Rostenkowski Case: A Question Hovers

By Stephen Gettinger

Dan Rostenkowski's April 9 guilty plea and his subsequent self-absolution may send him to jail and bring his legal saga to an end. But we still do not know wh at he did, or if anybody else did it. The outcome leaves a troubling shadow over the House.

The former "powerful chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee,& quot; as a radio report redundantly put it, pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud. But the 11 other criminal charges that were dropped in the plea bargain in cluded the ones that went to the integrity of the House. Specifically: Did he or other members filch cash periodically from the House Post Office?

The post office scandal, remember, was a key element in the litany of sleazy ethics and arrogant power plays that Republicans cited in 1994 to persuade voters to end 40 years of Democratic control of the House. Prosecutors investigating mi sdeeds at the in-house favor factory known as the post office quickly focused on Rostenkowski and widened their probe to include an array of questionable financia l practices, including ghost employees and officially purchased gifts for Rostenk owski's friends.

But at the center of the indictment was the charge that Rostenkowski pocketed $49,300 in public and campaign funds through sham transactions made to look like stamp purchases.

And he was not the only one accused. Former Rep. Joe Kolter, D-Pa., also was indicted. Former House Postmaster Robert V. Rota pleaded guilty in 1993 to embezz lement charges for running a scheme of trading stamps for cash that he said invol ved several members and dated back to 1972.

As soon as Rostenkowski pleaded guilty to the charges involving payroll abuse and improper gifts, he marched out of the courtroom to declare himself functiona lly innocent. He was a victim, he said, of vague and shifting rules, and had been unfairly targeted for practices that were common in Congress.

The post office charges he emphatically denied. "At no time did I ever m isappropriate any money or property from the congressional post office," he declared in the gravelly voice and blunt manner that made him the Republicans' po ster child for the corruption of power.

Prosecutors demurred, and the judge said the two mail charges "do not re flect the breadth of your criminality." Neither addressed any specifics, how ever, leaving Rostenkowski's denial floating in the air as the last word.

But there persists a mound of evidence that is unaccounted for. Rota's convic tion remains an indictment against the House, and prosecutors have declared that they have corroborating witnesses and physical evidence such as numbered vouchers used for phony stamp purchases.

Questioned by reporters after the April 9 court appearance, Rostenkowski's la wyers declined to say why he needed almost $30,000 in stamps over a 6 1/4-year pe riod when he could mail almost anything for free with just his signature. To date , Rostenkowski's only response came in 1992, when he barked: "I mail a lot. . . . Overseas mail, you've got to put stamps on."

A 1992 review of official records showed that altogether 20 members had bough t more than $10,000 worth of stamps at the post office - often in lots of $1,000 or $2,000 that did not translate easily into blocks of 22-cent or 29-cent stamps.

When questioned, these members cited uses for the stamps that amounted to tec hnical but inadvertent violations of franking law - usually using stamps to make their mail look more urgent or to mollify constituents who resented the franking privilege.

But did any of them do what Rota alleged: use the post office as a convenient cash machine dispensing public funds? After all, before 1977 it was legal for me mbers to "cash out" some of their official funds - the practice that Ro stenkowski said got him into trouble. Stamp allowances were something of a gray a rea: never explicitly legal to convert to cash, never explicitly illegal, either.

We may never know if this really happened. Kolter is scheduled to go on trial this summer, but if he cops a plea, or if Rota does not testify, the trail runs cold.

The House no longer seems very interested in digging through old bones. From 1992 through 1994, Republicans regularly took to the floor to demand a complete, public and immediate accounting of the whole affair. "At the heart of this d ebate is a prolonged, systematic pattern of denial, of silence, of secrets known to the select few, of winks and nods among the old-boy network in the majority,&q uot; declared Republican Leader Robert H. Michel, R-Ill., in 1993.

Democrats beat back GOP attempts, except for release of documents from a supe rficial look by the House Administration Committee. The House ethics committee ne ver opened an investigation. The Rostenkowski plea passed without comment in the House.

That leaves a question hanging: Was Rostenkowski right on April 9 when he sai d, "I do not believe that I am any different from the vast majority of the m embers of Congress"?

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