airing next right here on cnn. and then after that, we'll have this new cnn original series, twitter breaking the bird. it's premiering at 10 p.m. so a lot of good things ahead. thank you so much for joining me this evening. great to have you here with us. we'll be back here next weekend. have a great night, everyone. >> good evening. >> the word. abscam might not have the ring to it that watergate had. >> it won't knock. >> a president out of office, but it sure has some congressmen shaking in their boots and maybe even worrying about going to jail. >> i was raised during watergate and the vietnam war, so the concept of politicians being crooked and duplicitous was

for favors. it was comical. one exploding cigar away from wile e. coyote. more than 40 years later, i went back to look into abscam. and i came to wonder, when it comes to rooting out corruption, do the fbi's ends always justify the means? is there a point where the quest to find it crosses over into entrapment? [dramatic music] ♪ ♪ in august 2024, senator bob menendez, democrat of new jersey, resigned after he was convicted of 16 counts in a corruption case.

he was later sentenced to 11 years in prison. also that same month, congressman george santos, republican of new york, admitted to filing fraudulent fec reports, embezzling funds from campaign donors, stealing identities, obtaining unemployment benefits through fraud, and on and on. with each scandal, our distrust in government deepens. but believe it or not, there was a time when skepticism of our government ran even deeper than it does today. back in the late 1970s and early '80s, fresh off watergate, trust in government officials was at an all-time low. - people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. well, i'm not a crook. - the operation totally fell off the cliff when americans found out the fbi had conducted a sting operation on the nation's politicians that worked way too well. - there is a new word in the american political vocabulary this morning. the word is "abscam."

- eight members of congress are involved. some sources say there might be a ninth. - in the dawn of hidden video cameras, undercover agents offered cash bribes to members of congress, which had these guys literally stuffing wads of hundreds into their pants pockets, all caught on tape. the fbi had tested the system, and our politicians had failed that test. - no sooner were americans finding out just how many politicians accepted bribes, then they also found out the weird stuff the fbi had done to bribe them. - seven members of congress were lured before hidden television cameras by undercover agents, posing as representatives of an arab sheik. - the abscam story and the investigation is so ridiculous. - ridiculous enough to inspire a $40 million crime film that was mainly a black comedy. - put a camera in there. and then we can get a clear shot of the couch where we could put the congressman.

- that's right. that's the idea. - abscam was the real "american hustle," with as many costume changes and as much dramatic dialogue as the oscar-nominated film. - abscam was one of the most significant political corruption investigations and prosecutions in american history. - it was an undercover operation in which the fbi made use of a con man who placed a number of public officials in situations where it became attractive to them to take bribes. - the fbi survived watergate. so it was time for the fbi to make a showing. - today, teams of fbi agents numbering more than 100 confronted as many of the public officials as they could find with the evidence against them. - this is gonna be something. this is-- like, there's gonna be a time in congress before abscam and after abscam. - it was huge. it was really, really huge, 'cause the names that were being bandied about were people who were highly respected members of congress.

- john jenrette. - congressman ozzie myers. - congressman john murphy. - ray lederer. - frank thompson. - senator harrison williams. - everyone was surprised about the scope of this. - i had no intent, never had intent to sell my office as a member of congress. - i know of no wrongdoing that i have done or the congressional office that i serve in. - i deny any wrongful involvement with the fbi abscam operation. - these denials would end poorly, because for the first time in american history, these bribes were all caught on tape. - give me a figure. - if you want to throw another 50,000 in there, and line things up, i'll do it. - that's your thing. - money talks in this business and bullshit walks. it works the same way down in washington. - i've got larceny in my blood. i'd take it in a goddamn minute. - it was humiliating. it's an embarrassment for the country. - when you really get into abscam, you come away with two feelings. on the one hand, you can be amused and befuddled that, how on earth they

