NYT: Like Father, Like Son, Even When They Are Under Suspicion

Senator Ted Stevens at the Alaska Legislature last year with his son Ben behind him at left.

Like Father, Like Son, Even When They Are Under Suspicion
By PHILIP SHENON
Published: August 10, 2007


WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 — Ben Stevens is often said by Alaskans to be the spitting image of his father, Senator Ted Stevens. They have the same broad forehead, wide-set eyes and compact physique. They share the same rough-hewn personality, seemingly always spoiling for a fight.

Now, father and son share a new, unwelcome distinction. Both are under investigation by the Justice Department over their ties to an Alaska businessman who has confessed to bribing public officials.

The Alaska home of Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, was raided last week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His son’s offices in the Alaska Legislature — he was a state senator until this year — were raided last summer.

Neither Ted Stevens, who is 83, nor Ben Stevens, 48, a fisherman turned politician and lobbyist who is the youngest of the senator’s three sons, has been charged with a crime.

But in court papers in May in which he admitted to bribery, the Alaska businessman, Bill J. Allen, acknowledged making $243,000 in possibly illegal payments to a state lawmaker identified only as “Senator B.” Although he denies wrongdoing, Ben Stevens, who has acknowledged receiving about $243,000 in consulting fees from Mr. Allen’s oil-services firm, has not disputed that he is “Senator B.”

It is undeniable that Ben Stevens has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees from companies and industry groups that have been the recipients of huge federal grants steered to Alaska by his father in recent years.


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uhc note: Has anyone seen the hulk tie lately?

And this is the caliber of people we have running the country.

Little wonder that this nation has never fulfilled its potential.