Former Congressman Mark Deli Siljander Charged with Aiding and Abetting Terrorism

Former U.S. Representative Mark Deli Siljander (R-MI) was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lobbying for a charity linked to outlawed terrorist groups. Siljander was indicted for lying about his lobbying activities on behalf of the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), a Missouri-based charity that allegedly converted U.S. government funds into financial support for terrorists.

The former Republican Congressman is charged with conspiracy.

The IARA allegedly accepted funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) and sent them to an orphanage in Pakistan which was linked to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a man the government alleges has connections with international terrorism. Hekmatyar, in turn allegedly funneled the money to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The IARA stands accused of laundering $130,000 for terrorists, and using $50,000 in purloined U.S. money to pay Siljander to lobby Congress.

Hekmatyar was characterized as "a specially designated global terrorist with ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban" by John Wood, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. In 2004, the IARA was closed down by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on the basis of "suspicion" that it was raising funds for terrorism.

After three terms in Congress (1981-1987), Siljander served a year as a delegate to the United Nations. Siljander, who is the head of a public relations firm, Global Strategies Inc., is accused of lobbying members of the U.S. Senate for funds for the IARA, with knowledge that the money would be laundered and used to fund terrorism.

Siljander lobbied the Senate Finance Committee to have the IARA removed from a list of organizations proscribed for having suspected ties to terrorism, a charge the IARA denies. The government says that Siljander was paid for his lobbying activities with $50,000 of "stolen government funds." The government says the money came from U.S. AID. Siljander also was charged with money laundering and obstruction of justice.

The Office of the U.S. Attorney claims that Siljander "engaged in money laundering and obstruction of a federal investigation in an effort to disguise IARA's misuse of taxpayer money that the government had provided for humanitarian purposes."

U.S. AID had awarded the IARA a contract to run relief projects in Mali, but the conract was terminated in 1999 because the IARA was unable to make matching contributions. The government claims that the IARA did not return approximately $85,000 in U.S.AID money that it should have.

Siljander is not the first, nor will he be the last, politician to run afoul of the law. Here are four other prominent public servants who were accused of bribery:

Spiro T. Agnew

Spiro T. Agnew is the most famous American politician to be taken down in a bribery case. While serving as vice president under the doomed Richard Nixon, the U.S. Attorney's office in Baltimore, Maryland began a corruption investigation of Agnew during the time he held state office. Elected governor of Maryland in 1966 after serving as Baltimore County Executive, Agnew and other Maryland politicians became the target of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service for tax evasion. Eventually, the FBI joined the investigation when evidence arose indicating bribery, extortion, conspiracy, corruption, and racketeering

As it became more obvious after the re-election of Nixon and Agnew in November 1972 that Watergate was a far more serious problem than originally thought, the impeachment of Richard Nixon became a possibility. The problem with impeaching Nixon was the specter of Spiro Agnew becoming president. The man was not only an obscure politician (he had been elected governor in heavily Democratic Maryland due to the election being a four-way contest) before Nixon rescued him from obscurity, but he was a reactionary. Agnew who had become a ridiculous figure with his attacks on the press, the young and intellectuals. He was as vile as Nixon, who in fact despised his vice president as an "idler."

Agnew became famous for tarring the Nixon Administration's critics as' 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history," "nattering nabobs of negativism," "pusillanimous pussyfooters," and "vicars of vacillation." The alliterative rhetoric was penned by Patrick Buchanan and William Safire, and it made Agnew the darling of conservatives and reactionaries. However, such parodic language made him seem buffoonish to many.

Nonetheless, at one time during his vice presidency, he was voted the third-most-admired man in the United States, after Nixon and the Rev. Billy Graham.

Agnew had denounced the peace proposal of Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern during the 1972 campaign, saying that, ''Even Neville Chamberlain did not carry a beggar's cup to Munich -- as George McGovern proposes to carry to Hanoi.''

