Whitewater West: Show Me the Letters

Mayor Richard Riordan often is described as “absent” or “out of the loop” when big decisions are made. The latest example is the flap over who decided to give Webster Hubbell, once a Clinton Justice Department official and now a convicted felon, a secret $49,500 city contract. The recent city controller’s “Report on the Hiring and Payment of Webster L. Hubbell in 1994-95” is a rare (if tedious) description of City Hall decision making that reinforces this image.

The report concludes that Ted Stein, the mayor’s special advisor, “personally and alone” made the decision to hire Hubbell in a manner intended to be hidden from public review. The report cites a deposition in which Riordan almost embraces disconnectedness as a defense, stating that “at some point he became aware that Mr. Hubbell had been hired, but that he did not have a clear recollection of when or how he learned that fact. He said that, at some later time, he was reminded that he learned that Mr. Hubbell had been hired within a week or two after the hiring; however, he has no independent recollection of this. He testified that he had no involvement in the hiring, supervision or payment of Mr. Hubbell.” With amnesia like this, it’s a wonder the mayor remembered to show up for his deposition.

When Hubbell resigned as associate attorney general in April 1994, the media already had reported that he was a subject of the Whitewater probe. Nevertheless, Hubbell was hired a few months later to advance the mayor’s favorite cause, gaining federal approval to transfer airport revenue to fund local police. Stein, whose office was next door to Riordan’s, talked to Hubbell at least 48 times by phone but, we are to believe, never mentioned it to his boss. Stein informed Deputy Mayor Mike Keeley who, in his interview with the controller’s investigators, answered 40 times that he “did not recall.”

Also in the decision loop were William Wardlaw, the Riordan confidant often described as the “real mayor,” and Wardlaw’s wife, Judge Kim Wardlaw, along with another deputy mayor, Mary Leslie, and her husband, the political consultant Alan Arkatov. These were all Riordan Democrats, who along with the L.A.-based Lippo Bank had huge stakes in currying favor with the White House by raising funds for Hubbell’s defense.

If Riordan missed all the buzz about Hubbell among his top staff and closest friends, we have to assume either that they don’t confide in him or that he has no retention when they do. Did Riordan have any questions about the propriety of the secret deal to hire Hubbell? Presumably not, unless someone reminded him.

But what if reality is the other way around? What if there is a hidden government in which the mayor is intentionally insulated, and it’s the reporters, pundits and public who are out of the loop? The model for such governance would be that of Ronald Reagan, which promoted the image of an amiable leader whose forgetfulness was forgivable and whose minions carried out secret arms deals, savings and loan bailouts and other projects not suitable for public viewing.

Whether this is about full-scale or only selective amnesia, however, what is chillingly clear from the controller’s report is that the mayor’s office has willingly failed to keep documents required under city and state public records laws. Stein can’t find the Aug. 16, 1994, letter he wrote on mayor’s office stationery hiring Hubbell. Nor does Riordan’s office have a copy.

The mayor is required to store such official material for public review. The city clerk’s office, according to the controller, has asked several times for the mayor’s records-retention protocol and been rebuffed. So the question is not whether the mayor is forgetful, but whether he is responsible for an institutional amnesia in violation of the law by erasing inconvenient documents and letters.

The Hubbell contract appears to be part of a larger secrecy at City Hall. The mayor’s office has survived a first term in violation of the public records laws, but the pressure for reform will grow. Public money paid to Hubbell must be returned, and public records must be kept. The story may not be over. Hubbell is under pressure to talk or face prosecution for more crimes. We may be previewing Whitewater West.