October 9-15, 2003

pretzel logic

Going Buggy

by Howard Altman

Call me crazy. You certainly wouldn’t be the first. But this bugging thing? I smell a rat. When FBI spokesperson Linda Vizi told reporters Tuesday that the putative listening devices found in Mayor John Street’s office had nothing to do with the increasingly ugly mayoral campaign, she was, in essence, saying that the FBI knew about the bug, which means that, in all likelihood, the FBI put it there.

Now, there has been speculation for months that the feds were looking into scandals at the Parking Authority, the airport, NTI and/or Penn’s Landing. Vizi issued the standard cannot-confirm-or-deny routine.

But why did the FBI so quickly rule out any connection to a campaign that has already seen a possible Molotov cocktail, the arrest of Street supporters for making threats and the alleged theft of cell-phone records belonging to an ex-con who’s chummy with Republican challenger Sam Katz? Vizi won’t say why.

Any investigation into Street and/or his associates would be very good news for Sam Katz -- Republican Sam Katz, who, while just a Republican in name, is still a Republican.

And this is where the call-me-crazy part kicks in. There is this other election practically around the corner, pitting a guy who really didn’t win the last time out against some yet-to-be-determined Democratic schlub.

Pennsylvania -- with 23 electoral votes -- will play a big part in that election, and Philadelphia will play a big part in what happens in Pennsylvania. While a Republican mayor does not put Philadelphia in the GOP victory column -- or change the fact that most Philadelphians hate Bush -- the GOP apparatus that would seep into City Hall by November 2004 won’t help matters for the Democrats in a city that gave Clinton a 407,209 to 85,154 margin over Dole and Gore a 441,834 to 99,234 margin over Bush.

We are talking about a president who lost the popular vote, who lied in his justification for war, whose administration helped engineer a political upheaval in California -- with 54 electoral votes -- replacing the legitimate governor with the Grope Nazi. We are talking about an administration that dimed out a CIA agent, risking national security and unknown lives just for political payback. Sadly, it is not out of the realm of believability that the White House has a role here.

"This could be an illustration of how important the national GOP thinks Philadelphia is," says one well-connected source. "If the FBI is saying what the investigation isn’t, don’t they have an obligation to say what it is? Yet they made a statement, and right off the bat cleared Sam and left a cloud of dust around Street."

Spokespeople for Street’s administration and campaign say that, as far as they know, no one in the administration or the campaign has received a target letter from the feds. Campaign spokesperson Dan Fee says that routine sweeps for bugging devices have determined none exist at the campaign headquarters.

"The mayor wants to be sure no one could draw any conclusions of wrongdoing or anything untoward," says Street spokesperson Barbara Grant. "There is not. He has conducted himself in 25 years with integrity. His exact words were that he was surprised by it." And not just surprised. Grant says the mayor, and the rest of his staff, "feel violated" that the office was bugged.

The FBI is not playing politics, says Vizi. "The FBI operates independently of political parties. That is why the director has a 10-year appointment," she says.

Not surprisingly, Sam Katz thinks my White House connection theory -- which is pure conjecture, I must admit -- is a load of hooey.

"I haven’t talked to the FBI," says Katz in a telephone call Tuesday night. "First of all, if the inference was how surprised was I that the Katz campaign was not involved, I am not surprised at all. We were not involved in anything like this, nor will we ever [be]."

He adds, "I will not speculate, nor am I in any position to give you guidance," about why the FBI so quickly ruled out any campaign involvement in the bugging of Street’s office.

Katz scoffs at "attempts to suggest that this is part of a grand conspiracy by people who want to play politics. My election will have no impact on the presidential election. Street seems to think so, but I don’t believe that."

It could also be that the rat I smell resides in City Hall -- that John Street and/or his associates have done wrong, are being investigated for it and could eventually face charges and jail time.

"I have been told that this investigation has been going on for almost two years, and that it is wide-ranging," says another well-connected source, who, like the first, spoke only on the condition of anonymity. The source also says that, contrary to my theory, "the discovery of this listening device is a tremendous disappointment to criminal justice people, because they aren’t where they need to be, but if they have a listening device above the mayor’s desk, they think something improper was going on at the mayor’s desk. No federal judge would have granted this warrant lightly. This is a non-politicized environment. They wouldn’t do this unless there was a sense of serious wrongdoing they needed to investigate."

Call me crazy, but either way, I just can’t get enough of this stuff.