The Daily Background

The Washington Post today has some more details on the raid that the FBI and the IRS conducted on Senator Ted Stevens’ (R-AK) house yesterday. The scandal involving Stevens (and his son, a now former state Senator) has been simmering on the back boiler for a while, but this raid seems to have reignited questions about possible bribery:

Contractors have told a federal grand jury that in 2000, Veco executives oversaw a lavish remodeling of Stevens’s house in Girdwood, an exclusive ski resort area 40 miles from Anchorage, according to statements by the contractors.
[…]
The remodeling, which took place in 2000, involved putting the senator’s one-story house on stilts and building a new ground floor, making it two stories.

Veco has received more than $30 million in federal contracts since 2000, according to a database search of FedSpending.org, which tracks contracts given to private companies. The largest contracts were for logistical services provided to the National Science Foundation.
[…]
In that period, Stevens and [Alaska’s Republican Congressman Don] Young were the top recipients of Veco cash, taking in $37,000 and $30,250, respectively.

Senator Tubes Stevens, you’ll recall is the longest-serving Republican Senator, and was the Senate President pro tempore until Democrats took control of the upper chamber last November, giving that seat to Robert Byrd (D-WV). Veco’s (now former) CEO has already plead guilty to bribery, in a scheme that the Post says involved “handing out wads of hundred-dollar bills in an effort to win favorable tax legislation in Alaska for a natural gas pipeline long sought by the energy industry and leaders of both political parties there.”

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