were able to pull this off. and on the other hand, it truly is depressing. you get the feeling that, you know, how far would this go? was no one incorruptible? - i think there's a third important question when it comes to abscam. politicians are public servants, expected to forgo higher salaries of the private sector that they might think they deserve. but also required to raise campaign money. does that, combined with a hefty dose of ego and ambition, pave the way for corruption? - how are we doing? - we're good. - freshman republican senator larry pressler of south dakota was approached as part of operation abscam, but he has the rare distinction of turning those bribes down. - did you ever think to yourself, whew,

i'm glad i didn't take the bait. - i have said, whew, once or twice. [chuckles] politicians need money. that's the nature of the game. a united states senator has got to raise money. and that's where the difficulty comes in. - before the abscam bribe was offered or after, were there times that you were offered money that you felt uncomfortable about it? - well, i was constantly being offered campaign contributions or people would say to me, you know, we can raise a lot of money if we get this bill through or stuff like that. it wouldn't be a direct offer, but it would be a suggestion, that there was a lot of money out there to be had. - looking back on it now, do you think that what the fbi did was a legitimate sting operation, or do you think it was entrapment? - i am kind of offended that as a united states senator, without any suspicions, that my government tested me. on the other hand, i-- i did the test right. my theme when i first ran in '74 was clean up congress.

washington is viewed very negatively in my home state of south dakota and in the midwest. it is viewed as kind of a sin city, corruption-filled city. and to some extent, it is. - but we're getting ahead of ourselves. before we can discuss whether abscam was a necessary test on our elected officials, we have to understand operation abscam itself. and the first thing to know is abscam was not planned. the fbi fell into the ruse following a bizarre series of events that came out of a chance encounter with a very strange character. - melvin weinberg, a convicted swindler who served as the fbi's undercover informant. - they walked in to receive their money. i mean, they didn't have to walk in. they could have walked right out again. - i kind of described mel as a ne'er-do-well con man. - he's balding, and had an unapologetic comb over, patent leather shoes.

- he was pretty well-portrayed in the movie, frankly. - i told you mel was a character. christian bale's performance of a character based on him in "american hustle," was oscar nominated, coming as it did with additions of girth and a pliable coif. - without his sort of machinations, there never would have been an abscam. - mel weinberg, he was sort of a natural-born con man. - his father was in the glass business. - as a young man, mel weinberg would go late at night and break the windows of storefronts. [glass shattering] - the only way to sell glass is to people who need it. [laughs] - he was a scammer from the get-go. - and then later on turned it into his career and his identity. - but after decades of successful scamming, he eventually did get caught and charged with fraud, which is when mel made the fbi an offer they couldn't refuse. - he said, i tell you what, there's a lot of fish out there, and i'm a small fish. but he said, i can help you reel in some big fish.

- you can't investigate and convict criminals with angels. - so the fbi takes a gamble. they'll let this con man try to earn his freedom by conducting stings on white-collar criminals. but they had no idea how far that would go. - it started in a very humble way. the object was only to recover stolen art and securities. and to everyone's amazement who was involved in the investigation, three years later, it resulted in the conviction of six united states congressmen and a united states senator.

[dramatic music] - it's the late 1970s, and washington, dc is still reeling from watergate. the fbi is desperate to restore public trust. - marker a. - that's when stanley brand took the job of general counsel to the u.s. house of representatives. what was dc like at the time? this was the post-watergate era. - so as i tell my law students, when i'm teaching so-called political law, ethics, i tell them that watergate is like the fall in the bible. everything after the fall is different. and everything after watergate is different. - it was a different fbi. you had a new generation of much more aggressive, ambitious fbi agents looking to do things a little bit differently. and therefore, the idea was, hey,

we're no longer just worried about bank robberies. now we're really worried about white-collar crime. they need somebody to help them put it all together. and that's where they connect with mel weinberg. - originally, this mission had nothing to do with politicians. his charge was to retrieve stolen art. - mel told the fbi they needed some compelling bait to lure in art thieves. and he had the perfect, if culturally insensitive character in mind. - mel mentioned to me that one of his con schemes that he was thinking about was representing a wealthy arab. - in the late '70s and early '80s, we saw the oil embargo. - these prices, in our judgment, are unworkable. - the arab oil-producing companies had launched an oil boycott of the united states that sent the price of oil skyrocketing, and made arab officials and oil producers fabulously wealthy.