It was hot rhetoric in service of a man -- Richard Nixon -- whom Agnew later felt betrayed him, "throwing him to the wolves" to detract the sharks that later devoured the president himself.

Agnew's legal troubles provided an "out." He could be impeached before Nixon, should the need for removing the president come to the fore.

John Ehrlichman wrote in his autobiography Witness to Power that Nixon despised Agnew as a fool, but kept him on the ticket in 1972 because it made Nixon look better.

''No assassin in his right mind would kill me,'' Ehrlichman remembered Nixon as joking. ''They know if they did that they would wind up with Agnew!''

The Office of the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore charged Agnew with receiving kickbacks from Maryland highway contractors while in government service. Agnew had admitted to accepting bribes to his own lawyer, and told him that it had been going on ''for a thousand years.'' In a civil trial in 1981, it was revealed that Agnew took bribes of $147,500 over 10 years while serving as Baltimore County Executive and Governor. He took the final $17,500 in payoffs while serving as vice president.

The investigation of Agnew began after he was inaugurated for his second term, and went on for eight months. Agnew himself said he would not resign even if he was indicted, but his position was untenable.

Indicted for income tax evasion for not paying taxes on the bribes he had received, Agnew resigned as vice president on Oct. 10, 1973 as part of a plea-bargain worked out to avoid going to jail. He then pleaded nolo contendre (no contest). He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years probation.

Agnew became the second vice president to resign from office, and the only one to resign due to legal troubles. John Calhoun had resigned to accept a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Eight years after Agnew resigned, a Maryland court ordered him to repay $268,462 in compensation for the bribes he took while a state official. He later tried to take a tax deduction from the state of California for repaying the state, but the deduction was denied.

Abe Fortas

Associate Justice Abe Fortas was not strictly speaking a politician, but he continued to serve as an advisor to U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson while he sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. This helped engender a backlash against Fortas when he was nominated by LBJ to succeed Earl Warren as Chief Justice. By 1968, LBJ was so unpopular that he refused to terminated his bid for reelection after he was humiliated by Senator Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary.

Fortas had been associated with Johnson since the 1940s, and the President had pressured Arthur Goldberg to step down from his seat on the Court and become ambassador to the United Nations in order to elevate Fortas to the High Court. When the controversial Earl Warren announced he intended to retire as Chief Justice, Fortas was LBJ's pick to replace him.

It was a monumental miscalculation.

Earl Warren and the liberal, reformist Warren Court had alienated not only conservatives but a great many moderates in both parties. Warren, himself, was the subject of calls for impeachment. In addition to expanding civil rights and limiting the police powers of the state in the service of expanding civil liberties, the Warren Court was blamed for unleashing a flood of pornography under the aegis of promoting free speech. The liberal Abe Fortas, a stalwart member of the reformist wing of the Warren Court, became the lightning rod for all the criticis of the Warren Court.

Fortas was the first Chief Justice nominee ever to appear before the Senate, and he faced hostile questioning about his relationship with LBJ. Fortas denied he had continued to advise the President after being elevated to the Court. This legal fiction was maintained by Fortas as there was supposed to be a separation of powers between the three branches of government, and for a Supreme Court justice to advise the president violated that principle.

The Senate also grilled him over accepting $15,000 for speaking engagements. The Senate was worried that the fees meant that Fortas could be "touched" by special interests, which would violate the principle that Supreme Court justices should be insulated from the private sector.

The Senate hearings were a disaster and doomed the Fortas nomination. One of the greatest politicians in American history, LBJ's political savvy had decayed under the pressure of the debacle that was the Vietnam War. He had badly misread the Senate that he formerly had mastered. Conservative Republicans and "Dixiecrat" Democrats began an endless debate that turned into a filibuster, and LBJ could not muster enough votes for closure. The nomination was withdrawn.

It was apparent that Fortas would not be confirmed, but LBJ had gone for cloture under the fear that if he couldn't end the filibuster, Fortas' place on the bench would be untenable. He was right.

