When word got out that Rep. Jim McDermott will be packing it in at the end of the year, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was quick to plump the blustery leftist who has represented Seattle since 1989. He “has been a tenacious champion of hard-working Americans,” he “has shown the strength of his progressive values,” and he has been (insert trigger-warning here for those sensitive to witless rubbish) “a valuable intellectual resource to the Congress.”
Pelosi chose not to mention McDermott’s more salient accomplishments: the trafficking in illegal wiretaps and the coddling of dictators (including those at the IRS).
McDermott made a name for himself—”Baghdad Jim” to be precise—traveling to Iraq during the late days of Saddam Hussein’s reign. There he accused the Bush administration of plotting to lie about weapons of mass destruction and made the case that international sanctions were unfair, ill-targeted, and injurious to Iraqi children. Saddam’s PR team was gleeful, leading CNN to ask McDermott how it felt “to be used as a propaganda tool against your own country.” McDermott pronounced himself very comfortable, indeed: “If being used means that we’re highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then, yes, we don’t mind being used.”
McDermott’s Baghdad adventure was paid for by an outfit called “Life for Relief and Development,” run by one Muthanna al-Hanooti, who happened to be funding his efforts by selling Iraqi oil. Hanooti would later plead guilty to violating U.S. sanctions. McDermott was not charged.
Nor was he charged, criminally, in the ugly matter of the intercepted Republican conference call. Back in 1996, when the House ethics committee was dogging Newt Gingrich about the tax status of some college classes he had taught, the then-House speaker agreed to resolve the matter by apologizing. But, contrary to the spirit of the agreement, Gingrich got on the phone with a gaggle of GOPers to talk spin. At least one of those on the call was using a cell phone, which is where things got interesting: Quite miraculously, a couple of Democratic activists in Florida found they could hear the call using their trusty Radio Shack police-band scanner. And quite conveniently, they had a tape recorder handy. In a jiffy they had an illegal wiretap going and knew just who to take the tape to: Jim McDermott, who shared it with the New York Times.
One of the Republican politicos on the call was John Boehner, who in 1998 sued McDermott for violating his right to privacy. (Boehner was represented by an up-and-coming lawyer named Ted Cruz.) After years of legal wrangling, in 2004 a U.S. district judge found that McDermott had “participated in an illegal transaction when he accepted the tape.” After a few more years of wrangling, the judge in 2008 told McDermott to pay a million dollars in legal fees.
McDermott not only participated in the underhanded, he did his best to defend other Democrats caught in the same. At hearings in 2013 to investigate the IRS targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny, McDermott berated the groups for “asking the American public to pay” for their activities. “None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced,” the old bully said. “We are talking about whether or not American taxpayers will subsidize your work.”
When Nancy Pelosi proclaimed “Jim McDermott has been synonymous with forceful and effective leadership,” she might have added, “and synonymous with dirty tricks.”
