Stevens claims limited role in project

Sen. Ted Stevens portrayed himself Friday as detached from the remodeling project that transformed his mountainside home, as he detailed steps he and his wife took to pay for renovations now at the heart of his corruption trial.

In the Alaska Republican's second day of testimony, the senator said his wife, Catherine, took the lead role in paying all the bills while he was consumed with his work on Capitol Hill and meeting with constituents throughout Alaska.

{mosads}"What goes on in the house is Catherine's business. What goes on outside of the house is my business," said Stevens, 84, likening his statement to an old saying about "in the teepee out of the teepee."

"She got all the bills, and paid all the bills," said Stevens, who added that one of his aides in his Senate office coordinated the couple's payments.

Stevens told a federal jury, which will determine his legal and political future, that in 2000, he only spent two days at his residence in Girdwood, Alaska, when the renovations were taking place. On average, he said, he spent 20 days a year there as he worked 3,300 miles away in Washington and traveled the state during a congressional recess.

He said he and his wife took steps to pay all costs, including taking out a $100,000 line of credit, spending $10,000 in cash and liquidating a $50,000 trust.

About $130,000 of that went to Augie Paone of Christensen Builders, who Stevens said was the general contractor on the project.

Stevens downplayed the role played by Bill Allen, saying his former friend of more than a quarter-century, who owned the Veco oil-services firm, "had volunteered to help us find people to do the job," whom the Stevenses believed they paid. Stevens said Allen added modifications without the couple's knowledge, including an exterior staircase.

The senator insisted that he pushed Allen to give him all bills for additional renovations. Allen, 71, is now the government's star witness and raised the possibility that Stevens asked for the bills just to cover his tracks. Stevens called elements of Allen's testimony "a total lie" and a "falsehood."

Stevens, under questioning from his lawyer, depicted himself as someone who sought sought to pay his debts and Allen as a friend who wouldn’t let him.

Stevens read to the court an e-mail he sent to Allen from 2002 that showed he was wary  of the consequences of unpaid  gifts. In the message,  Stevens wrote , “Remember  Torricelli, my friend,” a reference to then-Sen. Robert Torricelli  (D-N.J.). That year, a federal investigation found that Torricelli had received illegal campaign contributions, prompting him to end his bid for another Senate term.
 
Stevens told the court that he raised Torricelli’s trouble s to show that he wanted a record for work done on his house and that he wanted to pay for it. Stevens noted that he, like Torriccelli, was up for re-election in 2002.

Stevens said that Allen, against the senator’s wishes, provided  him with gifts and services without telling him first. Allen in 1999 put up new Christmas lights on Stevens’s property instead of the old ones that Stevens wanted. In 2001, Allen left a gas grill on Stevens’s deck that neither senator nor his wife wanted.

Stevens recalled telling Allen at the time, “I don’t want it there; if you want it there it's yours. If you you want to keep it there, it's your business.”

{mospagebreak}Stevens is charged with seven felonies for intentionally failing to publicly report more than $250,000 in gifts, including about $188,000 in labor and material costs of his renovations that were allegedly paid by Allen. He denies all charges, and is the last witness for his defense, which may rest its case Friday.

Jury deliberations will likely begin just two weeks before the patriarch of Alaska politics faces his toughest reelection battle of his four-decade Senate career.

{mosads}The senator was answering questions from his attorney, Brendan Sullivan, Friday morning and will face a lengthy cross-examination by government prosecutors Friday afternoon.

Central to the senator's defense is that he intended to pay all bills, but Allen hid the costs even though the senator requested them. The senator says he believed the $160,000 the couple paid was a fair price.

The senator read a handwritten note where he requested a bill from John Hess, an architect for Veco, who drew up the renovation plans. But despite his request, Hess never provided him with a bill, Stevens said.

"I assumed we’d get one," Stevens said.

He also tried to downplay several letters he exchanged with Bob Persons, a friend who oversaw the project, by saying they often joked.

“You still have cookies and some of the cake,” Persons wrote in a 2000 e-mail, in discussing payment for work done at the home. Stevens testified that his friend was only kidding.

Even though he was kept apprised of some of the work, Stevens said, he forwarded all relevant e-mails to his wife.

He spoke in a measured tone, but at one point he said angrily that he forwarded the e-mails to his wife since he was in Washington while she was in between jobs and overseeing the project in Alaska.

“I sent the e-mail because she was in Alaska and I was in Washington," Stevens said.

He later said that "Catherine has a way of letting you know it’s her place," which included decorating, and ensuring "beds are made and stuff is off the floor."

"If I lived there alone, it wouldn’t look like that," he said.

Stevens also said he had no knowledge he received a $29,000 bronze statue of fish, which prosecutors said was another gift he failed to publicly report.