With an anniversary of a historic event coming up next month, and with Washington in disarray and with – possibly, but unlikely as of this hour – a financial disaster in the works, two events 50 years apart seem to come together.
If we have heard it once, we have heard a hundred times over the last few weeks how much President Obama is hated by the right wing. Chris Matthews is going to the bank with that line. Thinking back in history, we can recall no time when such strong language was used to describe an American president. Perhaps Franklin Roosevelt, but we were small then, and had little sense of the gap between the haves (some of whom hated Roosevelt) and the have-nots, who revered him.
Then came give-'em Harry Truman. People mocked him with the joke: “He’s a common man. Very common.” But people did not hate Harry Truman, who now goes down as one the of the best in his business. President Eisenhower was generally admired, and President Kennedy (where this is leading) was regarded as American royalty, with a beautiful wife and kids, from a family richer than the Roosevelts. He had looks and what Scott Fitzgerald would call animal magnetism. Apparently, a lot of women thought so.
Then came a series of presidents. Discard Nixon, who is in a class by himself, but all the others since then were not described as “hated.” Sure, people disagreed with them, but there was always a degree of respect for the office, and usually the man. Moreover, for the most part the government worked. The losers lost and they accepted it. The winners governed with the consent of the defeated.
Until now. Perhaps in this age of media over reach, too much is made of it, but it seems that in Congress there is a group (Tea Party, etc.) that will not accept tradition. In fact they seem reluctant to even accept government, mindless as that position is. They bring the country to the brink of paralysis, and find it fulfilling.
Now, for the journey back 50 years. A president of the United States was seen by most as enormously popular. Which he was, but not by everybody. The same mindset that we see among a few – and they are a few – in Washington today, existed in 1963. They were not elected officials, but they were even more powerful. They were the sinister shadow government, a combination that President Eisenhower warned about, a government unto themselves, contemptuous of any authority not to their liking. They almost surely involved some military figures in high places, and surely the intelligence community with its myriad tentacles. And they had enough control of investigative agencies to cover their tracks, and least for a time...
It is hard for some to believe today, but the Camelot president, never hated in print, was hated by a small but powerful group. Ask anybody in the Miami Cuban community from the 1960s. The haters wanted a nuclear war while we could still win it. They wanted to take back Cuba. They worried that their president might get us out of Vietnam and let the Commies dominate the world. They could not control John F. Kennedy, even after they set him up for failure. They considered him a traitor. They knew they could not beat him in an election. They didn’t care about government.
So they murdered him.
The website Fort Lauderdale Daily is up, and Gulfstream Media Group has a new business. We can’t claim to have invented this idea. Other magazines, including New York and Philadelphia, have popular sites associated with their highly successful print operations. While newspapers have struggled to compensate for the loss of their traditional business by going digital, magazines have managed to hold their own while augmenting their print revenue with digital presentations.
In our case, it will be a combination of our magazine material – as featured on the site now – and fresh contributions on topics of interest. It will in general reflect the lifestyle orientation of our company’s magazines, but it does not preclude occasional comments on breaking news. Thus the word “Daily.” Not daily as in the Sun-Sentinel or Herald, with fresh material every day. Rather, we reserve the right to do so when the opportunity presents itself. And it is surprising how often we get important information before the newspapers.
And we are not strangers to that kind of work. We have had two tours in daily journalism. The first was 50 years ago as a daily columnist for a suburban Philadelphia paper, where we worked in an office right out of "The Front Page" with pneumatic tubes sending copy to the clanking typesetters on the next floor, and where the electric typewriter had not yet found a plug. More recently – only 25 years ago – for the Sun-Tattler in Hollywood, where writers were first beholding the screens we still use today. Both our Managing Editor Nila Do and Associate Editor Jennifer Tormo have worked for daily papers. And the magazine has numerous associations with bloggers and other ex-daily news people (and there are a lot of those around) who are good sources for material.
We do have some advantages over other magazines who go digital. Our related software company produces The Magazine Manager, which has 9,000 print and digital users. Some 30 techies are constantly inventing new tricks to serve the varying needs of so many clients. No reason we can’t play some of those tricks for ourselves.
