Posted on 06/05/2005 9:44:32 PM PDT by SmithL
NASHVILLE - A big stack of documents produced by state investigators paints a picture of TennCare contractors more willing to spin the truth than divulge ties to Sen. John Ford.
One contractor linked to Ford, Doral Dental, said earlier this year that it wasn't aware of any improper links to Ford. But it was later revealed that Ford held meetings with the company's highest-ranking officers, and the company sought to keep the arrangement secret.
Doral blamed executives no longer with the company.
It took multiple requests, along with a state attorney general's investigation, to get another contractor that had a deal with Ford to fully divulge the relationship. That company, Memphis-based OmniCare (which has since been renamed UACH Health Plan of Tennessee), at first told state officials there was absolutely no connection to Ford.
UAHC has repeatedly blamed the misrepresentation on a fired executive, Osbie Howard, who was close to Ford.
The attorney general's report was going to be used as evidence to oust Ford from the Senate. Since Ford's arrest on separate federal bribery charges, the documents have become part of ongoing investigations.
Officials at TennCare, along with state investigators, say they can't talk about the report in detail because the investigation is ongoing.
So far no charges have been filed over the flow of money from state contractors to Ford, although the FBI and state investigators have been gathering more information.
And no other deals have been found like the two that saw Ford collect as much as $800,000 from two TennCare management companies. But that doesn't mean they don't exist, officials said.
Ever since revelations started seeping into the news early this year that the Memphis Democrat was linked to TennCare money, the suspect contractors have been slow - and in some cases deceptive - in revealing their ties to Ford.
"Who knows what's really happening there," said TennCare director J.D. Hickey.
All the TennCare contractors have been asked in recent months to disclose any financial ties to Ford or other lawmakers. All have sent back letters saying they are clean.
"Absolutely we are concerned, on multiple fronts at this point," Hickey said. "It's been exceedingly difficult to get information."
In the attorney general's report, prepared as part of a Senate Ethics Committee probe, a Doral Dental executive appears hopeful in an e-mail that other companies will get caught paying Ford.
Then-company President Ronald Brummeyer writes on March 9 "it would not surprise me if OmniCare and other HMOs are paying Ford - once it is found out where the other $800,000 is coming from, it will at least take a bit of the focus off of us."
It's not clear what he meant by the "other $800,000," and he did not name any other companies.
The same Doral executives had bragged in e-mails two years earlier about Ford's effectiveness at pushing their agenda in legislative hearings.
On Feb. 12, as news reports get closer to the extent of the relationship, one Doral Dental executive writes, "Right now we can't overreact to the situation ... we need to stay close to the situation and monitor the situation and react accordingly, but let's not play any of our cards until we see what others are dealt."
Shortly after, Doral had parted ways with the key executives involved in the contract with Ford's Managed Care Services Group, which had also been fired. The company was operating under a new owner, DentaQuest.
"The former owners carefully and systematically withheld information about the relationship between Senator Ford and the Managed Care Services Group from the management and the new owners," Doral spokesman Michael Pflughoeft said Friday.
Hickey has already announced big changes in the way TennCare deals with its management companies, including tough new contracts that feature stringent ethics language and bigger penalties.
The deals will affect all the management companies, not just those proven to have ties to Ford.
"We have been a vulnerable institution for a long time," he said. "This is an extremely large institution with a lot of dollars flowing through it."
The Ford Family is toast.
Don't let wishful thinking fool you. The Ford family has been almost untouchable for many decades. Any hits they take now will be labeled unfair attacks on Harold Jr's senate race.
...prominent black Memphis ministers think Ford's celebrity will have more of an impact than race.
"There's an emotional attachment to the legacy of the Fords," said Rev. L. LaSimba Gray, community activist and pastor of New Sardis Baptist Church.
His cell phone, church office phone and home phone buzzed for days after the indictments of Ford, four current and former legislators, and two alleged bagmen.
Gray's callers had similar reactions: Let's picket. Let's boycott. Let's protest.
