CONGRESS HAS ITS OWN 'MIKE DEAVERS'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706940040-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 15, 2011
• Sequence Number: 40
• Publication Date: August 15, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706940040-5
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15 August 1986
JACK ANDERSON and DALE VAN ATTA
Congress Has Its Own `Mike beavers'
F ew things in this town are more amusing than
the spectacle of Congress mounting its white
horse and charging forth on a lofty moral
crusade-only to discover that the target of its
outrage is actually a mirror.
That's what happened when the lawmakers
decided something should be done to curb the
growing number of high-level officials who leave
federal service and cash in on their connections by
becoming representatives of foreign governments.
It turned out that almost half the 76 former
public servants who recently registered as foreign
agents came from the halls of Congress itself.
Rep. Howard E. Wolpe (D-Mich.), introduced a
bill last November that would stop the revolving
door. It would prohibit former federal officials from
advising or representing foreign interests for 10
years after leaving the government. Members of
Congress were not included.
Wolpe always intended to include Congress and
its senior staff, but he's been around Capitol Hill
awhile. "We didn't want to prejudice the possibility
of getting an initial hearing on the bill," he
explained to our reporter Jim Lynch.
Even then, the bill didn't draw much interest in
what a Wolpe aide called the "pre-Deaver days." It
initially had only four cosponsors, but after the
foreign consulting fees of former White House
deputy chief of staff Michael K. Deaver began
making headlines Wolpe's bill began to pick up
support. By February, it had 50 cosponsors and by
May it had more than 120 in time for its hearing.
Wolpe requested a General Accounting Office
study of former high officials who recently made
the career change to foreign agent. And he asked
that former members of Congress and senior staff
aides be included. When the results came in,
Wolpe's bill was rewritten to include congressional
job switchers. He also cut the prohibition period
from 10 years to four.
The GAO's list-which it stressed was not
conclusive, because of loopholes in the registration
law-included 32 former-members of Congress and
staff, 18 White House and 22 other executive
agency officials and four generals.
Gray & Co., a leading public relations firm,
showed how to make the right draft choices when it
picked up Donald F. Massey just as he left office as
the Senate sergeant-at-arms. Massey became a
senior vice president.
Massey was an assistant legislative counselor in
the CIA from 1974 to 1979. He then went to the
Senate, where he was on the Rules Committee staff
and the Joint Council on the Inauguration, chief
counsel to the Appropriations Committee and
sergeant-at-arms. His current duties include
lobbying for Turkey, France, United Kingdom,
Morocco, South Korea, Japan, Canada and the
Cayman Islands.
Former Democratic senator John Culver contacts
members of Congress and staff aides on behalf of
his law firm's foreign clients: Liberia, France, Japan
and West Germany. Former Republican House
member Thomas Evans Jr. is a partner in a law
firm that represents Jamaica and Cyprus. Asked for
comment, Evans said the legislation would be "a
deterrent for people ... to serving in government,
because of the limitations afterward."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706940040-5