Life Inside the Congressional Cookie Jar

Politics is an exact science, not an ambiguous art. Whoever said it was not exact must have lost an election and, with hands in the air, said, "Too many variables—people are too hard to predict."

But my contention is that nearly everything in politics is predictable. Nothing under the political sun is new. To prove it, I have reduced the entire political experience down to a set of laws into which one can fit any political activity. I call these my first eight Laws of Politics:

1. Anybody who really would change things for the better in this country could never be elected President anyway.

2. Don't worry about your enemies, it's your allies who will do you in.

3. In politics, people will do whatever is necessary to get their way.

4. The bigger the appropriations bill, the shorter the debate.

5. If a politician has a choice between listening and talking, guess which one he will choose?

6. When voting on the confirmation of a Presidential appointment, it's always safer to vote against the son of a bitch, because if he's confirmed, it won't be long before he proves how wise you were.

7. If you want to curry favor with a politician, give him credit for something that someone else did.

8. Don't blame me, I voted for McGovern.

If you don't believe in the truth of these laws, just think back to any political experience within your own memory and try to apply one of Abourezk's Laws of Politics to it. For example, try out my first law: Anybody who really would change things for the better in this country could never be elected President anyway.

The test for this law is easy: Could Fred Harris or Mo Udall ever be elected President? No way. They have made outright threats against the establishment—the nation's power structure—and so the people who run this country would never let them win. It is only those who merely talk about change but don't really want it who are allowed to be President.

Or what about my second law: Don't worry about your enemies, it's your allies who will do you in.

Think about this law for a minute. Did George McGovern ever hurt Richard Nixon? No. It was one of Nixon's trusted aides, John Dean, who brought him down. What did Goldwater and the Republicans ever do to damage L.B.J.? Nothing. But L.B.J.'s fellow Democrats—led by Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy—did plenty. Or what about Wayne Hays? Was Liz Ray his enemy before she started talking into her tape recorder?

But it is Abourezk's third law that is to be the subject of this essay: In politics, people will do whatever is necessary to get their way. This law is well illustrated by one of Louisiana Senator Russell Long's early political experiences. At the time, Long was a fourth-year student at Louisiana State University and a member of the debate squad. Since his father, Huey, had been dead for some time, Russell occasionally sought the counsel of his uncle Earl Long, who had been (and would be again) governor of Louisiana.

When Russell solicited advice on one upcoming debate, Uncle Earl asked, "What's the topic?"

"Should ideals be used in politics? And I have the affirmative side, Uncle Earl," said Russell.

"Well, you've got the best side, boy," Uncle Earl said gleefully. "Just tell 'em, hell, yes, you oughta use ideals in politics—you ought to use any goddamn thing you can get your hands on."

•

Russell never forgot that lesson, judging from the way he operated during the debate on the Emergency Natural Gas Bill in early 1977. In the course of that debate, the oil-and-gas industry was accused by some Senators of withholding reserves of natural gas in anticipation of higher prices; to prevent withholding in the future, an amendment was offered that would permit the Federal Government to do its own drilling for natural gas, in order to obtain its own information on gas reserves.

Well, Senator Long, who usually comes down on the side of the oil-and-gas industry, was of the opinion that the Government already knew too much about gas reserves. So when the newly elected Senator from the state of Nebraska, Ed Zorinsky, voted in favor of the inventory amendment, Long rushed over to him and shouted excitedly, "You may not have any oil and gas in Nebraska, but, by God, you've got Mutual of Omaha, and one of these days, you're going to want a tax break for it. Just remember, I'm chairman of the Finance Committee, so I'm the one you have to come to for tax breaks."

Zorinsky refused to change his vote, and, to my knowledge, he still has not asked Long for any tax breaks for Mutual of Omaha.

•

Presidential lobbying itself can be an interesting study. Through the years, each U.S. President has had his own style of applying political pressure to get the votes necessary for his programs. Lyndon Johnson alternated between arm-twisting and pork-barreling, the legislative art of putting a Federal project into a particular state, so that the state's Senator will get credit for the jobs and income generated by the project and the President gets the Senator's support when he wants it.