It took some time to get used to that now useless laptop. It was presented in a hurry, by a woman who had no idea how it worked, just before a big trip, with minimal instructions based on words that did not mean what they meant. A big deal was made of inserting the "card." The only problem was that nothing in the support package looked like a card. Not a card like in American Express card or ace-of-hearts playing card. It took hundreds of miles, and suggestions from any number of 16-year-old experts, before an item that looked like a gizmo turned out to be the card in question. Then it took another day just to figure out how to get this little plastic rectangle to open, and determine which port (not like Port Everglades, more like a slot) it fit in.
Ultimately the obstacles were overcome, including realizing that even when correctly formatted, you could not get the laptop to work on the top of a North Carolina mountain. And there came a day, months later, when on a 90-minute Amtrak ride from Philadelphia to Washington, a whole chapter of a book appeared from that computer, rocking train and all. The joy of that achievement was lost upon returning to Florida to learn the laptop was too old, too heavy and needed a replacement.
Oh, for the day when our family, or at least one member of it, was a pioneer in the computer revolution. This was back in the 1960s when our late brother Mike, Ph.D and math whiz, who was teaching at Columbia University, took us into a building to see a UNIVAC machine that took up the better part of a city block. Already an expert on the subject, Mike said this machine could do amazing things. He knew his stuff. He even wrote a book, Numerical Methods in FORTRAN. He wrote it in 1964 with another genius, Mario Salvadori, and although we had never heard of FORTRAN, we were emboldened to review the book. Although their literary styles were similar, we could spot which parts our brother wrote and which belonged to Professor Salvadori.
For instance, this is clearly our brother’s inimitable style:
“Integration formulas for any n and any m may be derived in a similar manner. Some of them are presented in Table 3.3.1, where the interval of integration is indicated by the boldface coefficients. To illustrate, the 4-point integration formula for the strip from I to I + 1 (3.3.17), reads: I1q4 (i) = h/24 (9f. + 19f I + 1 = 5f I + 2 + fi+3).” Mike talked like that all the time.
Now Salvadori, whose prose was more Shakespearean, was obviously the author of these lines: “The Newton-Raphson integration formula (4.2.1) can be applied to the evaluation of the real roots (if any) of the transcendental equation.”
Our favorite scene in the book is when FORTRAN, having just broken up with his girlfriend, Cubicella, stares at the moon and says: “An ordinary initial-value problem is governed by an ordinary differential equation and a set of conditions all valid at the same “starting” point, x = xo.” She never found another guy who could talk like that.
Unfortunately, they don’t make writers like that anymore. And it’s hard to find a computer a block long that you can operate simply by reading a book.
The engines were lined up back to back, or nose to nose if you prefer, and you will not find trains as clean looking very often. After all, this was a public relations event, and a pretty important one, so CSX, Tri-Rail and the Florida East Coast Railway brought out their best-looking engines for the job. Tri-Rail was showing off a new, more streamlined design, and the FEC for the occasion chose to go back to the bright yellow, red and silver engine (shown above) that the line used back in the days when it last ran passenger trains.
Apparently they are repainting their current, mundane, blue prime movers to celebrate a historic event – the return of passenger traffic to Henry Flagler’s pioneering railroad for the first time since the 1960s. The fancy colors were displayed last week on the FEC tracks near Croissant Park in Fort Lauderdale, and the three engines symbolized another piece of history – the union of three railroad entities to bring passenger service back to the track where it belongs, the same FEC rails that built Florida’s East Coast cities more than a century ago.
The plan has been hinted at for years, but last week the official blessing of all involved was given. The idea is utterly sensible. Some of the slow-moving freight traffic on the FEC will be switched to the more westerly CSX tracks, which has far fewer traffic stopping grade crossings than the FEC. In turn, Tri-Rail, which now uses the CSX tracks, will switch some trains to the FEC, where they will be vastly more useful as they bisect the busy downtowns along the route. It is not a massive construction job. Tracks connecting the two railroads already exist.
