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By Josh Marshall
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Posted: 06/08/07 07:04 PM [ET] |
Good help is hard to find. That’s what I always say. And Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) seems to agree.
As you’d expect, Sen. Stevens has a home in Alaska — in Girdwood, to be specific. And about seven years ago he decided he wanted to have some major renovations done.
Actually, we can’t say for sure whether he decided or not. Because it doesn’t seem like he had much involvement with the renovations.
The whole operation was handled by Veco Corporation, a major oil-services company up in Alaska, sort of a like a Halliburton Jr. up north.
The story started seven years ago when Bill Allen, CEO of Veco Corporation, got in touch with a residential construction contractor named Augie Paone. Allen asked Paone if Veco could hire Paone to remodel Stevens’s home. Paone agreed, though it sounds like he didn’t feel like he had much of a choice.
Here’s what Paone told the Anchorage Daily News in an interview late last month: “Bill Allen and some of the Veco boys, some of the Veco guys, were the ones that approached me and wanted to know if I could give them a hand. I did it more as a favor, you know. It’s one of those things when somebody is the head, and packs that much power and asks you for a favor, it’s kind of hard to say no.”
I guess it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Paone had ongoing contracting work with Veco. So that may have been why.
In any case, the renovation went forward. And it even involved lifting up Stevens’s then-one-story home so that a new first floor could be inserted under it. Through the whole process, everything was handled by Veco. Paone, the contractor, said he had no contact with Stevens whatsoever. He’d never even met him.
Why exactly does a sitting senator have a corporation whose actual line of work is cleaning up oil spills and building pipelines running the renovation of his house back home? Good question. And there doesn’t seem to be any good answer.
Now, all of this might just seem like a very odd way for a senator to go about getting work done on his home — that is, if it weren’t for one salient fact: Last month, Allen pleaded guilty to multiple counts of bribing public officials in the state of Alaska. And according to reports in the Alaska press, one of those lawmakers is Stevens’s son, former state Senate president Ben Stevens.
So the senior senator from Alaska has his house renovations organized by the CEO of a major oil-services corporation in his home state. And the CEO, Allen, later pleads guilty to serial bribery of public officials.
Does this mean Stevens has a problem?
Maybe so.
Paone, the contractor, says FBI agents interviewed him about six months ago. And he subsequently provided testimony to a grand jury working on the Veco case.
And then there’s this very odd line in Bill Allen’s plea agreement. “Veco,” the plea agreement reads, “was not in the business of residential construction or remodeling.”
Other than as an oblique reference to Stevens’s home-remodeling, it’s rather hard to see how this would be a relevant fact in the case. That’s word, at least, up in Alaska.
Last week Paone lawyered up. So he’s not talking anymore. Veco’s lips are sealed and Allen’s are too. And Sen. Stevens wasn’t talking either, until The Washington Post got a few minutes of his time this week.
The FBI, he told the paper, “”put me on notice to preserve some records.”
I’ll bet.
Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com . His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail:
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