The Nixon White House usually used negative pressure on Members of Congress. Anyone—friend or foe—who voted against a Nixon-sponsored bill was marked for retaliation and punished at the first possible opportunity.

As does any President, Jimmy Carter has a lot of clout, but he has chosen not to cram it down the collective throat of Congress. As important as passage of the Panama Canal treaties was to his Presidency, Carter relied on (of all things) only gentle persuasion to line up the 67 votes he needed for passage.

Although I had publicly stated all along that I intended to vote in favor of the Canal treaties, about a week before the vote on the second, and most crucial, treaty, I had cause to reassess my position. At that time, President Carter and Energy Secretary James K. Schlesinger secretly hosted White House meetings of selected members of the House-Senate natural-gas conference committee; because I was opposed to natural-gas deregulation, and therefore perceived as a troublemaker, the meetings were closed to me—and to the press and the public.

It was obvious to me that Schlesinger and the President were going to use the prestige of White House meetings to try to get a bare majority of the conferees to agree to deregulate natural gas. In secret, they could wheel and deal much more freely than they could in public.

I was very strongly opposed to such actions. The year before, I had spent 13 agonizing days and nights engaged in a one-man filibuster to try to stop natural-gas deregulation. Quite naturally, I took a dim view of the Administration's teaming up with pro—oil and gas people to put in the fix—and doing it in the White House, too.

The result of my annoyance was that five days before the second Panama Canal treaty vote, I called Danny Tate, a White House Congressional lobbyist, to tell him that because of Carter and Schlesinger's secret meetings on the natural-gas bill, I intended to switch my position and vote against the Panama Canal treaty. I thought I beard his heart flutter on the other end of the line, since the Washington press had that day predicted that one vote—mine, theoretically—would make the difference between victory or defeat for Carter and the treaty.

At three minutes after six that evening, Jimmy Carter called. His voice was very soft, betraying none of the tension that he certainly must have felt.

"Jim, I hear you're upset with me," he said.

Although I usually call the President Jimmy, I was so outraged by his support of the gas-deregulation bill that I became fiercely formal.

"Yes, I am, Mr. President," I said. "In fact, I'm so upset that when I woke up at three-thirty this morning to take a pee, I couldn't get back to sleep. And the longer I lay in bed, the madder I got about the secret meetings you and Schlesinger are sponsoring at the White House. Finally, at five this morning, I got up and wrote a speech denouncing the meetings and announcing my (continued on page 224) Congressional Cookie Jar (continued on page 106) intention to vote against the treaty next Tuesday."

I was totally unprepared for Carter's response.

"Now, Jim," he said, "if you ever have trouble sleeping at night like that again, just call me up. You can always talk to me if something like this is bothering you."

Suddenly, I was no longer angry and I heard myself start to laugh. The President was shouting over my laughter, which I was unable to control.

"No, no, I'm serious," he broke in.

"That's a great line," I said, while he still protested it was not a joke. I suddenly realized that he was sincere about it.

Even though his remark took the edge off my anger, I was still determined to use whatever leverage the Panama-treaty vote gave me to try to bring the President around on the natural-gas issue. Carter, Tate, Schlesinger and I intermittently negotiated on the gas issue right up until the time for the treaty vote. After getting an agreement of sorts from Tate to curtail Schlesinger's wheeling and dealing, I tried a little persuasion of my own. I told Tate, who stayed in my office all afternoon to "baby-sit" me, that I would cut cards with him: If I lost, I would vote for the treaty; if I won, Carter would have to castrate Secretary of Energy Schlesinger, who, I thought, was, and still is, the world's most arrogant elitist. For the first time in a week, Tate managed a smile.

•

The oil lobby has generally avoided me during my time in politics. I suppose at first the oil industry didn't feel it had to concern itself with an obscure Senator from South Dakota; but, following the gas shortage of 1973, when I started making speeches and introducing legislation designed to break up the oil companies, I soon became the object of their attention. The industry apparently took a dim view of my public contentions that the gas shortage was contrived by the oil companies in order to increase their prices—and their profits. Consequently, the American Petroleum Institute sent its South Dakota lobbyist, Gene Stearns, to visit me in Washington in 1973, apparently to find out what would quiet me down.

