Scandal

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

I'M SORRY TO hear that Cardinal Bevilacqua is sick, but I have no sympathy for him. He wasn't sick when the priest sexual-abuse scandal broke. He wasn't sick when the attorneys the diocese hired played hardball with the victims and their families. He wasn't sick when the coverups were going on. He wants to claim that the grand jury is disrespecting him, but what about the victims and their families who were disrespected by diocesan attorneys, and who were lied to - what about them?

WASHINGTON - Three more Secret Service employees have been forced out of the government, bringing to nine the number of people who have lost their jobs in the prostitution scandal roiling the agency. Two employees have resigned and a third is having his national-security clearance revoked, the Secret Service said Tuesday. The employee whose clearance is being revoked can appeal the decision. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said one of the resigning agents stayed at the Hilton Hotel in Cartagena, Colombia, where Obama stayed for the Summit of Americas.

So what are we to call this emerging scandal? How about "Iranamok"? Or "Contradeceptive"? Or maybe "the Swiss Connection"? While Washington goes about the serious business of sorting out who did what and who knew what in the matter of U.S. arms sales to Iran, through Israel, with some of the payments diverted to Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras, by way of a Swiss bank account, a lot of less-serious folks are struggling to come up with...

LONDON - Britain's phone-hacking scandal intensified yesterday as the scope of tabloid intrusion into private voice mails became clearer: Murder victims. Terror victims. Film stars. Sports figures. Politicians. The royal family's entourage. Almost no one, it seems, was safe from a tabloid determined to beat its rivals, whatever it took. The focal point is the News of the World - now facing a spreading advertising boycott - and the top executives of its parent companies: Rebekah Brooks, former News of the World editor who is now chief executive of News International, and her boss, media potentate Rupert Murdoch.

Yup, they're all here, indelibly etched in black and white, quaint artifacts pulled from a time capsule, images plucked from an bygone era of bushy sideburns, rotary phones, bell-bottom jeans, electric typewriters, and smoke-choked rooms. Start with Richard Nixon, the star of this Smithsonian Institution photo exhibit, the President who announced 25 years ago tonight that he was resigning his office. He's up there on the museum wall in all his fading glory - scowling, pacing, cajoling, stalking along a rainswept beach with bodyguards.

There was an almost audible sigh of relief from Republicans last week when President Reagan came down from his California mountaintop and, as he phrased it, put "the machinery in place" to "restore complete confidence" in his shaken administration. Party leaders interviewed around the country expressed fervent hope that the worst of the Iran arms-sale crisis was past - a hope mixed with an uneasy uncertainty that such is really the case. As if in a chorus, almost all of them said "it's too early to tell" what the long-term impact of the crisis will be on the party or the 1988 presidential election.

The U.S. Olympic Committee directed more than $60,000 to support sports in Africa and the Mideast in hopes of currying favor for Salt Lake City's bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics, yesterday's Los Angeles Times reported. The newspaper said it obtained an internal USOC report which revealed that the USOC underwrote training costs and supplies for athletes and coaches from Sudan, Mali, Uganda and Turkey to help Salt Lake City win the 2002 Games. The USOC spent thousands of dollars on equipment such as basketballs and even gave out "pocket money" - $150 a month to each of three Sudanese athletes and a coach for four months in 1995, according to the report, which was said to give the most detailed account to date of the USOC's role in the worst corruption scandal in the history of the Olympic movement.

It is difficult to imagine how anything good could come out of the scandals that have rocked religious broadcasting in recent weeks. In the shadow of all the fun humorists and skeptical columnists have had at the expense of some of the stars of the electric church, the woes of religious broadcasters are no laughing matter. Three national public opinion polls conducted last week point to anger and disillusionment with the video vicarage. Those televangelists most directly involved are most badly damaged.

All our July chin-pulling about polls and veeps and CIA missteps has little to do with November's election, which will be decided by unforeseeable events. Instead, let's counter-program, to examine a political corruption story beginning to gain traction that will reach warp speed in hearings and headlines next spring. At least eight official investigations have begun into the largest financial rip-off in history: preliminary estimates from the GAO point to $10 billion skimmed or kicked back or otherwise stolen in the United Nations dealings with Saddam Hussein.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned troops Friday that it takes just seconds for misconduct to make headlines and said that enemy insurgents can use recent military scandals to fuel their fight. Speaking to soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., where he began his military career as an Army lieutenant nearly 50 years ago, the defense chief delivered a personal plea, urging troops to honor their military values. "These days, it takes only seconds - seconds - for a picture, a photo, to suddenly become an international headline," Panetta said.

