A LITTLE DIP IN THE CESSPOOL

A GROWING CHORUS OF AMERICANS will tell you these days that Washington is a cesspool of cronyism, funny cash flow and cover-ups. Judging from the small flood of incidents that came to light recently, they have a point. Even as Ross Perot is gearing up his third party, which he promises will make Beltway corruption a focus of collective rage, the capital was suffering a wealth of embarrassments last week. Says Charles Lewis, head of the watchdog Center for Public Integrity: “Every once in a while these seemingly bright Washington power people screw up, and we get a glimpse of how the town really works.”

The episode that raised the most eyebrows involved James Lake, a prominent and highly paid lobbyist. Last week, in one of the first results of the investigation of Bill Clinton’s former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, Lake–whose clients include powerful agribusiness interests–pleaded guilty to charges involving a scheme to benefit Espy’s brother Henry. A failed run for Congress had left Henry Espy with a $75,000 bank debt. To help him pay it–while evading the ban on corporate contributions to federal election campaigns–Lake persuaded three associates at his lobbying firm to make personal contributions of $1,000 to Espy’s campaign. Lake did the same. Then he reimbursed everyone, including himself, with funds from a fictitious billing to one of his clients, Sun-Diamond Growers. Lake, who expressed remorse, faces fines and jail time.

Bill Clinton himself was on the spot last week. During House hearings on the White House travel-office scandal, it emerged that in early 1993 the President pushed a business proposal by his friend TV producer Harry Thomason. Clinton made notations on the proposal that an aviation business Thomason partly owned be awarded a $500,000 no-bid government contract. “These guys are sharp,” he wrote, and put a check in the box marked ACTION.

And there was Senator Al D’Amato, who is hotly pursuing Whitewater. According to the New York Times, weekly poker games in D’Amato’s office once provided regular occasions for lobbyists to rub elbows with the New Yorker, who now heads the Banking Committee and the steering committee for Bob Dole’s presidential campaign. While nobody admitted losing on purpose–a ploy that would have let D’Amato pocket as much as $300 a hand–the Senator’s poker buddies represented clients who just happened to have business before the banking panel. D’Amato’s office said the games ended about four years ago. Some participants told the Times they played as recently as last year.

If not the most momentous, an extremely telling incident involved Senator Robert Smith, a New Hampshire Republican. On Monday, Smith left a message on an answering machine that he thought belonged to a supporter he was inviting to attend a fund-raising event the next night. He asked for “a contribution sometime before the end of the year” and a return call, leaving his Senate-office phone number.

Oops. It’s illegal to use congressional resources for anything related to campaign fund raising. Smith’s blooper was exposed because he left the message on the answering machine of David Sadkin, a lawyer for an environmental group opposed to the Senator’s voting record. A Smith spokeswoman said he left his Senate-office number “inadvertently,” adding, “He knows the rules.” He should. He’s a member of the Senate Ethics Committee.

–With reporting by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and John F. Dickerson/ Washington