Stearns sat down in my office, gave me a big smile and began his conversation with, 'Now, Jim, I know you don't really mean what you've been saying lately."

"About what?" I asked.

"About the oil industry," Stearns answered, still smiling.

"But I do mean it," I said. "What makes you think I don't?"

That went right over his head. Judging from Stearns's attitude, it was apparent to me that oil lobbyists are accustomed to getting their way with politicians.

"Well, I just know you don't mean it," Stearns repeated.

"Bullshit!" I said more firmly. "I mean every word of it."

That got his attention. He looked totally stunned, and after a few stuttering minutes, he excused himself and left my office, muttering to himself.

•

Stearns's visit was by no means my last contact with the oil boys, however. Whenever I attended a dinner at one of the Arab embassies, I was inevitably seated near an oil or gas executive, or the spouse of one. This seemed to reflect a kinky sense of humor on the part of the Arab ambassadors, who were well aware of my politics. But as uncomfortable as I felt at being thrown into the midst of that crowd, I learned that the oil people were even more distressed than I was. And often they exposed emotions similar to those that Stearns had expressed in my office.

My first contact with an honest-to-goodness real live oil tycoon came in September of 1975. It was at a Washington dinner to honor the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal.

As I stood talking to a group of people, a large man came toward me, drink in hand and wife in tow. His Texas drawl was so heavy that I thought for a moment he was putting me on.

"Sentah Abourezk, mah name is Maurice Granville and this heah is Missus Granville."

"Happy to know you," I said. The name meant nothing to me. "Where are you folks from?" I asked.

"Well, Sentah, you may not know who I am, but I know who you are. I'm chairman of the board of Texaco."

I had a klong! (A klong is a medical term that denotes a sudden rush of shit to the heart.) I had no idea what to do or what to say next. My bill to break up the oil companies had just been offered on the Senate floor as an amendment to the 1975 natural-gas-deregulation bill. I was the sworn enemy of this man and all he stood for. But he solved my problem with his next utterance.

"What are you-all in the Government gonna do to get awl out of the ground for the American people when you-all get done puttin' us outa business?"

He was referring, I believed, to my amendment to break up the oil companies, which had nearly been passed by the Senate not long before. While this divestiture amendment would force the oil industry to give up control of its vertical operations, it would by no means put anybody out of business. In fact, it would put new people into business, while taking away the big companies' power to withhold oil in order to raise prices.

I thought, You son of a bitch, but I said, "Well, if we put you out of business, I assume you'll be looking for work. So we can hire you, right?"

For a dedicated capitalist free enterpriser, he took that fairly well. He didn't vomit. He didn't blanch. He didn't run. He merely said that there was "no way" he was "gonna work for the Government."

Now he began to look at the cigar I was smoking. It was a Cohiba that I had picked up in Cuba during a private visit I'd made there just a month earlier.

"You know, I'm a cigar man myself," Granville said, with a great show of recovery ability. "Why don't I just send you along a box of good cigars—the kind I get on special order?"

Taunting him had been fun, so I thought I'd try it again.

"No, thanks," I said, holding up my cigar. "I have a lot of Havanas, so you needn't bother. As a matter of fact, I just came back from Cuba last month, and I saw one of your old refineries clown there."

That wasn't true. I hadn't really seen any refineries and, in fact, I didn't know whether or not Castro had actually expropriated any Texaco property; but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

"They're taking good care of it," I went on. "They're keeping the fittings shined up and the whole place painted."

His lips turned white. I knew I had scored. "Yeah, those sons a bitches cost us more'n sixty-two million dollars," he lamented. Granville spent the next 15 minutes or so following me around, trying to convert me to his point of view and offering to come to my office to educate me on the tremendous problems facing the "awl" companies.

•

No controversy has ever generated or sustained more animosity in the Western states than the one that has raged between environmentalists and sheep ranchers on the subject of coyotes. Out in the Great Plains of the United States—more specifically, in the ranch country of South Dakota, Wyoming anti Montana—a huge fight has developed over the issue of controlling coyotes, wild animals that, to put it simply, kill sheep anti eat them.

