Press: Where Were the Media on HUD?

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The Washington-based national press missed the warning signs altogether. In July 1988 Multi-Housing News, a trade publication, ran an extensive story on influence peddling in HUD's Moderate Rehabilitation program, spelling out, with almost every detail except the malefactors' names, the $2 billion scandal that has since emerged. Reports from HUD's own inspector general sounded similar tocsins. But none of Washington's investigative journalists seemed to be listening. Part of the reason was that news organizations had tired of HUD after reporting the massive Reagan budget cutbacks at the agency in the early 1980s; once most of the money was gone, so were the reporters. Only a few regularly covered the huge bureaucracy.

While sources went uncultivated and leaks dried up, the capital's best reporters were caught by other stories, like allegations against former Attorney General Ed Meese and the Iran-contra scandal. HUD remained the gulag of Washington journalism, a backwater with an obscure chief administrator they dubbed "Silent Sam" Pierce. There was a distinct lack of glitz and glamour about the HUD beat. "We were looking elsewhere," explains syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. "We don't have enough eyes to look at HUD. The very name HUD says dullness, dullness, dullness."

To complete the circle of neglect, Congress failed to monitor the enormous agency closely. For one thing, since hearings drew scant coverage, members of Congress sought public attention elsewhere. For another, the lawful political benefits of the pork barrel may have tempered criticism of HUD. Former Senator William Proxmire, who was chairman of the HUD subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, applauds the current congressional probe of the agency. Says he: "That's what we should have been doing. We didn't."

Even the most blatant instances of influence peddling went virtually unnoticed. Paul Manafort, later a leading campaign adviser to President Bush, used his connections at HUD to ensure funding for an unwanted $43 million rehabilitation of dilapidated housing in Seabrook, N.J. Not only was he a partner in the development firm involved on the project, but he also received $326,000 in fees for his trouble. The matter went unreported for three years. Are there any lessons to be learned from the HUD fiasco? Offered one Washington reporter: "Just because something's silent, that doesn't mean it's asleep."