PHASE THREE by Arnold Bornstein: Set the government scandals aside, democracy works
With the stock market seemingly resembling Atlantic City’s odds, the nation’s leading retailers reporting a severe decrease in consumer confidence, the Enron debacle being followed by other massive fiscal fiascos, little girls disappearing or their remains being found in various parts of the country, debates raging about military action in the Middle East, and a multitude of other tribulations facing Americans, the unofficial end of summer this past weekend may have been different than last year.
The mood of the nation may be a little different than during the Labor Day weekends of recent years, and in five more days it will be Sept. 11, and we will pause and reflect upon the horrific events of that day. Despite the mood or events, Americans have bounced back from adversity for 226 years and there is no reason to doubt that the current spate of bad news will be overcome eventually.
As an incurable optimist, let me nevertheless focus on an aspect of our society which periodically surfaces and temporarily tests our confidence. However, our faith in our system perseveres and prevails in the long run.
Such a situation hit me when I read a recent article that only made page 16 of The New York Times. The article concerned a 69-year-old Boston man who had spent 30 years in prison until his life sentence for a murder conviction was commuted by the governor in 1997. Last year, while still on parole, a state judge dismissed his murder conviction after documents were made public by a Justice Department task force that has been investigating an FBI case in Boston that goes back to the 1960s.
The man said recently he plans to bring a $300 million false-imprisonment suit against the FBI.
The story gets worse. The article reported that the documents, released by Congress’s House Committee on Government Reforms, indicate that FBI headquarters officials, apparently including J. Edgar Hoover, knew that Boston agents at the time "were employing killers and gang leaders as informers and were protecting them from prosecution." In other words, according to the article, innocent men were convicted of a gangland rubout while "the real killers who also happened to be informers for the FBI were left alone."
In all, the article noted, four men (including the 69-year-old mentioned earlier) were wrongfully convicted. Two died in prison and their survivors have joined the fourth man in a $375 million suit against the Justice Department; the fourth man, by the way, was sentenced to death but was spared when Massachusetts outlawed capital punishment in 1974, the article added.
As a result of the Justice Department task force’s ongoing investigation, the article said, a retired and convicted FBI agent is awaiting sentencing in connection with a matter that involved two mob leaders in Boston at the time.
So despite past events, as so often happens in our history, it appears that a wrong will be righted eventually although too often it’s never completely. How do you pay back 30 years to a man?
Our nation has overcome periodic scandals in just about all levels of our society, from high government officials to common swindlers. One of the most famous in government was the Teapot Dome scandal in the l920s during the administration of President Warren Harding. The country had naval oil reserves stored in domes or storage areas particularly in the west. In fact, the scandal got its name from the rock formation that resembled a teapot and which was located near an oil dome in Wyoming.
It turned out that several top officials in the Harding administration were secretly and illegally selling the oil reserves to private companies. Eventually, those involved were brought to justice.
At the other end of the swindle spectrum in the 1920s was a man named Charles Ponzi, whose name is now in the dictionary to define similar swindles. He went to various cities and amassed millions of dollars before being stopped, by using a pyramid scheme. He would convince people to invest in a project that would pay them a profit quickly and then lure them into larger investments. However, soon the people toward the bottom of the pyramid wouldn’t get paid, and he moved on with all that came toward the top.
Eventually, he too was brought to justice but many people never got their money back.
Nowadays, there appears to be a steady stream of consumer alerts about swindles. One of the latest to be reported involves phony telemarketing that often preys on seniors. One, for example, told the person that he or she had just hit it big in the Australian lottery or sweepstakes, but the person had to forward $1,000 to cover governmental fees. There was no payoff and the sent money was never returned. It has been estimated that 65 percent of sweepstakes swindles involve seniors.
Despite P.T. Barnum’s comment that there is "a sucker born every minute," keep in mind the paraphrasing of a quote attributed to Winston Churchill: "Nobody pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise," but it’s the best form of government compared to "all those others that have been tried from time to time."
With the passage of another Labor Day weekend, and the advent of Sept. 11, let us renew our confidence and faith in America’s ability not only to overcome problems at home, but to help make world peace prevail.
Arnold Bornstein is a resident of Greenbriar at Whittingham.

