Bank Scandal Brings Down Longtime Capitol Hill Institution

WASHINGTON - For 25 years, Jack Russ served the House as a doorman, head page, deputy doorkeeper, for the past nine years as sergeant-at-arms, in charge of security of the 435 House members and their aides, and, until recently, as manager of the House Bank.

Thursday, rebuked by the House ethics committee for sloppy bank administration, failure to implement reforms and kiting $56,100 worth of checks, Russ resigned.

On the instructions of House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash., the clerk read Russ's short note just as the House prepared to debate two resolutions calling for full disclosure of 355 members and former members who had kited checks at the bank.

"I respectfully submit to you (Foley) my resignation as sergeant-at-arms of the House of Representatives, effective March 12," the note said. "It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve the members of the Congress and of this institution for 25 years."

Foley named his executive assistant, Werner Brandt, to replace Russ.

Russ declined to comment on his resignation.

Minutes after the resignation letter was read, ethics committee Acting Chairman Rep. Matthew McHugh, D-N.Y., began introducing the first bank resolution. "Although the sergeant-at-arms inherited the system," McHugh said, the ultimate responsibility for mismanaging it must rest with him.

Congressional sources said several members had planned to offer "privileged" resolutions on the floor during the House Bank debate

calling for Russ's resignation. Each would have taken precedence over the bank debate and set off a series of one-hour discussions focused on Russ.

Late Thursday afternoon, one source said, the prospect of being the focus of attacks was presented to Russ and he decided to resign.

"It was the right time," one source said, adding, Russ "should have left when (former House Speaker Jim) Wright left." Wright, who resigned as speaker in June 1989, had been a major supporter of Russ along with a handful of major House Democratic committee chairmen and ranking members.

Russ, known for his powerful friends and a quixotic temperament, had been expected to resign or be dismissed ever since it became apparent in the past few weeks that the bank scandal had the potential to sully the reputations of hundreds of House members.

His departure came 12 days after he was shot in the cheek while walking his dog in a Capitol Hill Park. Critics had cast doubt on his story of being set upon by muggers, but friends in Congress rallied around him in sympathy.

Russ, 46, raised in Mississippi and Texas, is a spiffy dresser. He fit the "small town" of Capitol Hill like a glove. He was a product of the institution, hired first as an aide to the late Rep. William Colmer, D-Miss., becoming a doorman in 1967 and promoted through patronage jobs until his election by the Democratic Caucus as sergeant-at-arms in 1983. When he resigned he was making $115,000 per year.

Besides 15 bank employees, he supervised the Capitol's 30 tour guides and half of its 1,257-member police force. He carried a 9mm pistol and lifted weights in the House gym. He hobnobbed with the powerful. Wright, former Majority Whip Tony Coelho, D-Calif., and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., were his patrons. He counts many members and former members among his friends.

Every two years the caucus elected the sergeant-at-arms, requiring Russ to be as much a politician as the people he served. And when he had trouble, his connections kept him in office.

There was the time in November 1989 when the House subcommittee on personnel and police formally admonished him for staging the phony arrest of his assistant at a bachelor party and having him held at the Capitol lockup for two hours.

On another occasion Russ was reproved for selling his company's desktop flag cases in the House stationery store.

The scandal he could not survive began two years ago, when the General Accounting Office issued an audit report showing that the House Bank had cashed thousands of bad checks for members and had later made them good without penalty. Russ also had kited checks, the GAO said.

Foley demanded changes, and Russ promised to implement them, but last year another GAO report detailed even more abuses.

Foley had never been a major Russ backer. His wife, Heather Foley, who also serves as the speaker's unpaid chief of staff, maintained cool relations with Russ that were not helped by the problems shown in GAO audits.