Water Under the Bridge
Henry Cisneros became a national political icon by bringing Anglos and Latinos together. But after admitting he lied to the FBI, he’s put his public life behind him. And this time, he really means it.
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IF CISNEROS DOES NOT RETURN TO PUBLIC LIFE, then his final contribution will be indirectly but indisputably valuable: His case highlighted the excesses of the independent counsel law and helped bring about its death. All that the critics said was wrong with the law was present in the Cisneros investigation. Independent counsel David Barrett operated as a separate branch of government with a blank check (spending at least $9 million), an undefined mission (investigating potential witnesses for unrelated wrongdoing), no time constraints (taking four years to get to trial), and no accountability. Ordinary people had their lives turned upside down as he sought leverage to get them to testify—including Medlar, who went to prison for lying to the FBI (she now goes by her maiden name of Jones), her sister and brother-in-law, and two Cisneros aides. One critic of the law, a former federal prosecutor, told the Washington Post, “The first victim of every independent counsel investigation is perspective.”
The perspective that was lost here is that Cisneros’ conduct in understating the payments he made to Medlar, while morally wrong, was criminally trivial. The main reason is that a lie, to be prosecuted, ought to be material. This is no mere technicality. A free society must maintain an unbreachable line between conduct that is illegal and that which is merely undesirable or unadmirable. To lose sight of the distinction is to invite selective prosecution, and the independent counsel statute invited political leaders to be called to account for minor offenses. In Cisneros’ case, he had owned up to the material facts: the affair and the payments. The exact amount, while four times the sum Cisneros had acknowledged, was just a juicy tidbit that was irrelevant to his confirmation as HUD Secretary. Indeed, the Democratic chair of the Senate committee that held hearings on his nomination, joined by the committee’s ranking Republican, subsequently wrote Attorney General Janet Reno that knowledge of the true amount would not have affected the Senate’s decision to confirm Cisneros.
The prosecutor was not the only one who lost perspective. So did federal district judge Stanley Sporkin, who ruled that Barrett could buttress his case with numerous taped conversations between Medlar and Cisneros that she had secretly recorded and later doctored. The independent counsel’s legal team acknowledged that she had copied the original tapes—deleting portions that were irrelevant or unfavorable to her contention that Cisneros had promised to continue the payments to her—and destroyed the originals, but Sporkin allowed use of the tainted evidence, the fruit of the poisonous tree. He noted that Cisneros could argue the credibility of Medlar and the tapes before the jury. Sure—at the cost of $1 million in legal fees, and he still could have been convicted on the basis of doctored tapes.
On the day of the plea bargain, Sporkin indicated some misgivings about the process. “The problem with this case is that it took too long to develop and much too long to bring to judgment day,” he said from the bench, adding that it should have been resolved “a long time ago, perhaps even years ago.” Exactly. And Sporkin could have resolved it; had he thrown out the tapes, Barrett’s case would likely have evaporated. But he believed that the prosecution was necessary, because, he said, “We cannot permit an individual to lie his way into high public office.” Lost in this description of the case is the distinction between a material lie and an immaterial one. And so newspapers across America, on Wednesday, September 8, carried headlines like the one in the Washington Post: “Cisneros Pleads Guilty to Lying to FBI Agents.” He lied, all right— but he wasn’t guilty.
FOR A PERSON WHO WANTS TO BE AWAY from the limelight while he puts his life back together, Univision is a comfortable place to be. Chairman and CEO A. Jerrold Perenchio has been described as having a “long-standing aversion to publicity” and expects other executives to follow his lead. The company has a San Antonio connection too, having gotten its start there 38 years ago as SIN, Spanish International Network—a grandiose name for what was then a single television outlet, Channel 41, the first station in America devoted entirely to Spanish-language programming. During Cisneros’ presidency, which began after he left HUD in January 1997, Univision has thrived—its 1998 operating profit, $131.2 million on revenues of $577.1 million, was up 25.6 percent over 1997—and so has Cisneros, who had a piece of $42.6 million in stock options last year. Since Perenchio took the company public in 1996, Univision’s stock has more than quadrupled.
Still, Cisneros’ position as head of a Spanish-language network suggests that a lot of water has gone under the bridge—and the bridge builder—since the days when he was America’s foremost example of assimilation. Today one of the main issues in Spanish-language TV is whether to try to attract assimilated, upscale young Latino viewers, a prized demographic catch for advertisers, by incorporating more English-language programming; Univision has answered in the negative (with certain exceptions, such as brand names for advertised products). “We believe that we should defend the Spanish language like Tiffany defends its jewels,” Cisneros told the Los Angeles Times last July. Could this be the politician who was once preoccupied with bread-and-butter issues like jobs instead of cultural issues like bilingual education?
Cisneros gives Univision a familiar Latino face—Perenchio is Anglo, with his roots in Hollywood—as well as an executive who is credible with the advertisers the company must attract. Since his tenure began, ad rates are up by about one third (though still well below those of the four big American networks), and the network enjoys 92 percent of the prime-time Spanish-language viewership. And what does Univision give Cisneros? Money, of course, which he desperately needs. And peace. He is free from the pressure of bridge building, free from being the connection between the haves and have-nots, free from the expectations of everyone else. His sole responsibility lies with the Latino world now. Maybe some time in the future he will emerge to head a major national foundation or to be chancellor of his alma mater, Texas A&M University, or even of the University of California system. But for the moment, he couldn’t be happier than where he is. According to a state lawmaker who attended a conference in Corpus Christi, Cisneros told a group of Hispanic legislators, “All my life I’ve had to work with Anglos, get their approval, and explain us to them. Now I don’t have to give a crap what any Anglo thinks.”
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