"It's like a gut instinct," said Vanderbilt University law and political science professor Carol Swain. "The black community has a history of closing ranks around its own."
Business as usual for the ford machine. Their lawbreaking goes back to granddaddy ford as far as I understand it from the callers into Fleming. Fleming has been on this like a pit bull.
Sting risky, tricky, costly
Veteran Mafia chaserrole-played for FBI
By Lawrence Buser
June 6, 2005
When Edgar Robb suggests that the Tennessee Waltz undercover sting likely required top-level government agency approval and elaborate planning, he speaks with some authority.
Robb was one of the first FBI agents to do undercover work during the 1970s and 1980s. Before retiring in 1989, his victory lap included coaching agents around the country on the fine points of fighting crime through role playing.
"You do an undercover operation as a last resort because of the amount of planning and the amount of money required to set up," said Robb, who infiltrated the Mafia and helped send scores of mobsters to prison. "When you're dealing with public corruption, that adds an entirely new dimension to the picture, too. It (the Tennessee Waltz) was probably a pretty complicated operation and took a lot of approval, I would guess.
"When you get involved in politics there's a different mindset than with your typical Mafia types or criminal types. But again, it's all still driven by greed."
Robb, now the sheriff of Albemarle County in Charlottesville, Va., said he has no direct knowledge of Operation Tennessee Waltz that snared seven legislators and political operatives who allegedly accepted bribes from a fictitious company called E-Cycle Management created by the FBI and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
Billing itself as a recycler of old computers, E-Cycle was registered with the Georgia Secretary of State, purportedly had offices in Atlanta, Memphis and overseas and even had its own Web site -- all the creation of undercover agents. There also were lavish receptions, yacht cruises and some $90,000 distributed to the four legislators and the bagmen, according to authorities.
Robb, whose no-longer-secret life is profiled in the book "Friend of the Family," said the FBI -- with some 30,000 employees -- has the in-house talent and expertise to create undercover characters for any type of operation.
As leisure-suited "Tony Rossi," Robb ran a Mafia-sanctioned bar in South Florida, drawing on his previous real-life business experience to fit the role. He helped reel in drug dealers, gamblers, loan sharks and extortionists while serving drinks to legitimate and unsuspecting customers.
"The less you have to act, the more truthful you're going to be and the more acceptable to the other guy because they want to believe you're one of them," said Robb, who was a teacher, football coach and land developer before joining the FBI.
"The FBI is made up of people with all kinds of background and experience, and if they don't have them, they train them. I'm sure they had competent business people who set up that (E-Cycle) corporation down there. They must have, otherwise it wouldn't have been successful."
In the Tennessee operation, FBI Special Agent Mark Jackson testified last week that the ruse involved rewarding lawmakers for drawing up legislation favorable to E-Cycle.
Jackson also said he was always within a block whenever an undercover agent was meeting with state Sen. John Ford, who threatened to shoot one agent in the sting if he was working with the FBI.
Robb said undercover agents must stay in character, avoid overacting and be able to think on their feet for the heart-in-your-throat moments that are sure to arise.
"The more you lie, the more you've got to remember and the more likely you are to get caught in it," said Robb, who grew up in Pittsburgh and who was named for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. "There were a couple of occasions when someone thought I might be an informer, but you just have to fake it through. There's nothing lower on the criminal ladder than an informer, and when you get somebody making those kinds of allegations it's pretty serious, because informers get killed."
Many former undercover agents maintain low profiles, some with assumed names, to avoid becoming targets of revenge by the criminals they put away. Robb, however, has led a remarkably public life since leaving the FBI 15 years ago.
He has dabbled in several businesses in Virginia, served a term as a state senator and has been the Republican sheriff of his college community since 1999. When his book came out several years ago, he freely discussed his life undercover on national talk shows.
"If somebody wants to do harm to you, they're going to do it," said Robb, who is married and the father of three children. "You can't live your life constantly hiding. I always knew there was that potential (to be harmed), but that's just the name of the game."
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