FEDS AVOID A SCENE THIS TIME, SUBPOENAS TAKE THE PLACE OF MADE-FOR-TV FBI RAIDS...

ANOTHER DAY, another demand from federal investigators for documents from the city.

Instead of a platoon of FBI agents carting out boxes of documents, as happened Thursday, investigators delivered subpoenas to City Solicitor Nelson Diaz, a source said.

That allows the city to gather the information and deliver it to the FBI rather than face the embarrassment of raids captured live on evening news programs.

The FBI requested files from "several city agencies" that are involved with bond issues, said the source, who would name only two - the Redevelopment Authority and the Philadelphia Authority of Industrial Development.

Mayor Street yesterday said he knew nothing about the federal subpoenas, which are part of an expanding probe of possible corruption in his administration.

"I have no idea what happened today," Street said. "I don't get a blow-by-blow description of any of this."

Redevelopment Authority Director Herb Wetzel declined to comment on the subpoenas.

Peter Longstreth, director of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., which handles PAID's administrative functions, yesterday said he knew nothing about any FBI subpoenas.

Milton Velez, a deputy city solicitor, refused to say whether the city had received any new federal subpoenas. Velez's boss, Diaz, accused the FBI last week of violating an agreement to allow the city to voluntarily turn over information.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan last week denied that investigators breached any agreement.

While the agreement seemed back in place yesterday, Velez still took a verbal shot at the feds.

"This is an open investigation, and the Law Department and the city of Philadelphia are cooperating fully with the federal government, but we are not commenting on any subpoenas or any other aspect of this investigation," Velez said. "We're going to abide by the rules even if the other guys aren't."

• Street, speaking at an afternoon event where he was endorsed by state Auditor General Bob Casey Jr., continued to say that "someone" is trying to use the federal probe to interfere with his re-election efforts. Street said he has no idea who that "someone" is.

The mayor told reporters he expects leaks about the investigation to come "virtually every day" until the Nov. 4 election.

"But I have just decided that that is going to be my life for the next 16 days," he said. "I'm going to have to live with that. There's not much I can do about it, and so I'm just going to accept it."

After the endorsement, Street told reporters: "I have done absolutely nothing wrong here... Voters shouldn't even infer that I or anyone else has done anything wrong because there is an investigation."

The probe prompted state Sen. Vincent Fumo, a fellow Democrat but hardly a warm ally of the mayor, to say yesterday that he is feeling distressed by the leaks.

"I know [Street] very well, and he has an awful lot of integrity, but if he did anything wrong, the proper way for that investigation to happen is in secret with the grand jury and then everything comes out," Fumo said.

• Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose office would have had to approve the probe of the Street administration, was in Philadelphia yesterday but didn't mention the investigation.

Ashcroft spoke for about an hour on the Patriot Act and national security in front of an annual convention of 56 major-city police chiefs.

Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said Ashcroft took questions from the chiefs, but "nothing about Philadelphia came up," Johnson said. "Nothing about Philadelphia was asked."

• If the federal probe is confusing here, it is downright mystifying in Mobile, Ala.

The Mobile County School District received a federal subpoena on Thursday, asking for details of a recent $121 million bond issue to pay for building projects.

Among the information demanded were any details the district could provide on attorney Ronald A. White, a key Street campaign contributor; or attorney Anthony Snell, who works for JP Morgan Chase in Atlanta.

White's Center City offices were raided by the FBI last week. Investigators carried out 60 boxes of records, apparently detailing White's lucrative legal work for the city on bond issues.

Harold Dodge, Mobile's superintendent of schools, said the names White and Snell don't ring a bell.

"I can categorically tell you that there is no one [on] our staff who has ever heard of them," Dodge said.

The district compiled the bond documents on a compact disc and sent it to the FBI's Philadelphia office Friday.

Republican Sam Katz hasn't quite accused Street of killing a 3-year-old, but he said yesterday that one of the victims of Street's "culture of corruption" is Porchia Bennett, whose battered and malnourished body was found in a South Philadelphia home in August.

Asked if he was blaming Street for the death, Katz said, "Instead of giving no-bid contracts to friends and cronies, we could be using it in a way that would be more efficient and effective."

Katz, who has praised Street's Human Services Commissioner Alba Martinez, declined to say whether he would hire more child-welfare case workers if elected.

Street campaign spokesman Dan Fee called Katz's comments "beyond the pale...I'm just plain embarrassed for him."

Katz also unveiled a TV ad focusing on Mary Kohler, the Fire Department paramedic who contracted hepatitis C and staged a 15-day vigil outside Street's office, demanding that the city treat the disease as an occupational illness.

The ad says that Street "didn't give her the time of day" and "walked right over her."

Street expressed sympathy for Kohler, but said hepatitis C was a policy issue that had to be addressed for all firefighters in talks with their union.

Both are quasi-governmental agencies with the authority to issue bonds.

Anybody have a conjecture as to how and why bond issues could be illegally tampered with?

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