FBI Raids 3 City Agencies, Street Fund-raiser's Office

Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | Oct. 17, 2003 | Anthony S. Twyman, Nathan Gorenstein and Emilie Lounsberry

[End Times Sentinel]

FBI Raids 3 City Agencies, Street Fund-raiser's Office

By Anthony S. Twyman, Nathan Gorenstein and Emilie Lounsberry
Inquirer Staff Writers

 

 

 

Ratcheting up the federal investigation that has engulfed the mayoral election, FBI agents crisscrossed Center City yesterday to search three city agencies and the office of a lawyer who is a top political ally of Mayor Street's and has earned millions from municipal legal work.

 

The extraordinary raids targeted the city Finance Department, the city treasurer's office, and the city Board of Pensions and Retirement, as well as the law office of Ronald A. White, a major player in the city's lucrative government bond business.

 

The execution of search warrants inside city offices yesterday by FBI agents seemed to paralyze municipal business. At a hastily called news conference last night, Street complained that the timing of the raids was "curiously suspicious" - as if designed to harm his reelection.

 

Street said it was "unfortunate that these events, conducted in this way, have in effect hijacked this election."

 

But he added: "I intend to be the mayor and run the government. I also intend to be the candidate and work hard on the campaign."

 

As the mayor spoke, agents kept working at White's office at Broad and Walnut Streets. They carried empty boxes and what appeared to be computer equipment up to the second-floor office.

 

Then a half-dozen agents emerged shortly before 8 p.m. carrying out more than 50 boxes with markings that read: "PHA," "Tasker Homes," "Bonds 2002."

 

For a time, White, 54, was outside his office as the search proceeded. He declined to comment.

 

White is one of the city's most politically influential lawyers.

 

He has been one of Street's main fund-raisers, helping generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for two political action committees.

 

White has received large fees for legal work for the city, its employee pension fund and other agencies. At the same time, he represents clients who do work at Philadelphia International Airport and need other city approvals.

 

In addition to White's office, agents searched the offices of the pension board at Two Penn Center, and the 13th-floor offices of the Finance Department and the sixth-floor offices of the city treasurer, both in the Municipal Services Building.

 

The searches were the latest development in the federal investigation that has plagued the mayor since a sophisticated FBI listening device was discovered last week in the ceiling of his City Hall office.

 

The unusual decision to bug the mayor's office - the bug was up for only about two weeks - was approved by a Justice Department official, but not by Attorney General John Ashcroft, a person with knowledge of the investigation said yesterday.

 

People familiar with the inquiry have said that the wide-ranging corruption investigation focuses on city contracts.

 

After Philadelphia police discovered the bug on Oct. 7, law enforcement officials said Street was a subject, but not a target, of the probe. Generally, federal prosecutors term a target as someone who is likely to be charged; a subject is someone under scrutiny.

 

"I don't know what they're looking for," Street said at his jammed news conference, broadcast live on local TV stations.

 

"The scope of it does appear very broad, and fishing expedition is one of the words that does come to mind."

 

Street declined to make public the search warrants and subpoenas served on the city.

 

City Solicitor Nelson A. Diaz complained that the raids violated an agreement he had reached with the U.S. Attorney's Office to provide all documents voluntarily.

 

"It really disturbed me because I thought we had a deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office," Diaz said.

 

He said that federal authorities were supposed to give him advance notice of any requests for documents but that he learned of yesterday's raids only after agents showed up at the office of Finance Director Janice Davis.

 

This complaint prompted a sharp retort later yesterday from U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan.

 

Meehan, in a statement, said prosecutors in his office had met with Diaz about an unrelated matter in July and last week spoke with a Diaz deputy after FBI agents searched a city office.

 

"In each instance we unambiguously communicated the necessity to take whatever investigative steps are appropriate to safeguard and preserve evidence," Meehan said.

 

"To now suggest that we breached a promise is entirely unfair and inaccurate."

