Nation: Dapper Dan’s Toughest Scene

The peacock Congressman is accused of selling influence

In blue-collar Wilkes-Barre, Pa., there is a Daniel J. Flood Elementary School. Close by are a Daniel J. Flood Industrial Park, a Daniel J. Flood Rural Health Center and a Daniel J. Flood Elderly Center. All were named in honor of a theatrically flamboyant Representative who struts around Congress like a peacock. He slicks down his hair with stickum, sports a villainous-looking waxed mustache and favors wildly eccentric clothes—velveteen suits, ruffled shirts, patent-leather shoes and satin-lined capes. But despite his outlandish appearance, Dapper Dan Flood, 74, has amassed immense power in his 30 years on Capitol Hill. As a member of the so-called College of Cardinals—the 13 Appropriation subcommittee chairmen —he can influence a large share of the federal budget and direct as much as reason permits to his constituents’ benefit. Or maybe more. He has provided them with millions of dollars’ worth of public-works projects over the years, including an interstate highway, hospital and airport.

This week, however, Dapper Dan’s colleagues on the House ethics committee will begin a formal investigation into charges that he has been feathering his own nest as well as his district. Committee staffers and the Justice Department are scrutinizing Flood’s activities in these areas:

¶His efforts in 1972 to enable a chain of California trade schools to retain its accreditation with the U.S. Office of Education and thus continue to qualify for federal funds. Flood’s former administrative assistant, Stephen Elko, admitted receiving a $15,000 kickback from the schools, and was convicted in Los Angeles last fall of bribery, perjury and obstruction of justice. Elko claimed that he received $25,000 in hush money from Flood’s friends. But in exchange for a reduced sentence, Elko agreed to provide evidence against his former boss. According to Elko’s account, Flood received $100,000 in cash and bank stock from the schools and other organizations that obtained federal financing with his help. ¶Flood’s role in obtaining congressional approval in 1973 of $10 million for a livestock development project in the Bahamas, a project that was approved over the strong objection of the Agency for International Development. According to Elko, AID officials’ misgivings were silenced when Elko suggested that the agency’s appropriation might otherwise be “stymied” by Flood in Congress. But the agency did manage to block Elko’s attempt to put one of Flood’s friends, Bahamian Lawyer F. Nigel Bowe, in charge of the project.

¶Flood’s dealings with the government of Haitian President for Life Jean-Claude Duvalier. During a visit to the island in 1973, Elko promised that Flood would increase U.S. aid. Within a month of Elko’s return home, Congress approved $23.4 million in economic aid for Haiti, about 21/2 times as much as Haiti received during the previous year. In return, says Lucien Rigaud, a prominent Haitian businessman and former aide to Duvalier,

Flood received veto power over which U.S. companies would be hired to set up the aid programs.

¶Flood’s involvement in the financing of a $65.1 million, 20-story addition to Philadelphia’s Hahnemann Hospital. In 1975, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare rejected the hospital’s request for federal funds to build the wing. But Flood bypassed HEW by attaching a $14.5 million grant for the hospital to a bill appropriating antipoverty funds for the federal Community Services Administration. Later Flood urged the hospital to hire Pennsylvania Congressman Joshua Eilberg’s law firm in Philadelphia to arrange a bond issue that raised an added $39.5 million for the wing. For its work, the firm received a fee of $500,000.

Flood denies any wrongdoing. Moreover, admits one federal investigator: “If Flood took large sums of money, we haven’t been able to trace it so far.” Indeed, for all his personal flamboyance, Flood and his wife Catherine live modestly in a small frame house in Wilkes-Barre that is worth only about $20,000, though they do splurge on a new white Cadillac.

Born in Hazleton, Pa., Flood boxed at Syracuse University and, after graduation in 1924, joined a touring theatrical company. He performed in more than 50 productions, and grew his trademark mustache for the role of a plantation owner. Age and the wear and tear of his long-running performance on the Capitol Hill stage have lately begun to slow the headliner, who used to rock House debates with melodramatic oratory.

But he has not lost his popularity with the folks back home, who still revere him for coming to the rescue of Wilkes-Barre after it was virtually destroyed by the raging Susquehanna River during Hurricane Agnes in 1972. After hearing about the disaster at midnight in Washington, he flew home aboard then Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird’s personal helicopter, and declared: “This is going to be one Flood against another.” He soon learned that the most critical need was for helicopters to rescue marooned victims. He phoned a top official at the Pentagon and bellowed: “I want those helicopters, and I want them this afternoon. Not tonight or tomorrow. You know, there are an awful lot of people running around the Pentagon looking for stars, but if I don’t get help, the only stars they’ll see will be the ones in their eyes.” The choppers arrived posthaste.

Two days after the storm, in typically bravura fashion, he announced: “I have ordered the Army Corps of Engineers not to permit the Susquehanna to rise another inch.” The river rose no further. Afterward, Flood steered about $1 billion in disaster relief to his district. No wonder, then, that a constituent described him as “the next closest thing to God.” ∙