The most dramatic moment took place about thirty-seven minutes into the hearing. All eyes turned to the back of the room when Betty Wright, dressed elegantly in a bright turquoise suit, gracefully walked through the doorway with her chin up as Susman spoke. Before television viewers could see what was happening, the cameras caught heads turning and the photographers on the side eagerly standing up to snap pictures for the papers. Betty wanted to make sure that the committee sensed that she was unafraid and concealing nothing. Just as important, she hoped to provide a human face to the person whom Phelan had characterized as a participant in an elaborate con game. The committee would have to render judgment on a person sitting right behind the lawyers.
After pausing for a moment in order to give the photographers time to finish snapping their pictures, a steely Betty walked briskly, by herself, to the front of the room with the cameras following her. She sat next to one of her daughters in a reserved seat. A lawyer at Wright’s table turned and gave her a friendly smile. The camera zoomed in on her face as she caught her breath. She watched and took notes on a yellow tablet that she had brought along. When Susman finished his presentation, Betty stood up to give him an appreciative peck on the cheek as he walked over to greet her, and they shook hands. Always conscious of helping her husband, she gave Susman a kiss a second time to make sure that the photographers caught the moment.23 “You’re wonderful,” she whispered just loud enough to be certain everybody heard.24
And now it was Phelan’s turn. Although the two attorneys were close in age—Susman was forty-five and Phelan fifty-two—their courtroom styles could not have been more divergent. After sitting through Susman’s ninety-minute presentation, the tall and lanky Phelan disagreed with everything his opponent said, doing so with a theatricality that might have made Daniel Webster blush. He thrust his arms dramatically into the air as he went over in his booming voice the many ways in which the Speaker had mocked the ethics rules. Susman had used legalisms to hide corruption. “We are dealing with the confidence of the American public,” Phelan warned. “Are we to look at the rules through the prism of the most nearsighted, myopic person that we can?” For visual effect, Phelan pounded his hand on the lectern and threw down his papers when he concluded each point.25
Susman was no match for the Chicago litigator. Whereas Susman appeared sober, pedantic, and detail oriented, Phelan mesmerized as he sought to focus the committee, and the public, on the big picture. “But what does all this really mean?” he asked, with his voice getting slightly higher with each word, after talking about the legislative history of the honoraria and royalty rules. “Why is such a technical or legal reading really important? Are we really here debating the niceties of a tax code provision that deals with active and passive income?” The answer was no. “What we are dealing with,” Phelan said as he peered into the faces of the committee members, willing them to agree with him, “is the integrity of this institution! We are dealing with the confidence of the American public in the members that serve here and the rules that they are obliged to follow!” He urged members to look at the facts of the case rather than accept Susman’s scholastic recitation of how and when the various rules should be applied. “Is that what was intended by these rules? Was it intended by these rules that any member of this institution, could, by calling something a book, or an article, change the basic nature of what was done?” Phelan asked. “As one of the bulk purchasers said, ‘What we were paying for was the presence of the man.’”
Phelan painted a terrible picture of the Speaker, “James C. Wright,” as he kept calling him throughout the presentation. With Susman sitting stiffly through his opponent’s recitation, the prosecutor next dismissed the defense’s claim that all members of the House would be in danger of investigation themselves as a result of their friendships and ties to their districts. These were simply scare tactics conjured up by Wright to persuade the committee members to ignore his wrongdoing simply out of fear of being ensnared in their own scandals, he said. Phelan belittled Susman’s argument that the members should rely on the rules alone to determine what was a proper or improper gift. “We don’t need a trial lawyer or a battery of lawyers,” he bellowed, to talk about gifts because most people knew exactly what a gift was when they saw one. “Most folks don’t get gifts from anybody other than their family, and a close personal friend on occasion,” he reminded the panel. He mocked Susman’s effort to avoid the basic and obvious issue of a close confidant imparting “$140,000 in gifts” to the Wrights. “To suggest that everybody in Congress has a friend like George Mallick is absolutely wrong . . . and demeaning to this institution.” He reminded the assembled that as a real estate developer, Mallick’s “livelihood,” “investments,” and “future” depended in large part “upon the taxing powers of this Congress.”
With the camera zoomed in on Betty Wright, who fought to contain her emotions, Phelan charged, “This man was giving money, a home, a car, and loans to the Majority Leader of this body! And he was doing it for over ten years.” He questioned with mock amazement that during all those years Wright never once thought to ask of his friend Mallick, “Why are you doing this? What is in it for you? What do you expect from me?”
Phelan’s message to the committee was that they should focus on the “intent” and the “spirit” of the laws, not a technical interpretation of the language. “Look at the facts, the relationships . . . the facts here control, they lead in only one direction,” Phelan stated with conviction. And he warned that if the committee dismissed this case, every citizen would lose faith in the ability and willingness of the House to monitor ethics. The rules, he finished, his voice softening, perhaps in calculated exhaustion so the members had to lean in to hear, were meant to place limitations on members rather than to provide them a cover to pursue whatever behavior they wanted. The “integrity of this House” was at stake, he said.
