Why Smith Can't Recant: They've got him on tape.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Saturday, Dec. 6, 2003, at 11:32 AM PT
A taped interview with a Kalamazoo radio station virtually proves that Rep.
Nick Smith, R-Mich, has morphed from a whistleblower into an
uncooperative witness in a potential bribery investigation.
To review: Late last month, Smith said that "bribes and special deals were
offered to convince members to vote yes" on the Bush administration's
Medicare prescription benefit bill. Smith is retiring from Congress at the end
of this term, and his son is running for the GOP nomination to succeed him.
Smith said that somebody --”he wouldn't specify who, but an Associated
Press report said it was "House GOP leaders," and a Smith press release
issued the day after the vote seemed to hint it was House Speaker Dennis
Hastert or Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson
"made offers of extensive financial campaign support and endorsements
for my son Brad who is running for my seat." Smith, a fiscal conservative,
resisted the offer (or offers) and voted against the Medicare bill. A few days
later, Robert Novak wrote ”in a column that Smith, speaking via his chief of
staff, told Chatterbox was "basically accurate" -- ”that Smith had been told
Brad's campaign would receive $100,000 from "business interests" if Smith
voted yes. If that really happened, then Smith was the recipient of an
unambiguous attempted bribe, punishable under federal law.
Until this past Thursday, Smith stood by his accusations, but declined to
identify the person (or persons) he was accusing, except to say that it wasn't
Hastert, Thompson, or Majority Leader Tom DeLay. For his part, Hastert is
quoted saying in the Dec. 6 New York Times (in a beat-sweetener by Carl
Hulse about Hastert's emergence as a forceful legislative leader), "[W]e
didn't give away a dime."
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