Ethics Newsline®

President Bush begins Africa tour to highlight anticorruption efforts; warrantless surveillance is at the vortex of an ethics and political spat; and the Senate ethics committee issues a sharp rebuke to Sen. Larry Craig

WASHINGTON
Much of the news from inside the Beltway and across Africa had an ethics angle last week. Among the stories:

• President Bush highlighted successful anticorruption efforts as he began his tour of Africa. CNN reports that the multicountry tour kicked off in Benin, a nation Bush said is determined to fight corruption and ensure that U.S. aid is properly spent. Speaking to Benin’s president, Thomas Yayi Boni, Bush said: “One of the reasons I’ve come here, sir, is that leaders around the world have got to understand that the United States wants to partner with leaders and their people, but we’re not going to do so with people who steal money, pure and simple.”
• Before leaving Washington for his Africa trip, President Bush leveled angry charges against political opponents over one of the hot-button ethics issues of his term: surveillance for intelligence gathering. Bush accused House Democratic leaders of risking national security by refusing to extend the administration’s authority to eavesdrop on certain electronic communications, Bloomberg reported. Democrats said the underlying law authorizing the surveillance still remains in effect and accused Bush of attempting to frighten the public. Central to the controversy is a provision of the extension, approved by the Senate but not the House, that would grant immunity to telecommunications firms that likely violated the law by providing customers’ data to the White House without search warrants for more than five years following the 9/11 attacks.
• Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) faced a sharp rebuke last week from the U.S. Senate ethics committee over his conviction for disorderly conduct in an airport restroom. The ethics committee concluded that Craig committed the offense, tried to use his position as a U.S. senator to receive favorable treatment after arrest, and wrongly used campaign funds to pay his legal fees after pleading guilty. Craig later tried to withdraw his guilty plea, which stemmed from a police sting operation at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. In a letter publicly admonishing him, the ethics committee criticized Craig for “attempting to withdraw your plea in significant part because your initial calculation that you could avoid public disclosure of, and adverse public reaction to, this matter by pleading guilty proved wrong…. We consider your attempt to withdraw your guilty plea to be an attempt to evade the legal consequences of an action freely undertaken by you — that is, pleading guilty.” However, the Post notes, the letter effectively ended the ethics committee’s action on the case without any formal punishment or public inquiry into the incident. Despite criticism from fellow Republicans, Craig has vowed to finish out his term, which ends in January.

Sources: CNN, Feb. 16 — Bloomberg, Feb. 16 –Washington Post, Feb. 14.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Feb. 11 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 10, 2007 — Related Newsline story, May 14, 2007.