Morality Among the Supply-Siders

By Richard Stengel

"Government isn't the solution," Ronald Reagan regularly intoned before coming to Washington. "Government is the problem." The Government, went his litany, was bloated with "waste, fraud and abuse," all of which desperately needed purging. His words proved prophetic, though not precisely in the way he intended: his Administration, from its very beginning, has been riddled from top to bottom with allegations of impropriety and corruption.

More than 100 members of the Reagan Administration have had ethical or legal charges leveled against them. That number is without precedent. While the Reagan Administration's missteps may not have been as flagrant as the Teapot Dome scandal or as pernicious as Watergate, they seem more general, more pervasive and somehow more ingrained than those of any previous Administration. During other presidencies, scandals such as Watergate seemed to multiply from a single cancer; the Reagan Administration, however, appears to have suffered a breakdown of the immune system, opening the way to all kinds of ethical and moral infections.

Perhaps part of the reason for many of the Administration's sundry collisions with the law is that it is operating under a new set of rules: it is the first to be covered from the start by the 1978 Ethics in Government Act. Yet to a large degree it is the very ideology of the President and his Administration that seems to encourage a climate of abuse. Reagan appointees have tended to share a common philosophy about government: less is better, none is best. Many appear to have come to Washington with an innate disrespect for its institutions and a disregard for the rules that govern them.

The fallen Reagan Administration officials fit into some broad categories. There are the Foxes in the Chicken Coop: those appointed to enforce regulations they chafed under while in the private sector and who, once in office, seemed eager to undermine them. There are the Public-Service Privateers: appointees from the business world who carried their Wall Street ethos into the public sector. The True Believers: officials whose loyalty and ambition overcame their judgment and principles. And People with a Past: officials undone by acts committed before entering government.

When Reagan appointees took control of various agencies, they sometimes sabotaged the institutions -- from the top. At the Environmental Protection Agency, Anne Burford and more than a dozen of her senior aides resigned in the face of a variety of charges, including one that they had deliberately ignored environmental violations by chemical companies whose officials they were chummy with. For them the agency was the problem, not the solution; their remedy was to create the kind of chemistry that would neutralize it.

Some Administration officials, following the Reagan ethos of privatizing the public sector, treated their Government jobs as private fiefs. At least Emanuel Savas, an assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, preached what he practiced: he used his agency staff to type and proofread a commercial book of his titled, aptly enough, Privatizing the Public Sector. Some officials, having made financial sacrifices to go into Government, evidently felt entitled to recoup as much as possible. C. McClain Haddow, former chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services, was indicted last month for fraudulently obtaining $33,540 from the "T. Bear Foundation," which he helped create to encourage children to wash their hands.

In a tradition as old as the Republic, some officials regarded Government service as a splendid opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies. Victor Thompson, president of the Synthetic Fuels Corp., resigned after disclosures that he had sought help for his private bank from a Texas oilman who was doing business with the Government corporation.

Some former officials, following another time-honored tradition, apparently saw Government service as a stepping-stone to later affluence. Michael Deaver, Lyn Nofziger and Richard Allen were able to trade in their Government contacts for lucrative consulting businesses. Both Nofziger and Deaver have come under investigation for allegedly violating the Ethics in Government Act by lobbying their former employers too soon after leaving the Administration; Deaver has been indicted for perjury.

For some Reaganites, almost any action in pursuit of the President's vision was justified; for them, it was not a Government of laws, but of one man. Oliver North, for one, did not seem willing to let anything, even Congress, stand in the way of serving his Commander in Chief.

Other officials, who performed capably and honestly in office, were capsized by matters they had been involved in before taking office. J. Lynn Helms, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, resigned after it was disclosed that grand juries and federal agencies were probing some of his past business ventures. Max Hugel, deputy director for operations at the CIA, quit after allegations by two stockbrokers of improper securities dealings.

Although resigning under fire can shatter a life, a number of Reagan appointees have prospered, their alleged transgressions being considered an occupational hazard in a dirty business. Richard Allen, who resigned amid reports that he had received a $1,000 "honorarium" from a Japanese journalist after setting up an interview with the First Lady, has a plethora of Japanese and Taiwanese clients for his Washington consulting business.

For most, however, leaving office under a cloud shadows all their days. Deaver has seen his staff of 18 wither to a secretary, a bookkeeper and an aide. He has shuttered his glossy offices in Washington and put his fancy furniture in storage.

Rita Lavelle also knows what it is to put one's life on hold. The former head of the EPA's toxic-waste clean-up program, she served three months in prison for lying to Congress and is now house-sitting in San Diego "because I can't afford any rent." Says she: "I've applied for jobs that are far beneath me. It's hell being branded a felon. My career is in ruins. I'm financially devastated without any ability to get back on my feet. People shun me." She was hired earlier this year as a consultant to a Southern California company, but when executives of the firm found out, they sent security to remove her. "I have to justify being Rita Lavelle to people three or four times a week."

& Like most of those who have left office, Lavelle feels maligned -- in fact, she has enlisted congressional support and hopes for a new trial to restore her reputation. Many others consider themselves victims. Virtually all blame politics, selective enforcement and Washington backstabbing for their troubles. Hardly any feel remorse. "I've never profited or attempted to profit from any of this. I've had nothing but suffering because of my Government service," Lavelle says. Indeed, one of the sad commentaries on the Reagan era is that so many of those tainted by ethical improprieties still seem unable to divine what was wrong with their concept of government service.

With reporting by David Beckwith/Washington