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The
full Murtha – update
"...Murtha's new positions are
making waves in Pennsylvania.
"Everybody is shocked that he criticized the President and the
troops," said Gleason [PA GOP chairman]"
Below is the entire article from the September print issue of American
Spectator magazine, written by David Holman. It is interesting to note
that the majority of voters polled in Murtha's district 12 do not
support his anti-war position :
The Full Murtha
Washington is a forgiving town, at least to Democrats. Generally,
scandal-tainted Republicans are given little quarter. John McCain is
the most outstanding exception, and campaign finance reform is his
ongoing penance. In the absence of such surrender to the Democratic
agenda or a retreat from Washington altogether, the disgraced
politician does the smart thing: lies low. Congressman John P. "Jack"
Murtha (D-PA) did precisely that for almost 25 years after his
entanglement in "Abscam," an FBI investigation in the late 1970s and
early 1980s.
Then last November, Murtha re-emerged as the Democrats' main spokesman
on the war in Iraq, loudly advocating the withdrawal of American
forces. No flash in the pan, Murtha appears intent on remaining a
media darling. In June, hoping that Democrats take over the House, he
mounted a brief campaign for U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer's position as the
number-two Democrat in the chamber.
Despite months of Murtha's noise, the media have offered little more
than an abridged account of his 16-term tenure in the House of
Representatives. When he made his splash last year, newspaper reports
suggested that Murtha was a well-known hawk, a conservative even, who
reluctantly, heroically, turned against the war. Yet to most political
junkies, he was unknown. A flattering profile in the Washington Post
last fall devoted all of one sentence to Murtha's "ethical scrape" in
Abscam. Some outlets have reported the basic facts of Murtha's run-in
with the law, but have pretty much ignored the rest of his career.
So who is Jack Murtha? One of the greatest behind-the-scenes operators
in the House, he is an old-school congressman whose recent
outspokenness is out of character-and perhaps a sign of desperation.
Before Abscam, Jack Murtha was a rising politician. A native of
southwest Pennsylvania, Murtha twice enlisted in the Marine Corps and
served one tour in Vietnam, where he was highly decorated. From the
Pennsylvania statehouse, he was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives in a special election in 1974. He was quickly noticed
by House leadership and apparently headed for its ranks, earning a
slot on the Appropriations Committee and a role as a floor whip.
But his power-broker style made him a ripe target for the Abscam
investigation. A sting operation hatched by the FBI in the late 1970s,
Abscam had undercover agents offering bribes to senators, congressmen,
and local politicians in return for official services on behalf of
fictional Arab sheiks. After Abscam became public in 1980, six
congressmen and one senator were convicted of bribery and conspiracy.
Murtha wasn't among them, but he was named an unindicted
co-conspirator in the case. Although Murtha did not accept a bribe, he
failed to turn the undercover agents away.
The media's avoidance of Abscam isn't for lack of colorful details.
According to reports, an FBI videotape of the meeting shows Murtha,
quite confident in his large influence with Congress and the Carter
White House, interested in dealing with the undercover agents. A
13-second clip of the meeting was discovered by conservative media
earlier this year and disseminated on the Internet.
TAS has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the full tape,
which the FBI was still processing at the time of publication. But an
August 6, 1980, Washington Post column by the sometimes controversial,
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative columnist Jack Anderson,
overlooked in recent reporting on Murtha, fills in some of the gaps.
Anderson framed Murtha's performance as "perhaps the saddest scene on
the secret Abscam videotapes.... He refused to take the money, but his
reason was hardly noble."
The column continues, quoting Murtha speaking to the undercover
agents:
"I want to deal with you guys awhile before I make any transactions at
all, period.... After we've done some business, well, then I might
change my mind...."
... "I'm going to tell you this. If anybody can do it - I'm not B.S.-ing
you fellows - I can get it done my way." he boasted. "There's no
question about it."...
But the reluctant Murtha wouldn't touch the $50,000. Here on secret
videotape was this all-American hero, tall and dignified in a
disheveled way, explaining why he wasn't quite ready to accept the
cash.
"All at once," he said, "some dumb [expletive deleted] would go start
talking eight years from now about this whole thing and say [expletive
deleted], this happened. Then in order to get immunity so he doesn't
go to jail, he starts talking and fingering people. So the [S.O.B.]
falls apart."...
"You give us the banks where you want the money deposited," offered
one of the bagmen.
"All right," agreed Murtha. "How much money we talking about?"
"Well, you tell me."