Phelan radiated competence and even glamour on the screen. It was as if a director had cast him to play this part. His charming smile and the handsome gray streaks in his hair, along with the signature curl that hung over his forehead, gave him the appearance of a leading man. His baritone conveyed gravitas, a sense of mission. As Phelan drove home his point that this case was about protecting the reputation of Congress, the television camera caught a dismayed Susman sitting in his chair, his face grim and head lowered.
Perhaps it never was a fair fight. Phelan started with a distinct advantage, one that Gingrich had understood perfectly when he ignited this entire campaign. While Susman had to persuade the committee from a defensive crouch, by making arguments about legal technicalities that wouldn’t attract the support of many voters, Phelan spun his narrative around behavior that sounded highly questionable, regardless of the rules or the specific facts, and in a way that could be easily understood by any person listening.26 In terms of the book deal, for instance, Phelan depicted a powerful legislator who had required special interest groups to purchase large orders of a hastily patched-together collection of dusty speeches with the single intention of turning a profit and subverting the rules that members were supposed to follow. Even Wright’s staunchest supporters admitted that the robust sales for such a book didn’t look good on paper. And Susman never denied the charge but rather argued that book royalties were not covered under the honoraria limitations put into the ethics rules in the 1970s before Wright was Speaker. In the nation’s post-Watergate political culture, when all politicians were suspect and when the suffix “-gate” was constantly attached to scandalous news coming out of Washington, Phelan was confident that these kinds of stories from Wright’s career would not sit well with many Americans.
The Speaker, of course, was nowhere to be seen throughout the day other than for the few minutes when he stepped out of his office to gavel the House to order at midday. When he appeared for this brief spell, reporters followed him every step of the way, shouting out questions with the hope of getting some kind of response to w
hat was taking place. The only thing Wright was willing to say was that he thought his lawyer did an “excellent” job.27 As soon as he was done in the chamber, the Speaker rushed back to his office, where his wife joined him for a late lunch. His staffers were so glued to the in-house television feed they almost didn’t notice that he had returned to the office.
When the hearings resumed at 4:00 P.M., the two lawyers went back and forth, sniping about the details of the case as the committee members asked questions of both of them. By now the niceties from the earlier part of the hearing had faded away. Everyone was tired. Susman and Phelan felt the pressure from the clock ticking down. Congressman Gaydos, who had dozed off at one point in the presentations, perked up for the second round. Susman began his counterattack by saying that a wise lawyer once told him, “When the law is against you, argue about the facts. When the facts are against you, raise your voice, wave your hands, sound convinced, offended. . . . I think we have just seen a demonstration where a lawyer, at a hearing designed to deal with legal issues, tells you, don’t worry about the law, focus on the facts. Rather than talking about the facts we have a lot of appeals to emotion.” Susman dismissed Phelan as the “special persecutor,”28 lashing out at him for talking about issues that were not even in the Ethics Committee report. “Forget about the letter of the law,” a frustrated Susman accused Phelan of saying. “The American public doesn’t like what Jim Wright did . . . so punish him.” He charged that Phelan had twisted the ethics rules to serve his own purpose of obtaining a politically motivated conviction. As if to underline just how ridiculous the charges were, the cameras caught Betty laughing when Susman went over the spurious nature of Phelan’s accusations regarding her use of a company car. Yet through it all most members of the Ethics Committee sat “stone faced,” according to one reporter.29
Meanwhile, from their seats alongside Susman right up front, Wright’s advisers searched for clues as to whether any members were changing their opinion. There were some glimmers of hope for those still defending the Speaker. The Republican Chip Pashayan, who was perpetually determined to look like the most judicious person in the room, lamented when it came his turn to ask questions, “These were dark days in Washington.” He said to the committee, the lawyers, and the cameras that he was unhappy that the defendant had been “prejudged” by many quarters, including by his colleagues on the committee who were supposed to listen impartially. The “cries of resignation” before the Speaker could present his side of the case, Pashayan said to his fellow committee members, the lawyers, and everyone else in the room, were wrong.
But the moments that bolstered Wright’s supporters were few and far between. The ranking Republican, the amiable John Myers, indicated he was skeptical of Susman’s presentation. He even tripped Susman up when he asked a question about the intention of Rule 47, the ethics rule that placed limitations on members earning outside income, which Susman simply could not answer. Myers read the language of the rule that said it covered “anything of value” in addition to cash earnings, and he wanted to know why that was put in there if book royalties did not count. Susman looked down at his desk, like a student who couldn’t answer his teacher’s question, stumbling on his own words before falling silent with a downcast face.