Thousands of commuters will be able to walk from the station near Broward Boulevard to their downtown Fort Lauderdale jobs. And people living as far north as Jupiter will be able to commute fairly quickly to Fort Lauderdale and even Miami. In short, our area is going big-time, doing the kind of traveling that New York, Philadelphia and Chicago have had even before Henry Flagler’s days. And he died in 1913. HEAT fans will be able to take a train from Palm Beach and Broward counties to the front door of the American Airlines arena. That same track will actually pass through Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International airport. What could be more convenient?
Although it was not part of last week’s celebration, it is known that Amtrak is also considering using the FEC tracks, which come straight down the East Coast – as opposed to the current route that makes a time-consuming loop through Central Florida enroute to our coastal cities.
It is hard to exaggerate the long-range impact of this combine. As we have noted before, the FEC has large land holdings along its track. It is planning a large development on its yards in Miami, and passenger traffic will open up numerous opportunities farther up the coast. You can expect some impressive redevelopment in cities such as Fort Lauderdale. It already has considerable new apartment construction on the east side of the FEC in the downtown area. These units will be mostly walkable to the new service. But there is plenty of land on both sides of the tracks, now lined with small old buildings housing small businesses, that would be natural sites for high-rise structures.
Not so long ago we complained of all the construction underway in downtown Fort Lauderdale, without planning for the increase in traffic sure to follow. This announcement of railroad cooperation is a game changer. The people buying or renting in the downtown area had little choice in getting in and out. But now they will. This may not be quite as historic as driving in the golden spike in Utah on the transcontinental railroad in 1869, but it will do until something better comes along.
We knew him a long time, but for years not very well. That changed in 2003 when our daughter, Julie, went to work for Rep. E. Clay Shaw in his Washington office. She was looking for work in Washington, and, coincidentally, he was looking to hire another person who knew his South Florida district. Julie did know the home territory. She was the only one of our four kids to be born here. St. Anthony grade school, St. Thomas Aquinas High School, FSU – a similar path as his own family. When he lost in 2006, he recommended her to another Republican member of the House, David Camp of Michigan, and she worked for him until marriage and motherhood took them apart.
Republican. That word is important. Clay Shaw first entered politics in the 1970s, when Republicans dominated Broward County, at least the Fort Lauderdale area. That was to change, fairly quickly, but Shaw served for 26 years in Congress, even after the demographics of his district changed and made his re-elections more difficult. He should never have lost, but as he aged, the people who knew his qualities best also aged, and many went above. He never liked campaigning, especially the fundraising aspect.
The mid-term election of 2006 was a tough time for all Republicans, even in what were considered safe districts. Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee were demolished. Events that had nothing to do with Shaw, such as the Mark Foley scandal and the Terri Schiavo controversy gave Democrats ammo that year.
Had he survived that election, he likely would have won easily two years later, as the Republican tide made a mild recovery. He was a noted non-partisan and his presence in Washington would have been welcome in a day when so many Republicans are against anything President Obama is for, even when it is a position they themselves previously endorsed. And vital subjects such as Social Security and Everglades restoration were his specialties.
Illustrating his statesmanlike nature, he did a local public television show and invited government figures from around the country. Often they were Democrats, and he would point that out, usually with a jest, but invariably raising their stock by letting them share the stage with a man who was an experienced and highly respected House member. Although a Republican, he was never on the extreme right, and managed to like even those on the extreme left. For want of a better word, he was a middle man.
Julie Donovan, who worked as his scheduler (also known as his gate keeper), had a front-row seat of the last years of that era. She recalls:
"Mr. Shaw was the mayor of Fort Lauderdale when I was born and the only House representative I knew growing up. His service and accomplishments spanned my lifetime. He and Mrs. Shaw (you can't say one name without the other) treated all the staffers like family, and I absolutely loved working for him and for Florida’s District 22. We both took such pride in calling it 'home.'"
