Stung Again

Another Abscam conviction

Lights, camera, action. On a video tape made at a house in Georgetown, Florida Congressman Richard Kelly, 56, tells an FBI agent posing as the representative of two fictitious Arab sheiks that he will help them immigrate to the U.S. Then, just before stuffing $25,000 into his coat pockets, he says: "If I told you how poor I am, you'd cry. I mean, the tears would roll down your eyes." In a Washington, D.C., courtroom last week, the tears were streaming from his wife Judy's eyes as Kelly, who was voted out of office last year, became the sixth present or former Congressman -- and first Republican -- to be convicted in the Abscam sting.

Before the trial, Government lawyers had joked among themselves that Kelly's best defense would be to play the video tape backward. His defense was even more bizarre. He claimed that he took the money as part of his own probe of congressional corruption. The charges against him, he testified, were just another attack by the Establishment, which he said has been out to get him ever since he left the Rhode Island orphanage where he was reared. Kelly has served successively as a lawyer in New Port Richey, Fla., an assistant federal prosecutor, Florida state circuit court judge and, finally, as a Congressman for six years. As a judge, he was impeached by the Florida house of representatives in 1963 for "lack of judicial temperament," but the charges were later dismissed.

The tapes proved more persuasive than Kelly's story to the jurors, who convicted him and two defendants, Florida Businessman Eugene Ciuzio, 49, and Long Island Accountant Stanley Weisz, 54, of bribery and conspiracy. They face up to 25 years in prison and fines of $40,000.

The last Abscam trial, of Democratic Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey, is scheduled to begin on March 30. Already, however, the FBI investigation itself is on trial before Federal Judge George Pratt, who is holding hearings in New York City on whether the agents went too far in trying to encourage Congressmen and others to commit illegal acts. Indeed, Judge William Bryant, who presided at Kelly's trial, has said that Abscam "has an odor to it that is absolutely repulsive." Nonetheless, Justice Department lawyers are confident that the defendants can not show enough evidence of Government overreaching to get the convictions thrown out on appeal.

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