Nation: Opening the Floodgate

It was billed by Republican Senators as a roast of Jimmy Carter and his Attorney General Griffin Bell. But when the Senate Judiciary Committee began to consider Benjamin R. Civiletti’s nomination as Deputy Attorney General last week, the mood was surprisingly low-key. Only a narrow attack was mounted on the ouster of Philadelphia’s U.S. Attorney, David Marston, the issue expected to dominate the hearings this week. Said Wyoming Republican Senator Malcolm Wallop: “There was no reason why Marston should not have been fired as a Republican; the only question is the timing.”

Civiletti, 42, a quietly decisive trial lawyer plucked from private practice in Baltimore on the recommendation of Carter Adviser Charles Kirbo, had his brief encounter with the Marston affair while serving as head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Marston had told a Civiletti aide, Russell (“Tim”) Baker, that Pennsylvania Congressman Joshua Eilberg was involved in a corruption investigation. Carter and Bell have said they did not know that Eilberg was a target at the time they agreed to his request to dump Marston. But what escaped their notice is another question.

In a sworn statement, Baker claimed he passed the word about Marston’s investigation of Eilberg to Civiletti last August and again in November—shortly after Eilberg leaned on Carter. Civiletti swore he did not gather from the first conversation that Eilberg was himself under investigation, and said he did not recall any subsequent conversation with Baker about Eilberg. The contradiction led New York Times Columnist William Safire to draw a harsh conclusion last week: “Ben Civiletti or Tim Baker—one, not both—is telling the truth [and]deserves advancement, while the other ought to be receiving, rather than dishing out, criminal justice.” That is an overstatement since there is nothing criminal about forgetting or misunderstanding a conversation, but the episode is at the least prima facie evidence of sloppy management at Justice.

There are other signs of ineptitude as well. Quite apart from Marston’s probe in Philadelphia, Justice investigators in Washington became aware late last year that Eilberg and his fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Daniel J. Flood were both candidates for investigation. Following a federal bribery conviction, a former Flood aide named Stephen Elko arrived at the department offering to tell tales—in exchange for immunity from further prosecution—that implicated Flood and Eilberg. Yet by all accounts, this information did not travel up the department hierarchy in time to warn Bell and Carter away from the urgings of Eilberg, whose telephone conversation with the President could be construed as an effort to obstruct justice.

Justice officials, TIME has learned, now regard it as certain that Flood will be indicted. Says one Government investigator: “We have 175 possible cases.” According to Elko, the mustachioed Congressman who represents blue-collar Wilkes-Barre was Congress’s most successful “muscler,” an official who used his considerable influence to direct federal contracts to people and companies that said “thank you” in cash. Other Congressmen and many friends of Flood’s will probably be touched by the investigation, which is already becoming known as “Floodgate.” The House ethics committee is expected this week to name a special counsel and staff for a congressional investigation of Flood, who has so far come under investigation by at least eight separate U.S. Attorneys’ offices.

Among the matters under scrutiny:

> Ties between Flood and Pennsylvania Rackets Boss Russell Bufalino. The suspected link: the Wilkes-Barre firm of Medico Industries, controlled by President Philip Medico and his brothers. The FBI discovered more than a decade ago that Flood steered Government business to the Medicos and traveled often on their company jet. Investigators say Bufalino frequently visited the Medico offices; agents tape-recorded Bufalino’s description of Philip as a capo (chief) in his Mafia family. Elko’s testimony has sparked new investigative interest in the Flood-Medico-Bufalino triangle.

> Payments from the Airlie Foundation, a Virginia research organization and conference center. Investigators suspect that Flood received approximately $59,000 from the foundation and its director, Dr. Murdock Head, while Elko and former Louisiana Representative Otto Passman shared an additional $28,000. Between 1971 and 1977 Airlie got contracts worth more than $18 million from the State Department’s Agency for International Development for educational films and other projects. Passman, Flood and Head deny any improprieties. Yet Elko’s story is filled with specifics. TIME has learned that he claims Head asked him to invite Passman to dinner and the director gave him an envelope containing Passman’s “taxi fare”—$10,000 in cash. Investigators do not yet have corroboration of the payments, but there is evidence that Flood and Passman pressured AID on behalf of Airlie. Former AID Official Jarold A. Kieffer wrote to his supervisor and to President Gerald Ford protesting Passman’s pressure; an earlier letter from Kieffer to AID’S former deputy administrator John Murphy complained: “It does not matter who the Congressman is, or what his power over us may be, some things are just wrong, and his coercion and demands in this case are wrong.”

— Assistance to a bank in which Flood owned stock. A Mountain Top, Pa., real estate development called Crestwood Hills ran into financial difficulties in 1974: then it became part of a Luzerne County housing project subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and was able to make some of its payments on a $3 million mortgage issued by the First Valley Bank, in which Flood owns stock. Investigators are exploring a possible conflict of interest in Flood’s dealings with HUD.

Scrutiny of Eilberg has so far yielded little evidence. Elko’s testimony has centered on Flood, and investigators say that most of it has already been corroborated.