Updated Tuesday, April 23
R
ep. Devin Nunes, who decided earlier this month to sue the parent company of the Fresno Bee over a story that did not allege he took part in a 2015 orgy aboard a yacht on San Francisco Bay, just helped us pinpoint the latest boat in America's Scandal Navy.
The nation's real Navy — the one with submarines and aircraft carriers and missiles and Tom Cruise pretending to be a pilot — has a heroic past conveyed by the names Bonhomme Richard, Constitution, Monitor and Missouri, and great engagements like the battles of Lake Erie, Mobile Bay and Midway.
The nation's Scandal Navy is short on armament but long on sordid episodes involving politicians whose careers have often intersected with yachts and various brands of impropriety. The roster of scandalcraft includes names like the Monkey Business, the Duke-Stir, the Sequoia and the Potomac. The engagements they were part of were more fit for the National Enquirer than the national Naval War College.
The latest addition to the flotilla — again, thanks to Congressman Nunes — is the Alpha Omega. That's a 59-foot yacht owned by the proprietor of St. Helena's Alpha Omega Winery, a close friend of Nunes who occasionally donates the craft for charity events.
Nunes announced earlier this month he had filed a $150 million defamation lawsuit against the McClatchy Co. over a story the Fresno Bee published last year. That piece recounted a suit filed by a former Alpha Omega Winery employee who said she witnessed an orgy during a charity cruise aboard the yacht in 2015.
Nunes' connection to the episode, which allegedly involved a group of male guests using cocaine and consorting with possibly under-age prostitutes aboard the Alpha Omega, is that he has a small investment in the winery. Beyond Nunes' investment, there's no suggestion in the original lawsuit, or in the Bee's story, that he participated in the bay bacchanal.
That's a little disappointing, because the most illustrious craft in America's Scandal Navy have hosted our elected representatives doing things on board they'd never want their constituents or their wives to know about. But who knows? The Alpha Omega is for sale, and maybe some other member of Congress or the Legislature will get a chance to breach ethics, morals and/or federal, state and local laws during a voyage.
While we wait for that to happen, here are some other illustrious members of the Scandal Navy:
The Monkey Business, 1987
The Scandal Navy's honorary flagship. If you've been following seaborne political misbehavior for a while, you'll remember Monkey Business as the yacht on which, in 1987, a promising Democratic presidential candidate, Gary Hart, saw his career sink out of sight (ironically, the boat stayed afloat).
The details have been rehashed for decades, but briefly: Hart, a senator from Colorado, was seen as the odds-on favorite to win his party's nomination for the presidency in 1988. Before a single vote had been cast in the primaries, however, Hart became the subject of an investigation by the Miami Herald, which had gotten a tip that the senator was having an extramarital affair. Among the evidence of impropriety provided to the paper were snapshots of Hart and his paramour, a woman named Donna Rice, on a pleasure cruise from Florida to the island of Bimini aboard the Monkey Business.
A team of Herald reporters, accompanied by a photographer, witnessed Hart and Rice entering and leaving the senator's Washington, D.C., residence. Hart denied a dalliance, but the resulting explosion of attention led him to quit the presidential race. Reports continue to circulate that the episode was a dirty trick orchestrated by operatives working for the campaign of Republican candidate George H.W. Bush.
Recommended reading: "How Gary Hart's Downfall Forever Changed American Politics," by Matt Bai in The New York Times Magazine (2014).
"Was Gary Hart Set Up?," by James Fallows in The Atlantic (2018).
The Duke-Stir, 2005
Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a San Diego County Republican, was a star in the real U.S. Navy: an oft-decorated fighter-bomber pilot and instructor at the service's Top Gun flight combat school. He's also honorary commodore of America's Scandal Navy.
Cunningham was elected to Congress in 1990 and won re-election seven times. In 2005, the San Diego Union-Tribune began reporting Cunningham's ties to a defense contractor who secured a series of Pentagon deals with the congressman's help. The ties included shady-looking real estate transactions and a variety of gifts and favors — including the contractor buying a $140,000, 45-foot yacht upon which Cunningham lived rent-free. The former combat ace's floating residence, which had been named the Buoy Toy, was rechristened the Duke-Stir.
The Union-Tribune's reporting led to a Pulitzer Prize — and also to an FBI investigation, criminal charges and the congressman's eventual guilty plea to tax evasion, conspiracy to commit bribery, wire fraud and mail fraud. Cunningham resigned from Congress and spent nearly seven years in federal custody.
'USS Traficant,' 2001
In the early 1980s, James Traficant was a sheriff in northeastern Ohio who found himself facing federal charges he had taken bribes from mobsters. Traficant — not a lawyer — defended himself in court and beat the rap. Shortly afterward, he won election to Congress — but it wasn't the last time he faced corruption charges.
Sometime during his nine terms in the House of Representatives, the Democrat Traficant bought a boat from Sen. Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho who is best remembered outside the Gem State for allegedly trying to solicit sex in an airport bathroom. The boat may have been the least eye-catching thing about Traficant, who was known for his throwback '70s attire and a wild mane of hair — it was actually a toupee — that he once claimed he cut himself with a weed whacker.
Traficant's House tenure ended when he was convicted on 10 counts of racketeering, bribery and fraud. Among other things, he was accused of demanding salary kickbacks from his congressional staff and requiring them to do repair work on his boat, docked at a Washington, D.C. marina. I've tried without success to dig up the name of the craft, which Traficant described during his House expulsion hearing as "a 1970 wooden Egg Harbor motor yacht. It is old, but it was lovely inside." Not even the grand jury indictment mentions the boat's name. We'll just call it the USS Traficant in honor of the late congressman, who served seven years in prison for his crimes. He died in 2014 after a tractor toppled over on him at his Ohio horse farm.
Recommended reading:"Oh, Behave," by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker (2002).
