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Sun. Mar 12, 2006

Bill Campbell, Too Slick To be Guilty

Over the past eight weeks, our former Mayor Bill Campbell has been on trial for corruption during his term in office. But, man, was he slick. So slick the jury said they thought he was guilty of the bribery charges, but didn’t think the prosecution gave them the evidence to bring it home. He was too good at being bad. And this whole trial makes a bizarre encounter I had with him during the 1996 Olympics make a bit more sense.

Throughout the trial, we heard about his methods. Only one person could testify they actually handed over money directly to Campbell (or in this case, slipped it into his golf bag at Campbell’s direction). Other than that time, he always used intermediaries.

Prosecutors detailed his cash expenditures. In 1996, they documented that he withdrew about $20,000 from his personal account. Roughly $400 a week, not an unreasonable amount of cash for a man in his position to spend each week. But that figure dropped year by year, even though his spending habits grew. In 1999, he withdrew a total of $69 from his personal account … not even enough to buy a Big Mac per week. Yet prosecutors said he spent over $23,000 in cash that same year, on expensive trips and gifts in which multiple people testified were never put on a credit card or paid by check. Campbell always paid by peeling big bills off the wad of cash in his pocket.

Campbell’s defense? He was just a very good gambler, and won all that cash at the tables.

Tunica, Miss., a nine-casino backwater a short drive from Memphis, was a favorite Campbell playground. He also enjoyed himself at high-stakes blackjack tables from Vegas to the Caribbean and Gulfport to Atlantic City, often gambling with $100 chips. Campbell never spent a dime of his own money for those trips, prosecutors say; instead, they were bankrolled by businessmen angling for city contracts.

Typically along for the ride were “various women with whom Bill Campbell had a personal relationship,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sally Yates explained Monday, during her opening remarks to the jury.

Creative Loafing: ‘What’s in it for me?’
Campbell to get his answer at federal graft trial

Ah, yes, the ladies. Bill has a wife. And not only did two mistresses testify in court, it was clear their time with Bill overlapped. Bill was a busy man. And it was all cash-and-carry: “TV anchor Marion Brooks testified Wednesday about a four-year-long affair with a married Bill Campbell, about exotic and romantic getaways, and how he paid for it all with cash. Their travelogue included stops in San Francisco, Paris, Mexico, Jamaica and culminated in a trip to Paris.”

He took her to Paris, stayed in a five star hotel, and she said he paid for every bit of it in cash. I doubt even Donald Trump would do that. But Bill didn’t want to leave a paper trail. He was oh-so-slick. He even had a live-in bag man: “A trusted aide who lived in Bill Campbell’s basement apartment testified Monday that he funneled money to the former Atlanta mayor to be used for gambling and taking girlfriends on trips.”

And there was little doubt what was going on. Campbell was even arrogant about it: “Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell’s secretary was so fearful of losing her job at City Hall she was reluctant to talk to FBI investigators in the summer of 2000. [...] She testified Wednesday she heard Clark say: ‘You know you took that boy’s money.’ She said the mayor responded: ‘Technically, I didn’t — you did.’”

Technically. As in, if this ever went to court. So slick.

Slick, yet blatant: “A former city contractor testified today that Bill Campbell told him to raise $100,000 for Campbell’s mayoral re-election campaign if he wanted to do business with the city.” A former city contractor who’s already plead guilty to concealing $130,000 in illegal contributions to Campbell.

And did he use all that campaign money to, um, campaign? Nope. He mostly used it to get the hell out of the city he was supposed to be leading:

One witness testified Campbell used campaign money for travel, flowers, cellphones and sporting events at a time when the campaign owed thousands of dollars to creditors.

Another testified that Campbell took 379 trips between 1995 and 2001 and, on many of them, was out of town for days, staying at expensive hotels, yet there was almost no record he used credit cards or checks to pay for anything, according to FBI Special Agent Mile Brosas.

Campbell spent more than $36,000 of campaign money just on sports events from 1998 to 2001, according to Deborah Fitzpatrick, a supervisor with the Internal Revenue Service. The money was earmarked to pay off debts left after Campbell’s heated re-election race, she said.

FBI Special Agent Brosas testified that Campbell was out of town for 861 days on his 379 trips. Only 37 of the 379 trips were with his family. The trips represent the equivalent of traveling every day for two years and four months of seven years of his tenure.

AJC: Alleged misspent money a key issue in Campbell trial

He “vacationed” more than George Bush. Which really takes some doing. And only 10% of those trips were with his family. The rest were for real fun.

He also scalped four World Series tickets, which is a crime in Georgia. Sold them to a “friend” for 500 bucks a piece. Heaven protect me from such “friendship.” A cool two grand gained for tickets he was likely given for free, via an act for which others were arrested outside the stadium.

But despite these blatant tales, he was just slick enough to slide out of the charges: “‘We got him on three things,’ [Juror Gerald M.] Scandrett said, referring to three guilty verdicts against Campbell for tax evasion. ‘But on the corruption, we kind of figured he was guilty, but they couldn’t prove it. So we couldn’t convict.’”

It’s also notable that when Campbell left office, after two terms as mayor, he seemed unable to find a gig in town. He’d burned so many bridges, and left such a lasting impression on so many, he had to go to Florida to get work.

By contrast, his successor, Mayor Shirley Franklin, is seen as one of the best mayors the city has had. And part of that is due to the fact she’s done a good job of cleaning up the terrible mess Campbell left behind. Many within Campbell’s administration say that during his last two years in office, the city government was essentially non-functional. Contracts didn’t go to the best or lowest bidder, they got delayed until one of Campbell’s cash cronies could be slipped the contract on an emergency basis. He even claimed he did not sign the big water contract that has since been voided as a fiasco, yet the papers have his signature on them 18 times, and somehow didn’t turn up until after he’d left office.

Now, this story is finally over, after some seven years of investigation, and seven weeks of trial. Campbell may well get some prison time for tax evasion, despite his claim he’s just a really bad bookkeeper. Who needs to keep books when all you’re dealing with is cash?

But all of this has taken me back to a stark memory from a bad day. The morning after the bombing at Centennial Park, I had rushed downtown about 7am, to continue the Olympic coverage I was putting up on the web. As I approached the Apparel Mart, I saw Campbell outside being interviewed by a couple of journalists. As I approached from his left, still a good thirty yards away, he turned in my direction … away from the cameras … and locked onto me with his eyes while still talking to the media. It was a scary stare. I couldn’t hear what he was saying yet, but it was a look that made me think that any second he was going to point at me and say “and it was that sumbitch right there.” It was not a curious or even blank stare, it was filled with hostility.

I swung around behind the journalists interviewing him and took this shot. The whole time, as I walked up, and as I shot, his hard stare never left my eyes. At the time, I attributed it to the fact he’d likely been up all night after the 1am bombing, and was angry (as all Atlantans were that morning). But it struck me as really odd.

Today, I see that encounter in an whole new light. I can’t really explain it, but what confused me then makes a whole lot more sense now. He’s a scumbag. A slick scumbag. And I was getting the scumbag stare, for no reason at all other than the fact I was there.

I hope Bill looks good in orange. And gets plenty of hostile stares of his own in the Big House.