and so there was an impression that, yeah, these people have a lot of money. - the main depiction of arabs was this wealthy, very rich sheik. sheik essentially translates to a wise, elderly person. but if we looked at pop culture, hollywood, that's not exactly what americans thought of when they heard the word "sheik." - no, they were probably more likely to think of something like this from "the bionic woman"-- - absolutely magnificent. - --where our hero is forced to belly dance for a tyrannical sheik. the scheme relied on playing to people's prejudices. definitely not the most sensitive strategy. - so we created abdul enterprises. - the ruse was that he was the representative of a fabulously wealthy middle eastern sheik. that he had money to spend on buying stolen art. - but the fbi knew they needed the sheik himself in a room with the art thieves to seal the deal.

- i looked around the office. and i said, i don't see any arab-speaking people anywhere here. so i went to mike dennehy, and i said, hey, mike, how would you like to do an undercover stint as a-- as an arab? - the first agent that they got to play the arab sheik spoke not a single word of arabic. - he was just making grunting noises to replicate that he was speaking arabic, which was particularly outrageous. - he had a beard already. so we said, let me go over to the west side and see if i can find some arab garments or something like that. - he went out and bought a $37 robe and headdress from a theatrical company. - they end up with a costume that doesn't fit the guy. and they put some sunglasses on him and said, yeah, he's a sheik. - casting a bearded irish guy from new jersey as a fake arab sheik inspired the hollywood version of the story. - paco. - but wait, wait, wait. he's not a real arab. - no, i'm mexican, from tucson. - yeah, sometimes the truth is even stranger than fiction.

- it just looked like a lot of bumbling around. they didn't know what they were doing. - they may not be ready for primetime, but the roles were cast, and the plot was in place. and the fbi was ready with their first mark. - the first meeting that we had, it was an attorney trying to be somebody among organized crime figures. - the first meeting was so crazy. - the entire scene is out of a bad movie. they were at the plaza. - it was a corner room overlooking fifth avenue and central park. - mel weinberg wanted to order these, you know, very fancy foods, you know, get some champagne and alcohol, but the fbi's budget didn't allow for it. - sitting on the table was several items to eat, including stuff from a jewish deli. and mel said, you know, he-- he said, what the hell? you know, why would you have jewish food at an arab meeting? - and mel weinberg leaned into it. he decided to justify it and said, the sheik or the emir

would never be able to eat these foods back in his homeland. and therefore, when he comes to new york city, he has to have new york deli. - the whole thing was so comical that we had to take turns going to the men's room and laugh it out, so we could come back and act normal. [laughing] - it's so chaotic that you can't help but laugh. - it's like the "three stooges" or something. - i got it. - so that was our debut for bringing out the arab. and thank god we had an idiot there who thought it was great. you know, i came away from that thinking, that was possible. we can go out and do that. - miraculously, the dress rehearsal succeeded. from the fbi's perspective, you know, this trope was so easily accepted by everyone in the room. so much so that they continue to use this plotline for other stings to come and eventually work their way from other hustlers to politicians.

- the turning point was when the undercover operatives for the fbi met mayor angelo errichetti, the mayor of camden, new jersey. - a target himself of the sting, errichetti fell so hard for the ruse, he became an inadvertent assistant to the fbi. - errichetti gave the undercover operatives a list of political figures who could be bought. - why did errichetti want to be in that position? because he got a cut of all these deals. - it was in his own interest to bring in politicians. - and that's when they realized, wait, this is something else altogether. hang on to your seat belt.

