Papers Disclose Key Role of Pierce Aide in HUD Grants

The awarding of grants under the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s scandal-ridden Moderate Rehabilitation program was an arbitrary process during the Ronald Reagan Administration that was often determined by personal and political influence, according to newly released documents and internal memos.

Deborah Gore Dean, who served as former HUD Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr.’s executive assistant, emerges in the documents as the HUD official who assumed much of the responsibility for the final approval of hundreds of millions of dollars in low-income rent subsidies.

Automated Signature

In a majority of instances disclosed in the documents, Pierce’s approval came in the form of an automated signature that Dean authorized.

Her decisions frequently involved people with whom she exchanged friendly correspondence and social dinners.

For example, in a September, 1986, note addressed, “Dear Debbie,” Katie Bush, whose husband, Fred, was a Reagan fund raiser and consultant to developers involved in the Moderate Rehabilitation program, thanked Dean for dinner and expressed regret that they would not be meeting on a subsequent trip to Europe the Bushes were to make.

Bush, who is no relation to the President, has been nominated to be ambassador to Luxembourg and is scheduled to appear Thursday for the second time before a congressional committee that is investigating improprieties at HUD.

Target of Probes

The documents released Tuesday came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request on the Moderate Rehabilitation program, which has been the target of federal and Justice Department investigations for the last three months. The phone logs, appointment schedules and funding-allocation records shed new light on a process that critics have said had little to do with serving those most in need.

Dean, 34, in testimony before a House committee earlier this month, refused to discuss her role at HUD with congressional investigators, who believe that she has key information about influence peddling at the nation’s primary housing agency.

Dean invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify until HUD agrees to turn over documents she said were needed to aid her testimony. The Washington Post requested the same documents and received them from HUD on Tuesday.

Joseph DiGenova, Dean’s attorney, said Tuesday that neither he nor his client had received the documents they had requested. “This is just delightful,” he said, when told that HUD had released them to the press. “You have them, the New York Times has them and we don’t. . . . Obviously, we can’t respond because we don’t have the documents.”

Served as Executive Assistant

Dean, whose mother, Mary Gore Dean, lived with former Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell, served as Pierce’s executive assistant for the bulk of the secretary’s eight-year tenure and, according to several former HUD officials, oversaw much of the agency.

A Senate committee rejected her nomination to be HUD’s assistant secretary for community planning and development in 1987. She has become a target for criticism of a program that the department’s inspector general found to be loosely managed and prone to fraud and abuse.

Dean, who was a Georgetown bartender and ran a small magazine before joining HUD, was harshly criticized by Pierce when he testified before a House committee recently for overstepping the bounds of her authority.

Moderate Rehabilitation grants were supposed to be initiated by local public housing authorities who applied to HUD headquarters. Once a panel of high-ranking HUD officials determined which housing authorities would receive the limited funding, local competitions were to be conducted to award the units.

Congressional and HUD investigators have found that well-connected Republican insiders received lucrative fees in exchange for using their HUD contacts to circumvent the process.