Henry J. Stern
July 16, 2007

The falling star of Alan G. Hevesi may damage his entourage and family before it smashes into the ground.
 
The opening shot came in a leak published in this morning's Post.  A page one headline on the wood, HEVI LIFTING, is accompanied by a photograph of the Comptroller's face and the following brief text: EXCLUSIVE  Documents showing who cashed in on state pension-fund investments during Alan Hevesi's scandal-scarred tenure as state comptroller have been stolen or destroyed, sources have told The Post.  The papers vanished under the watch of Hevesi's successor, Thomas DiNapoli.", a 20-year Assemblyman from Great Neck in Nassau County, popular with his colleagues.  DiNapoli was selected by the Senate and Assembly, meeting jointly,  under the leadership of Speaker Sheldon Silver.  He  was elected and sworn in on February 7.  He has not yet gotten into any kind of trouble.
 
The text of Fredric U. Dicker's column appears on p5, under pictures of Hevesi and DiNapoli. The headline is HEVESI PAPER$ IN MYSTERY VANISH: Pension-fee Files Stolen or Destroyed.". The anonymous source, who the Post called an "Albany insider", said that the papers, "which identify who received fees for obtaining state pension-fund investments, were believed stolen or destroyed by a high-ranking Comptroller's Office employee."
 
Rule 29-T "The trouble is the charges are true."  While the papers may be located eventually, and one would think that in a public office copies would have been made of all documents, we are aware of the destruction of business records in the Houston office of the (former) Arthur Andersen accounting firm during the Enron scandal.  The shredder has its uses, legal and illegal.   At any rate, shredders don't destroy evidence, people do.
 
While we have written in the past criticizing Hevesi's removal from elected office and his conviction for an E felony as an excessive penalty for using his driver to transport and care for his indisputably sick wife, we have long believed that there may be other sins that would come to light.  On October 31, 2006, eight and one-half months ago, in a column whose subject was "Nobody Does It Once," which happens to be Rule 16-J  (for Michael Jackson), we wrote:
 

"Sadly, [Hevesi] has some not so unusual flaws, and more sins may come to light as the result of vigorous investigation.  His few deficits are magnified, however, because of his importance and intelligence,
and don't forget the schadenfreude his colleagues, rivals and victims feel at his distress."

 
It now becomes more evident why Comptroller Hevesi, represented by expensive legal talent, pleaded guilty on December 22 and immediately resigned the office to which he had just been reelected.  He hoped to forestall further inquiries that would further damage his reputation and possibly provide the basis for new criminal charges.  The success of that gambit was short-lived.  With two ambitious bloodhounds, State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Albany County District Attorney Richard Soares on the trail, we predict intense scrutiny of Comptroller Hevesi's conduct in his former office.
 
 The jobs and favors received by his two sons, former State Senator Daniel Hevesi and Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi, will also be the subjects of scrutiny.  It is not uncommon for defendants to plead guilty to protect their families from prosecution or exposure.  Professional criminals and their attorneys wrap up those arrangements with prosecutors before they plead to the charges against them.
 
It is possible that the data in the missing files, although unsavory, may not contain proof of crimes having been committed.   We will not know that until the information is collected and released to the public.   It is likely that the documents will reveal a pattern of reciprocal favoritism.  Rule 21-O: "One hand washes the other."    The decision of when favoritism slides into criminality can be either easy or difficult to make.   Sometimes that decision tells us more about the prosecutor and his  aspirations than it does about the defendant.
 
NOTE:  In our column of July 6, “Tough Talk at the Albany Corral” we quoted a Post headline "All the Governor's Men" and called "the title a reference to All the President's Men, a book by Carl Bernstein and Robert Woodward in 1974 about the downfall of the Nixon administration over Watergate.  The book was made into a 1976 movie, starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein.  Hal Holbrook played Deep Throat, although he was not further identified at the time.  We received a number of e-mails stating that the reference for the Post headline should have been to "All the King's Men," a novel by the distinguished American author, Robert Penn Warren, published in 1946, and depicting the life of Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long (1893-1935), a demagogic populist with national ambitions who was assassinated on the steps of the Louisiana state house.
 
"All the King's Men" as a title derives from the nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty.  The history and possible sources for the quatrain are examined at length in Wikipedia.  Their article begins:
 
Humpty Dumpty (that is an egg which looks like a person) is a character in a nursery rhyme, portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg.  Most English-speaking children are familiar with the rhyme:
 
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again."
 
The point of the rhyme is that the all the power of the state may be insufficient to achieve about certain results. To us, it is evocative of Ozymandias.


We want to thank David (Maverick) Slarskey, Barry A. Popik of Austin, Texas, and Robert P. Forbes for e-mailing us to discuss this matter.


#393  7.16.07  909wds