To those close to the congressman, his ability to connect was obvious. Julie Donovan remembers:
“Mr. Shaw and Charlie Rangel, another long-time member of the House and also a member of the Ways and Means committee, had a friendly working relationship. It was such fun to watch the two of them go head to head on the networks. They would have their disagreements but it was always very respectful. Mr. Shaw spoke often about this, and how much he missed the old days when Congress was less partisan and relationships more meaningful.”
We bury the man with the prayer that some fine day it will be that way again.
We are working on a 50th anniversary story of Gulfstream Media Group. The first issue of what is now Gold Coast magazine appeared in the winter of 1965, but the company that launched it was being formed in 1964, so our timing will be the fall of next year. The story of a publication, of course, is also a story of its community. In 50 years all places change, but few have changed as much as South Florida. The growth has been enormous. What is now the Galt Ocean Mile had a few tall condos, but most were under construction, the cranes poking like giant water birds into the sky. Fort Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge section was still being built, especially the high-end finger islands off the Intracoastal Waterway. There was no Galleria Mall. Where Macy’s and many other stores stand was a rough open area.
To the west, far to the west in those days, the new city of Coral Springs was being touted as a great place for young families. In Boca Raton, there was near panic that the small town would turn into another out-of-control Fort Lauderdale. Where the Town Center stands was open land, a prime landmark being a sprawling polo field along Glades Road. That was about to change. It is called growth.
These thoughts come at a time when our governor is bragging about Florida’s growth under his rule, although The Miami Herald’s “politifacts” team finds his claims exaggerated. The recovery from the recession would have happened no matter who was in charge. But in general it is being touted as a wonderful thing that Florida is rapidly becoming the country’s third largest state. Growth is good. Growth is king.
Who says? We can make an argument that South Florida in 1965 was a better place to live than it is today. At least that’s what people who grew up here at the time seem to think. There was not the traffic, not the environmental threats associated with reckless over-building. You did not read about the destruction of the Everglades or pollution from Lake Okeechobee damaging the quality of life in all directions. Ironically, the growth that brought about these conditions was considered a boon at the time. Modern highways, I-95 and 595, were great advancements. Well, drive them today. And rail transit is now a necessity. It should have been 40 years ago.
We can recall visiting Inverrary when Jackie Gleason launched a golf tournament. The place had a spectacular landscaped entrance and the whole planned development was impressive. It was the place to live. Well, the golf tournament moved. It is now The Honda Classic, played in Palm Beach Gardens. And the Inverrary so proudly launched in the early 1970s no longer exists – at least not in the form its founders envisioned. It has become a seedy sort of place, and the same can be said for much of the western area that 50 years ago was farms on somewhat soggy land. Look at Coral Springs, in 1970 being touted by Johnny Carson as a great investment. Someone who grew up there, when it truly was the place for young families, comments:
“When I grew up there you couldn’t have a better place to live. The schools were great. You could say my neighborhood was upper-middle class. In 1978 it was known as 'The City in the Country,’ which was a pretty accurate. There were many areas of forest, trees and open spaces with commercial spaces sprinkled throughout. Everybody was pretty much of the same socio-economic background. That included all races. But then the second stage of development changed everything. They built far too many apartments and duplexes. Eventually all that greenery went away with the over-building of commerce in the city. They just let too much shopping be built. The city just went down. It attracted the lower socio-economic end of all the races. Today, when I see where I lived, it’s a dump.“
Much has changed in 50 years. But, unfortunately, with the exception of a few communities, what has not changed is the idea that growth is always good. Good for what?
The large payout to former NFL players claiming brain injuries from concussions, including a number of Miami Dolphins, resembles the lawsuits won by smokers claiming lung damage. The difference is that smokers knew, or should have known, decades ago that their habit was dangerous. Terms such as “cancer sticks” and even advertising slogans such as “not a cough in a carload” were around years ago. The damage of head injuries to football players is a more recent revelation, but still old enough that one questions the reasonableness of the argument that the NFL was negligent in not protecting players in a game where the whole idea is violent collisions.