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watch up to 4 live events at once. brought to you by comcast business, proud partner of the players. just say “the players championship” into your xfinity voice remote. [dramatic music] - the fbi's operation abscam was designed to catch white-collar criminals. but it took a turn into politics when con man mel weinberg met a man who had been called corrupt to his bones, mayor angelo errichetti of--where else? new jersey. - in 1976, new jersey voters vote to allow gambling within the borders of atlantic city. - atlantic city's first casino opened its doors. - this was a huge deal. everybody's trying to get a foot in the door. - mel came to me and said, the mayor of camden would possibly be interested in helping

the arab gain some business opportunities in new jersey. - errichetti is a prominent figure in new jersey. he knew every politician in new jersey and many beyond that. - he was an example of an urban boss political machine. - the mayor had handed the fictional sheik a list of politicians who might be interested in his illicit investments. but in reality, errichetti was unwittingly handing the fbi a list of potential targets for their new political bribery stand. so finally, abscam goes into politics, but not to catch politicians who had accepted bribes, to try to sting everyone errichetti thought might be open to bribes with the right conditioning. and given that serpentine relationship between money and congress, that started to look like it might be pretty much everyone.

- and with that, the stakes began ratcheting up for the whole operation. - it was a bit of a changing cast. that's when they brought in anthony amoroso. - they swapped out mike dennehy for an actual arabic-speaking agent. - the abscam team was able to get a hold of a townhouse on w street. - it's a brick house, two story. - you would never guess what was going on was going to change congress. - this was really an evolution. it started out where they were targeting people that they had suspicions. but pretty soon, they thought just everybody in congress was crooked. - in order to get congressmen, they created a crime for a congressman to break.

- the storyline that they had built was that the sheik wanted to essentially buy off these politicians in exchange for immigration favors. - a congressman could introduce something called a personal relief bill. that would give legal residence to the name on the personal relief bill. - and it was something that made sense at the time, because of all of the political turmoil that was happening back in the middle east. - it became, hey, this emir is worried about revolution in his country. - we need to get somebody into the country. can you help us? and we're prepared to make it worth your while. - one of the things that's intereston cases is that it exists within this context that politicians constantly need to be raising money.

- yeah, the construction of the ruse was to entice members of congress into the trap with something that they were always very interested in, which is how can we bring business to our districts? - the objective was to secure evidence of bribery. - that objective was hardly mission impossible. soon, congressmen began filtering through the townhouse, declaring their loose morals on camera as if no one was watching. but, of course, someone was. - ozzie myers from philly was the one who notoriously said, oh, you're going about this the right way. - money talks in this business and bullshit walks. - money talks, bullshit walks. - money talks, bullshit walks, i believe. - that became almost--

you know, almost one for the ages. - of the seven people from congress, five of them were from philadelphia, and new jersey, and new york. and democrats were in charge there. - there's only one republican, representative kelly from florida. stuffed the money in his pants. - patted it down, says, does it show? i mean, it was-- it was almost a kind of a buffoonery. [whimsical music] - you have congressman ozzie myers saying, money talks, bullshit walks. you have congressman kelly stuffing cash in his pants and asking if it can be seen. i mean, it's pretty damning, right? - it was damning. but they got drawn into this. - and you think they just got a raw deal? - yes. - but how do you keep the sleazy people out of congress? or that's-- - i'm not sure you do. i mean, when people rob the bank, they don't say, we need new laws to stop people from robbing the banks.

they prosecute the people who rob the bank under existing law. - spoken like a true lawyer for congress. but is he right? even if good politicians are one offer away from the dark side, when does enticing them become entrapment?

[dramatic music] [tense music] - as operation abscam continued,

the fbi had undercover agents offering cash bribes to members of congress in exchange for legislation. - you know, john jenrette was a liberal kennedy guy who got elected from south carolina. - his base was african american and a lot of poor, white farmers, so a lot of working class. basically, looked out for the little people. they approached john jenrette. they said, we're gonna put a defunct factory back to work, put 400 people back to work in his district. and we want your help because this arab sheik wants to get permanent residence. and will you help us? all that was perfectly legitimate. and john jenrette said, yes. what is not legal is then accepting money. - john jenrette grew up very poor. they owned a mule and not a car when he was a child.

he was determined to not ever go back to that kind of poverty. - and remember, $50,000 in 1980 is worth more than $180,000 today. - the lure was so attractive and purposely constructed that way. - yeah. - that i think john thought, well, i don't want to turn this down and have my constituents think i'm not in favor of doing these kinds of projects in the district. - john jenrette turned them down four times. - and then accepted a loan from an intermediary later on. the line that john jenrette was famous for was-- - --"i've got larceny in my blood."

