Ex-U.S. Housing Secretary Pleads Guilty To Lying

Updated 2:20 PM ET September 7, 1999

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. housing secretary Henry Cisneros pleaded guilty Tuesday to one misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI about payments he made to a former mistress, ending a long independent counsel investigation.

On the day his trial was to have started, the former member of President Clinton's Cabinet reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in which he agreed to pay a $10,000 fine while an 18-count felony indictment against him was dropped.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin accepted the plea agreement and imposed the $10,000 fine, but questioned why the case could not have been resolved sooner.

Independent counsel David Barrett has spent more than four years and $10 million investigating whether the former Housing and Urban Development secretary lied to FBI agents about how much money he paid his onetime mistress, Linda Jones.

Cisneros, a former San Antonio mayor who now is president of Univision Communications Inc., said in a statement that he regrets "my lack of candor and" accepts "responsibility for my conduct."

Barrett was one of a number of independent counsels who have drawn criticism for the amount of time and money they have spent on recent investigations.

The best-known independent counsel, Kenneth Starr, has spent more than five years and $40 million investigating Clinton in connection with the failed Whitewater land deal in Arkansas, with the Monica Lewinsky affair and other matters.

Another independent counsel, Donald Smaltz, investigated another former Clinton Cabinet member, ex-Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who was acquitted last year on charges he illegally took gifts from companies he was supposed to regulate.

Barrett said the way the case was disposed "should in no way be viewed as minimizing the serious ethical breach by Mr. Cisneros." He described it as a "just disposition," saying that Cisneros had otherwise dedicated his life to public service.

According to the 18-count indictment, Cisneros allegedly lied to FBI investigators during a routine background check before President-elect Clinton named him to his first Cabinet in early 1993.

Cisneros allegedly lied to the FBI about paying $250,000 in hush money to Jones, known at the time by her married name of Medlar. The indictment alleged that Cisneros made the payments between 1989 and January 1994, a year after he joined the Cabinet.

The misdemeanor count to which Cisneros pleaded guilty accused him of falsely telling the FBI agent on Jan. 7, 1993, that the monthly payments to Jones were $2,500, when in reality they exceeded that amount in 1990, 1991, and 1992.

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Chalk ANOTHER lie up to a member of this Administration!

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 07, 1999

Answers

Well, it's a matter of proportionality, or to put it another way, of the good sense that God gave a goose. Why Henry Cisneros had to have his life ruined for a lie so absolutely trivial is beyond my comprehension.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), September 07, 1999.

Peter, lies are not TRIVIAL. If one is willing to lie UNDER OATH about one thing you can bet they are willing to lie about other things.

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 07, 1999.

Ray, to the best of my knowledge Cisneros did not lie under oath.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), September 07, 1999.