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The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH),
John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB).
After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald
Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in
its investigation of Lincoln Savings. Senators John Glenn and John
McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for
having exercised "poor judgment".
All five of the senators involved served out their terms. Only Glenn and McCain ran for re-election, and they were both re-elected.
The Keating Five scandal was prompted by the activities of one particular savings and loan: Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, California. Lincoln's chairman was Charles Keating, who ultimately served five years in prison for his corrupt mismanagement of Lincoln.[3] In the four years since Keating's American Continental Corporation (ACC) had purchased Lincoln in 1984, Lincoln's assets had increased from $1.1 billion to $5.5 billion.[4] Such savings and loan associations had been deregulated in the early
1980s, allowing them to make highly risky investments with their
depositors' money, a change of which Keating and other savings and loan
operators took advantage.[4][5]
Savings and loans established connections to many members of Congress,
by supplying them with needed funds for campaigns through legal
donations.[5] Lincoln's particular investments took the form of buying land, taking
equity positions in real estate development projects, and buying
high-yield junk bonds.[6]
excerpt
Conclusion of investigation
The Senate Ethics Committee's report regarding the Keating matter came out in August 1991, and addressed each of the five senators.
Glenn and McCain: cleared of impropriety but criticized for poor judgment
The Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of McCain in the scheme
was also minimal, and he too was cleared of all charges against him.[27][26] McCain was criticized by the Committee for exercising "poor judgment"
when he met with the federal regulators on Keating's behalf.[7] The report also said that McCain's "actions were not improper nor
attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring
institutional action against him....Senator McCain has violated no law
of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate."[30] On his Keating Five experience, McCain has said: "The appearance of it
was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a
meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression
of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.
After McCain became a leading Republican contender for the U.S.
presidency in the 2000s several retrospective accounts of the
controversy contended that McCain was included in the investigation
primarily so that there would be at least one Republican target.[31][32][33][13] Glenn's inclusion in the investigation has been attributed to
Republicans who were angered by the inclusion of McCain, as well as
committee members who thought that dropping Glenn (and McCain) would
make it look bad for the remaining three Democratic Senators.[31][33] Democrat Robert S. Bennett, who was the special investigator during the scandal, suggested to the Senate Ethics Committee that it pursue charges against neither McCain nor Glenn, saying of McCain, "that there was no evidence against him."[32] The Vice Chairman of the Ethics Committee, Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, agreed with Bennett, but the Chairman, Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama, did not agree.
Reactions
Not everyone was satisfied with the Senate Ethics Committee conclusions. Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause,
which had initially demanded the investigation, thought the treatment
of the senators far too lenient, and said, "The U.S. Senate remains on
the auction block to the Charles Keatings of the world."[35] Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, called it a "whitewash".[35] Jonathan Alter of Newsweek said it was a classic case of the government trying to investigate
itself, labelling the Senate Ethics Committee "shameless" for having
"let four of the infamous Keating Five off with a wrist tap."[36]Margaret Carlson of Time suspected the committee had timed its first report to coincide with the run-up to the Gulf War, minimizing its news impact.[35] One of the San Francisco bank regulators felt that McCain had gotten
off too lightly, saying that Keating's business involvement with Cindy
McCain was an obvious conflict of interest.
Aftermath
Keating and Lincoln Savings became convenient symbols for arguments
about what had gone wrong in America's financial system and society,[38] and were featured in popular culture references.[39][38][37] By spring 1992, a deck of playing cards was being marketed, called "The Savings and Loan Scandal", that
featured on their face Charles Keating holding up his hand, with images
of the five senators portrayed as puppets on his fingers.[38][7] Polls showed that most Americans believed the actions of the Keating Five were typical of Congress as a whole.[22] The senators did not escape infamy either.
Cranston left office in January of 1993, and died in December of
2000. DeConcini and Riegle continued to serve in the Senate until their
terms expired, but they did not seek re-election in 1994. DeConcini was
appointed by President Bill Clinton in February 1995 to the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. [40]
Glenn did choose to run for re-election in 1992, and it was
anticipated that he would have some difficulty winning a fourth term in
the Senate. However, Glenn handily defeated Lieutenant Governor R. Michael DeWine for one more term in the Senate before retiring in 1999.
