(I'm glad this guy is doing well. He's got his whole life ahead of him and I bet he really has learned from this.)
Ex-aide calls 'Ney World' irresistible
By 2005, Capitol Hill insider Neil Volz had come to realize that he had to help destroy his former boss, Rep. Bob Ney, to save himself and begin recovering his self-respect.
Sunday, October 7, 2007 4:15 AM
By Jonathan Riskind
The Columbus Dispatch
<p>In an interview, Neil Volz described how he went from an idealist with good small-town Ohio values to an enabler for Rep. Bob Ney and lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- both of whom he helped put in prison. The process took a lot of rationalization.</p>
MANNIE GARCIA | FOR THE DISPATCH
In an interview, Neil Volz described how he went from an idealist with good small-town Ohio values to an enabler for Rep. Bob Ney and lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- both of whom he helped put in prison. The process took a lot of rationalization.
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WASHINGTON -- The phone calls from Rep. Bob Ney to Neil Volz would come late at night.
Meet me at Signatures, Ney would say, referring to the posh restaurant near Capitol Hill owned by super lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Volz, who had just departed his job as Ney's chief of staff to join Abramoff's lobbying shop, knew exactly what his old boss wanted: Volz's expense-account credit card to cover the ever-increasing tab for Ney's drinking and eating.
It was part of what Volz calls "Ney World," where ambition and greed overcame the small-town Ohio scruples and idealism that Volz had brought to Washington, a slippery slope toward unethical and ultimately criminal behavior. There were free trips to Scotland to play golf, free tickets to NBA basketball games and Redskins football games, and always lots of free drinks and meals totaling thousands of dollars.
By the time Ney World collapsed, the congressman and Abramoff were in federal prisons after admitting their guilt to corruption charges. Volz also pleaded guilty, but he received just two years' probation last month because his assistance to federal prosecutors played a vital role in bringing down Ney, a Republican from Heath.
Volz had come to realize that he had to help destroy his former boss to help save himself and begin recovering his self-respect.
"I came to Washington this total idealist," Volz told The Dispatch last week in his first public comments since he began working with federal prosecutors in 2005. "But it's kind of like I took on this mind-set that there was a machine at work and I was just a cog in the machine. And, therefore, I need to get mine."
It was a world of trying to justify accepting gifts that he knew were wrong, in exchange for legislative favors that he knew never should have been granted.
"It is a lot easier to rationalize something away when you are in the front row watching Michael Jordan play basketball," Volz said. "That's sad to say, but if I can kind of spend the next many years at least being honest about what's happened ? hopefully, whatever does come about, for my life, I can live with that."
In an exclusive interview last week, Volz, 37, discussed his past, current frame of mind and future hopes. He spoke in his small, red-brick Washington, D.C., home, with his dog, Winnie, a German Shepherd-hound mix, beside him. And he gave a tour of his new workplace with U.S. Vets, a nonprofit group that helps homeless veterans get back on their feet, located on the grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home.
Tainting proud moments
When Volz was sentenced, prosecutors made it clear that he remains a cooperating witness. Volz refused to talk about any possible future aspects of the investigation or discuss his involvement with anyone other than already convicted or named figures such as Abramoff and Ney.
As he reflected on his life with them, Volz recounted how one of his proudest memories, his actions on 9/11, is tarnished by those relationships.
As Ney's chief of staff and director of the House Administration Committee, which Ney chaired, Volz helped run the House side of Capitol Hill. He was among several staffers who ran toward the Capitol on 9/11 when most others were fleeing. Soon, they were forced to sprint away themselves when the report came in that a plane was headed for the Capitol.
Volz worked feverishly in the days that followed to help configure Capitol Hill security and communication operations to post-9/11 realities.
But just before the planes hit in New York and near Washington, and one apparently headed for the Capitol was brought down by passengers in a Pennsylvania field, Volz was thinking about the Baltimore Orioles tickets Abramoff had given him for that night.
