Stevens Did Not Want to Be Billed for Work, Witness Says

New York Times | October 1, 2008

By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON — Bill Allen, the Alaska oil services tycoon, testified Wednesday that he never sent any bills for the gifts and services he provided to Senator Ted Stevens because the senator’s designated liaison told him clearly that Mr. Stevens wanted him not to do so.

In his second day of testimony for the prosecution, Mr. Allen told the jury that he was told explicitly and coarsely to ignore Mr. Stevens’s notes asking for bills, saying that they were sent only to provide a false record to protect the senator. Mr. Stevens is on trial for failing to list on Senate disclosure forms an estimated $250,000 in gifts and services from Mr. Allen and his company, Veco, mostly for renovating the senator’s home in Girdwood, Alaska.

Mr. Allen, who had once been close friends with Mr. Stevens, acknowledged under questioning that he had received a handwritten note from Mr. Stevens on Oct. 6, 2002, effusively thanking him for all the work done on the house. In the note, Mr. Stevens, Alaska’s veteran Republican senator, adds: “You owe me a bill. Remember Torricelli, my friend,” a reference to Senator Robert G. Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat who left office in disgrace after he was admonished by the Ethics Committee in 2002 in a case involving unreported gifts from a supporter.

Mr. Stevens’s note asking for the bill also noted that Bob Persons, his close friend, would talk to Mr. Allen soon about the issue. Mr. Allen testified Wednesday that within a short time he met with Mr. Persons who told him: “Bill, don’t worry about getting a bill. Ted’s just covering his ass.”

Mr. Allen, who had earlier detailed for the jury all the work he did on the Stevens home, said he did not send a bill after his conversation with Mr. Persons. He received a second note from Mr. Stevens on Nov. 11, 2002, thanking him for the work again, saying, “Don’t forget, we need a bill for what’s been done out at the chalet.”

Joseph Bottini, a government lawyer, asked Mr. Allen if he sent any bills in response to that note. “No,” he said.

“Why not?” the prosecutor asked

Mr. Allen said that the message from Mr. Persons was unmistakable. Did he want to get reimbursed? he was asked.

“I really didn’t want to,” he said laconically.

“Why not,” asked the prosecutor.

“I wanted to help Ted.”

“Why?”

“Because I liked him,” he replied.

Mr. Allen, a blunt and plainspoken man, portrayed a political world in which people were eager to do favors for someone like Mr. Stevens, who was the state’s dominant political figure for decades.

Mr. Bottini, the prosecutor, sought to insulate Mr. Allen from what is expected to be a withering cross-examination that could begin Thursday. Mr. Stevens’s lawyers are expected to assert, among other things, that Mr. Allen is trying to curry favor with the Justice Department because he is awaiting sentencing for his conviction in federal court in Alaska for a scheme to bribe state lawmakers.

When he was confronted in the summer of 2006 by the F.B.I. with secret wiretaps disclosing his bribery scheme, he agreed to cooperate with the government, he said, “to help get the guys I bribed.” In exchange, he said, federal prosecutors agreed “they wouldn’t mess with my kids.”

He faces a sentence of about 11 years, though the sentencing has been delayed so prosecutors can adjust their recommendations based on how cooperative he is in the Stevens trial.

Mr. Stevens is not charged with bribery, that is doing services for Mr. Allen in exchange for the goods and services. But Judge Emmit G. Sullivan has, over defense objections, allowed prosecutors to submit evidence of favors Mr. Stevens did for Mr. Allen to demonstrate a motive for the senator to have willfully concealed what he received.

Judge Sullivan told the jury that any testimony or evidence could only be used to “determine motive or intent, if any.”

Mr. Allen, under questioning, then related how in 1999, Mr. Stevens intervened with the World Bank to help persuade the government of Pakistan to pay Veco dividends it had earlier been promised on a pipeline project in that country. Prosecutors introduced a September 1999 letter sent by Mr. Stevens to James Wolfensohn, then the president of the World Bank, asking for help. The letter raised the issue of World Bank sanctions against Pakistan.

“Did you get paid the dividends,?” Mr. Allen was asked.

“Yes,” he said.