Wednesday was a good news-bad news day for Sen. Alan Dixon.
The good news was that the Senate ethics committee exonerated the Illinois Democrat of any alleged intervention with federal regulators on behalf of Charles Keating and his Lincoln Savings & Loan in 1989.
The bad news was the disclosure that a secret ethics panel inquiry had even taken place, and that the committee`s eight-page report had come out even as Dixon`s fiercest rival in the March 17 primary was trying to tar him with the savings-and-loan scandal.
”It`s not true. It`s just some poppycock,” Dixon said Wednesday of any suspected connection to Keating.
The Senate ethics panel agreed, concluding after an inquiry that began Jan. 22-and had remained private until Wednesday-that ”absolutely no information has been found which would suggest that Sen. Alan Dixon intervened in any way.”
The Office of Thrift Supervision last year had obtained a 1989 memorandum to Keating, the convicted S&L swindler, from his secretary, Carol Kassick, concerning the sale of Lincoln Savings & Loan. The sale was pending before the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and Kassick`s memo said that three other senators ”met with Dickson,” who went to regulators ”to get it done.”
Dixon is a member of the Banking Committee and in January 1989 became chairman of the subcommittee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
One of Dixon`s two primary challengers, Chicago lawyer Albert Hofeld, has attacked the incumbent for accepting campaign contributions from financial industry interests and for not paying enough attention to the 1980s savings-and-loan crisis.
Neither Keating nor Kassick would testify before the ethics committee without immunity. Dixon was interviewed by the panel.
It also questioned Sens. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), Donald Riegle (D-Mich.) and Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), members of the ”Keating Five,” as well as M. Danny Wall, who was head of the home loan bank board in 1989, and lawyers involved in the sale of Lincoln Savings & Loan.
The report said none of them ever contacted Dixon in regard to the transaction, nor could they recall any involvement by Dixon.
”The committee concludes that those statements in the (Kassick)
memorandum are incorrect and inaccurate insofar as the memorandum purports to describe the actions of senators,” according to the report released Wednesday.
In a telephone interview from Washington, Dixon said: ”No senator has ever talked to me about Keating. I never went to any regulator for Keating. I don`t know Keating. Keating didn`t contribute to me. It`s all hogwash.”
Meanwhile, Hofeld charged Wednesday that Dixon voted against a 1987 bill calling for an investigation of fraud in life-insurance sales to the elderly because he has accepted campaign contributions and speaking fees from the insurance industry.
But Dixon aides said the senator voted against the bill because he feared it was the first step in requiring the Federal Trade Commission to oversee the insurance industry. Dixon favors leaving insurance regulation up to the states, said spokeswoman Erin Kern.
Meanwhile, Cook County Recorder of Deeds Carol Moseley Braun, Dixon`s other opponent in the Democratic primary, has released financial records that put her net worth at $135,503. Hofeld, a Chicago personal-injury lawyer, has said his net worth is $15 million, and documents released by Dixon put his net worth at $1.2 million.
