The Franklin Files

Claims to fame: Republican lobbyist; Washington socialite; closet homosexual; rent-boy john; pimp

Moral apex: See Franklin Credit Union Child-Sex Ring Scandal,

Consider the case of Craig Spence, a behind-the-scenes Republican powerbroker in Washington. In June 1989, the Washington Times published a story that sent shockwaves rippling across Capitol Hill. It seemed that Spence had been deeply involved with a callboy ring that supplied young boys, some of them very young boys, to the elite of both political parties, as well as to visiting dignitaries.

 

It was reported by the Times that a list of some 200 influential clients included the names of “government officials, locally based U.S. military officers, businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides, media representatives and other professionals,” only a few of whom were publicly identified. On the guest lists for Spence’s parties were former CIA Director William Casey and former Deputy Director of Intelligence Ray Cline; Congressman Barney Frank and Senators John Glenn and Frank Murkowski; political activist/propagandist Phyllis Schlafly; former Attorney General John Mitchell (who once co-hosted a party with Spence); journalists William Safire, Liz Trotta, Ted Koppel and Eric Sevareid; former Ambassadors James Lilley, Robert Neumann and Elliot Richardson; General Alfred M. Gray, the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, and Lt. General Daniel O. Graham, an expert on the ‘Space Defense Initiative’; and former U.S. Attorneys Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing. Spence once held a birthday bash for the notorious Roy Cohn. He also boasted of playing host to Rock Hudson and other celebrities.

Among the revelations in the case was that Spence had taken some of his callboy escorts on private, late-night tours of the White House. The tours, of which there were at least four, were cleared by a uniformed Secret Service guard who moonlighted as a bodyguard at Spence’s parties. Spence hinted that the tours were arranged by the national security adviser to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, Donald Gregg, for whom Spence once sponsored a dinner. One of the tours occurred just after Spence stopped by the Nightline studio to see his friend, Ted Koppel. Spence reportedly introduced Koppel to a 15-year-old boy, whom Koppel later claimed Spence had introduced as his son. Koppel though had been a close friend for over twenty years and surely knew that Spence did not have a teenage son. Koppel first met Spence in Southeast Asia when Koppel was serving as the ABC bureau chief in Hong Kong, and Spence was nominally working as an ABC correspondent in Vietnam.

Spence openly boasted of working with both the CIA and ranking members of the Reagan and Bush administrations. He claimed that he had been involved in covert operations in Vietnam, Japan, Central America and the Middle East. His claims were scoffed at and he was largely portrayed as a self-important blowhard. There are indications, however, that Spence was involved in covert operations as far back as Vietnam, where he could well have been working under journalistic cover. An associate of his from that era told the Washington Post: “Spence pulled disappearing acts in Vietnam — sometimes for weeks at a time. Then he’d turn up, refusing to say where he’d been.”

“The sex? That’s done all the time,” a former Bush economic adviser told the press. “If a foreign diplomat wants a companion, the State Department provides it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or woman. They have a special fund set up for that.” What the unnamed adviser did not say was that such services were provided not as a courtesy to the dignitary, but as a way to compromise and control. Allegations quietly arose that the callboy ring, and Spence’s parties, were part of a CIA sexual blackmail operation. Spence’s Washington mansion was said to be overflowing with surveillance equipment, including hidden cameras and microphones and an abundance of two-way mirrors. It was also alleged that cocaine flowed freely at Spence’s parties, and that he could have been involved in bringing drugs in from El Salvador.

The Spence story never really registered on the national media’s radar screen. Despite being a largely Republican scandal, it was completely ignored by such pillars of the purportedly liberal press as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The story soon disappeared entirely and Washington and the media proceeded to pretend as though nothing had ever happened. According to a Washington Times reporter, the paper trail was quickly covered up. Some 20,000 documents pertaining to the case were sealed by court order and the U.S. Attorney’s office issued a gag order on the release of information. By the time that Craig Spence turned up dead in a Boston hotel less than five months after the story first broke, he had been all but forgotten. He had earlier told a friend: “I may be disappearing soon. It will be sudden. It may appear to be a suicide, but it won’t be.”

Spence was reportedly found lying on his bed in room 429 of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, wearing a tuxedo and with a telephone cradled to his ear and a Walkman headset around his neck. He had, according to the Independent, “no obvious signs of injury,” and “police refused to comment on the cause of death.” The door to the room was barricaded. Written on the mirror were several messages, one of which read: “Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always said, you can’t ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America.” Another was an apology to the hotel: “To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience.” A third was an unexplained Japanese phrase: “Nisei Bei.” The hotel registry showed that the room the apparent suicide victim was found in was occupied by “C.S. Kane.”

Spence had been subpoenaed by a grand jury but had not yet been called to appear. As it turned out, very few witnesses ever did appear before that grand jury. Spence had also reportedly agreed to provide Penthouse magazine with “lurid details of Washington’s bisexual wonderland.” His story, needless to say, was never told.

Ms. Magazine
December, 1988