The Center for Public Integrity

Maryland is one of 27 states in which no outside agency oversees ethical conduct of state legislators. It is one of 9 of those states where an outside ethics agency does oversee disclosure for members of the legislature, in this case only personal financial disclosure.

Maryland is among the 22 states that established outside oversight of ethical conduct and/or disclosure requirements of legislators in the post-Watergate 1970s.

Of the 32 states that have outside oversight of ethical conduct and/or disclosure requirements for legislators — 23 that cover ethics and disclosure, plus nine that cover disclosure only — Maryland is one of 17 where the legislature has some involvement in choosing commission members. Only three states — California, Hawaii and Massachusetts — have members picked without the input of the legislature.

Budget

Maryland is among 22 states that did approve a budget for its ethics agency exceeding the rate of inflation, or 7 percent, between 1997 and 2000. Those states include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. Six state ethics agency budgets — in Arkansas, Georgia, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey and Washington — at least doubled during this time period.

Investigation

Of the 32 two states with outside ethics and/or disclosure oversight, only two ethics agencies — in Florida and West Virginia — cannot initiate an investigation or investigate an anonymous complaint. Only one agency, Alabama's, cannot issue subpoenas.

LAHORE, Pakistan — In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the US Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide US advisers to train the guerrillas. Until then, no US-made weapons or personnel had been used directly in the war effort.

The CIA, Britain’s MI6 and the ISI [Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence] also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. The task was given to the ISI’s favourite Mujaheddin leader, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In March 1987, small units crossed the Amu Darya river from bases in northern Afghanistan and launched their first rocket attacks against villages in Tajikistan. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with [the late Pakistani] President Zia [ul-Haq] to review the Mujaheddin groups.

Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982, and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea.

As the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael K. Powell can draw on his experience as an FCC commissioner in trying to navigate the arcane world of telecommunications policy and the closely knit group of high-powered, multibillion dollar companies that dominate the industry.

Powell has had the opportunity to witness and regulate some of the biggest mergers in the history of American industry, as well as to develop regulatory guidelines for cutting-edge technologies, such as broadband Internet access and a new high-speed wireless Internet bandwidth.

But Powell has another experience from which to draw: On-the-job training with one of the biggest players in the game.

According to Powell's personal financial disclosure reports and a company spokesman, one of Powell's major clients at his old law firm of O'Melveny & Myers was GTE Corp., an "incumbent local exchange carrier" that held a monopoly on local phone service in various communities across the country. GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications, now the nation's largest local phone company. FCC spokesman David Fiske told The Public i that, as an FCC commissioner, Powell never recused himself from matters relating to GTE or Verizon, including the merger that was completed in 2000.

A key Commerce Department official could face frequent conflict-of-interest issues because her office controls high-tech policies that affect a number of telecommunication and wireless firms for which she and her husband have worked.

As the new assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, Nancy J. Victory also serves as chief of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. NTIA is responsible for a number of key policy issues affecting telecommunications companies, including what is known as "spectrum management."

Meanwhile, her husband, Michael Senkowski, remains the lead telecom and Internet partner at Washingtons premier communications law and lobby firm, Wiley Rein & Fielding, where Victory was also a partner. Many of the firm's largest clients are keenly concerned with how the Bush administration chooses to address spectrum management issues.

According to a federal conflict-of-interest statute regarding personal financial interest for employees of the executive branch, an employee who "participates personally and substantially as a Government officer or employee" in a "particular matter in which, to his knowledge, he, his spouse, minor child, general partner . . . has a financial interest," can be subject to criminal penalties, says Title 18, U.S. Code, section 208.

There are a number of ways by which Victory or any political appointee can avoid such penalties, including making the government agency aware of personal financial interests and being cleared by the agency should those interests prove unlikely to affect the integrity of the person's decisions.

In addition, Senkowski, a member of the District of Columbia Bar, might violate conflict-of-interest rules set by the bar, as his and his firm's clients could be heavily affected by federal legislation on spectrum issues about which his wife will be advising.