"Well, let me find out what is a reasonable figure that will get their
attention," said Murtha, "because there are a couple of banks that
have really done me some favors in the past, and I'd like to put some
money in....["]
In the following exchange with an undercover agent, part of which
appears on the 13 seconds of available videotape, Murtha leaves the
door open for later negotiations:
Amoroso: Let me ask you now that we're together. I was under the
impression, OK, and I told Howard [middleman Howard Criden] what we
were willing to pay, and I went out, I got the $50,000. OK? So what
you're telling me, OK, you're telling me that that's not what you
know....
Murtha: I'm not interested.
Amoroso: OK.
Murtha: At this point, you know, we do business together for a while.
Maybe I'll be interested and maybe I won't.... Right now, I'm not
interested in those other things. Now, I won't say that some day, you
know, I, if you made an offer, it may be I would change my mind some
day.
It is damning stuff. But the mainstream media have yet to question
Murtha aggressively about even the short snippet of available tape,
much less the full reel.
Recent articles about Jack Murtha have also ignored the House Ethics
Committee's handling of his case. After considering his role for a
year, the committee in 1981 voted in secret to end the investigation,
by a 6-6 party-line vote. E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., a prominent
Democratic lawyer serving as the committee's special counsel
investigating Abscam, resigned that afternoon. Roll Call asked
Prettyman in 1990 whether he resigned because of the Murtha vote and
he called that "a logical conclusion." When contacted by TAS recently,
Prettyman said that shortly after the vote the committee informed him
that he worked directly for the committee and not Congress in general,
so the attorney-client relationship barred him from discussing the
Abscam investigation.
Within months of the conclusion of the Ethics Committee investigation,
Murtha's colleagues hailed his political survival. Though discounted
for a leadership post, he resumed his role in the House as a quiet,
skilled operator. A 1985 Washington Post profile called him "a
political deal maker more comfortable in the back rooms of Congress
than on the set of Meet the Press." In a place populated by the likes
of Tip O'Neill, Murtha earned a reputation as "possibly [the House's]
premier political operator," according to the profile. O'Neill told
the Post, "He loves political intrigue. He likes to deal. He puts the
votes together, make no mistake about it."
Sometimes, he put the votes together without Democratic leadership
knowing it. When a hubbub erupted in 1989 over a bill giving
then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley use of his own military jet,
Foley's office denied knowledge of the effort. But the word was that
Jack Murtha was responsible for the stealth amendment. At the time,
the Los Angeles Times identified him as "a behind-the-scenes operator
with close ties to House Democratic leadership."
Murtha remains a well-known advocate for such congressional
privileges, especially pay raises. This skilled parliamentarian has
repeatedly slipped pay and honoraria limit increases into
bills-leaving his colleagues dumbfounded, according to press accounts.
As the second-highest ranking Democrat on the Appropriations
Committee, Murtha is a master of another form of congressional spoils:
the earmark. According to Rob Gleason, chairman of the Pennsylvania
Republican Party, Murtha is part of the "old school who considers
money spent outside the 12th District foreign aid," referring to his
congressional district.
In the late 1990s, he proposed a series of reforms, such as a bill
reining in federal prosecutors, and an amendment requiring the House
Ethics Committee to quit an investigation if the committee is
deadlocked for six months. Murtha also sought to have the Department
of Justice reimburse members of Congress for their legal bills if they
are charged but not convicted.
Murtha was rarely quoted by reporters throughout the years, and
refused interviews even when his actions were the subject of news
reports. Michael Barone noted this public reticence in the Almanac of
American Politics:
Murtha is also one of those old-time politicians who operate best in
secret, holding court in the back corner of the House chamber where he
trades gossip and votes to colleagues who crowd around him as if they
were kissing his ring.... He speaks for attribution to few national or
local reporters, hardly ever appears on television, and rarely speaks
in the House chamber except for the annual defense spending bill.
Before last year, Murtha was also a quiet campaigner. Bill Choby, his
Republican opponent in five elections from 1990 to 2002, told TAS that
Murtha's campaign style "was limited to handing out pork money
immediately before an election, edited press releases, one-minute
interviews before the safe local media, and 30-second commercials
catered to the retired voters."
Even when facing political ruin in the form of Abscam, Murtha only
briefly spoke publicly about it: "I did not consider that any money
was offered and certainly none taken," he told reporters at the time.
"The FBI who taped the entire conversation knows damn well no money
changed hands." Murtha chose his words carefully, revealing no more
than what was already publicly available.
For a man who long resisted the camera-seeking style of congressional
politics, the new Murtha is an abrupt shift in style and substance.
