Let me say this about that...

• Author: Heard, Alex
• Position: What a congressmen should do after the FBI videotapes him soliciting a 10-year-old Arab sheik in the Tidal Basin

LET ME SAY THIS ABOUT THAT . . .

No historian was there to record Wayne Hays's initial response to the bomb Elizabeth Ray dropped down his pants the morning of May 23, 1976, but we can safely assume a minute-long groan and immediate, all-day loss of appetite. The chesty, well-traversed blond had told all to The Washington Post. Hays was giving her a $14,000 federal salary in exchange for twice-weekly "sexual services.' Ostensibly a secretary, she admitted: "I can't type. I can't file. I can't even answer the phone.' Ray even let a reporter listen in as the Ohio congressman told her on the phone that his recent marriage (to another former secretary) would not affect their arrangement.

A lesser man might have crawled back in bed for a week, but Hays had no time for self-indulgence. Knowing his version of "Honey, I can explain' would have to play in front of hundreds of thousands of voters, he sprang into action. There was no denying that Ray was on the payroll, but he denied everything else. "Hell's fire,' he roared, "I'm a happily married man!' On day two he admitted to having had dinner with Ray the previous Monday but insisted his reasons were strictly humanitarian: ". . . she called me, said she had no money, was hungry, and was going to commit suicide.' The next day he said Ray was crazy, fired her, accused the Post of "engaging in a personal vendetta' against him, threatened a huge libel suit, and tearfully described the "anguish' these false accusations were causing his new bride. The next day he dropped the lawsuit idea during an emotional "confession' in the House chamber. Admitting to a "personal relationship' with Ray, he denied she was paid for sex, said he originally had lied only "to protect his wife,' accused the Justice Department of pursuing "a personal vendetta' against him, and "demanded' that the House ethics committee conduct a full investigation of the matter.

"Her lies must be laid bare,' he sputtered, "to protect the integrity of the House.' Ray, he insisted, was angry because he had ended their affair when he married. Now she was engaging in-- that's right--a "personal vendetta.'

To the untrained eye, Hays's actions must have seemed like the crazed, mindless flailings of an old man whose sap had risen too far. But the longtime readers of The Washington Monthly knew that, to the contrary, Hays was flawlessly "wiggling' out of trouble, using a set of 13 steps first described here by veteran Congress-watcher James Boyd in September 1970. (See chart, opposite page.) In a bravura flurry, Hays managed to invoke Rules 1, 2, 6, 9 (three times), 10, and 11.

Was it working? I think so. Hays's confession was greeted with an exultation of snickers in the House, but back home the voters favorably compared his performance to Richard Nixon's careersaving "Checkers' speech. Yes, it is true: Hays's wiggle ultimately failed. Stripped of his power by House members who were gleefully paying him back for 28 years of obnoxious browbeating, he resigned the following September. Yet, had he held firm, he might well have been reelected. The man had failed, not the rules.

But was it really that simple? When I first read Boyd's masterwork, I was stunned by the clarity and uncanny correctness of his advice as it applied to 1960s-era congressional scandals. Still, the sixties were long ago. I wondered: Could these dusty old precepts possibly apply in a post-Watergate world filled with congressmen and senators whose deeds make Adam Clayton Powell look like a harmless practical joker? To find out, I studied a representative sample of congressional scandals that occurred between Wilbur Mills's 1974 Tidal Basin splash and the recent "frequent flyer' case of Rep. Dan Daniel. Admittedly, my work is not comprehensive. There have been more than 50 noteworthy congressional scandals since 1970. I have, however, paused at all the major low points: Mills, Hays, Koreagate, Abscam, plus an assortment of standard financial and sex scandals.

Overall, it is clear the rules can still work; many congressmen have used them in the past 15 years to fend off conviction and gain reelection. Yet there are two facts we must remember. One is that even a mind as fecund as Boyd's could not have foreseen all that was coming. Who except Nostradamus could have predicted that so many congressmen would one day be videotaped taking cash from phony Arabs and stuffing it in their coat and pants pockets? Or that Rep. Robert Legget would get caught keeping a wife and a mistress while carrying on a second affair with Suzi Park Thomson, all without political damage? Or that Rep. Jon Hinson, a conservative Republican from Mississippi, would win reelection after exposing himself to an undercover policeman at the Iwo Jima Memorial? Or that, given the severity of the other crimes involved, runaway boozing would become an alibi? Would he have believed it? Could he have believed it?

Today, of course, we have no choice but to believe it. In our time, the purple drama of these episodes and the increased press attention spawned by Wilburgate have pushed wiggle activity into a more advanced stage. Hence fact number two: in the post-1970 era, more congressmen were indicted, expelled, and jailed. Of the dozens of miscreants in Boyd's study, only one ended up doing a stretch. Abscam alone put several men behind bars, however briefly.

In response to these higher stakes, congressmen have concentrated more creative energy on pre-trial and courtroom antics and post-conviction damage control. The slight modifications I have made in the rules merely reflect these and oher new realities.

Rule 1: Admit notbing until you know the worst; if it looks like a one-shot affair, hide till it blows over.

Hunkering down and shutting up can still work. Though Koreagate wasn't exactly a "one-shot affair'--the investigation dragged on for months--several congressmen survived it precisely because, as Boyd put it in describing earlier scandals, "they did not rush forward to testify and clear their names' when the scandal hit the papers. Despite Leon Jaworski's best efforts, the Koreagate investigation was a bust. The Korean government refused to cooperate, and there was nothing we could do about it but whine. Investigators were able to track the cash outlays of Korean rice broker Tongsun Park, but former Ambassador Kim Dong Jo never did reveal where his huge payments went. As Robert Boettcher wrote in Gifts of Deceit, ". . . there are congressmen who must get up every morning thankful for the stonewalling Park regime.'

The Koreagate revelations sent only one congressman to jail: California Rep. Richard Hanna. According to Otto Passman's bribery, conspiracy, and fraud indictment, the Louisiana congressman received $213,000 from Park. But with artful stage-managing...