I have been a Catholic priest for years, and, like most people I know, I have been changed by my experiences over the years. Growing up Catholic in a small town in Louisiana, I and others did not ask why the black members of our church had to sit in the last five pews during Mass, or why our schools were segregated. Nor did we, needless to say, ask why women could not be priests. The military was my ticket out of Louisiana. I volunteered for duty in Vietnam, which became a turning point in my life.

LONDON - Rupert Murdoch apologized Thursday for the phone-hacking scandal that has tarnished his global media empire, declaring: "The buck stops with me. " But he also blamed underlings at News Corp. for keeping him in the dark and trying to keep a lid on evidence of widespread hacking at the News of the World tabloid, which he shut down in July when the scandal broke wide open. On his second day testifying before a British judicial inquiry on media ethics, the Australian-born tycoon said he had spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" on the legal fallout of the hacking allegations and on cleaning up his newspapers.

WASHINGTON - Three more Secret Service employees have been forced out of the government, bringing to nine the number of people who have lost their jobs in the prostitution scandal roiling the agency. Two employees have resigned and a third is having his national-security clearance revoked, the Secret Service said Tuesday. The employee whose clearance is being revoked can appeal the decision. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said one of the resigning agents stayed at the Hilton Hotel in Cartagena, Colombia, where Obama stayed for the Summit of Americas.

WASHINGTON - The Secret Service prostitution scandal grew Monday to include a 12th member of the U.S. military as the Pentagon suspended the security clearances of all the military personnel who have been implicated. The Secret Service has also taken action against 12 of its employees. Three Defense Department officials said the 12th military person involved was in Colombia in advance of President Obama's arrival for the Summit of the Americas and was assigned to the White House Communications Agency, a military unit that provides secure communications for the president.

WASHINGTON - The chairman of a House committee investigating an alleged Secret Service prostitution scandal predicted more firings as key lawmakers and a top adviser to President Obama expressed confidence Sunday that the agency will effectively deal with the incident. "Every possible lead is being examined," said Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), who heads the House Homeland Security Committee. King said he expected that in the "near future, several other" members of the Secret Service will leave.

WASHINGTON - Three more Secret Service officers resigned Friday in the expanding prostitution scandal that has brought scorching criticism of agents' behavior in Colombia just before President Obama's visit for a summit meeting earlier this month. Mark Sullivan, the agency's director, went to the White House late Friday to brief Obama. The Secret Service announced the new resignations, bringing to six the number of agency officers who have lost their jobs because of events at their hotel in Cartagena.

WASHINGTON - He was described as the "evil genius" of the Nixon administration, and spent the better part of a year in prison for a Watergate-related conviction. His proclamations after his release, that he was a new man, redeemed by his religious faith, were met with more than skepticism by those angered at the abuses he had perpetrated as one of Richard Nixon's hatchet men. But Charles "Chuck" Colson spent the next 35 years steadfast in his efforts to evangelize to a part of society scorned just as he was. And he became known perhaps just as much for his efforts to minister to prison inmates as for his infamy with Watergate.

As bad as President Obama likely felt upon hearing that Secret Service agents sent to Colombia to prepare for his arrival were involved in a sex scandal, former President Bill Clinton may have been just as dismayed. The incident has allowed comics and cartoonists to joke that had Clinton been president, he might have joined the hotel party in which Secret Service agents, and perhaps U.S. military personnel, allegedly cavorted with prostitutes. No, the "bimbo eruptions" will never be forgotten.

WASHINGTON - Three more Secret Service officers resigned Friday in the expanding prostitution scandal that has brought scorching criticism of agents' behavior in Colombia just before President Obama's visit for a summit meeting last week. Mark Sullivan, the agency's director, went to the White House late Friday to brief Obama. The Secret Service announced the new resignations, bringing to six the number of agency officers who have lost their jobs because of events at their hotel in Cartagena.