"I sullied what was an accomplishment," Volz said.
"On 9/11, I was proud to be running up into harm's way ? (but) on a day on which I am very proud of what I did that morning, Jack Abramoff was still a part of it."
Even before Abramoff became a big factor, Volz said, Ney thought nothing of having lobbyists regularly pick up dinner bills in violation of the congressional gift ban and using campaign credit cards to pay late-night bar tabs.
Then Volz, trying to change his lifestyle and separate himself from Ney -- and save his new marriage -- went to work for Abramoff in early 2002.
By then, Ney had already grown closer to Abramoff.
Back in 2000, at the urging of Abramoff associate Michael Scanlon, Volz and Ney inserted comments into the Congressional Record to promote an Abramoff business deal. Scanlon had been an aide to then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose help Ney had sought to become a committee chairman.
Volz went to work for Abramoff about the time the lobbyist opened Signatures restaurant. Once again, Volz found himself joining Ney's late-night partying. But now he was the lobbyist picking up the tab.
"I lived in this insular world where everything was simple, because it was based around Bob's best interests," Volz said. "So it was kind of like I thought, 'If I could get away from some of that, even if it's going to Abramoff, somehow I could get into a better place.'
"But my priority was not, 'I want to be the most ethical staffer/lobbyist in Washington.' If that had been my priority, I never would have gone to work for Team Abramoff."
Volz didn't get much of a raise beyond his congressional salary of about $145,000 a year when he went to work for Abramoff. But the expectation of big money was just down the road, especially if he cashed in on his connections to Ney and others on Capitol Hill.
Justifying the means
Within a few months of going to work for Abramoff, Volz was helping arrange for Ney's support of a provision backing the reopening of a Texas casino owned by an Indian tribe represented by Abramoff. Ney played along, agreeing to insert it into a wide-ranging election-reform bill the Ohio lawmaker was co-writing. Volz tried to rationalize to himself that he was still just working on that bill as he had when he worked for Ney.
"Bob would tell me that he had agreed" to insert the provision. "Then he would refer to 'that thing that Jack wants me to do,' " Volz said.
When the provision didn't make it into the bill during the final House-Senate negotiations, Abramoff arranged a conference call between Ney and tribe members to explain what had gone wrong. Ney was eager to help, once again.
"Bob asked me, 'What does Jack want me to say (to the tribal representatives?)' " Volz recounted. The congressman told them that it wasn't Abramoff's fault and that Ney would continue to try to help him achieve the tribe's goals.
Shortly after joining Abramoff's firm, Volz participated in the now-infamous $140,000 golf trip to Scotland in August 2002 with Abramoff, Ney and several others. It was payback for all of Ney's help, and while there was some discussion about putting congressional business on the agenda, that never happened, Volz said.
On forays to Scotland and elsewhere, such as a May 2003 trip to New Orleans to drink and gamble on Bourbon Street, Abramoff was more than happy to finance Ney's desire to have a good time. But it was often Volz who signed the checks.
"The congressman wanted to relax and go on vacation. And I paid for it," Volz said. Abramoff was "like, 'I want to keep the gravy train rolling, so, Neil, make sure Ney has a good time.' "
Abramoff clearly saw that Ney "was ambitious and responsive to his style of playing the game," Volz said. "We crossed the line. This was ambition run amok."
Volz said he knew that he and Ney were breaking the rules time and again, from accepting expensive gifts to Volz's breaking the one-year-ban on lobbying his former congressional employer and staff members.
"I remember walking by a bunch of red flags ? and rationalizing things," Volz said. "When I got to that point where I believed that whatever was good for Bob Ney was good for the 18th Congressional District, I was in a scary place, because that gives you free rein to cut any deal you want, to be underhanded, not do the right thing, all because you think the ends justify the means."