- were they too aggressive in your view? - yes, very aggressive. - in a way that you think was unfair? - i think it was almost bordering on unconstitutional. there was no evidence that any member had or would commit a crime. and yet, they set up this elaborate ruse to see if they could lure members of congress into the trap. - the assertion is, if these seven had been out there collecting bribes, developing a reputation, then have at it. - exactly. - but this wasn't that. this was a setup. throwing a wallet on the sidewalk and seeing who grabbed it. - and, well, it was more than that. it was more insidious than that. they set it up in a way that would be the most attractive to members of congress. - but we shouldn't forget that not everyone tasted the biblical fruit. so it's 1979. you're a first-term senator. why do you think that they went after you?

- well, i didn't have much money. and i was an easy target. and i don't know, for sure. - he was the worst fundraiser on the planet. he hated it and hates it with a passion. he had no personal money. and his campaign was in debt. the fbi informant figured, god, if anybody's gonna take a $50,000, it's gonna be this guy. - they said they had some friends in saudi arabia and they wanted to come to the united states. - and they offered you money? - they held out the prospect of money. - and what did you say? - i said, no, i would-- i would not want to do anything illegal. - washington, dc is a town that gets a lot of money. and the problem is getting it legally. - right. - [chuckles] - he did have that boy scout not just image,

but feel to him. when you're in the room with him, he looked like an innocent in a den of politics. - senator pressler and then-new jersey congressman and later governor james florio aced their ethics tests. but how did these other guys fail so spectacularly? after all, it does not take a genius to sniff out a fake sheik in a cheap costume. - it was this almost unholy combination of overwhelming greed and overwhelming amounts of money that just blinded them to what might have been an easily detectable, you know, undercover operation. at some point, i think it just became overwhelming for the fbi. they were constantly getting calls about the sheik's money. we want to introduce you to this person. would you meet with that person about this deal? and they were reaching a point of exhaustion that they made a decision to bring it to a close. - with enough bad behavior on film to release

"c-span after hours," the fbi was confident they could get the crooked congressmen to confess. they just needed to confront each one individually before word of the operation spread. - this is what we've been doing. we've got you on tape, and the bet was that at least some of them would want to come in and plead guilty. - the fbi was about to arrest six congressmen and one senator at the precise moment when one of the fbi agents came to the office and said, the story was playing on the front page of "the new york times." - on groundhog day 1980, a colleague said, he had received a call from a reporter who was writing a story that involved john jenrette accepting bribe money from an arab sheik. we played a lot of jokes on each other back in those days, and i thought he was pulling my leg. we called john jenrette's house.

and john jenrette's wife, rita, answered and said, i can't talk right now. fbi agents are here. - more than 30 people got a visit from an fbi agent over the weekend. - it is already being called the biggest scandal since watergate. - people were stunned. not so much that congressmen were corrupt, but that they had been caught being corrupt. i think members of congress thought they almost enjoyed a kind of immunity. - people on the hill were completely outraged. their argument was that the fbi was going out and seducing people into an illegal behavior that they would not otherwise have been doing. - and that would be the main question presented in the many public court battles to follow. - did the fbi go too far? were members of congress coaxed, or enticed, or entrapped? - but those were not the only questions on the public's mind. - what would have happened if the undercover operation had just kept going? - who else would they have caught?

- tom puccio, the prosecutor who was overseeing abscam, he sort of joked, he was afraid that it just kept going and going, they'd wind up with half of congress.

