Friday, October 2, 1998 --- New York (APJP) -- Flash back a couple of weeks. Henry Hyde gets his "earth" scorched by Salon magazine. The next morning, there was A-list GOP loudmouth, renowned exterminator-turned-House Majority Whip Tom "The Bug Man" DeLay, demanding a federal investigation of the White House for what he characterized as a smear campaign against Republicans orchestrated by Sid Blumenthal.

Well, Tom DeLay got a federal investigation, all right.

In a delightfully ironic twist, DeLay now finds himself the subject of a Justice Department investigation into campaign finance scamming of the worst kind!

Here's the story:

Peter Cloeren Jr. is a conservative republican from Texas and the founder of a plastics manufacturing company in Orange, Texas. Back in June, Cloeren pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of illegally reimbursing employees for nearly $40,000 in contributions to Brian Babin’s unsuccessful campaign against Jim Turner (D-TX 2nd District).

At the center of the allegations is a political consulting firm named Triad Management Services Inc., which was the subject of a Senate investigation into whether the company "violated campaign-finance laws... with impunity" by, in effect, laundering campaign funds.

Less than two months later, a complaint was filed with the Federal Election Commission containing allegations by Cloeren that in 1996, DeLay helped orchestrate a series of contributions by Cloeren in such a way that they would circumvent contribution limits to Babin's campaign.

Cloeren claims that during a lunch held in August of 1996, DeLay told him that "additional vehicles" were being devised so that Cloeren could perform an end-run around contribution limits.

During the process of the investigation that led to the guilty pleas, information concerning two other organizations came up in connection with the alleged money laundering scam: Triad Management Services (which was the subject of a Senate investigation into whether the company laundered campaign cash) and its subsidiary Citizens for Reform.

The managers of each group are telling stories that are wildly at odds with each other, and a subpoena of Triad issued by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee a couple months back turned up suspiciously little in the way of a paper trail.

House Government Reform & Oversight Committee Chairman Dan Burton (R-IN) shot down a request by Democrats on the committee to launch an investigation inquiry. Ranking Minority Member Henry Waxman (D-CA) did send an investigative team to interview Cloeren back in August.

Then, a little over two weeks ago, the Justice Department's Campaign Finance Task Force started a full review of evidence gathered by the Beaumont, Texas US Attorney's Office and the FBI. The probe was reported by UPI on Monday and The Hill on Wednesday -- but went almost completely unnoticed amidst the Monicathon.

All of this could not come at a more embarrassing time for DeLay. On the one hand, he has set up what he describes as a "clearinghouse on impeachment information" (read: spin central for coming up with ways to tar anything Clinton did as a "high crime and misdemeanor").

Meanwhile, he now stands accused of being a one-man clearinghouse for campaign finance abuse trickery.

Perhaps if the press would get their minds out of the gutter and turn their back on "scorched earth" tales of sexual peccadilloes, they'd pay a little attention to a story in which some actual crimes allegedly took place.

But it's doubtful they ever will... even in spite of the fact that a GOP whiner demanding an investigation with no evidence of wrongdoing finds himself accused of engineering a "scam-paign" plot.

Be careful what you wish for, Tom -- you just may get it!

-- Dave "Doctor" Gonzo