And the term “punchy” is as old as boxing, and it does not take a medical scholar to note that repeated blows to the head in any sport carry risk. In football, however, unlike boxing, it wasn’t always that way. We did not hear of men who played in the days before helmets, or in the leather helmet era, suffering dementia so severe that it has been linked to several suicides. It is ironic that the phrase “he played too many games without a helmet” has produced amusement, when in fact football may have been safer without such protection.
The first plastic helmets were designed in the late 1930s, grew popular in the late 1940s, and by the mid-50s had become common, even down to the high school level. Notre Dame was a throwback with leather helmets during the Paul Hornung era. The first hard hat we recall was not even designed for football. After World War II, helmets worn by tank crews, made of a hard synthetic material, were sometimes sold as surplus, and made a cheap football helmet for the sandlot. The men who had worn them in battle had some protection for their heads. Of course they also had several inches of steel around them.
Initially, plastic helmets did not dramatically change football. But not long after, face masks came into play, and the combination of the hard shell and the protection of a mask made players look like knights of old, ready to challenge spear and mace. As players grew bigger and faster, they learned to use their heads as weapons, and in fact until recently were even coached to do that. Football became a different and dangerous game.
A glance at films from the leather helmet era tells the story. One does not see the violent, helmet-to-helmet, cracking collisions that mark almost every play in the modern game. Players arm-tackled and hit low, trying to trip or wrestle ball carriers to the ground rather than seeking to decapitate them. Without protective masks they did not often lead with their noses. Despite rules against it, and coaches' suggestions, it is difficult for a pass rusher to avoid helmet-to-head contact with quarterbacks. Especially when knocking the quarterback around is part of tactics. Tacklers instinctively use their heads as weapons, and ball carriers tend to lower theirs for more power and to provide less of a target for the defense. Helmet-to-helmet collisions are hard to avoid.
And with the speed and size of players, a knee or a kick, even a strong slap can jar the brain inside the head inside the helmet. It may take 20 years before the long-range effect of those blows are felt, but the NFL sure feels it now: $765 million worth of hurt.
The people we talked to were all in the boating business, but we got the impression the anger – and it really is anger - over this situation extends to most people in the community. It is one thing when tourism is hurt when charter groups coming to town for what was once great fishing cancel their plans, or boat captains are forced to go out eight miles into the ocean to have good fishing. Or when those who harvest oysters find the beds destroyed, and fish are killed for miles around. But it is something else when people are warned not to go into Stuart’s many waterways because of health concerns.
As Florida Sportsman editor Karl Wickstrom previously pointed out in this blog, the official excuse for this terrible situation is concern that the levee around the lake could break, repeating a disaster that occurred in 1928. But Wickstrom, whose magazine is based in Stuart, calls that a phony position. The main reason is to protect Big Sugar, the combination of sugar and citrus growers, whose political clout is used to protect their lands south of the lake.
Before Florida embarked on the program of draining wetlands for agriculture, water from the lake flowed south into the Everglades through marshes that naturally cleaned the water. But most of that land is now farming, and rather than interfere with that industry, the Corps releases the water into rivers and estuaries east and west, destroying businesses that need clean water.
You would think that tens of thousands of people on both coasts whose quality of life is hurt could outvote a relative handful of business interests - especially since communities such as Stuart have plenty of well-heeled residents, both seasonal and full time. But it doesn’t work that way. Big Sugar contributes millions to elected officials, both local and federal, especially those in key positions, where they can influence legislation and make appointments to boards that oversee environmental issues. It also spends huge amounts on lobbyists. Almost anyone in Stuart and nearby communities will tell you that historically those legislators protect Big Sugar at the expense of their own neighbors.
What is this if not corruption? This is not the same as donating a hundred bucks to a neighbor running for city commissioner. But it is much like the gun lobby’s enormous funding against anyone advocating gun sanity. Campaign contributions in such massive amounts amount to legal bribes. And when that money is so destructive to the environment of a state whose economy is based so heavily on environment, you would think law enforcement would consider it a crime. It is a crime that they don’t.
