Did ABSCAM target Democrats?

Start with the result. Six of the seven members of Congress convicted were Democrats: Williams, Myers, Lederer, Thompson, Murphy and Jenrette. The only Republican was Kelly. Many of the other officials caught were Democrats too, in Camden and Philadelphia. [1]

Add the process. The Senate committee found the FBI had no factual basis for targeting most of the people it met, that it relied on middlemen, and that headquarters approvals were rushed. If the selection was not driven by evidence, the critics ask, what was it driven by? [2]

And the timing. The leaks came in an election year, in February 1980, and three of the convicted Democrats lost their seats that November. [1]

That is the honest case. The rest of this file asks whether the record supports the conclusion it points toward.

Base rates first. The House in 1979 had 278 Democrats and 157 Republicans, about 64 percent Democratic; the Senate was also Democratic. If seven members had been picked at random from that Congress, the chance that six or seven would be Democrats is roughly one in five. Lopsided, but not wildly improbable on its own. [1]

Selection was not random, and the direction it ran matters. The pipeline went through Angelo Errichetti, a Democratic mayor, and Howard Criden and Louis Johanson, Philadelphia Democrats. Their contacts were Democrats from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and nearby, the party that controlled those city halls and most of those seats. [2]

The agents pushed the other way. On tape, Weinberg asked for Republicans because it looked bad that it was all Democrats, and agent Amoroso said the same thing three weeks later. The committee criticized that too: it found no basis for seeking Republicans either. [2]

And the people running it: a Democratic Justice Department under President Carter and Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, with FBI Director William Webster, a Carter appointee. A Republican-led Senate committee later investigated the operation with an even split of Republican and Democratic members and did not find a partisan aim. [3]