Indecent Exposure on Capitol Hill

It was exciting. I thought politicians were gods. They did no wrong. You have to understand--me, a little girl from the South talking to a Congressman.

--Elizabeth Ray

The sin may not have been all that original in the U.S. Congress, but the public confession certainly was. After two days of lying about it, Ohio Democrat Wayne Hays stood in an unusually hushed House chamber and admitted that he had carried on an affair with Elizabeth Ray, 33, whom he employed as a $14,000-a-year committee clerk although she claims that she can neither type nor file. The portly Congressman, 65, who in January divorced one wife after 38 years of marriage and six weeks ago wed his secretary, denied only that Miss Ray's federal salary was awarded solely for sexual services. She was not, insisted Hays, "hired to be my mistress."

Hill Glee. For almost any other Congressman, such an emotional admission would have yielded a measure of forgiveness. But the acidulous Hays is the kind of sinner who has been casting stones at others throughout his 28-year career in Congress. He put it well himself, almost boasting to the House that he was "mean, arrogant, cantankerous and tough," and noting that he had also been called "ruthless, coldblooded, vicious and temperamental." Thus there was ill-disguised glee on Capitol Hill at his indecent exposure.

Hays had little choice except to confess. Liz Ray, an emotionally flaky, sensually attractive woman, had detailed her sex life with him to reporters for the Washington Post and let them listen as the Congressman reassured her on the phone that he would continue their sex-and-job arrangement despite his new marriage. She is understood to have even more explicit tape recordings. "I have proof," she insists.

The FBI was under Justice Department orders to see if any federal laws had been violated. That would be the case if Ray, as she claimed, did nothing more for her salary than have sex with Hays. She was granted immunity from any possible prosecution and was talking freely to the FBI.

The scandal may well spread and engulf others. Liz is not alone in turning talkative. Federal investigators are expected to explore reports that she and other women working on jobs over which Hays held power took part in "orgies" at a hideaway in the Capitol--assigned to Speaker Carl Albert and known as "the Board of Education" --and in suburban apartments. Various Congressmen, staff members and Capitol Hill police reportedly attended.

There were ironies aplenty in the scandal. In 1967, Hays had led an investigation of Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, who was charged, among other things, with taking women companions along on official junkets. Powell, perhaps more on target than he realized, replied that he had just been doing what white Congressmen often did but was being hounded because he was black.

But it was as a petty, bullying tyrant over House committee staff members and more menial employees that Hays became most hated. He has used his Administration Committee, which oversees such mundane but vital matters as Congressmen's parking spaces, travel allowances, restaurant service and custodial help, to satisfy his vindictive whims. Annoyed that elevator operators were sitting when he had to stand, he ordered their jump seats removed. Irked at House barbers, he raised haircut prices and banned tipping. Mad at the press, he temporarily refused to sign pay vouchers for some press-gallery employees. Hays gained extra influence as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which dispenses much-sought funds for the election of House members.

Spacy and Dim. To be sure, the Congressman's accuser is no more admirable. A frustrated would-be actress and model, Liz Ray wandered from job to job (airline ticket agent, waitress, car-rental clerk) after her graduation from high school in Asheville, N.C., in 1962. She first appeared in Washington in the mid-'60s, landing a job as hostess in a restaurant. Her ex-employer says he called her "Excedrin--she was such a headache," and fired her after about five months because "she was hustling."

Later she took up briefly with a trial lawyer, Charlie Schulze, who recalls: "She wasn't very intelligent. If I took her out somewhere, I'd tell her not to say anything. Now and then she'd forget and call me the next day to apologize." Then Liz latched onto Tom Sarris, a Washington restaurateur. She scratched the paint on the car of a woman she thought was competing for Sarris' attention--and was given a suspended sentence for "destruction of property." Her former boy friends generally describe her as nutty, spacy, neurotic or dim.

According to Liz, her first job on Capitol Hill developed in 1972, when she was a hostess at the Terrace Restaurant in the Watergate complex. Kenneth Gray, then an Illinois Democratic Congressman, phoned up to ask for a former hostess there. Liz told Gray that she wanted to meet him. Recalls Liz: "I had heard about him--the limousines, the boat, the good looks, the sharp clothes." They dined that night and, she says, he offered her a job.

Gray, who kept a 55-ft. yacht on the Potomac and was known for the comely women who partied on it, recalls the sequence differently. He claims she called him and was "kind of crying," pleading for work. He made her his receptionist. Says he: "She made all my appointments and typed letters into the thousands." But she typed so slowly, she insists, that other secretaries had to finish her letters. "I could never learn the keyboard," she says. To Gray, Liz was "an exhibitionist. She'd call up at midnight and say she was going to kill herself."

