Word: sheiking
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...bribery sting that eventually implicated seven Congressmen and Democratic Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey. While helping the FBI, Meltzer learned that, to lure politicians into the Abscam net, the FBI had set up a phony investment firm called Abdul Enterprises in New York City and invented a fictitious sheik, Kambir Abdul Rahman, who was eager to invest part of his vast fortune...
Among his other maneuvers, Silvestri told a wealthy socialite in Washington that, as he apparently believed, the sheik in the Washington house would be willing to contribute to political campaigns. Quite innocently, it seems, she passed the word to South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler, whose forlorn try for the Republican presidential nomination was then still alive but in need of cash. Silvestri drove Pressler to the sheik's house, where the candidate assumed he was to meet some men who had formed a legal political action committee. But when Pressler asked about their PAC, he was astounded...
...legalized casino gambling felt vindicated in their long-held cynicism about the ability of public officials to keep such high-stakes operations honest. Not only had one member of the New Jersey casino control commission apparently been caught taking a $100,000 bribe to help the FBI'S sheik get a casino license, but the FBI promptly notified the four remaining members that it wanted to interview them too about just how free the commission is from criminal influence...
...tactics used by the actor-agents in the field were proper. Moreover, each actual cash payoff was witnessed by a Justice Department attorney, who sat in an adjoining room and watched a closed-circuit TV monitor. In some instances, the attorney would telephone one of the agents serving the sheik, if the bribe suggestions were getting too bold. The agent picking up the telephone would be advised to ease the pitch...
...question of whether the FBI carried the Abscam sting to the point of inducing the politicians to take bribes. It was not the usual sting. The agency was not simply participating in ongoing criminal activity. To some degree, it set up the conditions for the crime. The bounteous Arab sheik was strictly the creation of the bureau. The targets of its probe were sometimes subjected to a pretty hard sell-never by the FBI, but by contacts who were anxious to set up deals with the high-spending sheik. When Middleman Joseph Silvestri first approached Congressman James Florio...