During the first year of Nixon's presidency, it was revealed that Fortas had accepted an annual retainer from Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson's private foundation. In January 1966, the Wolfson foundation had hired Fortas in an advisory capacity for $20,000 a year (about $125,000 in today's dollars, when factored for inflation) for the rest of Fortas's life. The retainer was to be paid to Fortas' widow for the rest of her life after his death.

The contract had been kept secret. When it became known, Fortas was doomed. The government had been investigating Wolfson for securities fraud, and the agreement was seen as Wolfson bribing Fortas to fix his problems, by getting LBJ to pressure the SEC to drop charges or have LBJ give him a presidential pardon should he be convicted.

Fortas denied that he ever done anything wrong, and insisted that he had not helped Wolfson avoid prosecution. The financier eventually was convicted of violating federal securities laws. Fortas returned the retainer.

Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, informed outgoing Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Wolfson incident, and he persuaded Fortas to resign to avoid certain impeachment.

U.S. Senator Harrison A. Williams

U.S. Senator Harrison A. Williams was the most prominent victim of the FBI's Abscam investigation. Abscam was an FBI sting operation run during the late 1970s and early '80s that eventually focused on public corruption. The Abscam investigation also led to the conviction of five Congressmen.

In order to investigate trafficking in stolen property, the FBI set up a shell-company, Abdul Enterprises, Ltd., in 1978. The investigation later expanded to focus on politicians engaged in corruption. FBI employees posing as Middle Easterners were videotaped soliciting government officials, whom they offered money to in return for political favors for a fictional Arab sheikh, "Kambir Abdul Rahman."

Harrison Williams was one of the stung.

Senator Williams met with the FBI agents multiple times to hammer out a deal where he promised to direct government contracts to a titanium mine in exchange for 18% of the mine's stock, issued in the name of his lawyer. On October 30, 1980, Williams was indicted on nine counts of bribery and conspiracy to use his office to aid a commercial enterprise.

The Senator's lawyers tried to get the indictment dismissed on the ground that Williams, as a supporter of Senator Edward Kennedy's 1980 challenge to President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination, was actually a victim of selective prosecution by Carter's Justice Department. The premise was rejected. At trial, Williams' attorneys argued in his defense that he had not actually accepted a bribe as the titanium mine stock was worthless.

The jury convicted Williams on May 1, 1981, after deliberating for 28 hours. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison. Williams appealed the verdict on the basis of entrapment, but his appeal was denied.

The Senate Ethics Committee voted to censure Williams and to have him expelled for his "ethically repugnant behavior" and for dishonoring the Senate. The Senate censured Mr. Williams, but he resigned before the motion to expel him from the Senate could be voted upon.

Williams claimed he was innocent in his resignation speech and also claimed that the FBI sting was an assault on the rights of the Senate. He served two years of his three year sentence at a federal penitentiary in Newark, New Jersey.

Alcee Hastings

U.S. Congressman Alcee Lamar Hastings (D-FL) is one of only six federal judges to be impeached and removed from the bench by the U.S. Senate. In 1979, Hastings was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, becoming the first African American to sit in the 11th Circuit. In 1981, he was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe through a go-between, William Borders. The bribe was offered to influence Hastings to issue a lenient sentence to two brothers that had been convicted of racketeering in his court. In return for the bribe, Hastings also allegedly was to return their seized assets.

Supported by other attorneys, Hastings defended himself during his trial on bribery and perjury charges. Borders, his alleged co-conspirator, refused to testify in court. Hastings' defense was that the FBI had set up Borders, and then arrested him, in order to get to Hastings, the sole African American federal judge on his circuit. Borders had not been acting for Hastings when he took the bribe, Hastings argued. He charged that the Reagan Justice Department sought to remove the African American from the bench to appease white racists.

Hastings was acquitted by a jury of his peers. Borders went to jail for refusing to testify.

