Friend admits not getting bills for Stevens

A close friend who oversaw Ted Stevens’s home renovations admitted Thursday that he did not get the Alaska Republican bills to pay for the project now at the center of the senator’s corruption trial in Washington. 

Bob Persons, who owns a restaurant near the senator’s home in Girdwood, Alaska, said under cross-examination Thursday that he was not asked by the senator to get a bill from Bill Allen, the former head of the Veco oil-services firm who paid for much of the costs.

{mosads}In 2002, the senator told Allen to give Persons an invoice when he asked for one. Persons kept the senator apprised of the renovation project while he was working on Capitol Hill.

“Do you ever recall Sen. Stevens asking you to obtain an invoice from Bill Allen?” asked Nicholas Marsh, a government prosecutor.

“Not a particular invoice, no,” Persons said.

The testimony is critical because the government is trying to establish that Stevens never intended to pay for nearly $188,000 in home renovations. The senator is charged with lying on his Senate financial disclosure forms about gifts received from Allen. He has denied all charges and said he intended to pay all costs but Allen concealed them.

Persons denied a claim Allen made in the trial that Stevens was “just covering his ass” in asking for bills, and didn’t want to pay for the costs. He testified also that he reminded Allen to give Stevens bills.

But Marsh tried to portray Persons as a loyal friend to Stevens who could be trying to protect his friend from a conviction. He also raised doubts about Persons’s honesty, and pointed to his conferring with Stevens just prior to his testimony before a federal grand jury two years ago.

“You weren’t trying to cover anybody’s butt here sir, were you?” Marsh asked.

“No,” Persons said.

Before the grand jury, Persons testified that he gave the senator a $2,700 massage chair in 2001, one of the $250,000 in gifts the senator allegedly failed to report. But Persons backed away from that assertion Thursday, saying his memory had been jogged recently that Stevens did not want the chair as a gift and had considered it a loan.

Persons explained that, if his statement conflicts with his grand jury testimony, it was largely the result of harsh treatment by FBI agents, which he likened to being “mentally waterboarded.”

Catherine Stevens, the senator’s wife, will testify Thursday morning, and the senator is expected to be the final witness for the defense.