Without talking to a sheep rancher face to face, it is difficult to gauge the depth of the bitter emotions inspired by' the economic losses that ranchers suffer from coyotes' killing their sheep. Environmentalists maintain that ranchers exaggerate their claims and that, in any event, the importance of a few sheep killed by coyotes is far outweighed by the importance of maintaining the coyote as a living species.

Thus, when Richard Nixon signed Executive Order 11643 banning the use of the coyote poison 1080, because of its residual effects on other animals and bird life, the environmentalists were delighted and the sheep raisers outraged. The burden of explaining the 1080 ban fell upon Nixon's Secretary of the Interior, Rogers Morton. When Wyoming Senator Clifford Hansen was deluged with constituent demands for some kind of weapon to control coyotes, a meeting was arranged in Washington between a group of Wyoming sheep raisers and Secretary Morton. The Secretary brought along an Interior Department biologist to explain the Government's coyote policy.

Following the introductions, the governor of Wyoming asked Morton to explain to his angry constituents exactly what the Government intended to do to help them fight the predatory coyotes. Morton passed the buck to his biologist. The biologist stood up and began citing the reasons for the ban.

"It was," he said, "the residual effects of 1080 poison on eagles, as well as other birds and animals, that forced the Administration to outlaw its usage. As an alternative, however, we are now working on a chemical that will sterilize male coyotes. This sterilization chemical will avoid the residual damage on other wildlife, since it affects only the coyote."

Suddenly, an angry rancher stood up, interrupted the biologist and addressed himself to Morton.

"Mr. Secretary, you've got this thing all wrong. Those coyotes ain't fuckin' them sheep, they're eatin' 'em. Sterilizin' 'em won't do a damn bit of good."

•

Anyone not practicing self-deception would have to admit that Israel has had a massive propaganda edge over the Arabs among the American public. But the Arabs are learning, however slowly, as is indicated by an experience of mine.

In late 1973 and early 1974, not long after the October war, I traveled to several countries in the Middle East. My first stop was Beirut, where I had made arrangements to meet and speak with Yasir Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

At the appointed time, according to instructions I had received, I waited for a telephone call in my room at the Phoenicia Hotel. When the call came, I was instructed to drive to a certain street corner in Beirut, where I was to wait to be picked up by a P.L.O. car and driver. I did what I was told. Not long after I was dropped off by my own driver, a small Volkswagen pulled up and the P.L.O. driver asked me to get in. Although unfamiliar with Beirut, I could tell we were taking an extremely circuitous and confusing route to our destination. After winding through a great many narrow streets, we finally disembarked in a high-rise-apartment area.

Both around and above us, on the balconies of the two apartments flanking the P.L.O. headquarters, stood hundreds of Palestinian guerrillas with automatic weapons carelessly slung over their arms and shoulders. I was taken into the building and literally had to push a submachine gun aside in order to get into the elevator. I was led to a fourth-floor apartment, where Arafat was waiting, along with other members of the P.L.O. Executive Council.

It was an impressive event. Our serious political discussion, however, was interrupted by a loud burst of automatic-weapons fire just outside the apartment window.

I jumped out of my chair. "What's that?" I asked.

The interpreter grinned sheepishly. It was probably a wedding party, he told me.

A few minutes later, the telephone rang. Arafat answered and began shouting excitedly in Arabic. The interpreter turned to me and said that there was a report that Israeli helicopters were circling the area, looking for Arafat in an effort to assassinate him. (The story was credible, since not too many months earlier, Israeli terrorists had landed on the tourist beaches of Beirut at night, climbed into cars rented by Israeli agents and assassinated four Palestinian leaders.) Although nothing more came of the telephoned threat, the incident remained sharply engraved on my mind.

Later in 1974, I arranged for Senator Adlai Stevenson, who was traveling to the Middle East, to also meet with Arafat. When Stevenson returned to Washington, I asked him about his trip and particularly about his meeting with Arafat.

