Rep. William Jefferson: One More Reason for the High Price of Gas

By Ken Silverstein

A few people have emailed to ask if I intend to report primarily on corruption involving the Bush administration and the GOP. I can assure readers that Washington Babylon is strictly nonpartisan and has no illusions about the moral fiber of the Democratic Party. I’ve been focusing on the GOP because it controls Congress and the White House, and hence Republicans currently hold the great majority of cashier positions at the political checkout line. Indeed, if you’re a major corporation or federal contractor looking to win favors in Washington, it’s hardly even worth buying a Democrat anymore.

There are exceptions, however—Democrats who hold seats on the Appropriations committees and a few other strategic committees can provide a reasonable ROI. Which brings me to Rep. William Jefferson, the Democrat from Louisiana who holds a seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Just last week, the owner of iGate Inc., Vernon L. Jackson, pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson to promote deals for the company in Nigeria and several other African countries (Jefferson, by the way, is also co-chair of Congress’s Africa Trade and Investment Caucus.) Back in January, Jefferson’s former legislative director pleaded guilty to related charges. Jefferson denies all, but the evidence against him—for example, $90,000 that the FBI found in a freezer during a raid on the Congressman’s home—looks fairly compelling.

After Jackson copped his plea last week, Jefferson said, “I have never, over all the years of my public service, accepted payment from anyone for the performance of any act or duty for which I have been elected.” I can’t speak definitively to the alleged bribes offered by iGate, but Jefferson’s entire political career has been based in large part on performing great acts on behalf of the oil and gas industry, one of his biggest sources of campaign money.

I remember reporting on Jefferson some years ago and hearing Hill staffers affectionately describe him as “the Congressman from Chevron,” so prodigious were his efforts on behalf of the company, which has huge interests in Louisiana. (In fairness to Jefferson, “the Congressman from Jones, Walker” seems a more appropriate moniker, since that Louisiana-based lobby shop, which represents ChevronTexaco and a host of other firms with investments in Louisiana, has been a far bigger campaign underwriter than any single oil company.)

Here are some selected highlights of Jefferson’s long years of service to Chevron:

1) After the China National Offshore Oil Corp. announced last June that it would try to acquire Unocal Corp., Chevron—which also wanted to buy Unocal—dispatched a lobbyist to Jefferson’s office asking for his help blocking the Chinese bid. Within days Jefferson rounded up dozens of colleagues to sign a letter he sent to the Bush Administration demanding an immediate review “to investigate the implications of the acquisition of US energy companies and assets by CNOOC.” The political uproar scuttled the Chinese bid; two months later Unocal accepted an offer from Chevron.

2) Jefferson has been one of the leading congressional backers of the African Oil Policy Initiative Group, which calls for the United States to increase energy ties with Africa. Chevron, which holds huge investments in Nigeria, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, was a member and financial sponsor of the AOPIG. “African oil is of national strategic interest to us, and it will increase and become more important as we go forward,” Jefferson said several years ago at a major event sponsored by AOPIG.

3) Back in 1998, an oil-industry-heavy business coalition looking to pass legislation restricting sanctions against countries with poor human-rights records put together a strategy paper that called on individual companies to line up support from members of Congress with whom they were thought to have great sway. After scrutinizing criteria such as geography, past campaign contributions, and historical friendships, Chevron was assigned the job of recruiting Jefferson. He swiftly signed up in support of the legislation.

4) In the mid-1990s, Chevron and several other oil companies led a successful campaign to block tough sanctions on the regime of Nigerian general Sani Abacha, who had a habit of stringing up his political enemies, and who also plundered the Nigerian treasury to the tune of about $1 billion a year during his five-year rule. The oil companies helped to produce a lobbying brochure that lauded the special quality of Nigerian crude and said that “any disruption to this supply of imported petroleum will severely impact the American economy.” Jefferson was one of only two members of the Congressional Black Caucus who opposed sanctions on the Abacha dictatorship.

So if Jefferson ends up in the clink over the iGate matter, Chevron will need to find a substitute water-carrier (or oil-carrier). This being Washington, the land of legalized bribery, it shouldn’t take long.

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