It sound like Mr. Paul would make a great guest for Drudge's radio show this Sunday evening. This is from a Boston Globe profile that ran in June 2003:
216.239.39.104
As Kerry prepared for his reelection campaign in 1990, he found that the tables were sometimes turned -- the senator who loved investigations became the subject of informal inquiry. Reporters queried candidates in the race about drug use, and Kerry was forced to admit that he had smoked marijuana after he returned from Vietnam. "About 20 years ago, I tried marijuana. I didn't like it. I have never used or tried any drug since," Kerry said through a spokesman at the time.
Republicans and the media also raised questions about his dealings with wealthy donors. The most prominent inquiry focused on one of Kerry's major fund-raisers, a savings and loan executive named David Paul, who emerged as a principal figure in the savings and loan scandals of the time and who had ties to BCCI.
Paul's CenTrust Savings Bank of Miami failed in 1990 and cost taxpayers an estimated $2 billion, according to a report prepared by the Republican staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The investigation found that Paul "spent millions of dollars of insured deposits on such lavish personal perquisites as an art collection, the leasing of an airplane frequently used for personal and political purposes, operating expenses of a $7 million yacht owned by another Paul business interest, the purchase of a sailboat, Persian rugs, Baccarat crystal, foreign linens, and other expensive furnishings."
The Republican investigators also found there was "an interlocking relationship" between CenTrust and BCCI in the person of Ghaith R. Pharaon, a Saudi investor in both banks, who paid to fly six French chefs to a lavish 1988 dinner party at Paul's Florida home, attended by Kerry and other legislators. Kerry was among those politicians who flew on Paul's jet, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which Kerry chaired, leased Paul's yacht for fund-raisers.
When their relationship became known, Kerry acknowledged that Paul had asked for special consideration of a banking amendment CenTrust needed. Paul had contacted Kerry and other key lawmakers in 1989, seeking to weaken a portion of the savings and loan bailout bill. Specifically, he wanted to dilute the part of the bill that restricted institutions' use of "good will" assets rather than capital, as reserves against losses.
Kerry wrote Paul a friendly letter, inviting him to Washington "so that we can sit down and perhaps follow up." But, the senator said, he ultimately opposed Paul's request, which failed to win support in Congress.
Blum, the former Kerry aide, says the senator "came to understand he was being compromised." Blum stresses that Kerry in the end "got out of there."
Still, the matter became fodder in the reelection campaign, with Republican hopeful Jim Rappaport asking: "How could John Kerry possibly have appointed David Paul to a senior position in the Democratic Party?" Despite Rappaport's self-financed campaign and the nation's anti-incumbent mood, Kerry's performance during his first Senate term proved sufficiently popular to secure a healthy 57 percent of the state's vote.
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