May 29 (Bloomberg) -- John Kerry has never run for sheriff. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he is starting to act like one, and the world is his jurisdiction.
The Massachusetts Democrat is wielding his gavel with an investigative zeal, and plans to take on Iran’s nuclear program, gun-running on the Mexican border, terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, all through the prism of money laundering. He has hired a former investigative reporter, an ex-CIA agent and a one-time managing director of Bear Stearns Cos. LLC to help him.
“There are lots of big pieces out there that depend on money moving,” he said in an interview in his office in the Senate, where he is serving his 24th year.
Kerry, who was a prosecutor and attorney in Massachusetts before starting his political career in 1982, said the lack of congressional oversight during the Bush administration left behind a target-rich environment for his panel. The Treasury Department “has its hands full” and is “inadequately resourced” to pursue these inquiries, he said.
“For the last eight years we’ve had an administration that has done its utmost to protect, hide, obfuscate, neglect, void, simply not even care about these issues,” said Kerry, 65.
The results of his investigations could help Kerry recover some of the prominence he lost after 2004, when he was the Democratic presidential nominee and failed to unseat George W. Bush. He took over the committee chairmanship in January after his predecessor, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, became vice president.
‘Springboard’
“A good investigation that leads to drawing a lot of attention to an important issue is always a springboard for a lawmaker to be a player,” said Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, a group in Washington that helps form policy for Republicans.
The wide mandate Kerry has set for his panel, though, creates an expectation for significant results. It also opens the possibility that his agenda will collide with that of President Barack Obama or cause friction with other agencies specifically charged with conducting investigations.
“There’s more than enough to go around,” he said. “If I can cooperate with somebody, I will cooperate with them completely.”
Since becoming chairman, Kerry has taken the committee to El Paso, Texas, for a hearing about violence along the U.S.- Mexico border.
Iran Report
The first report issued by the panel, on May 6, focused on Iran and concluded that the country’s leaders hadn’t “ordered up a bomb,” though their scientists were moving closer to completing the technology to build one. Kerry said he is looking at further probes of Iranian nuclear weapons, terrorist financing and international tax evasion.
His new role will be similar to one he played in an earlier era of his Senate career, when he led investigations into the Iran-Contra scandal, and former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega’s ties to drug trafficking and the 1991 collapse of Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
The congressional probes, Kerry said, help the public understand why these issues matter to them.
“You have to give people a reason to act,” Kerry said.
Investigative Reporter
To carry out his mission, Kerry has hired Douglas Frantz, a former managing editor for the Los Angeles Times and one-time investigative reporter for the New York Times. He is a co-author of books including one on Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who five years ago admitted selling bomb technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Another staffer is Heidi Crebo-Rediker, who previously worked at New York-based banks such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. She will examine global financial transactions and issues such as offshore tax havens, Kerry said.
“She can look at these financial instruments that traverse around the world,” Kerry said. “She can look at interlocking directors and boards and corporate entities, look behind sham transactions.”
The staff also includes John Kiriakou, a retired field agent from the Central Intelligence Agency who was the head of a team that captured al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002. He gained national attention in December 2007 in interview with ABC News, in which he defended the merits of Zubaydah’s interrogation, including waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
Noriega, BCCI
Kerry said his ability to rely on these staffers is a welcome change from the 1980s and 1990s, when he led investigations into the Reagan administration’s secret plan to fund Nicaragua’s contra rebels with arms sales to Iran, Noriega’s ties to drug-trafficking and the CIA, and their links to BCCI.
Then, Kerry was chairman of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that had jurisdiction over terrorism, narcotics and international communications. At times, the full committee authorized investigations. When committee members refused, he assigned his personal staff to do the digging.
The power to issue subpoenas and compel testimony gives Congress “extraordinarily broad investigative power,” said Jack Blum, who was one of Kerry’s investigators at the time.
“As a tool, congressional investigation has been underused,” said Blum, a former lawyer at Baker Hostetler LLP in Washington, who now practices on his own.
Debating Club
Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said an enhanced investigative staff could help the panel become more than a debating club.
“I hope we’ll move away from being a place for people to pontificate about foreign-relations issues,” Corker said.
Kerry said he would be careful not to undermine Obama’s policies. He said he edited his May 6 report on Iran to ensure it was “factual, documented, not provocative.”
The panel issued the report on the same day Kerry held a hearing on Iran. He called an old acquaintance to testify: Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who indicted BCCI in the 1990s in part thanks to leads from Kerry’s probe.
After the hearing, Morgenthau said he discovered the power of Senate committees when Kerry asked during testimony almost two decades ago whether regulators at the Bank of England were cooperating with prosecutors on the BCCI case.
Morgenthau, 89, said the bank’s deputy governor, Eddie George, hadn’t responded to a request for information.
“The following day we got a call from Eddie George saying, ‘How can we help you?’” Morgenthau said.
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