There were a few knowing nods after Rep. Vito Fossella (R-Staten Island, N.Y.) got picked up for drunk driving in the wee hours of May Day.
The other shoe was going to drop. It was only a matter of time.
The knowing souls were following the time line. When you get picked up and are in police custody, you need to get bailed out. Police keep records, so the mystery was over the identity of the bailer who fetched the bailee.
Never mind the ensuing mini-scandal over Fossella, a 43-year-old rising star who was metro New York’s only Republican congressman. We’ll get past the part about how Fossella, fresh from a White House celebration over the New York Giants’ Super Bowl victory, checked back at Congress, showed up at a tavern, and several hours later posted a .017 blood-alcohol level across the river in Alexandria, Va. (The legal limit in Virginia is .008).
Or how he royally screwed up the alphabet, arranging a train wreck out of the 17 letters from ‘D’ to ‘T’.
The inquiring minds would want to know just what he was doing at the appointed hour, to which he reportedly told a little fib about visiting a sick friend. (Memo: avoid the term “good friend” in such circumstances). Let’s not forget that we’re relying for our facts on two warring New York tabloids.
The knowing minds were sensing trouble in the weeds before they found out that ex-Air Force Lt. Col. Laura Fay, who lived nearby, showed up to bail out the congressman.
Up until that point, Fossella had been a rising Republican, in his sixth House term, espousing family values and bashing gay marriage. In New York he had a wife and three young children. After that point, as Fossella confessed, he had two families — the other involving Fay, a former Air Force/House liaison, and the girl, now 3 years old, he’d fathered.
This is a tale not of collateral damage, but of collateral results — what happens when one wayward report almost certainly will lead to another.
Last Thursday, another member of Congress, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) was cleared by a Senate ethics committee of wrongdoing in his involvement in the D.C. Madam’s sex club. All six committee members agreed that Vitter’s conduct had happened before he entered the Senate in early 2005.
For Vitter, the “collateral results” came after the Madam’s prosecution, in which her clients’ phone numbers make an appearance.
For Larry Craig, the Idaho senator whose shoe stepping in the men’s room at the MSP airport produced national comic material, the results came after the transcripts of his interview were released. (Craig was urged to quit; Vitter was not. The difference was that Idaho has a same-party governor who could name a replacement; Louisiana does not).
Sex scandals are often forgiven when the “collateral results” are minor. It’s a little murkier when the politicians in question have built careers as loyal practitioners of “family values” and whatever other values those code words represent. Even when there are lies, we understand. Nobody wants to be told he must answer questions about his love life, whether a president, senator or congressman.
The fascination comes in how a “second-life” tale slowly emerges.
Prosecutors have long seen this phenomenon when seeking to unravel a financial scandal. They know for certain that there’s a mess, some of it involving crimes. Only the dates and personalities are in question.
There can be lots of discretion in reporting facts. One episode is recounted by police reporter Edna Buchanan in her memoir “The Corpse Had a Familiar Face.” Miami police were hedging in the case of a prominent doctor who’d been apparently mugged and shot to death. The police were seeking to spare the wife some pain. She learned the truth later when the hospital returned his clothes, carefully washed. She discovered that while there had been holes in his body, there were none in his clothes.
Even local papers have their limits. In the early 1980s, the Aspen Daily News received reports of a towed police car, and recognized the possibilities of a minor but fun story. Someone would have had to show up at the towing company to reclaim the forlorn auto. We called the police employee named by the towing company.
What followed were a string of calls asking what it might take to bury the story.
It turned out that any report of the towed auto and its location would produce a tip to an affair involving a police officer, whose family had remained in the dark.
We ended up balancing the intense embarrassment to the man’s family with the small enjoyment of a report about the wayward car. No story ever ran about the episode.
The affair involving Congressman Fossella includes a cautionary lesson. Once starting down a clandestine path, consider the small choices along the way — like what might happen if you leave a D.C. tavern with your affairs out of alphabetical order.
You might get picked up, but the forgiving folks back home will cut you a break if there’s no accident. But don’t forget the lessons of collateral results.
The Usual Suspect is a founder of the Aspen Daily News and appears here each Sunday. Counsel, console or berate him at ddanforth@aol.com. Your notes will be kept private unless you ask that we print them.