[dramatic music] - today was just the wind up of the undercover phase of the abscam investigation. - once the story of operation abscam broke, the whole world learned that white fbi agents had been cosplaying as cash-rich arab sheiks. - it provoked what was almost a diplomatic incident, because the press reported that abscam-- - stands for arab scam. - they later said that it was not arab scam, but it was called abdul scam, abdul based off of the name of the sheik that was created. nonetheless, it still had the same impression. abscam provided like a litany of content. "snl" put out this one parody. - [clamoring] - and they're just making noises, as if they're speaking arabic. we're now mocking cultures and traditions. the fbi was doing it and the highest level of government and was doing it, then tv could do it. that's disheartening.

- but the question remained, was this entrapment? - those abscam trials continue today. - williams pleaded not guilty on nine counts. - as the trials of members of congress began, many claimed entrapment as their defense. - i'm sure that the american people will not stand still for what the fbi did to me and what the justice department has done to this country. - what they had to show was the quid pro quo. this money is for this piece of legislation. - temporal proximity between the campaign contribution and the official act is not enough. you have to show an explicit quid pro quo. - did you think any of the abscam defendants were explicit enough that it was actually bribery? - no. in a lot of these cases, there was no direct evidence of the receipt of the money. - does the presence of larry pressler, and what he did and what he said not undermine your argument?

his saying, i can't do that. that would be illegal. does that not suggest that there was a different path? - certainly, there was a different path. - said senator pressler, "i turned "down an illegal contribution. "whatever have we come to if that's considered heroic?" - sir walter cronkite called you a hero, but you kind of rejected the hero label. - yes, i said, you cannot be a hero for turning down a bribe. [laughing] - it's just too low a bar for the hero stature. - that's right. the hero stature, i rejected it. - pressler has a point. celebrating public officials for not committing crimes seems a rather weak standard. - when you do a legitimate sting operation, you're catching someone already committing a crime and you're just getting them to step into it. in this case, the fbi was creating a crime that did not exist. and that, in my book, would be entrapment and i think a very poor use of taxpayers' money.

- jenrette's lawyer says the fbi knew the congressman had a drinking problem. and they took advantage of that when they tried to get him drunk before offering the money. - i wish i hadn't been there. i wish i hadn't had the drinks. - the question in all the trials where entrapment was asserted as a defense was, is this something they wouldn't have done? the problem they faced was, when those tapes were played in court-- - you came back with $15,000. - well, i like girls. i like to [bleep] gamble. that's one reason. [laughs] - --the tapes belied those defenses. - and when people got a look at the tapes, they said, what is this? and ultimately, no one but no one could defend that. - video was new. this is the '70s. - by today's standards, it probably would come across as pretty primitive. but it accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish.

- in certain circumstances, i think there is overreach and there's overcriminalization of politics. - so you know that the public, probably if polled, would disagree with a lot of what you're saying, right? - the juries disagreed. - the first verdicts in the so-called abscam cases. - guilty on all three counts. - guilty. - eighteen convictions. - congressman myers indicted in the abscam case. - each received three years in prison. angelo errichetti also received prison terms. - jenrette's attorneys intend to appeal his verdict. - every single person who accepted a bribe on video was convicted. and every single conviction was upheld on appeal. - as ben civiletti said, the attorney general at the time, he said, a picture's worth a thousand words. you show a picture of members purportedly accepting briefcases with cash in them on grainy videotapes, that's really tough evidence in front of a jury. - are they wrong? because, i mean, i think the impression might

be, there are a lot of people in washington who get a lot of-- who get away with a lot, and are very sleazy, and misuse and abuse their power, and do favors for money, and the fbi is probably just scratching the surface. do you disagree with that? - i disagree with that. i think anybody put in a tempting situation-- as justice frankfurter said, you can't expect legislators to be people of uncommon courage. they have to get elected. - we have a great country, but we want to keep it an honest country. and we have to have some unpleasant little checks on people to keep everybody on the straight and narrow. and i may not like the flavor of this, but it's a necessary thing in a democracy with a lot of people, like myself, floating around who might be looking for a bribe. i wasn't, but i think it keeps the whole place a little more honest. it's the only thing the fbi can do to catch some of the high flyers. - and we just had another conviction for corruption charges, senator bob menendez of new jersey.

so it keeps going on and on. - yes. - as much as i respect senator pressler's hope for a more honest country through more checks and balances, i'm not sure the reality of that is even possible. and even if it is, how far will we go to achieve this idealized vision? do we want to live in a country where our behavior is secretly being monitored, even if we haven't done a thing to arouse suspicion?

