The middlemen

Angelo Errichetti was the hub. He was mayor of Camden and a New Jersey state senator, and he brought the operatives Myers and Lederer. Howard Criden, a Philadelphia lawyer, and his law partner Louis Johanson, a Philadelphia city councilman, brought Thompson, who in turn brought Murphy and Murtha, and named the Philadelphia council members. Joseph Silvestri, a New Jersey businessman, raised Senator Pressler’s name. Eugene Ciuzio and Stanley Weisz brought Kelly. John Stowe brought Jenrette. Alexander Feinberg, a lawyer, was Senator Williams’s partner in the titanium venture. [1][2][3]

They were paid. The Senate report records Criden receiving $5,000 on 10 January 1980 for delivering Murtha to a meeting three days earlier, and middlemen keeping shares of the cash the members took. [2]

Their claims were often false. Of 24 officials the FBI authorized for bribe meetings, every one except Representative William Hughes of New Jersey had first been named by a middleman who said the person was corrupt. Several never showed up, and some who came, like Pressler, refused. [2]

Errichetti, Criden and Johanson were convicted with Myers in August 1980. Errichetti died in 2013. [3]

The committee’s harshest finding about targeting was that the FBI let corrupt people choose its subjects. “At least one (and apparently more) clearly innocent public official was brought before the hidden cameras,” it wrote, because the operation relied on middlemen who had every reason to promise more than they could deliver. [1][2]

The government’s reply was that the meeting itself was the test. An honest official would turn the money down, and some did: the trial judge in the Myers case pointed to Pressler, Patten and Murtha as proof that the offer did not overwhelm anyone who heard it. [3]

Both points are true at once. The meeting did separate refusals from acceptances. It also put honest people’s names into FBI files and, once the leaks began, into the newspapers.