Liz, who admits to being depressed often and seeing a psychiatrist, claims that when Gray retired from the House in 1974, he suggested she seek a job with Hays. Claims Liz: "Hays said, 'Let's have dinner and talk about it.' We had dinner, he came to my apartment afterwards for sex and he told me, 'Show up tomorrow, keep your mouth shut, make yourself available to me, and I'll pay you $11,000. If it turns out you can do any work, I'll pay you $12,000.' "

Soon Liz's code name for Wayne became "Ha" (short for Hays) and his for her was "Agent 55" (the last two digits of her private office phone). She says they had sex at her apartment once or twice a week. "He favored Monday or Tuesday, and I wasn't free to sneak in anyone else until he went home to Ohio on Thursdays." During this period Hays also had a liaison with Pat Peak, his longtime secretary in his home office in Flushing, Ohio.

Liz claims she did not enjoy sex with Hays. She now says: "If I could have, I would have put on a blindfold, worn earplugs and taken a shot of Novocain."

Out of Sight. Tiring of her sexual service for Hays, she left for Hollywood in the spring of 1975. "I'd been giving Academy Award performances once a week," she told the Washington Post. When she returned from the West Coast last July after failing to land even a cocktail waitress job, Hays asked South Carolina Democrat Mendel J. Davis to put her on his staff. As a member of Hays' House Administration Committee, Davis, 33, was eager to oblige the chairman. After a month or so Liz asked to rejoin Hays. He placed her on the committee payroll as a clerk. When she sought a raise, he transferred her to the Oversight Subcommittee of the Administration Committee. Says she: "I call it the Out-of-Sight Committee."

Liz chose to tell her story after Hays decided to marry Pat Peak and did not invite her. "I was good enough to be his mistress for two years but not good enough to be invited to his wedding," she pouted. To make matters worse, "I was hoping after the marriage he wouldn't make so many demands. But I've had to see him four times since the wedding--twice intimately."

She sought out a Post reporter she had met by chance. Reporters found her in a luxurious unnumbered office in the new Longworth House Office Building. It has only two desks, while a dozen staffers are crammed next door into New York Democrat Bella Abzug's similar-size quarters. Liz claims she rarely bothered to go to the office. Indeed, she lived in a cheaply furnished apartment in suburban Arlington, Va., where shopkeepers at Vincent & Vincent Boutique recall her as a leisurely midweek shopper who showed no concern about being away during office hours.

Still, Ray was around Capitol Hill enough to meet many powerful men. Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. said that he had put her in touch with friends in show business to try to aid her acting career. Senator Hubert Humphrey said that she brought constituents around to the Senate floor to meet him.

Two weeks ago Hays formally fired Liz--a little late. His own career was in ruins. At least 28 House members asked the Ethics Committee to investigate him. Speaker Albert was expected to summon Hays to his office this week and suggest that he step down from his leadership of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He will probably lose his Administration Committee chairmanship, which he narrowly retained in a reform movement last year. His professed hopes of running for Governor of Ohio or House Speaker have been dashed. Whether he can cling to his congressional seat is questionable.

Back home in Ohio's grimy, industrial 18th Congressional District, Hays has built a solid reputation for taking care of his constituents. Although bothered by the fact that he had first lied about the affair, many of them seemed steadfast. But Steubenville Mayor William Crabbe will oppose him as an independent in November, and sees new hope of winning. Actually Hays' biggest danger may be a grand jury indictment on charges of fraud if Liz Ray's claims of no work hold up.

The Hays scandal, coming so recently after the celebrated liaison between former House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills and Stripper Fanne Foxe, raises the question of the extent of such congressional misbehavior. Gregarious politicians attract a stable of admiring groupies. Often away from their families, they have unusual opportunities to chase --or be caught by --willing women. The use of taxpayers' money for such a purpose is a far more serious matter, but the practice does not seem to be widespread.

Liz Ray claims otherwise. She says she knows at least a dozen Capitol Hill office women who are really only mistresses. She signed a contract a year ago with Dell Publishing Co. to tell all about her politician bedmates in a paperback autobiography. Dell lawyers banned any names from a manuscript that was described by one former Dell employee as "terribly written" by an author who was "subliterate and crazy as a coot."

The book details Ray's contention that there is a ring of Congressmen who share women on each other's staffs. Called The Washington Fringe Benefit, the book is being rushed to press--but to avoid lawsuits--as a novel. It should appear in about a month.

Too Eager. As the FBI probes deeper and the other men who slept with Ray feel cornered, the names of prominent politicians may be drawn into the fuss. Ray, it seems, was only too eager to please. Yet her unsophisticated approach turned off some. One Congressman told of getting a phone call from Liz at his Washington apartment. "Mr. Congressman," she said, "I understand your wife is out of town. It must be lonely for you there in the apartment. Maybe we'd like to have supper together." Asked the untempted Congressman: "What gave you the idea my wife was out of town? She's right here." Last week the House member was deeply thankful that he had become such a smooth liar.

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