POLITICS

John Murphy, Congressman Convicted in Abscam Sting, Dies at 88

By 
Representative John M. Murphy in New York City in 1980 before a court appearance. David Bookstaver/Associated Press 
John M. Murphy, a former New York City congressman who served 18 years in the House before being caught taking a $50,000 cash payment in the Abscam sting operation in the late 1970s, died on Monday on Staten Island. He was 88.
His death, at a hospital there, was confirmed by his grandson John M. Murphy III.
Mr. Murphy, a Democrat from Staten Island, was one of seven members of Congress found guilty of taking illicit payoffs in the Abscam operation, which involved undercover agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation posing as Middle Eastern tycoons offering bribes in exchange for help with immigration and other matters. The F.B.I. videotaped the payoffs.
Posing as an aide to an Arab sheikh, an F.B.I. agent handed over Mr. Murphy’s payment in a closed briefcase, which a co-conspirator carried away after Mr. Murphy told him to “take care” of the case.
He served 16 months in prison for his conviction on charges of conspiracy and receiving an unlawful gratuity.
The lawmakers’ indictments, in 1980, rocked Washington and led to a wide debate over the proper limits of undercover investigations. (The 2013 film “American Hustle” was loosely based on the Abscam scandal.)
Mr. Murphy, a West Point graduate decorated for valor in the Korean War, was regarded as a hard-driving politician who, beginning in 1962, was elected to nine terms in the House of Representatives.
He represented a district that included Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn in the 1960s and the island and Lower Manhattan in the ’70s. Often described as a “middle of the road” Democrat, he opposed abortion and gay rights and vigorously supported the Vietnam War. He also supported civil rights and antipoverty legislation as well as government efforts to aid education and provide housing for the poor.
As chairman of committees dealing with maritime and oceanic matters, Mr. Murphy guided the legislation paving the way for Panama to take control of the Panama Canal from the United States, and was instrumental in shaping measures to revitalize the nation’s shipping industry and regulate offshore oil development. He urged New York State to cash in on such development by building drilling platforms and superstructures “approaching the size of the Chrysler Building.”
Before Abscam, the Justice Department and the House Ethics Committee investigated Mr. Murphy and other House members as part of an inquiry into South Korean influence-buying in Congress.
Federal prosecutors also looked into his dealings with the governments of Nicaragua — whose leader at the time, President Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was a longtime friend of Mr. Murphy’s — and with Iran, under the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
Mr. Murphy maintained that he was a victim of overly ambitious officials, and no formal charges were brought against him in those investigations.
Later, he was scornful of the officials who had conducted the Abscam investigation. “How does that little bureaucrat down at the end of the Justice Department line get famous?” he said after his indictment. “He drops a watch in somebody’s pocket.”
At trial, Mr. Murphy, unlike some of the other indicted congressmen, did not argue that he had been illegally entrapped into taking money. Rather, his lawyer told the jury, Mr. Murphy had not known that the closed briefcase produced by the undercover agent contained money. He thought it held immigration forms, the lawyer said.
In a second videotaped meeting, Mr. Murphy denied he had taken money during the earlier encounter.
The jury convicted him of taking an unlawful gratuity, but acquitted him of the more serious charge of receiving the money as a bribe. He finished serving his sentence in 1985.
In November 1980, even before the trial began, Mr. Murphy, in his bid for a 10th term, was handily defeated by his Republican opponent, Guy V. Molinari, a New York assemblyman who went on to serve several terms in Congress before becoming the Staten Island borough president.
John Michael Murphy was born on Staten Island on Aug. 3, 1926. He enlisted in the Army during World II and after the war attended West Point, graduating in 1950. He won a Distinguished Service Cross and other medals for valor as an officer in the Korean conflict.
After leaving the Army in 1956, he became an executive in his father’s trucking business. He made two unsuccessful runs for office — for the Staten Island congressional seat in 1960 and for borough president in 1961 — before being elected to Congress in 1962.
Mr. Murphy is survived by five daughters, Dierdre Murphy, Eve Reid, Emily Hynes, Elizabeth Murphy and Amanda Murphy; two sons, John Jr. and Mark; two brothers, Frank and Charles; a sister, Rose McBrien; 11 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Daniel E. Slotnik and Ashley Southall contributed reporting.