Moving past betrayal
For his part, Ney expressed disdain for Volz before the former lawmaker entered a West Virginia prison this year. In an interview with the Capitol Hill paper The Hill, Ney said Volz was responsible for the legal trouble that Ney and another top aide, William J. Heaton, got into. He said that Volz "instigated a ton of this for his own paycheck."
After Volz originally had pleaded guilty, Ney said that he "always considered Neil Volz my friend," adding that Volz had been under pressure from the government.
Ultimately, Heaton, chief of staff to Ney after Volz, also cooperated with government prosecutors against Ney. Like Volz, Heaton got two years probation when he was sentenced in August, and it emerged that Heaton had secretly taped conversations with Ney and turned them over to prosecutors.
Volz said Ney would never openly admit that anything he did was wrong or improper. He had his version of the truth and would stick to it no matter what; he expected staffers to do the same.
Even on little things, Ney would have his "own reality," Volz said. In talking with a reporter, for instance, Ney might claim that dozens of constituents had called about a certain issue, when only one had done so.
"But then that was the reality we had to work with when it came to that issue and that reporter," Volz said. "Whatever (Ney) said became his truth, and he would stick to that no matter what, that was the way it happened."
In early 2004, The Washington Post ran a story about Abramoff and the millions of dollars in fees he was taking from clients such as Indian tribe casino owners.
The story prompted Volz to not only take a fresh look at his own improper activities, but also to see the broad swath that Abramoff was cutting.
Abramoff left the firm of Greenberg Traurig and went to a different lobbying firm, followed by many of the members of "Team Abramoff." But Volz decided it was time to get out.
"I said to myself, 'I've got to get on the straight and narrow,' " he said. "I was scared, hoping all the black clouds would just pass over. But I wasn't going to dig a deeper hole."
Coming clean with the FBI
In the spring of 2005, when Volz was contacted by an FBI agent, he was ready to talk.
"The clutter was lifting," he said. "My contacts on the Hill didn't matter. I was going to tell the truth."
Volz's 67-year-old father, a retired salesman and college professor from the Cincinnati area who is fighting Parkinson's disease, told Volz it was time to come clean.
"My dad just kept telling me that at the end of the day, the guys with the badges are the good guys," Volz said. "My friends and family all told me I had to just tell the truth. The fact is that cooperating was in my and my family's best interests.
"I am not hiding from that. But I also knew that I looked long and hard at myself. I was committed to doing what I knew I could live with when I was 50 and 60 and 70 years old."
He and his wife, Alison, who don't yet have children, have put their lives on hold for two years, Volz said. Now, it's time to move forward.
At U.S. Vets, Volz shares a cluttered office with Emily Button, the Americorps program director who helps run the veterans' initiative, which can house and counsel about 50 veterans at a time.
Just a couple of miles north of his former office at the Capitol, Volz leads house meetings, coordinates the work of several case managers and helps residents put together resumes and search for jobs.
After pleading guilty in May 2006, Volz spent much of the rest of the year meeting dozens of times, for hundreds of hours, with prosecutors as the Justice Department prepared its case against Ney and others.
Despite his cooperation, Volz learned that he was "radioactive" as he sent out hundreds of resumes in a vain attempt to get a job. He wound up volunteering as a substitute teacher in a neighborhood pre-school.
Button says Volz was "very upfront" about his past when he asked to volunteer there about a year ago. Soon, a staff member left and Button asked Volz to take the job, which pays $31,000 a year.
"We are a second-chances organization. That's what we do," Button said. "He understands where a lot of our guys are coming from. I don't know what I would do without him."
Walking around the U.S. Vets building, Volz stopped at the patio to point out a mattress sitting outside in an effort to halt a bedbug infestation.
He talked about a charity golf tournament he is organizing to raise money for U.S. Vets, and paused to laugh about the irony, referring to the notorious golf jaunt with Ney and Abramoff.
"It's a long way from Scotland," Volz said. "It feels a lot better now."
jriskind@dispatch.com
http://columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2007/10/07/volz.ART_ART_10-07-07_A1_88842KO.html?sid=101
