjured himself and had siphoned some of the Abscam bribe money into his own pocket. In a mysterious turn two weeks later, she committed suicide. The second, and more fundamental, issue is whether enticed bribery is an appropriate law enforcement technique for apprehending white-collar criminals or whether it constitutes unlawful entrapment. When entrapment is used for those on the social fringe, it generates little critical attention. Abscam suddenly questioned the fairness of undercover tactics and the moral acceptability of enticed bribery to solicit crimes that otherwise would not have been committed. Regardless of whether the Abscam defendants were tricked or beguiled, one thing is certain. The behavior they exhibited is wholly indefensible.
