Ex-HHS Official Gets 1-Year Sentence in Ethics Case

C. McClain Haddow, former chief of staff at the Health and Human Services Department, was sentenced Tuesday to a year in prison for pocketing $55,330 from the government and a private foundation.

U.S. District Judge Gerhard Gesell sentenced Haddow on two counts of conflict of interest. The judge said that Haddow had breached the public trust by following “a course of conduct which involved concealment, perpetuation and personal gain.”

He ordered Haddow to serve the time at a minimum-security prison and said he could be released after a third of the term. With credit for good behavior, Haddow would spend 90 days in prison, the judge said.

Gesell also fined Haddow $15,000 and ordered him to make restitution of more than $12,000 to the foundation and the government.

Maximum penalties for the offense are four years and a fine of $500,000.

Haddow, 37, pleaded guilty in July and admitted that he arranged to receive $33,540 from the private T. Bear Foundation, which he helped to form under government auspices.

Haddow also admitted that he arranged the awarding to two friends of $25,300-worth of contracts to write speeches for then-department Secretary Margaret M. Heckler. He acknowledged that the friends, Gordon and Susan Jones, then paid his wife, Alice, $21,790 to write the speeches.

Haddow denied any intention to defraud the department or the foundation, which was set up to raise private money for a drive to promote the idea of hand-washing among medical professionals as a way of reducing infections in hospitals, day-care centers and nursing homes.