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The year was 1980 and the FBI was investigating corruption in government, it was found that this corruption reached up to the highest levels, the Congress of the United States. In all the years that the Congress had been in existence, only ten members had ever been convicted of corruption up to 1970. In 1978 the FBI set up a sting using the name of a non existent sheik They offered to give money for favors to various government officials through an agent posing as a mid eastern business man. This operation reached higher than even the FBI thought it would.

Five Representatives and One Senator were convicted of bribery and conspiracy. One of the Representatives had his conviction overturned even though he was on video tape putting $25,000 into his pocket. He claimed entrapment. The convictions also hurt the FBI because they were accused of targeting certain politicians for political reasons.

I guess this will never change. With the price of oil sky high, and money flowing like water, I wonder what would happen if another investigation of this type was launched. I have a feeling that the people who launched it would be fired.

The Senator in question that was convicted tried to get a pardon from President Clinton but Clinton refused and on November 19, 2001 he died. This was ex Senator Harrison from New Jersey.

Many people question the ethics of planting a trap or entrapment. Offering money when you're a law enforcement officer or an agent thereof is considered wrong by some. Other feel that if you are honest it doesn't matter what bribe you are offered because you shouldn't and wouldn't take it. It always seems that the most outraged people are those that were caught, their families or those with vested interests. Of course we have to always include the American Civil Liberties Union. The question is, should we, as citizens, be outraged? Is the entrapment somehow worse than the crime? It seems to me we have to have some way of keeping our politicians honest. Hey that is almost an oxymoron. But seriously, how do you monitor all the money and offers that pass through our halls of government? I have never been able to figure that one out, and apparently neither has anyone else. Maybe they don't want to, I mean, after all, there are so many groups that have an interest in keeping things the way they are that it would be almost impossible to change them.

In ABSCAM the FBI used the name of a fictitious company named Olympic Construction Corp and rented a house in Washington DC. It was rented from, of all people, a reporter for the Washington Post. The whole idea of the scam, was that government officials were told that they would be given money to help a sheik get asylum for certain people in the US, develop investment schemes and smuggle money out of his country. The third part of the scheme, the smuggling money out of a country sort of reminds me of all the Nigerian Email schemes that everyone gets. It was said that many politicians caught on just in enough time to save their skins, of course I have no way of knowing the truth of this statement.

Anyway the FBI has released their ABSCAM documents under the Freedom of Information Act and they are posted below in PDF format.