After 1999, the only member of the Keating Five remaining in the U.S. Senate was John McCain, who had an easier time gaining re-election in 1992 than he anticipated,[41] and who ran for president in 2000 and became the Republican presidential nominee in 2008. McCain survived the political scandal in part by becoming friendly with the political press.[41]
The scandal was followed by a number of attempts to adopt campaign finance reform—spearheaded by U.S. Sen. David Boren (D-OK)—but most attempts died in committee. A weakened reform was
passed in 1993. Substantial campaign finance reform was not passed
until the adoption of the McCain-Feingold Act in 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
excerpt.
https://www.realchange.org/mccain.htm
Founding Member of the Keating Five
Back in the old days, defendants in famous trials got numbers -- the
Chicago Eight, the Gang of Four, the Dave Clark Five, the Daytona 500.
McCain was one of the "Keating Five," congressmen investigated on
ethics charges for strenuously helping convicted racketeer Charles
Keating
after he gave them large campaign contributions and vacation trips.
Charles Keating was convicted of racketeering and
fraud in both state and federal court after his Lincoln Savings &
Loan collapsed,
costing the taxpayers $3.4 billion. His convictions were overturned on
technicalities; for example, the federal conviction was overturned
because jurors had heard about his state conviction, and his state
charges because Judge Lance Ito (yes, that judge) screwed up jury
instructions. Neither court cleared him,
and he faces new trials in both courts.)
Though he was not convicted of anything, McCain
intervened on behalf of Charles Keating after
Keating gave McCain at least $112,00 in contributions.
In the
mid-1980s, McCain made at least 9 trips on Keating's airplanes, and 3
of those were to Keating's luxurious retreat in the Bahamas. McCain's
wife and father-in-law also were the largest investors (at $350,000) in
a Keating shopping center; the Phoenix New Times called it a
"sweetheart deal."
Mafia ties:
In
1995, McCain sent birthday regards, and regrets for not attending, to
Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonano, the head of the New York Bonano crime
family,
who had retired to Arizona. Another politician to send regrets was
Governor Fife Symington, who has since been kicked out of office and
convicted of 7 felonies relating to fraud and extortion.
to the head of the Federal
Communications Commission -- which was
way out of line, since McCain headed the Senate Commmerce Committee,
which controls the FCC. McCain's pressure was so outrageous that, even
though McCain was in charge of funding his commission, the FCC
commissioner wrote a letter back rebuking him for his interference, at
the height of McCain's "ethics in government" campaign.
McCain
Sources:
"For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk", New York Times, February 21, 2008, pA1
"McCain Says He's Been Baptist For Years", by Bruce Smith, The Associated Press, September 12, 2007
Candidates' Vices: Craps and Poker, by Michael Sherer and Michael Weisskopf, Time Magazine, July 2, 2008
"Profiles: McCain's Party", by Connie Bruck, New Yorker Magazine, May 30, 2005
"Candidates invite questions about their faith", by Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, September 18, 2007
"The Pampered Politician", by Amy Silverman, The Phoenix New Times, May 15, 1997
"See John Run Off at the Mouth", Phoenix New Times, October 1, 1998
"Opiate for the Mrs.", Phoenix New Times, September 8, 1994
"Flashes: What's Up, Murdoch?", Phoenix New Times, September 17, 1998
the US Veteran's Dispatch web site.
"Symington Gets Slammer", Phoenix New Times, February 2, 1998
Election 98: Arizona Governor, Fox News web site, 1998 coverage (no longer on web)
"Keating Gets New Trial", CNNfn Web Site, December 2, 1996
"No More Wagging,", (editorial) by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, January 3, 1999
"John McCain, rock-and-roll dad", by Andrew Essex, The New Yorker Magazine, December 6, 1999 p52
"Unmasking Darth McCain", by William Cleeland, The Daily Illini, March 9, 2001
"Famed McCain Temper is Tamed", By Michael Kranish
Boston Globe, January 27, 2008
