School for Scandal

The hearings on the Bobby Baker case have resumed in the Senate Rules Committee. Though the election is over, Democrats are perhaps understandably reluctant to tarnish the shining mandate won in November. It is clear now that the committee will restrict itself to Baker's financial exploits outside the Senate and that it will not investigate his dealings with Senate members. The Rules Committee thus continues to act with indifference toward the issue of the misuse of privilege within the Senate. Throughout the year-long investigation, the lid has been firmly shut on this Pandora's box.

Last October, Bobby Baker was sued by a former partner for the misuse of his political influence in a business transaction. His resignation must have aroused regret and apprehension in the Democratic leaders in the Senate. They trusted Baker because he was a child of the Senate. A page boy at the age of fourteen and later assistant to the minority secretary, Baker learned the subtle, often devious, use of power.

As a trusted lieutenant of majority leader Johnson, he plumbed shifting sentiments on bills, relayed the party line, and prodded the recalcitrant. He knew where to find all the legislative snags and how to use craft and tact to steer around them. As an intermediary in the legislative process, he felt the pressures of various outside lobbyists upon him. Baker knew how to manipulate these interests to achieve the desired ends. Because of this instinct, Baker became an indispensable and trusted instrument of party policy. The subtle and not so subtle use of influence was a game Baker played with the finesse of his mentor, of the Byrds, the Russells, and the Kerrs.

But if he played with much skill, he certainly played with few scruples. That he had learned to use his influence for his won ends him employers should have realized. Baker staged an extravagant party for them at the opening of a $1.2-million motel he had built on the Maryland coast in the summer of 1962.

As the scandal deepened in October 1963, the Democratic leadership pushed through a measure that essentially shoved the case into an administrative backroom--the Senate Rules and Administration committee which had never before undertaken a major investigation. The committee usually oversees the Senate Restaurant, the Botanical Gardens, and the painting and statuary on the Hill. In committee, two major problems arose. Three of the Democratic members preferred to defer to a subcommittee headed by the less than energetic Carl Hayden. The chairman, B. Everett Jordan (D-N.C.) refused. Secondly, an impartial counsel had to be brought in from cutside the Senate. The committee seemed on the verge of an investigation of the ethical standards of members of the Senate establishment.

But for the committee counsel, Lennox P. McLendon, a skilled lawyer from North Carolina, the Baker case was disillusioning. He had been persuaded that "this investigation involved not only a man named Baker but the operation and philosophy of government." The committee uncovered many of Baker's financial shenanigans outside the Congress. Yet it ignored the problem of the misuse of his influence within the Congress. The charges of Ralph Hill whose suit initiated the Baker affair were clarified. It was learned how Baker's vending machine company Serv-U had grown in two years into a $3.5-million business with contracts with several aero-space firms. The committee also looked into Baker's financial dealings with Fred Black, a lobbyist for North American Aviation, a corporation to which Baker had leased his vending machines. These were but a few of the business scandals.

Yet the committee ruled out of bounds any inquiry into Baker's financial dealings with Senators or other Senate employees. When a committee member asked that other Senators be called to testify, Chairman Jordan angrily retorted he was not "investigating Senators." Baker wielded enormous power within the Senate, yet his practices, from the standpoint of the committee, did not implicate any others who had dealt with him. The problem was that so many Senators had dealt with Baker in some way or other.

But the report filed in July by the committee did not ignore the problem of Senate ethics. It recommended that Senate employees and Senators be required to file a statement of income in excess of their government salary. These proposals were strongly backed by the committee counsel McLendon who criticized the "cloak of immunity around the personal behavior of members." He implied that Senators self-righteously insist that their personal behavior be regulated not by law, but by conscience. McLendon's judgement proved correct. The relatively moderate report was defeated.

Partisanship, of course, was involved in these maneuverings. The election was approaching and the Republicans were emphasizing that Baker had been Lyndon Johnson's protege. But when Senator Dirksen proposed a 17-man committee to investigate ethics in the federal government, he precluded any close study of the misuse of privileges and prerogative, Democrats and Republicans closed ranks. The Senate finally established an ineffectual six-man bipartisan committee to study "allegations of improper conduct" by Senators. This committee, however, has yet to be set up by the Senate Democratic leadership.

The investigation was reactivated last October to study the charge by Senator Williams (R-Del.) that builder Matthew McCloskey, a former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, made an illegal $25,000 campaign contribution in 1960 through Baker. It adjourned after five days of hearings began again. But Chairman Jordan has limited testimony to the McCloskey affair. He has refused once again to probe directly Baker's dealings with Senators.

By implication, the Baker case raises two questions the committee must come to grips with. First, is the chaotic moral code of the Senate and adequate protection of the public interest? As interest groups have proliferated, the Senators are under extreme pressure in their legislative decisions about contracts and allocations. Secondly, are there structural changes lessening the abuse of privilege? Many islands of personal power sanctioned by the seniority rules necessitate the use of coercive tactics, of influences of all types. Robert Baker was a child of the Senate. But was that revered institution a school for scandal?