Key witness: Stevens sought cover by asking for billsBy Manu Raju A key witness testified on Wednesday that he was told Ted Stevens was “just covering his ass” in asking for bills to pay for extensive renovations that transformed the senator’s chalet in an Alaskan ski town. Bill Allen, the former head of the now-defunct Veco Corp., testified in federal court that the Republican senator was aware of the renovations, including revamped electrical wiring, a new power generator, new decks and stairways, a reworked rooftop and the addition of an entire ground-level floor that required his home to be lifted on stilts. The 71-year-old’s testimony is central to the gift-giving scandal that has landed the senator in criminal court. The Justice Department is also using Allen’s testimony to establish a motive for Stevens’s alleged decision to conceal gifts and home renovations he received from the former oil-industry executive. In October 2002, Stevens sent a handwritten note to Allen asking him for a bill to pay for those renovations, citing strict Senate ethics rules on gift-giving. “When I think of the many ways in which you make my life easier and more enjoyable, I lose count,” Stevens said in the note, which was admitted as evidence Wednesday. “Friendship is one thing, compliance with ethics laws is different,” Stevens said in the note. In the note, Stevens stated that a friend who was helping oversee the renovations, Bob Persons, a local restaurant owner near his home in Girdwood, Alaska, would remind Allen to give the senator a bill for the work. In court on Thursday, Allen said that Persons signaled that the senator only wanted cover by asking for a bill. “Don’t worry about giving a bill, Ted’s just covering his ass,” Allen said Persons told him in 2002. Stevens, sitting across the courtroom, remained expressionless, and barely made eye contact with his former close friend of some 25 years. Stevens has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of felony for failing to disclose more than $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from Allen and other longtime friends. His defense attorneys argue that he paid every bill he was given, including $160,000 in home renovations, and was unaware of other extensive renovations that Allen arranged without consulting the senator, who was 3,500 miles away working on Capitol Hill. Allen is expected to be cross-examined by defense attorneys Wednesday afternoon. Under questioning from Joseph Bottini, a government prosecutor, Allen revealed that he asked Stevens to use his power as a senior member of Congress to help with a number of public policy issues that Veco was pushing. For instance, on behalf of Allen in 1999, Stevens asked the World Bank to push Pakistan to help pay for the construction of Veco’s oil pipeline in that country. The senator also helped renew a contract Veco had with the National Science Foundation, and met with the State Department to consider training Russian workers to help with a project the company had there. In 2006, Stevens agreed to meet with Alaska state legislators who objected to a proposed natural-gas pipeline from the state to the lower 48, which Veco had been pushing aggressively. Allen, who asked Stevens to take one opposing legislator “to the woodshed,” was so involved with that proposal that he bribed state legislators to win their support. The former oil-industry chief faces up to 11 years in jail after he pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy charges, but has agreed to cooperate with the government investigation into corruption in Alaska. Stevens is not charged with delivering legislative action in return for the gifts, but the government is citing those examples as reasons why the senator decided not to publicly report the gifts and renovations he allegedly received from Veco. If convicted on all seven counts, the senator faces up to 35 years in prison. |
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