He "used to be a low-key guy, under the radar," said Gleason, who has
known Murtha for over 30 years (their hometown is Johnstown). Now "his
conduct has changed" to "political chestbeating." Not to mention
verbal recklessness. In a recent interview, Murtha offered that
American troops in Iraq could redeploy to Okinawa, a claim that
analysts and the media widely derided. And Murtha's new positions are
making waves in Pennsylvania. "Everybody is shocked that he criticized
the President and the troops," said Gleason, who also noted that
Murtha was once a strong pro-life vote in the House. "I never even
detected a pro-choice vote from him until this year," Gleason said, in
reference to Murtha's votes in support of embryonic stem cell
research.
Some commentators suspect that Murtha's recent volubility is an
attempt to deflect attention from new ethical problems. The Los
Angeles Times reported in June 2005 that Murtha's brother, Robert C.
"Kit" Murtha, is a Washington lobbyist whose firm, KSA Consulting,
reeled in more than $20 million for its defense contractor clients
from the House defense appropriations subcommittee. Murtha is the
ranking Democrat on that subcommittee, which he also chaired for six
years before Democrats lost the House in 1994. KSA directly lobbied
Murtha's office on behalf of these clients.
In the wake of the Times story, Roll Call reported last year that the
House Ethics Committee may investigate the KSA matter. Ethics
Committee staff director William O'Reilly would neither confirm nor
deny any ongoing or potential investigations. After Murtha called for
withdrawal from Iraq last fall, Investor's Business Daily asked,
"could Murtha have been thinking about a possible ethics investigation
when he decided to throw himself into the public limelight last week?"
Murtha's behavior seems to confirm such suspicions. His opposition to
the war is his constant shield against criticism or damaging
revelations. When Cybercast News Service questioned Murtha's Purple
Hearts from the Vietnam war, his spokeswoman said, "We certainly
believe that the questions being raised are an attempt to distract
attention from what's happening in Iraq." He similarly dismisses any
questioning of his Abscam role.
His strategy is not so nefarious, said Gleason. "He's obsessed with
getting back in the majority. He is upset that the President doesn't
invite him to the White House."
But Gleason predicts that his new national presence is endangering his
re-election hopes. "It's not sitting well with the people in the 12th
District," he said. For the first time since 1990, Murtha could be
facing a formidable challenger. The Republicans have fielded Diana
Irey, a young, attractive Washington County commissioner running a
professional campaign. A recent poll shows that only 43 percent of
Murtha's constituents support his anti-war comments.
So why pursue such a strategy? "He feels invincible," Gleason said. "I
think he feels that when he unleashes his war chest in the fall and
reminds people of the jobs and money he brings home, they will
overlook the anti-war stuff." Maybe Jack Murtha will have to lose his
seat before he wishes he had remained the quiet power broker from
Johnstown.
Murtha's actions above pay grade
now he's slamming Hillary Clinton!
 In fashion reminiscent of a higher pay grade, Congressman John Murtha
turned on Democrat leader Hillary Clinton – blasting her for not being
more anti-war. [LINK
to story]
[EXCERPTS:]
Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha has
been an outspoken critic of the war. Last year he called on the Bush
administration to immediately withdraw American troops. Now in an
interview airing tonight on NY1’s “Inside City Hall,” Murtha is
turning his tough talk on Clinton.
“I have been disappointed. I've been
disappointed she hasn't spoken out more forcefully. She's a leader in
the Democratic Party -- she's probably going to be the nominee for
president next year,” said Murtha.
Asked whether Clinton would make a good
president, Murtha had this to say:
“There's an awful lot of things that she
would bring to the nomination process, but this is one area where she
has to step up at some point and I don't know whether it's related to
New York politics or what it is, but I would hope that in the next few
months she would make her position clear," said Murtha.
In response to Murtha's criticisms, a
Clinton spokesman said: "Senator Clinton has been a clear and
consistent critic of the way the Administration has handled the war
and believes the Iraqis must step up so we can begin to bring our
troops home."
Congressman John Murtha claims he is leading America in a 'new
direction.' Nothing could be further from the truth. His Nov. 17, 2005
call for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq is nothing new. It's a
re-dux of his 1993 call to cut and run from Somalia. We did cut and
run from Somalia and it emboldened Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to
plan and execute the 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil.
Murtha is not leading America in a new direction. He is leading
America to repeat old mistakes.
Here is a side-by-side comparison of Murtha's 1993 and 2005 talk
points: click
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