The FBI Gets Tough

By Timothy J. Burger

For many voters in the heartland, the Jack Abramoff congressional lobbying scandal has simply confirmed their suspicion that all the bums inside the nation's capital are on the take. But Washington's scandal du jour is just one example of the political corruption that the FBI is increasingly uncovering at all levels of government across the country. Under code names such as Tennessee Waltz, Plunder Dome, Safe Road and Lively Green, the FBI has mounted a growing number of investigations and undercover operations that have busted cops, mayors, judges, Governors--and everyone in between. Since 2002, the FBI has engineered a surge of more than 40% in public-corruption indictments, with 2,233 cases pending nationwide, compared with 1,575 four years ago.

Much of that increase stems, strangely, from 9/11. As the FBI turned more of its attention and manpower to counterterrorism, the bureau handed off most of its drug-related inquiries to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Since only some of the former drug agents were moved to the counterterrorism division, the shift in focus freed up 200 additional agents to combat public corruption, says special agent Chris Swecker, the criminal-division chief. By 2003, senior FBI officials were fanning out to field offices across the U.S. to drive home the point that public corruption was now the criminal division's No. 1 priority.

In Chicago, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, also the special counsel in the CIA-leak investigation, is presiding over an ongoing contracting and patronage probe that has already led to 30 indictments, including those of two lieutenants of Mayor Richard Daley. A federal official tells TIME that the bureau is looking closely at possible Daley links to the scandal, although an FBI spokesman stresses that Daley himself is not implicated to date. At the same time, former Illinois Governor George Ryan stands trial on various corruption charges (which he denies) that arose initially out of a probe into whether low-number license plates were being doled out to political supporters when Ryan was Illinois Secretary of State.

Before Katrina pounded New Orleans last summer, that city's longstanding reputation for graft was reinforced by Operation Wrinkled Robe, which uncovered a bribery scheme initiated by a bail-bonds company at a local courthouse. In addition to various officials in the Jefferson Parish sheriff's office, two state judges were convicted for their roles in helping steer business (i.e., prisoners) to the firm. In San Diego local government has been effectively frozen--and a city-council member has been convicted (although he remains free on appeal)--as a result of a scandal in which local officials accepted cash bribes from a strip-club owner in exchange for promises to try to change a city law to allow hands-on lap dances.

Meanwhile, dozens of border guards, National Guard soldiers and other law-enforcement officials in Arizona have been charged with accepting bribes from FBI agents posing as Mexican drug smugglers. Towns in Florida and Connecticut--where Republican John Rowland quit the Governor's mansion in 2004 and went to jail last year for his part in a gifts-for-contracts scheme--are also charging their local officials. The FBI even had a local West Virginia politician facing corruption charges pose as a candidate in a state-legislature election in order to help uncover vote buying and other instances of election fraud. The phony candidate pulled out before the actual election, but when he ended up with more than 2,000 votes in a close race, some critics wondered whether the feds had gone too far and skewed the results.

Corruption in politics is, of course, as old as politics itself. So the current spike in prosecutions does raise a rather obvious question that FBI criminal chief Swecker is happy to answer. "I don't think there is more corruption," he says. But with more agents on the job, "we're just trained better and look more to find it."

With reporting by Brian Bennett