In the mid-nineteen-eighties, shortly after the convictions of six members of the House of Representatives and one senator in the F.B.I. bribery sting code-named Abscam, one of the bureau’s anticorruption units turned its attention to the California legislature, where an informant had reported that lawmakers were on the take. Agents posing as representatives of a shrimp-processing company announced plans to build a plant near Sacramento, provided that a state-loan guarantee could be procured. They offered to reward legislators who would help secure their financing. The operation, inevitably, was known as Shrimpscam.
Patrick J. Nolan, an earnest law-and-order conservative representing Glendale and Burbank, was the leader of the Republican minority in the assembly. He had already voted for a bill making the company eligible for the guarantee, but Governor George Deukmejian, who was aware of the sting, had vetoed it. Now one of the agents wanted to meet Nolan to entice him to intercede with Deukmejian. On June 29, 1988, Nolan and a legislative aide, Karin Watson, arrived at a bugged suite in the Sacramento Hyatt Regency, across from the Capitol. They declined the agent’s offer of champagne (it was not yet noon) in favor of Diet Pepsi, admired the view, engaged in some awkward small talk, and left twenty minutes later, with two five-thousand-dollar checks. One was made out to a Republican campaign committee. The other was left blank, apparently to see if Nolan would pocket the money. He filled in the name of a Party PAC.
[For more of this story, written by Bill Keller, go to http://www.newyorker.com/magaz.../06/29/prison-revolt]
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