Fighting Its Image Problem

Congress launches an investigation of sex and drug charges

The cartoons are ubiquitous and derisive, picturing Congressmen as flashers or high-bouncing coke snorters. Jokes are traded in the streets, on TV talk shows, even on Capitol Hill. To most Congressmen, however, the allegations that some of them have had homosexual relations with teen-age pages or use cocaine are anything but funny. On their visits home over the Fourth of July recess, they got an earful from angry constituents. Says Arkansas Democrat Bill Alexander: "The people were outraged, incensed and repulsed."

What especially troubles the legislators is the belief that until the culprits, if any, are named or the whispers proved false, almost every Congressman faces public suspicion and ridicule. Says Massachussetts Democrat James Shannon: "Everyone thinks there is a cloud over his head."

In an effort to dispel that cloud the House last week voted 407 to 1 to authorize a wide-ranging investigation of both the sex and drug allegations. The committee will question witnesses and review reports from the FBI and Justice Department. Shortly before a picture-taking session, reporters heard Staff Director John Swanner telling Committee Chairman Louis Stokes, an Ohio Democrat: "In two weeks' time, we should be able to finish this up." Swanner added: "Show me 10,000 ministers and I'll show you some drugs and homosexuals. People really have a taste for morbidity. This kind of thing really brings it out." Some legislators are already worrying about a potential catch-22 effect: if the committee, especially after a hurry-up investigation, decides that the charges are either baseless or wildly exaggerated, will the public believe it or suspect a coverup?

Proof of any of the allegations so far has been singularly elusive. Two former congressional pages first aired the sex charges on national TV three weeks ago. One, Leroy Williams, 18, of Little Rock, Ark., claimed to have had sex with three Congressmen and to have secured the services of a prostitute for a Senator. But he has failed an FBI lie-detector test. The other page, Jeff Opp, 16, of Denver, said he had heard from friends that perhaps half a dozen Congressmen were sexually abusing male pages, but conceded that none had tried to seduce him. FBI agents who have been questioning other pages--some 100 boys and girls, age 14 to 17, who run errands for lawmakers--say that so far they have encountered only similarly vague reports. "Clouds, rumor and innuendo," is the way one agent summarizes the findings to date. One likely result of the scandal, however it turns out, is a long overdue reform of the page system. House Speaker Tip O'Neill last week appointed an ad hoc committee to recommend within a month some system for housing the pages together, in a dormitory perhaps, and for keeping them under supervision. At present the pages live wherever they choose and roam about Washington in off hours as they please, an arrangement that in view of their youth is a standing invitation to trouble.

The cocaine stories grew out of an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Capitol police of possible drug dealings on Capitol Hill. Initially it focused on low-level congressional employees. California Republican Robert Dornan now claims to have a list of six present Congressmen, two former Congressmen and one Senator who use coke, but so far he has refused to show it even to the Ethics Committee. Dornan sometimes makes eccentric charges; he recently claimed that some rock records, when played backward, reveal devil-worshiping messages.

Investigators suspect that there may indeed be some coke users on the Hill. If any are unmasked, they may face more than the wrath of voters. The Justice Department usually prosecutes only drug dealers, not users. But it might make an exception of members of the Congress, which, after all, wrote the law making cocaine possession a federal crime.

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