Down River – Dec. 31, 2013
By John Lipez
Ozzie and Moose:
Here it is, your six degrees of separation, your link with a late state House member from the area, a convicted congressman with a hunting camp near Orviston and Christian Bale’s comb-over in the audacious new hit movie “American Hustle.”
Let’s start with the movie and see where it goes:
“American Hustle” is loosely based on the late 1970s Abscam scandal that trapped some half a dozen U.S. congressmen in an FBI sting operation.
Among the victims was Philadelphia congressman Michael “Ozzie” Myers. Veteran local political types and outdoorsmen will recall Myers as a former Philly longshoreman who went to Congress and also was and is part of a hunting camp “above” Orviston, towards Kato.
Somewhere along the line Myers came to know everybody’s friend, the late Kels Lomison, the “mayor” of Orviston and someone who could hit it off with anyone.
Kels and Myers, known as “Ozzie,” were friends for a long time and when Kel’s co-workers and buddies needed tickets for a sporting event in Philadelphia, Kels knew Ozzie was the guy to call.
Also a few decades back, likely through Democratic politics and a common interest in hunting, the late Russ Letterman and Myers became very close friends.
Russ, a small-town guy from Milesburg known as Moose, shared with Myers not just a passion for hunting but each had a larger than life personality.
Letterman served in the state House from 1971 through February of 1999 when he passed away, the victim of a heart attack.
In the interim Myers fell on hard times, ensnared in the Abscam scandal, an FBI undercover operation from 1978 to 1980, one that ended with six congressmen and one senator, the late Harrison Williams of New Jersey, in prison for bribery and conspiracy.
It was in October of 1980 when Myers became the first congressman since the Civil War to be expelled from Congress and the very first tossed out for official corruption (for those of you scoring at home, the vote was 376-30).
The FBI probe included fake sheiks seeking political favors, offering many dollars in return for congressional favors.
And Myers was the first to go down. 37 years old at the time (now 70), he was convicted of bribery and conspiracy for accepting $50,000 in cash from an undercover agent. He was sentenced to serve three years in federal prison and fined $20,000, released from jail before the full term had been served.
A former longshoreman with a tenth grade education, Myers fought the case and filed two unsuccessful lawsuits against the House Ethics Committee and the FBI.
His undoing at his trial came when he was observed on video tape taking an envelope of money from a phony sheik, exclaiming (squeamish Record readers, cast your eyes away), “I’m gonna’ tell you somethin’ real simple and short. Money talks in the business and bullshit walks. And it works the same way down in Washington.”
Myers later said he had been only “play acting” when caught on tape, therefore he did not have any criminal intent; the court system thought otherwise.
He hadn’t helped his case when caught on camera complaining the envelope he received only had $15,000 in it from the first installment of some $50,000 in bribes (this in a time when congressmen earned $60,000 a year).
The Washington Post caught up with Myers just the other day to get an update and his view on “American Hustle.”
Myers told the D.C. paper that relative to his famous ‘money talks’ statement, “It’s probably more true today than it was then.” He considers the entire Abscam affair a waste of money destroying “legitimate, honest people.”
Myers said he had not seen the movie but was told it was “more of a comedy than it is about the facts of Abscam.”
He told the Post it was “outrageous to go after people who had never done anything wrong. Where do you come up with that I was as some kind of a hoodlum?”
But in 1981 he had told a reporter the payoff was justified because he was poor. “I took the money because I like money. I feel I didn’t do anything wrong and if anybody offers me $25,000 this afternoon, I will take it.”
To bring our “American Hustle” story full circle, State Rep. Mike Hanna, successor to the late Letterman, knows Myers well and calls him a “good friend and a great guy,” one who will help in any way possible.
Hanna said he sees Myers periodically, most recently at the annual Pennsylvania Society gala in New York City; Myers, he said, was representing the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Hanna said he has done some legal work for Myers in the past, relative to the camp Myers and his son Matt have in Centre County.
And a final thought: Those $50,000 bribes pale into insignificance today, a period where corporations can legally give tons of money to legislators and presidential candidates to do their bidding, all because the U.S. Supreme Court (five of them, anyway) says they can.