 

As the investigation intensified, top city Democrats continued to denounce the federal government's refusal to describe the probe's intent.

 

U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, who is also chairman of the Democratic City Committee, said last night that he and some Democratic colleagues would write the Justice Department, urging it to go public about the investigation.

 

"We're going to call for honesty," Brady said. "We want them to come out and tell us what's going on."

 

Since the probe burst into public view last week with the discovery of the listening device, the FBI has appeared to be working feverishly to conduct interviews and carry out court-authorized searches.

 

In an overlapping investigation involving contracts at Philadelphia International Airport, John Velardi, head of an airport maintenance firm, Philadelphia Airport Services, said he was interviewed in June about the $13.6 million contract his firm won after hiring the mayor's brother, T. Milton Street Sr., as a consultant.

 

Velardi said federal agents asked him about the bidding process and were "intimately familiar" with the contract.

 

He received two subpoenas in July for all records about the bidding and contract, and turned over six boxes and 13 CDs of electronic files.

 

Also interviewed by the FBI was Bill Sautter, an executive of Elliott-Lewis Corp., the firm that lost out on the airport contract.

 

Four FBI agents showed up at the Minority Business Enterprise Council (MBEC) office last week, carrying a search warrant and leaving behind a subpoena asking the agency's chief to appear later before a grand jury with documents concerning city work done by Imam Shamsud-din Ali, another Street supporter. Ali's business and home were searched last week. Agents also asked about other contracts at the airport, including those by Marketplace Redwood L.P. , a concession-management firm that leases space to shops, bars and restaurants there.

 

Louis Applebaum, a former city procurement commissioner, said FBI agents spent two to three hours with him in July, asking him questions about the airport-services contract.

 

Agents asked if Street played a role in the award to Philadelphia Airport Services, Applebaum said. He said he replied: "Absolutely not."

 

 

[End Times Sentinel]

Last night at Big John's Press Conference he stated that the raids were unnecessary and that "99 or 100 percent" of the documents were public and readily available.  In the very next breath he said that the documents were "private".  I see a very guilty man who may be beginning to realize that he can no longer operate in open contempt of the law.

To no surprise to anyone even vaguely familiar with the mindset of democraps, John "Mugabe Jr." Street has surged ahead of Sam Katz as voters realize that they have something important in common with Street- Lawlessness.

I'm currently taking suggestions for conservative enclaves outside the city to relocate my family to.  We will not be the taxbeasts of burden for a lame duck and soon to be indicted John Street.  He'll likely make the plundering of the Iraqi Central Bank by Saddam and his boys look like a deposit.

Owl_Eagle

" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"

[End Times Sentinel]

Philadelphia Election ping.

Owl_Eagle

" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"

[been_lurking]

Street said it was "unfortunate that these events, conducted in this way, have in effect hijacked this election."

But he added: "I intend to be the mayor and run the government. I also intend to be the candidate and work hard on the campaign."

Then, he went back to rearranging the deck chairs as the ship continued to sink.....

[twigs]

Yes, but his poll numbers are substantially up this morning. This man knows how to wring the hearts of his constituency. I find it profoundly disturbing that a man under scrutiny from the FBI involving an airport, among other things, in this day and age of terrorism is getting a BUMP in the wake of probable corruption.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

[barf alert]

Holy Terror

Discrimination is nothing new to Black Muslims.

SOLOMON JONES (sjones@philadelphiaweekly.com)

The U.S. government has accused the Al Qaeda terrorist network, led by Saudi-born Muslim Osama bin Laden, of carrying out the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. As a result of those attacks and bin Laden's call for Muslims to unite in a holy war against the U.S., Americans have taken a greater interest in learning about the Islamic faith.

In some cases, that interest has led to backlash. Arab-looking people have been discriminated against, singled out and profiled in airports, train stations and other public places as a nervous American public tries to adjust to its new reality.

