Club Business

A member faces expulsion

It is a rare occasion when more than a few of the 100 U.S. Senators are present in the chambers to listen to a debate. But last week nearly all the members of what has been called the most exclusive club in the world sat quietly at their desks and listened. The solemn and painful business at hand was Senate Resolution 204, urging the expulsion of Senator Harrison Williams, 62, New Jersey Democrat, member of the club for 23 years and convicted felon. His crime: accepting stock in a Virginia titanium mine and promising to use his influence to help that venture prosper in return for a $100 million loan for the mining operation from a supposed Arab sheik who turned out to be an FBI agent. Caught in the ABSCAM net, Williams had been sentenced to three years in prison, and now his colleagues had to decide whether to cast out one of their own for the first time in more than a century.

Acting as prosecutor was Howell Heflin of Alabama, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Ethics Committee, which last August voted unanimously for expulsion. "Put most simply," drawled Heflin, "Har rison Williams traded on his office." For nearly three hours, Heflin painstakingly built his case. "At any point in this drawn-out, sordid affair, Senator Williams could have said, 'Wait a minute. What you're proposing is wrong,' " said Heflin. "But he didn't. He stayed, he discussed, he agreed, he promised, he pledged, all this to abuse his public trust."

Countered Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Williams' advocate: "The FBI created a trap and then goaded . . . members of Congress into that trap. It could happen to any of us. I don't believe a Senator should be expelled for being a fool." The next day Senator Williams launched into his own four-hour, rambling defense, which included charts. "I am completely innocent," he insisted. "I do not believe it is asking too much for me to expect that my peers will . . . answer my prayers and cast the first vote against the perpetrators of ABSCAM."

But as the session adjourned for the weekend, several Senators said privately that Williams had failed to explain why he could not turn his back on temptation. Williams seemed to face the dubious distinction of belonging to an even more exclusive club. Only 15 Senators have been expelled in the Senate's history: William Blount of Tennessee in 1797 for trying to incite an Indian rampage, the other 14 during the Civil War for joining the Confederacy. Said Williams sadly: "What the Senate of the United States does, I will accept, I will respect."

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