Return of the Potted Plant

Twenty years ago, U.S. senators were investigating the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran (which President Reagan said he would never do) to raise funds to support the Contra rebels in Nicaragua (which was illegal, though a court challenge to the Congressional ban might have gotten it thrown out on Constitutional grounds). At one point in the Senate hearings, Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawaii, got tired of hearing Oliver North's lawyer speak for North, a Marine lieutenant colonel who played a key role in the matter. Inouye suggested that North speak for himself. And his lawyer, a little pugnacious guy, leaned into his own microphone and said, "What am I, a potted plant? I'm here as a lawyer. That's my job." That was Brendan Sullivan. He is "a lawyer" the way Mauna Loa is "a mountain." He got North off, though there is no question he committed crimes, by having him describe them in immunized Congressional testimony, so the courts could throw out his later conviction on the grounds that prosecutors could not prove they would have nailed him without the immunized testimony. Sullivan is back. He's representing Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who faces seven counts of making false statements in the case of an oil contractor who made improvements to his home that more than doubled its size. On Thursday it was Sullivan entering a not-guilty plea, while Stevens stood silently, playing the potted plant role. Stevens, whose career dates back to an Interior Department post in the Eisenhower administration, has been a good friend to Hawaii for many years. Stevens and Inouye, though of different parties, are friends, and close allies, each working with the other to round up bipartisan support for federal grants and projects to aid their two remote states. It is difficult to imagine any outcome to this matter which does not pose some peril for Hawaii. Stevens will be acquitted or convicted or settle out of court, but regardless of which way the matter ends legally, politically it will lead to a new campaign focus in the battle to succeed Stevens, who is 84 and approaching his 40th anniversary as a senator. Hawaii benefits from an Alaska senator who gets things done. Is Stevens, apart from a senator who gets things done, one who engages in improper conduct? Perhaps the court case will answer that. What he allegedly did is fail to report gifts from VECO Corp., and its chief executive officer. VECO is an Alaska-based oil pipeline construction and maintenance firm. It hired more than 2,000 workers to clean up the mess after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, a spill so great that if it had happened along the Atlantic Coast it could have stretched from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to Cape Cod. CEO Rick Allen and Vice President Rick Smith pleaded guilty last year to extortion, bribery and conspiracy. Allen and Smith resigned and Allen's daughter Tammy became chairman. The FBI and the IRS raided Ted Stevens' home a year ago Wednesday. The indictments Tuesday said Stevens received hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreported gifts. We'll see how Stevens does, and what kind of performance is turned in by the "potted plant."