But not all Muslims--especially those who are African-American--have faced that type of backlash.

"I haven't had any Muslims say that they have been mistreated as a result of this," says Imam Shamsud-Din Ali of the Philadelphia Masjid, the Arabic word for mosque.

That's not to say that African-American Muslims have not been mistreated at all, he adds. Like other blacks, he says, African-American Muslims often face discrimination.

"Profiling us is so common we probably can't even tell. We can't tell if it's because we're Muslims or because we have different-color skin. We've been treated so wrong for so long that if they treated us right, we wouldn't know how to take it."

 

Islam has a long history in the black community. Muslims lived in North and West Africa for centuries before the Atlantic slave trade began, and some Africans brought the faith to America with them.

Though many African Muslims were stripped of their religion during enslavement, Islam became popular among African-Americans with the rise of a black nationalist Muslim sect called the Nation of Islam in the 1950s and '60s.

Today, about 30 percent of the estimated 6 million Muslims in America are African-American, according to "The Mosque in America: a National Portrait," a report prepared by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. And many of the approximately 1,200 American mosques are in inner-city neighborhoods where blacks worship.

It's not uncommon to see male Muslims in black communities wearing skull caps called kufis, while female Muslims wear the hijab--a loose-fitting garment that is accompanied by a head covering.

African-American Muslims are not seen as an oddity in America. That's partly why black Muslims have not experienced widespread backlash in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

But even though black Muslims have not been widely targeted, they have taken issue with the way their religion has been portrayed.

In an Oct. 21 statement, a group called Majlis Ash'Shura--a consultative body of Imams, Masjid and Islamic organizations from Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley--took exception to the use of the word "Muslim" to describe terrorists.

"The United States and its media should stop using religious labels to identify Muslims who are fighting against what they perceived as oppression and injustices. The Irish Republican Army is not called the Catholic Irish Republican Army in the press and Timothy McVeigh was not called a Catholic terrorist."

 

Shamsud-Din Ali, a spokesman for Majlis Ash'Shura, says his organization is against terrorism wherever it occurs. But Ali is careful to point out that there has always been terrorism in America--especially against blacks.

"African-Americans are acquainted first-hand with terrorism," he says. "We probably have suffered the worst kind of terrorism anybody can suffer. We have been seized upon and treated with terrible disrespect. We've been threatened, our children have been killed in churches, people have been hung on trees."

That reality, says Ali, has fueled distrust concerning the current war on terrorism, not only in the Muslim community, but in the African-American community as a whole. "There's probably a lot going on that we don't know about. Not just foreign policy, but local policy. When our people suffered those things, it was local policy that allowed that to happen, not foreign policy."

Ali's organization has called for the U.S. government to stop the bombing in Afghanistan because the Afghan people did not bomb the United States. The organization has also said "the United States should find a diplomatic or other solution to this situation."

"I am against terrorist acts, against injustice against anybody," says Ali. "I don't care what color. I don't think people should be denied the right to live and to raise their children. I'll stand for that and even die for that. To give blind allegiance to this foolishness, I would not subscribe to that."

Whatever else has resulted from the terrorist attacks, says Kenny Gamble, a Muslim community activist and former owner of Philly International Records, the events of Sept. 11 have brought about change in America.

"It's a terrible thing that happened," Gamble says. "But out of it comes a world that is looking to God for answers. That has to be good for the whole of humanity because everyone is looking to God for help."

 

Solomon Jones (sjones@philadelphiaweekly.com) last wrote about local survivors of segregation.

PW

[fatima]

Owl_Eagle,Saw this in the morning paper,this is making national news.KYW said his poll numbers are up now.

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

Thanks for the ping...... I think Street looks scared silly - and he should - it is so obvious what has been happening in that office - dems have to be the dumbest people alive.......

