
WASHINGTON, July 31, 2007
Sen. Stevens Probe Focuses On Finances
Financial Bookkeeper For Alaska Senator Appeared Before Grand Jury In Corruption Investigation
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Sen. Stevens Finances Probed
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens' ties to Veco, an oil field-services company, are being investigated after allegations that the company paid to renovate the senator's home. Sharyl Attkisson reports.
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More On Sen. Ted Stevens
Only On The Web: Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, talks with Sharyl Attkisson about the corruption investigation into Sen. Ted Stevens.
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Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, walks to the Republican Party luncheon in the Capitol on July 31, 2007. Federal agents raided Stevens' Alaska home on Monday as part of an ongoing public corruption investigation. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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Barbara Flanders, who serves as a financial clerk for Stevens on the Commerce Committee, testified in the past several weeks and provided documents regarding the senator's bills, according to an attorney in the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because grand jury matters are secret by law.
Investigators are scrutinizing Stevens' relationship with oil field services contractor Bill Allen, who helped oversee a complicated renovation project that more than doubled the size of Stevens' home in 2000. Allen's company, Veco Inc., won tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts. Allen has pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska lawmakers.
According to numbers compiled by CBS News, Veco executives have contributed more than $70,000 to Stevens' campaigns.
As head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Stevens helped steer $30 million in federal contracts to Veco, reports CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Also, Veco reportedly paid Stevens' son Ben $243,000 in consulting fees while he was an Alaska state legislator. The FBI has searched his offices, too.
Neither Sen. Stevens nor his son has been charged.
Federal agents raided Ted Stevens' home Monday, photographing and videotaping its contents and leaving with a garbage bag full of unidentified items.
Stevens, 83, is the longest-serving Republican in Senate history. He has denied any wrongdoing and said he paid for all the improvements himself but he says he worries the looming investigation could have political consequences.
Flanders is a longtime aide who helps ensure that Stevens' bills are paid and his personals affairs are in order, the attorney said. She was questioned about the improvement project and how the bills were paid.
Reached by telephone Tuesday, Flanders would not discuss her testimony or describe her duties involving Stevens' personal accounts.
"I work for the Commerce Committee," she said. "I don't have any comment on any other issues."
Jenilee Keefe, a spokeswoman for Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, said there was no evidence the subpoena involved committee business.
"It is a personal thing. She worked for him in another capacity," Keefe said. "Right now we're just not getting involved."
Spokesmen for Stevens had no comment on the subpoena or Flanders' role in the senator's personal finances.
The investigation grew out of a lengthy corruption probe that has ensnared several Alaska lawmakers and resulted in Allen's guilty plea for bribery. Only recently, however, have authorities turned their focus on Stevens and that focus appears to be narrowing.
The Interior Department's inspector general and the Commerce Department have also joined the case to investigate Stevens' connections with a Seward, Alaska, marine science organization that operates the Alaska SeaLife Center, a person familiar with the probe said on condition of anonymity because it is ongoing.
Among many items photographed in Monday's search were cases of wine stored in Stevens' house. Investigators photographed each case and the individual bottles, the attorney said.
About 15 agents took photos and video of various angles of the structure, climbing onto the roof at one point, and eventually entered. They later carried out a garbage bag full of unidentifiable materials and loaded it into an unmarked white van. The curtains were drawn during most of the search.
Investigators did not raid Stevens' home in Washington, where he spends most of his time.
An e-mail statement issued by Stevens through his spokesman in Washington said federal agents had alerted his attorneys that they wanted to search his home. Stevens, who has been in office since 1968, said the interests of justice would be best served if he commented after the investigation.
"I continue to believe this investigation should proceed to its conclusion without any appearance that I have attempted to influence its outcome," Stevens said. "The legal process should be allowed to proceed so that all the facts can be established and the truth determined."
Located 40 miles south of Anchorage, Girdwood is nestled in a valley next to Mount Alyeska and has evolved from a gold mining town into Alaska's only year-round resort community.
Congressional watchdog groups called for Stevens to step down — at least temporarily — from his posts on the Senate's Commerce and Appropriations committees.
"There is growing evidence that Sen. Stevens may have used his powerful perch on the appropriations committee to direct tens of millions of dollars of earmarks to benefit family, friends, business partners and former staff," said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. She commented in a letter to the Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
McConnell has not said whether he would ask Stevens to temporarily relinquish his committee assignments.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, called it "imperative that no member under federal investigation be involved in the oversight or appropriations of any agency involved in investigating that member."
The group referred to Stevens' membership on the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Justice Department.
The Justice Department's probe into Allen's relationships has led to charges against state lawmakers and contractors. Last year, FBI raids on the offices of several Alaska lawmakers included Ben Stevens, the former president of the Alaska Senate.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.



Posted by sparks224 at 05:49 PM : Jul 31, 2007
That is classic !
Remember Ted, the bookkeeper is how they nail Capone! Welcome to prison you SOB!
Posted by sparks224 at 05:49 PM : Jul 31, 2007
That is classic !
Posted by tejasdemo at 05:57 PM : Jul 31, 2007
Agreed...an instant classic!
Ya know what they said about angels wings? Silver wings? Vietnam?
I think you guys do that on purpose.
Its a culture! Its yer money.. Its yer way of life. Its yer bread and butter. You grew up in a generation that knew nothing else other than the Vietnam war. Thats why yer like the way yer like with Iraq.
Can I ask you something seriously? Is vietnam really like iraq? Or are we just all the victims of some doped up hippy again.. Some guy who don't give a god damned about anything.
People started to realize that you don't give a god damned about anything? And that thats what you think is the right thing to do? Thats yer tongue.. never stopping.. Never stopping criticizing other people. Ya see.. Ya just.. Ya just grew up! In that generation! AND THAT GENERATION IS DUN!
