White and Street jumped on race thing, accused Bush Adm. This killed any chances for additional Bush votes in Philadelphia in last election and got Street elected as Mayor once again.
White, Street saw 'race thing' as probe tactic..."
By John Shiffman, Emilie Lounsberry and Craig R. McCoy
Inquirer Staff Writers
Three days after the City Hall scandal broke, FBI wiretaps captured a phone call in which Mayor Street agreed with Ronald A. White's advice that Street should use the "race thing" to galvanize his voters.
"We don't have much choice but to go with it," Street told White on Oct. 10, 2003, less than a month before the mayor was reelected.
At the time, White was a key fund-raiser for Street - and was the target of intense FBI scrutiny. On the phone, he told Street that the two men needed to discuss "how we're going to do this from a black thing."
"We can do both," Street replied, without elaborating.
A detailed account of the conversation, intercepted on White's cell phone, has been obtained by The Inquirer from three sources in the criminal justice system.
The Inquirer sent a copy of the transcript to Street on Friday but he did respond to requests for comment on it. His spokesman said yesterday that the mayor "did not" use the racial tactic White had suggested during the 2003 conversation.
The Street-White conversation was intercepted at a time when two forces were bearing down on the mayor and White, his longtime ally and fund-raiser: the wide-ranging corruption probe that had burst into view when an FBI bug was discovered in Street's office ceiling three days earlier, and the looming Nov. 4 election. Before the bug was found, polls had shown Street pulling slightly ahead in a close race.
Though Street seemed to endorse White's call for using the "race thing" during the recorded conversation, it is not clear whether the mayor decided to embark on such a strategy.
What is known is that while Street and his campaign aides generally avoided the subject in public, his political allies in the city and in Congress attacked the federal probe - some charging that it was a Republican plot against a big-city Democrat, others suggesting it was racially motivated.
Street has not been charged with any wrongdoing in the probe. His spokesman, Dan Fee, who worked as senior communications adviser for Street's 2003 campaign, said on Friday: "The campaign never used race as a defense during that entire process... . I never once, that I can recall, ever heard a serious conversation about using race as a defense against the probe."
When the intercepted phone call began, it was 1:10 p.m. and Street was in the middle of city business - on the way to the burial of a firefighter who had died of a heart attack while fighting a blaze. "Forty-three years old," the mayor said sadly to White.
Then they turned to the political fallout from the discovery of the bug. "We're obviously getting ready to readjust our strategy a little bit," Street said with a laugh.
"We got to go all out now, John," White replied.
White brought up an article in that morning's Philadelphia Daily News about a North Philadelphia drug investigation. The article disclosed that the corruption probe had had its roots in a drug investigation. Wiretaps of alleged drug dealers led authorities to tap the phone of a Muslim cleric, Imam Shamsud-din Ali, who also had political ties to the mayor.
As The Inquirer reported last year, it was while listening to the Ali wiretaps that the FBI stumbled onto information that triggered a second probe - focusing on political corruption unrelated to the drug case. Street had no ties to the drug network.
White told Street that the morning's Daily News had "put you right in the story... . They're overstepping the line. That's going to give us the justification to do what we got to do now."
"Right, right," Street replied.
"We got to be sensitive, man," White said. "We didn't want to get into no race thing. They did this." White did not specify whom he meant by "they."
"So now we got to go with it," White said.
Street said, "We don't have much choice but to go with it."
White exhorted the mayor: "We got to go at these guys with everything we've got."
White's words in the 2003 conversation square with the way he has sounded in dozens of FBI tapes played during the bug trials to date: a skilled wheeler and dealer who always had a pitch to deliver, a man with access to the city's decision-makers, and one who was not shy about giving suggestions, even instructions, to the mayor and his people.
Sometimes, the evidence has shown, Street and others followed through on White's requests for city business; at other times they humored him but did nothing.
As their 2003 conversation wound down, White complained bitterly that he had been the subject of "irresponsible" rumors suggesting that he was the target of the federal probe.
It soon emerged that White was indeed the target. He was charged last June with conspiring to corrupt City Treasurer Corey Kemp's office but died of cancer in November at age 55.
The night before his conversation with White, Street had helped fuel the racial debate about the investigation.
"There are some people, particularly in the African American community, that believe this is too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence," he said in answer to a question during a televised mayoral debate on Oct. 9, 2003.
Later, Street aides and allies more bluntly raised race - in comments that resonated in many quarters of the city.
On Oct. 14, the day the FBI raided the city's Minority Business Enterprise Council, Street adviser A. Bruce Crawley said he found it "suspicious that they would only focus on African American businesses and African American clergy."
"It's like they're being profiled," Crawley said.
On Oct. 16, amid more FBI searches, top mayoral aide George Burrell again brought up race. "People don't want to hear the fact that everyone who's being complained about in the investigation, in the media crusade, are people of color," he said. "I don't talk about race very often; I just say it's curious."
With the bug rebounding strongly in Street's political favor, Republican candidate Sam Katz, during an Oct. 19 rally with black supporters, accused the mayor of "racial politicking."
Katz gained little traction. According to a poll taken shortly after the listening device was found, the fallout from the FBI investigation helped Street. His support among African American voters increased 14 percentage points; one in four black voters said that the probe made them "more likely" to vote for Street.
Among all voters, Street surged sharply ahead.
While some Street allies focused on race, other supporters, such as campaign officials Fee and Frank Keel, cast the probe as a Republican plot.
"It's not Democrats who are known for dirty tricks," Fee said the day the bug was found.
In late October, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whom Street had mentioned during the intercepted call, condemned the investigation during a rally with city workers.
"The same forces that stopped the counting in Florida and disenfranchised voters," Jackson said. "Those same forces are entering into, in the same ugly way, this election."
Another critic was U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, chairman of the Democratic City Committee. Brady called it "Justice Department meddling in the city election."
Many months later, Philadelphia Magazine reported that Brady had disavowed his comments. "I was just spinning the s-," the magazine quoted him as saying, "and it worked."
Brady later told the Daily News that his comments about spinning had been quoted out of context, adding that federal authorities had eventually convinced him that their motives were not political.
The Street-White conversation was among some 25,000 discussions secretly recorded by the FBI with court permission over eight months in 2003 in the City Hall investigation.
White was among 12 people charged in a corruption indictment. Five others pleaded guilty, and one, investment banker Denis J. Carlson, was acquitted of lying to the FBI.
Five defendants are now on trial in U.S. District Court, including former Treasurer Kemp, two Commerce Bank executives, and two others.
FBI agent John R. Roberts testified last week that agents hid the bug in the mayor's office to determine whether Street was trading city contracts for political contributions.
He said that during the short time the bug was in place, the device did not record anything incriminating.
Federal prosecutors intend to play about 450 of the secretly recorded conversations during the current trial. Transcripts of the discussions became public when they were filed as exhibits last month. Prosecutors may play other wiretaps, too.
As the trial has progressed, defense lawyers have played a handful of conversations for the jury. The lawyers have said they intend to call the mayor as a witness, and to play more tapes - probably including recordings with Street's voice, such as the one recorded on Oct. 10, 2003.
Contact staff writer John Shiffman at 215-854-2658 or jshiffman@phillynews.com.
Inquirer staff writers Marcia Gelbart and Mark Fazlollah contributed to this article
philly.com
ps. Street was tipped off about bug in his office. Of course that is another subject. |
