Nofziger's Turn

The intent of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act is clear enough: to prohibit former federal officials from selling their influence with friends in Government. The law is not unduly restrictive. A would-be lobbyist must wait only one year after leaving the Government before contacting his old associates. Yet Congress wrote such ambiguous language into the law that until last week no one had ever been convicted of violating it.

The hapless precedent setter was Lyn Nofziger, 63, a onetime California newsman who served as Ronald Reagan's political director until January 1982. After a 16-day trial, a federal jury in Washington found Nofziger guilty of illegally contacting the White House for three clients of his "communications" firm. They were: New York City's scandal-plagued Wedtech Corp., which paid Nofziger's agency $1 million to help secure an Army small- engine contract; Fairchild Republic Co., which paid his firm $25,000 to promote continued federal funding of A-10 antitank aircraft; and the National Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association, a maritime union that retained him ! at $90,000 a year to advocate the use of more civilian seamen on U.S. fleet support ships.

Nofziger's lawyers did not deny that on April 8, 1982, he wrote to Edwin Meese, then Counsellor to the President, urging that Wedtech get the $32 million Army contract. They conceded that Nofziger talked to National Security Council aides on Sept. 24, 1982, about the Fairchild planes and wrote to a Meese deputy on Aug. 20 of that year about the seaman jobs. But these overtures did not violate the Ethics Act, they argued, because the law prohibits lobbying only on matters of "direct and substantial interest" to the contacted agencies.

Federal District Judge Thomas Flannery noted that the law is "hardly a model of clarity." Even so, he instructed the jurors, they did not have to find that the issue "was of major importance to the White House as compared to other matters" to conclude that the law had been violated. Under those instructions, the jury found Nofziger guilty on three of four counts.

Nofziger dismissed his crime as being "kind of like running a stop sign." However, it carries a possible prison sentence of six years. Ironically, another independent counsel, Whitney North Seymour, had viewed the Ethics Act as "riddled with loopholes." Instead of using it against Michael Deaver, another Reagan aide turned lobbyist, Seymour successfully prosecuted him in December for lying about his lobbying.