[dramatic music] - i'll be right back up. - ok. - ok? - all right. - see you later. - when the fbi worked with a lifelong con man in a sting operation called abscam, dangling cash in front of members of congress, most of them took the bait. - fundamentally, abscam is about greed. people who are desperately greedy will believe almost anything you

tell them if they think there's a pot of gold at the end. this is what mel weinberg made a living as a government employee, because he understood people were greedy. - his name is melvin weinberg. he's the scam in the abscam case. - mel weinberg, i think, achieved the holy grail of any con man. this was the ultimate con. and he helped to pull it off. the notoriety, though, had one downside, which was his career as a con man was basically over. - before his retirement, mel weinberg found much success as a con man turned fbi informant. and for the ones that did not succumb to his elaborate scam, they did just fine. - so one of the fbi agents came out and campaigned for you? - yes, john goode is his name. and he felt what i did was so clear-cut that he, at his own expense, volunteered to come out to south dakota to campaign for me. and he said, this is an honest man.

[chuckles] - that's pretty cool. - yeah, it was kind of cool. - did you see the movie? - yes, i did. - what did you think of it? - well, i thought it was ok. i thought it was very good. well done. - not enough pressler? - yeah, no. - you should have been played by brad pitt, perhaps. - [laughs] - pressler's integrity notwithstanding, there remained legitimate reasons to question the abscam sting. in november 1980, two of the abscam cases involving the philadelphia city council president and a city councilman were thrown out by a federal judge, who ruled the case entrapment. though, that judge was overruled by the court of appeals, which reinstated their convictions. perhaps the best argument that abscam was entrapment came when the new attorney general, civiletti, issued stricter guidelines in 1981, governing undercover operations. - before they were more general, like don't engage in entrapment. and after it, i think they started tightening it up substantively in terms of what threshold of suspicion

was needed before an undercover operation could be mounted. - it established a new review committee that would have to review potential bribes and must believe that the target of the sting is engaging, has engaged, or is likely to engage in illegal activity. as for what the american people thought of abscam, that was a mixed bag. law and order types were happy that crooked politicians had been caught on tape. but privacy advocates worried that hidden cameras were coming for their living rooms next. the only clear loser was washington, dc, where no one seemed to learn anything. you would think that abscam would be, like, the last time there would be corruption charges against a member of the house or senate, because it was such a big deal. but then, of course, not. is it just the nature of, because the campaign-- because politicians need money that this is just gonna keep going on?

- i'm afraid it's just gonna keep going on. we still have the same problems today that we had then. i think washington, dc has a corroding influence on people who come here. little by little, we come to accept more and more dishonesty. washington, dc is a cesspool of money because of all the power here. and if you want to get your portion of the pie, you got to tell people that you can get them their rightful share of the washington, dc cesspool pie. - cesspool pie does not sound very appetizing. - no, it doesn't, does it? - ok, thank you, senator. - thank you. - look, the fbi is still the fbi. there are laws in this country. people violate the laws. and in recent years, we've seen people who can't resist that temptation. - it's human nature. you're not gonna stop it. these things are cyclical. they go on. people are always going to try to influence congress.

- i think we haven't learned yet how to control the power of money with members of congress who need the money to campaign and are not paid that much money to begin with. and that corruptive power, we still haven't found a way to control. - as a kid, all i knew about abscam was that our local congressman, ozzie myers, was a crook. i wanted to interview him for the show, but i couldn't because myers had gone back to prison, this time for stuffing ballot boxes on behalf of his political consulting clients. how many of today's elected officials might be successfully stung if the fbi attempted abscam again? they might be too sophisticated to tell a fake operative or a fictitious sheik that, quote, "money talks and bullshit walks," but that doesn't mean they don't think it. i guarantee, we have not seen the last member of congress go to prison for taking bribes.