Worst of all for the Speaker was the fact that the two members who were seen as crucial swing votes to both counsels, Representatives Dwyer and Atkins, provided no indication that they might switch their votes.30 Indeed, Atkins did just the opposite. He said that the hearings were the most “difficult and painful experience of my twenty years in public life. I did not seek election to stand in judgment of my peers or bring harm to my colleagues.” He was also mindful of the “terrible hurt and hardship” this inquiry had caused Wright and his family. Atkins called Wright an “effective and talented Speaker,” and the Massachusetts Democrat predicted that when the history of the House was written, his tenure would be compared to greats such as Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn. But then Atkins continued that the committee’s goal was not to judge his speakership but to evaluate the rules of the House and to restore “public confidence” in government. During his turn at questioning, Atkins told Susman that he was struck by the problem of whether Mallick, the commercial real estate developer, had a direct interest in legislation. Atkins’s own reading of the evidence suggested that there was truth to the claim that Mallick’s projects benefited from federal funds that were earmarked for the Fort Worth Stockyards.
Glancing at the television screens in their offices, congressional staffers on both sides of the aisle muttered comments about the proceedings the same way they would while watching a sports event. “Phelan’s losing it,” cheered one Democratic staffer to his office mates. “Too histrionic,” he continued. Even Senate staffers remained riveted as rumors flew around their offices that Wright might resign.31 Republicans felt that Phelan was giving Susman a shellacking, responding to his technical legal defense with common sense and clear-eyed moral arguments that seemed hard to refute.
When the hearings ended after eight and a half hours, the committee members packed up their materials knowing they would soon have to decide whether to accept Wright’s proposal to dismiss the charges against him. Speaker Wright, sheltered in his office for the day as his lawyers instructed, rushed out of the Capitol with his wife. He paused to speak briefly with the press. “We clearly had the better side of the legal arguments,” he insisted. Admitting that it “remains to be seen” whether he would continue as Speaker, Wright said that Phelan was “very bad about distorting the facts.” Wright continued to insist that he abided by all of the ethics rules, “as I understand them.” But it wasn’t pretty. One reporter asked skeptically if he thought he could win with these kinds of legalistic arguments. Another reporter asked if Wright believed in his heart he could survive politically. Yet another asked if he could be an effective Speaker if he managed to stay in power.32 The Speaker hurried to his car without commenting.
Although each side had faith that it had presented the stronger argument, Democrats were even more shaken than before the televised hearing. The hearing had been a preview of how effective Phelan could be in the next phase of the committee process, and they felt little confidence in how Wright’s attorneys would perform. Imagining how this would unfold when the committee heard from the lawyers again, in hearings that would also be televised, many Democrats shuddered to think that the outcome would be the same as, or even worse than, when they voted on the report. It could be the first time in many years, as one Democrat privately told a reporter as he observed Wright’s struggles, “that being an incumbent is not an advantage.”33
What bothered Democrats the most was that Wright’s team did not seem to understand the most fundamental point: a technical defense would not work in such a highly politicized environment. Everyone remembered how badly Wright mishandled the pay raise and the way he had missed the underlying conservative discontent in the electorate. The result had been devastating, and it appeared that Wright had not learned from it. The two-stage ethics process was flawed by design because the deliberations took place in a political rather than a legal setting. In Wright’s case, the initial findings of guilt, irrespective of the weak standards of evidence, already damaged his standing, which in turn influenced the opinions of fellow legislators who were contemplating the next phase of the investigation. The next trial would not take place in some closed courtroom; the trial would occur on Capitol Hill and on television with even larger numbers of reporters, cameras, and, crucially, viewers. The public didn’t trust Congress to begin with, and it was inconceivable that they would give the House leader the benefit of the doubt. Phelan’s dramatic and persuasive style, which played well in front of the cameras and made a convincing case as to the muddier side of Wright’s interactions, frightened them. It was as though the Speaker’s side were defending him with matches while the prosecutor wielded a blowtorch. And the questions from the committee members provided no comfo
rting indications that Atkins or Republicans were going to change their minds in the near future.
* * *
—
From the inner sanctum of his corner Rayburn Building office, just a few floors away from where the Ethics Committee had met, Newt Gingrich savored what he saw on C-SPAN. He had not yet left the city for the Memorial Day break, but would depart now with an extra bounce in his customary swagger.
The minority whip knew enough about Washington to predict that the Wright story would consume the city even as the legislators returned to their districts for the short break. The story seemed as if it were reaching a climax, so the press would not stop its coverage even while the members were gone. For the many staffers, lobbyists, and government workers staying behind, Coelho’s stepping aside and the Speaker’s travails were the main topic of conversation at the Georgetown parties and the barroom dives around Washington. Even the late-night talk show hosts had taken an interest in the House of Representatives. “Do you believe what’s going on in Congress?” the comedian Jay Leno asked his audience during the Tonight Show monologue. “Jim Wright is in trouble. This Tony Coelho guy resigns. And this Representative [Donald] Lukens of Ohio is convicted of having sex with a sixteen-year-old girl,” Leno chortled, referring to the jury decision just rendered about the Ohio Republican who was friends with Gingrich. “Suddenly, old John Tower is starting to look pretty good!”34
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