What if that were true?
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Does anyone think the FBI would have found any money in Sen. Jefferson's freezer if they had warned him before hand that they were going to search his property?
Another question: does anyone think Bush might claim "exective privilege" for Sen. Stevens
He should be on late nite TV, not in the US Senate. LOL
Posted by donnie900 at 06:38 PM : Jul 31, 2007
Sorry donnie, but I'm not a republican politician or preacher and I'm not g*ay.
Posted by donnie900 at 06:30 PM : Jul 31, 2007
It's not.
Hey Randi! What if yer wrong? Do you care if you're wrong?
Posted by donnie900 at 06:25 PM : Jul 31, 2007
I'm not, so I can't.
Ya see what I'm saying? What if yer wrong? Where will you be so as I can find ya?
Posted by donnie900 at 06:33 PM : Jul 31, 2007
I do. I'm not. Hell.
Posted by donnie900 at 07:09 PM : Jul 31, 2007
Thank you and yes we will.
Dude, are you psychic?
Posted by donnie900 at 07:01 PM : Jul 31, 2007
No.
How do ya know though? I mean, ya say so much other stuff. How do ya know? Fer sure I mean..
Posted by donnie900 at 06:58 PM : Jul 31, 2007
I just know.
and its earth shall be salted that no thing shall grow.
and its leaders shall be shunned throughout the earth.
and its followers shall be barren and their wives shall bear no children.
so shall be the curse upon the south.
and the lord shall no longer cast his benovolent sight upon the evil and wickedness of the south.
for the south brings only pain, death and false religion upon their neighbors.
so shall the fate of the south be.
ha,ha,ha.
even gawd knows how phony those creepy bush loving southerners are.
war, hate, reborns, rednecks, republican snakes...
nothing good comes out of the south.
I wonder what kind of *** will leak out tomorrow.
Not a chance donnie. Even McCain's campaign manager got arrested in florida for soliciting oral ***. This Senator. Foley. Gonzales. Your side has about no credibility. At all. Your side is turning on itself real nasty like.
This is gonna cost the right for a long, long, long time.
Same reasons the Mexicans don't. They don't get caught.
let the northern and western blue states combine with liberal canada.
let the southern red states combine with mexico.
man, if we could be rid of the republican south
america would really be a super country then!
ha,ha,ha.
war, hate, republikan snakes, christian creeps...
nothing good comes out of the south.
See, again the credibility issue.
Wonder if Giuliani or McCain has any brothers that are governors?
Posted by donnie900 at 08:23 PM : Jul 31, 2007
Yes, I just know.....
These people in Washington are really out of control...
I'm sure it won't stop until the people of this country are in the streets over it..
The boys and girls in Washington think this will never happen..
But if they keep up, it will...
Posted by forthepeopl1 at 07:05 PM : Jul 31, 2007
Stevens has been sucking at the pork pig trough for decades in a manner that would embarrass the fattest greediest hog and basically daring the government to catch him accepting all of his bribes and kickbacks. As of now I really don't care if Bush does pardon him, just so the greedy bas*trad dies broke, disgraced, humilated and the shame of his entire family for generations to come!
instead, they took the path of insurrection and war.
after they lost the war, the south was so shamed and humilliated that they sent john wilkes boothe to assasinate abraham lincoln.
when america forced civil rights on the south, the south retaliated by murdering john kennedy.
now those idiot southern snakes make america suffer through 8 years of george bush.
republicans, christians, rednecks, war makers, ignorant dixie trash...
nothing good comes out of the south.
he and his son have both been the subjects of speculation of bribe taking, sweetheart deals and kickbacks for years, but old man Stevens has been daring the FBI and IRS to catch him for years because he thinks he's untouchable. His son was run out of office in the Alaska state senate just ahead of his own bribery indictments that he's still under. They look at themselves like the old time Texas cattle barons, a law unto themselves and owning the whole state. Seeing him get taken down would be akin to seeing JR Ewing get his, except Stevens has even less morals and ethics (and a much bigger ego) then the late Larry Hagman's character did.
Posted by veteran71 at 12:32 AM : Aug 01, 2007
I know! There goes their 2000 campaign promise to bring back morality and dignity! Such a shame! And they were so trusted until now too! I mean if you couldn't trust a republican, who is always only looking out for America's bests interest, then who could you trust?
Gosh...you...you don't think they'll....resign...or WORSE...from the disgrace...do you???
;-)
Please stop saying nothing good comes from the South. First of all, Alaska is not south of much, and the southern part of the U.S.has given us many many wonderful things, including about 30% of the U.S. population.
Just think about gumbo, jambalaya, peach cobbler, that beautiful architecture, the sweet drawls and courtesies of the people, the moss on the trees, the amazingly great music, etc., etc.
Posted by RandalDS
Sorry Randal, that would be justice, but the chances that any of the party's crime bosses, including Stevens will die broke are pretty slim. There are too many offshore banks with no more scruples than these crooked politicians and after all his years in the Senate, he knows where too many skeletons are buried to ever do without anything.
I don't want to get into a conspiracy debate, but the circumstantial evidence seems to suggest that JFK was murdered by the CIA. John McCone of San Fransisco was the Director of the CIA. California murdered JFK.
The south didn't make America suffer through 8 years of Bush, that was Ralph Nader and the yankees on the Supreme Court.
Go home and let's get someone who cares about Alaska and retaining the wildness. Not someone who cares only about money!!!!
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by kansas1946
August 2, 2007 12:32 AM PDT
- Yawn. Just another day, another corrupt Republican. This "values" party is just looking better and better.
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