FBI tape airs in Stevens trial

Friends heard plotting to hide work payment

Senator Ted Stevens arrived at the US District Courthouse in Washington yesterday with his daughter, Beth Stevens. (Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press)

WASHINGTON - Two close friends of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska schemed to conceal the fact that one was paying for extensive work done at the lawmaker's cabin in Alaska, according to prosecutors who played FBI audiotapes yesterday at Stevens's corruption trial.

The friends, Bill Allen and Bob Persons, are heard on tape fretting in February 2006 over a plumbing bill that says, "Labor paid for by Bill," after Stevens contacted them about the job.

"We need to make that disappear from [the plumber's] records," Persons says in one conversation captured by an FBI wiretap of Allen's phones. "Tell him Ted's paying for everything. I mean, that's the safest thing, Bill."

On the tape, Allen, the government's star witness, and Persons, a neighbor who helped oversee the cabin remodeling, agree that Allen should get a check from Stevens for the work. But they also decide that instead of cashing it, it should be photocopied and saved in case the senator was ever investigated for ethics violations.

"If it ever comes up, you say, 'Bull - -. He paid me for that," Persons says.

Stevens, 84, is accused of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts from Allen, the former chief of an oil pipeline company. The patriarch of Alaska politics hopes to clear his name with an acquittal before voters go to the polls next month to decide whether to return him to the Senate seat he's held for 40 years.

Allen concluded his testimony yesterday after spending nearly four days on the witness stand detailing a relationship with Stevens that spanned two decades. Prosecutors used Allen to attack Stevens' claim that he did not know about the extent of free work that Allen and his company, VECO Corp., did on the cabin.

Before he left the stand, Allen quoted Stevens as saying during one of their many dinners together, "I know you're putting more work in there than what you're saying."

Allen testified as part of a plea agreement in a bribery investigation of Alaska legislators. On cross-examination yesterday, he testified that in addition to possible leniency at his sentencing, Allen has millions of dollars riding on his cooperation.

Under the terms of a $380 million sale last year of VECO, the buyer was allowed to withhold $70 million until able to determine whether Allen's cooperation helps deflect criminal charges against the company.

Jurors on Monday heard conversations - secretly recorded by Allen - in which Stevens proclaimed his innocence while advising Allen to keep a low profile during the FBI investigation.

"I don't think we've done anything wrong, Bill," Stevens said on the tape. "I tell you right now, I've told my lawyer I can't think of a thing we've done that's wrong."

US District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said he would hold a hearing today on repeated defense claims that prosecutors intentionally withheld evidence favorable to their client.

Prosecutors said they had done nothing wrong and called the defense claims "the latest salvo. . . to derail the trial."