"Fascinating," he said. "It was kind of a James Bond arrangement where I had to switch cars and move all over Beirut to find Arafat's headquarters. I was finally taken to an apartment-building complex full of Palestinians. During my meeting with Arafat, there was a lot of gunfire outside the window. It was explained to me that it was a wedding party. Not long after that, Arafat got a telephone report that Israeli helicopters were circling the area, searching for him."

I never told Senator Stevenson about my earlier, remarkably similar encounter, although he probably would have understood; and events both before and since our visits to Beirut bear out the reality of danger to the Palestinian revolutionaries. But the moral of the story is that even revolutionaries will find a way to get their point across.

•

It is hard for anyone in my age group to forget the bitter animosity that existed between the United States and the People's Republic of China between 1949 and Nixon's visit to China in 1972. If one accepted the views of the China lobby and most American politicians, a "yellow peril" lurked off the shores of the U. S., waiting to devour us. We were consistently told we had to build our defenses in the event Communist China attacked us. However, that attitude was largely dispelled by Nixon's visit and the subsequent public knowledge it brought about China's attitudes and military capabilities.

In 1977, I was asked to dinner at the embassy of the People's Republic of China. I gladly accepted the invitation, since I was, at that time, attempting to get a visa to visit China. I hadn't had much luck obtaining the visa, so the dinner invitation was a hopeful sign.

After the meal, I sat down to talk with one of the Chinese political attachés and the subject of Cuba arose. "I met Fidel Castro in 1975," I said. "I found him to be a rather likable and very charismatic person."

The political attaché drew back from me in horror and shouted, "What? Don't you know that he's a running dog of the Soviet Union?"

After that outburst, he calmed down somewhat and eventually, in an attempt to normalize our conversation, he asked how I usually voted on the military budget. I responded by saying that I generally voted to hold down military spending; my view was that the Pentagon tends to wastefully overload the budget with unnecessary weapons systems.

"Do you include the cruise missile as unnecessary weaponry?" he asked.

I said that, at that point, I did not know a lot about the cruise missile, but early indications suggested to me that its production would be destabilizing, and perhaps would heat up the arms race.

The attaché then caught me totally off guard. "How can your country possibly defend itself against the Soviet Union if it doesn't have a cruise missile? I urge you, Senator, to support the cruise-missile program and do everything you can to get it into production."

•

My political struggle with the Israeli lobby has been fiercer and more prolonged than my battles with any other lobby in Washington, including the oil lobby. Those who direct the Israeli lobby are tough, smart, well organized and have terrifically long memories. For one who likes political combat, as I do, they are ideal opponents, because they also love to fight.

However, in 1975, when I decided to campaign for a seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee—in opposition to the late Senator James Allen, who was senior to me and who had applied for membership to the committee long before I had—I sought help from everyone I could. I contacted civil liberties groups, labor groups and every other organization that had an interest in Judiciary Committee legislation. I knew that, while most Jewish groups agreed with my positions on civil rights and civil liberties and opposed those of Senator Allen, my Middle East position would make them reluctant to lobby other Senators in my behalf.

Nevertheless, almost on a whim. I approached Dave Brody, the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League lobbyist, to ask for help. "Dave," I said, "if I fail in my fight to get on the Judiciary Committee, I intend to try getting on the Foreign Relations Committee. I suspect I won't be refused for that if I get turned down for Judiciary."

Success was imminent. Brody immediately agreed to do what he could to help me win the Judiciary Committee seat. Although I had no real interest in the Foreign Relations Committee, it turned out that Brody and his people did not want to take any chances on my influencing Middle East policy and joined the campaign to get me on Judiciary.

•

Most of us will probably never know the details of all the lobbying that goes on in Washington. "Koreagate" may only have scratched the surface of money payoffs, or it may have exposed most of the graft that exists.

One thing I am convinced of, however, is that politicians represent the country fairly accurately. Congress has its proportional share of crooks, angels, weaklings and persons with great strength—much the same as our total population. I have found, however, that the public is much better off when government conducts the public's business in the open. The more that is done in secret, the less chance there is for the public's interest to be protected.