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Part of the school investigation by a joint task force of the FBI, IRS and Philadelphia police centers on "no-show jobs" and "missing $4 million" in connection with an adult basic-education program jointly run in 1999-2002 by Sister Clara Muhammad and the community college. The community college and the Philadelphia School District have turned over subpoenaed records to the FBI.

$4million is a lot to lose.

[FlyVet]

City Solicitor Nelson A. Diaz complained that the raids violated an agreement he had reached with the U.S. Attorney's Office to provide all documents voluntarily.

Democrat + "voluntarily" = shredder working overtime.

[Temple Owl]

He may win the election, but I hope he is convicted of whatever they suspect him of and give him a long paid vacation at Allenwood.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

"I don't know what they're looking for," Street said at his jammed news conference, broadcast live on local TV stations.
LOL

Owl Eagle,
You can always move up towards the Lehigh Valley. Would that be too long of a commute?

[End Times Sentinel]

Muslims lived in North and West Africa for centuries before the Atlantic slave trade began...

This is an important distinction to be made.  The fact that they were busily enslaving one another for eons, and continue to happily enslave one another even today isn't germane to a hit piece on whitey.

Today, about 30 percent of the estimated 6 million Muslims in America are African-American

When I see an African American muslim, two things I can be certain of:

1.  They or "they husband" just got out of prison.

2.  They'll drop their practice about the same time "them pork ribs start smelling too good" at the next block party.

Owl_Eagle

" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"

[Mo1]

He said that federal authorities were supposed to give him advance notice of any requests for documents but that he learned of yesterday's raids only after agents showed up at the office of Finance Director Janice Davis.

So basically he's upset the FBI didn't give him a chance to clean things up before the raid?

BTW .. couldn't help notice this article doesn't mention anything about the kick backs some get from these contracts and bond issues

[Mo1]

I find it profoundly disturbing that a man under scrutiny from the FBI involving an airport, among other things, in this day and age of terrorism is getting a BUMP in the wake of probable corruption.

Street and his aide were playing the race card in yesterdays news briefing

[End Times Sentinel]

 I think Street looks scared silly - and he should - it is so obvious what has been happening in that office - dems have to be the dumbest people alive.......-  WhyisaTexasgirlinPA

He may win the election, but I hope he is convicted of whatever they suspect him of and give him a long paid vacation at Allenwood.- Temple Owl

Essentially, a vote for John Street is a proxy vote for City Council Prez, Anna Verna.  IF he wins (and if he has an actual lead now, the legions of North Philadelphia homeless guys who will be riding around in motor coaches voting at every polling place will surely put him beyond Katz's reach), it's going to be interesting to see if Frank DiCicco challenges her for the Council Prez seat since that person will be appointed mayor as Street is lead off to the Slam.

Owl_Eagle

" WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
DIVERSITY IS STRENGTH"

[twigs]

I know they have been. I just find it so annoying that it's WORKING!

[Mo1]

It's ok .. soon the taxpayers of Philly realize how bad Street and his buddy's have been ripping them off

Grey Davis thought he was so dislike .. wait till the Philly taxpayers wake up to what's going on at City Hall

[RedBloodedAmerican]

I was just discussing the whole reparation thing yesterday with someone, and the point was made that blacks kidnapped from their homes other blacks and then sold them on the slave market.

Maybe Jesse Jackson should start his reparations program by hitting up Al Sharpton, first.

[twigs]

Actually, not all blacks are buying this as Street would have us believe. Some really are voting for Katz. And I used to work in a soup kitchen in Montgomery County (Abington) where a number of our folks came up from Philly. For the most part, these folks were very conservative! They couldn't understand why OJ got off for killing his wife and why Clinton wasn't forced from office. I really enjoyed listening to them solving the problems of the world. They had a lot more sense than many of our leaders!

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

Interesting - this is going to be a fun election I think.....lol...... did you notice that Street is already trying to cover his butt in case he loses ...... this investigation has hijacked the election! lol