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| S C T E CHN I CA L CO L L E G E S Y S T EM ’ S
F I R S T 5 0 Y EAR S
or after hours in hotel bars where cash and bribes helped push
through favors. Unknown to most of them, the FBI was watch-
ing. When ‘Operation Lost Trust’ snapped shut in the summer of
1990, more than two dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and others had
been caught in the largest legislative public corruption prosecu-
tion in U.S. history.”
The sting led to substantial changes in South Carolina’s ethics
laws. Free-flowing gifts dried up. A lobbyist couldn’t legally give
a lawmaker a cup of coffee. Ed
Zobel remembers a joke from
that time. “During this dark
time if somebody dropped a
$10 bill on the front steps of the
State House it would stay there
two weeks. Nobody would
touch it.”
“Lost Trust’s” critics accused
prosecutors of being overly zealous and withholding evidence.
Zobel remembers how disappointing losing trust was. “You
get to know these people. You think you know them. And then
something like this comes up.”
He also remembers the Fat and Ugly Caucus. “Their secre-
tary—they even had a secretary—would come to you and say,
‘You’ve been chosen today. You’re a special one. You get to take
the Caucus to lunch.’”
“Now, you’re talking about $500, and I didn’t have that type of
money. So, I went to the chairman and told him, ‘Look, I’ll do
what I can, but if I have to pay it, it’s coming out of my pocket,
because I’m paid by state money.’ But the big boys, the indepen-
dents, the private companies, you know, they bankrolled those
fellas.”
Lunch was one thing; graft another. “Ex-House member Ron
Cobb from Greenville was pushing horse racing in South Caro-
lina. ‘If you help me with this bill, I’ll slip a little money in.’ The
camera was rolling, and Cobb was wired,” said Zobel.
A scene’s etched in Ed Zobel’s memory. It’s straight from
a Mickey Spillane novel. “We were on the portico at the State
House and the guy who wore the trench coat on ‘60 Minutes,’
Mike Wallace, was standing across the street.”
It was June, and Columbia gets hotter than the hinges of Hell.
There stood Myron Leon “Mike” Wallace wearing his trademark
trench coat.
“We yelled, ‘come over here,
Mike, if you want the truth,’”
said Zobel, “but he wouldn’t
do it. He just would not do it. It
was a perfect opportunity. Be-
cause a lot of the guys standing
out there had been involved,
like Tim Wilkes (House mem-
ber from Fairfield County),
who was cleared. Some other
guys, it ruined their lives—absolutely ruined their lives. I’ve got
a good friend in Charleston. I call him every now and then, but
he is just not the same person. He says, ‘I was stupid. I did some-
thing wrong. Easy money. All he wanted was my vote, and it was
for sale.’”
“All of us saw Ron (Cobb) standing over by the door every
day with this stranger,” said Zobel. “And the stranger was an FBI
man. And Ron would pick out his prey for the day and say, ‘Meet
me at the hotel.’ And they would go over and record it. When
he was finished with his subject, Ron would say, ‘It’s a business
doing pleasure with you.’”
NO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL
Not all was so glib. The sting doused ice water over “business
as usual” and paranoia dredged up new reporting requirements.
Dr. Dennis Merrell, president of York Technical College from
1989 to 2006, remembers. “You know the legislature never fig-
ured out that you can’t fatten the hog by weighing him, so, every
The 1990s
A H I G H E R R O L E I N E D U C A T I O N
“If names are not correct, language
will not be in accordance with the
truth of things.”
—Confucius