After his acquittal, the Judicial Council of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which was almost entirely white, launched its own investigation of Hastings that lasted almost four years. The Judicial Council, which was made up of circuit's active appeals court judges and three U.S. district court judges, determined that Hastings was guilty of the initial charges, and that he had committed perjury during his trial.

What is interesting is that part of the evidence against Hastings was a bag that the judge had used for an alibi. As part of the FBI sting, Hastings was supposed to "show up" at a prescribed time that Borders and the FBI agents posing as contacts for the convicted brothers had arranged in advance. In his defense, Hastings claimed that he had visited Borders in his office on the day the payoff was to made because he was trying to find a leather repair shop to mend the strap on the bag that had broken, not because he had prior knowledge that a payoff was to be made.

The FBI had sent an agent affiliated with their Crime Lab to the Judicial Council proceedings who testified that the strap on Hastings' bag had been cut and had not broken, insinuating that Hastings had cut the strap to provide himself with an alibi. The FBI agent claimed that he had done the forensic examination of the strap, when in fact, he had not. The actual FBI agent who had examined the bag had determined that it had broken and was not cut. Famed FBI whistleblower Fred Whitehurst exposed the deception: The FBI had sent an agent who had not done the forensic examination to lie to the proceedings in order to incriminate Hastings.

The Judicial Council essentially was a star chamber. Hastings was not allowed to examine of refute the evidence, or take part in its proceedings.

Urged on by two Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Hastings in 1988. Evidence was examined by a committee empanelled by Congress. In 1989, acting on the recommendations of the committee, Hastings was convicted and removed from the federal bench. Hastings was thus a victim of double-jeopardy, as he had already been adjudged innocent of the crime. The House, and then the Senate, essentially nullified a jury verdict.

As part of the conviction, the Senate did not forbid Hastings from again occupying federal office. The Senate had jailed his alleged co-conspirator Borders for refusing to testify in the impeachment proceedings; he was later pardoned by Bill Clinton.

Hastings filed a lawsuit claiming that his impeachment trial was invalid because he had been adjudged innocent at trial on the charges that he had been impeached on, and that furthermore, he had not been tried by the full Senate, as required by the Constitution, but by a Senate committee. His arguments were accepted, and his case was remanded back to the Senate. The judgment was stayed pending a related case before the Supreme Court.

In Nixon v. United States, the High Court ruled that the federal bench has no jurisdiction over Senate impeachment matters, so the ruling was vacated and Hastings' conviction and removal stood.

Alcee Hastings was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992, and represents Florida's 23rd District. In 1997, the Justice Department issued a report claiming that the false FBI testimony did not affect his impeachment trial. Hastings denounced the report.

The former judge and serving Congressman said that the overriding fact was that the FBI agent had lied under oath.

"If you lie about irrelevant evidence, common sense tells you that the most evidential items stood to be lied about."

Congress ignored his criticism.

In the House, Hastings has risen to become a Senior Democratic Whip, making him part of the Democratic Leadership. He serves as a member of the Rules Committee and is a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

When the Democrats retook the House after the 2006 elections, Speaker Nancy Pelosi considered appointing Hasting to chair the HPSCI, but instead chose Silvestre Reyes of Texas due to the continued controversy over Hastings' earlier trial and impeachment. Most of Hastings detractors failed to mention the FBI Lab's chicanery in giving false testimony to the Star Chamber that pilloried him. After being passed over, Hastings was named chair of the HPSCI's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Sources:

BBC News, "US politician on al-Qaeda charge"

ABC News, "Ex-Congressman Charged in Terror Finance Case: Mark Deli Siljander Faces Charges Stemming From Islamic Charity Investigation"

New York Tmes, "Spiro T. Agnew, Point Man for Nixon Who Resigned Vice Presidency, Dies at 77"

F.B.I. Freedom of Information Act: "Spiro Agnew"

American Law Encyclopedia, "Abe Fortas"

Encyclopedia.com, "Abscam"

"Alcee HASTINGS, Plaintiff, v. UNITED STATES of America, et al., Defendants"