Ex-HUD Aide Dean Sentenced to 21 Months : Housing: Gore’s cousin is given three identical terms but allowed to serve them concurrently. The judge decries conditions at the department.

Deborah Gore Dean was sentenced to 21 months in prison without parole and fined $5,000 Friday for her part in a Ronald Reagan Administration housing scandal that the federal judge likened to “locusts descending on a lettuce patch.”

Pronouncing the sentence, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan was scathing in his condemnation of the atmosphere at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where Dean worked as executive assistant to then-Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr.

“What concerns me is the sense of honor that apparently was lost in that particular era among not just Ms. Dean but other political appointees as well,” he said. Without mentioning Pierce by name, the judge said that little leadership was shown at HUD during those years.

The scandal, which drew little notice until the close of the Reagan Administration, centered on the awarding of housing rehabilitation contracts to developers with political connections to Dean, HUD and the Administration. Dean was convicted in late 1993 on 13 counts, including perjury, conspiring to defraud, accepting illegal gifts and concealing information.

Ten other HUD officials either have pleaded guilty or have been convicted in the scandal. Dean, the most prominent of those charged, has tried to blame the improprieties on Pierce, who has never been charged. Arlin M. Adams, the independent counsel who successfully brought actions against the 11 officials, said after Dean’s sentencing that he has not closed his investigation.

The 39-year-old Dean, who runs an antique shop, is a cousin of Vice President Al Gore. Hogan sentenced her to three sentences of 21 months but ruled that they would be served concurrently. Dean was released on bond pending an appeal.

Hogan described Dean as “a young, immature individual who was given responsibilities far beyond her capability at HUD, and that she never should have been put in that position.” But he also said that “the conduct of the defendant was intentional and serious.”

In a letter that the judge read aloud in court, Dean said: “I mourn the fact that this case has cast dishonor on myself, my family and a department whose mission I heartily admire.”

Dean acknowledged in the letter that HUD’s Moderate Housing Rehabilitation program “was largely maintained to deliver political favors for the Administration and the Congress.”

“Political influence dominated the process,” she said.

Referring to one specific case, she wrote, “I should not have entertained any inquiries from John N. Mitchell on any HUD matter.” Mitchell, a close friend of Dean’s mother and the Richard Nixon Administration attorney general who served a 14-month jail sentence for his role in the Watergate affair, was linked to the HUD scandal in testimony at Dean’s trial by former Kentucky Gov. Louis Nunn.

Nunn testified that developers paid him $644,000 in consulting fees for doing little beyond steering them in the right direction for a housing contract. Of these fees, he turned over $184,000 to Mitchell for his part in moving contracts to the developers.

Such actions created what Hogan called “a major scandal that eroded public confidence. Individuals were favored because they had political connections,” he said.

Although Dean’s sentence was the longest meted out so far in the scandal, Adams has called it “far too lenient under the circumstances.” Dean could have been sentenced to a maximum of 57 years in jail and $3 million in fines.