Jaworski Comes Back

It involves Congressmen who have accepted gifts of cash, trips, women--or all three--from agents of the South Korean government, and it is expected to produce Justice Department indictments of five former Representatives later this summer. But is the House Democratic leadership at the same time covering up its own long-stalled attack on the so-called Koreagate scandal? Countering such suspicions, Speaker Tip O'Neill and Majority Leader Jim Wright last week persuaded former Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski to lead the House ethics committee investigation into the whole affair.

Jaworski, 71, had comfortably settled back into his lucrative Houston law practice after accumulating the evidence that did much to force Richard Nixon's resignation. When O'Neill and fellow Texan Wright called to try to persuade him, Jaworski says, "I wish I had been in Timbuktu." But, he adds, they "insisted." So, ignoring friends' warnings that he might "screw up" his Watergate reputation, he accepted--and agreed to serve without pay. Says Jaworski: "There is another challenge to another institution of Government, and it's up to someone to ferret out the facts."

That may be as tough as getting tape recordings from the White House. The key figure, South Korean Entrepreneur Tongsun Park, hastily moved from Washington to London last year after the first published reports that he had given some Congressmen up to $10,000 each. The ethics committee, headed by Georgia's John J. Flynt Jr., has been looking into Koreagate for almost ten months without noticeable progress. Further tarnishing the House's image, the committee's counsel, Philip Lacovara, 33, who was Jaworski's Watergate assistant, quit two weeks ago, claiming that Flynt was not fully cooperating.

Demanding "complete freedom and power of subpoena," Jaworski figures that it will take six months or longer to complete the investigation. What if the notoriously clubby House resists his investigation? Says Jaworski: "The American people will hear."

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