The Hightower Report

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TAKING TAXPAYERS FOR A RIDE

Yessiree, our nation's top officials will leave no dollar unspent in their unstinting effort to keep us safe from terrorists – including spending several million dollars on the essential need to transport the FBI director to speaking engagements.

In 1999, the bureau persuaded Congress to buy a $40 million Gulfstream V jet for the agency as part of its growing role in counterterrorism work. The sleek, fast, and posh Gulfstream is a favorite of corporate executives. But the FBI wanted it to zip agents abroad for rapid-response investigations. And that's exactly how the bureau used the Gulfstream – until George W. took office in 2001 and named Robert S. Mueller III as his FBI director.

The rationale for the jet has remained the same. This spring, for example, when seeking another $3.6 million annual appropriation to maintain, fuel, and fly it, the bureau reported the plane was having a "tremendous impact" in the war on terrorism by transporting agents to "fast-moving investigations and crisis situations." Unreported, however, was the fact that Mueller has been commandeering the Gulfstream about a fourth of the time for his own flights to make speeches and to visit field offices here in the U.S.

No doubt Mueller is a busy fellow – but his predecessor was, too, and he traveled either on commercial jets or by using a smaller jet the agency keeps. Well, snapped a spokesman, Mueller is "the CEO" of the FBI, and every trip he makes "furthers the operational mission of the bureau." Hmmm – I wonder if that includes when Mueller uses the Gulfstream to fly to a speech event, then stays behind for a vacation? Even some Republicans are critical. As Sen. Chuck Grassley says, "If the FBI wanted a jet to fly the director around, then it shouldn't try to justify the plane as a weapon in the war on terror."

Exactly.

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THOMPSON THE ACTOR

Fred Thompson is not a gruff, straight-shooting district attorney, but he plays one on TV. Thompson also is not a political outsider, but he's planning to play one in the coming presidential campaign.

The outsider role, however, is going to take way more acting ability than Thompson has, because it's totally out of character for this longtime Washington insider. Not that he hasn't played the role in the past. When he moved to Tennessee from Washington to run for the Senate in 1993, he doffed his suit and tie, leased a red pickup truck, and drove around the state posing as Just Plain Fred.

But a presidential campaign is a much bigger stage, and Plain Fred is going to be revealed as the real Fred, who has spent more than 20 years as a Washington lobbyist for billion-dollar corporations. Thompson was the Republican counsel for the Watergate hearings, and he has not been shy about cashing in on his congressional contacts since then.

You and I paid for a couple of his lobbying gigs. Representing the Tennessee Savings and Loan League, he helped push through the deregulation bill that led directly to the S&L crash of the late 1980s, resulting in a $150 billion taxpayer bailout of the industry. Thompson also was a longtime lobbyist for Westinghouse, helping it get $1.7 million for its Clinch River nuclear project, which was never built.

More recently, even while he's been a TV actor, Thompson has continued to lobby for Equitas, a British insurance giant wanting to avoid paying what it owes to people sickened by asbestos. And last year "Mr. Outsider" was deemed to have so many inside connections that he was tapped to help raise $5 million for Scooter Libby's legal defense fund.

Maybe Thompson the Actor can lease that red pickup truck again to haul off the money that Thompson the Lobbyist makes.