The ones who said no

Larry Pressler, a South Dakota Republican, came to the house in Washington on 7 November 1979 believing he was meeting potential campaign donors. The name had come from middleman Joseph Silvestri in an unrecorded phone call, and the FBI approved the meeting within about an hour. When the talk turned to money for immigration help, Pressler said, in substance, that what they were suggesting might be illegal, and left. [1][3]

The FBI later told the committee he was the first Republican legislator to come forward, and that turning him away could have made the operation look political. The committee found there was no reason to suspect him at all. It called him clearly innocent and found that the 1980 leaks, which put his name in the news alongside the defendants, injured him. [1]

The trial judge praised him by name. [2] The committee recommended that innocent people hurt by undercover operations get written notice clearing them. [1]

John Murtha of Pennsylvania met the operatives on 7 January 1980, brought by Criden through Thompson. On the tape played to the jury he turned down the $50,000: “I’m not interested… at this point.” In the same conversation he talked about the sheikh investing in his district and suggested they could do business in the future. [1]

The government named him an unindicted co-conspirator and then called him as its own witness. At the Thompson–Murphy trial he testified that Thompson had told him the three congressmen would split the money, and that he had wanted no part of it. The Second Circuit later described the offer as one he declined. [2][3]

In July 1981 the House ethics committee voted not to charge him. Its special counsel, E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., resigned within hours and would later say only that it was “a logical conclusion” that the vote was the reason. Don Bailey, a fellow Pennsylvania Democrat who had argued Murtha’s side to the committee, wrote in 2002 that he had come to believe Murtha cooperated to avoid prosecution, not out of civic duty. [4]

Murtha’s defenders note he refused, cooperated and was never charged by the Justice Department. His critics note he left the door open on tape and was cleared by colleagues. Both are accurate. When he ran for majority leader in 2006, CNN replayed the tape. [5]

Representative William Hughes, a New Jersey Democrat, was the one official approved for a bribe meeting whom no middleman had first claimed was corrupt. He never attended. [1]

Representative Edward Patten, also a New Jersey Democrat, was cited by the trial judge as one who refused. [2]

Four of the 24 officials approved for meetings never came. Some names the middlemen offered belonged to people who knew nothing about it. The committee warned that their names sat in FBI files anyway, and once the leaks began, some were reported.