The subject is particularly apt right now, as the undefeated team of 1972-73 was honored by the president of the United States yesterday. All real Americans are concerned that in this season of August (through January) memories, the classic uniforms worn by these heroes have been changed. The changes are not glaring. Aqua has replaced orange in stripes. Not much else. The effect is to make somewhat effeminate colors even more so. Although don’t call No. 39, aka Larry Csonka, effeminate. The question, therefore, that real Americans ask, is why? Why change the look, even mildly, worn by a team of legend? It has been 40 years and no other team has gone undefeated, and we are willing to bet several martinis that the guys in the new Dolphins uniforms will not go undefeated. Proof of that bold statement is that they have already lost two games.
It has been a lifelong crusade of this writer to oppose stupid changes in classic uniforms. Our favorite, as with all real Americans, is the New York Yankees, who still look much the way they did in the time of Ruth and Gehrig. One could say the same for other franchises, including Detroit, St. Louis (the baseball team), the Dodgers, and Notre Dame (the football team). On the opposite side, we should mention the United States Army (not the football team), which has discarded the bile green that so many of us wore since 1957, for a return to the two-tone blue the Union wore in the Civil War, itself a throwback to the Continental Army’s colors in the war against the Brits.
Back on topic. Don Shula says it does not seem like 40 years since that season of glory, until he looks in the mirror. Gold Coast magazine was there, actually the year before, when we traveled with the soon-to-be legends to Boston, where our all-time favorite photo was taken. Gold Coast also covered the team a few years later, profiling both Joe Robbie, the owner, and Doug Swift, perhaps the most unusual of an unusual collection of jocks. He is now Dr. Doug Swift, an Amherst grad who got into professional football almost on a lark, and after a brief, wonderful career, went to medical school and, as an anesthesiologist, participated in the first heart transplant at Temple University Hospital. He got us into that hospital early one Monday morning to witness a triple bypass. He did not even ask the PR people for permission, and his fellow docs that day did not know the unknown figure behind the green mask was writing a piece for The Miami Herald. Such innovation is what made him a great linebacker on the No Name Defense.
Little note here of another uniform change. The Miami Marlins (the baseball team) made another uniform change, adopting a look abandoned by most junior high teams. Nobody cared.
The news over the weekend that a federal sting had nailed two Dade County mayors and a pair of lobbyists on the same day is unusual, but a long way from a record for government corruption investigations. Some people call it entrapment, for the public officials involved did not go looking to do something illegal. The alleged bribers sought them out, but such cases usually start with a pretty good hunch that the targets have been on the take, and only needed a little baiting to prove it.
This case is small potatoes compared to some federal stings in the past. One of the biggest was in the late 1970s when a con man posing as an Arab sheik, doing much of his work in South Florida, brought down 19 people, including a U.S. senator and state senator from New Jersey, six congressmen (one from Florida), several Philadelphia city councilman and related parties.
The sting was code named Abscam and the master con-man behind the scenes, Mel Weinberg, lived in the Jensen Beach area. He agreed to work for the government in order to stay out of jail, and being paid a fee of $150,000. Nice money for doing what you love. Weinberg was an entertaining storyteller; his involvement was entertainment in itself – a Jewish guy from the Bronx pretending to represent an Arab trying to get highly placed help in various illegal activities, including political asylum and money laundering. He was profiled in Gold Coast magazine by our late colleague, Gaeton Fonzi. Much of the sting occurred in South Florida. Weinberg nicknamed a West Palm Beach hotel where many meetings took place the “Gotcha Hotel.” He described one incident where a number of marks were invited about the sheik’s yacht in Delray Beach where just about everybody else aboard, posing as guests and crew, were FBI.
The only problem was the FBI had no budget for such a lavish function. It could barely pay for the limousine to escort a phony Arab to the party. An FBI man jokingly suggested that Weinberg try to con one of the political targets – the mayor of Camden, N.J. – into paying for the event.
Recalled Weinberg in the 1981 article: “So that night I call the mayor and tell, 'We’re gonna throw this party in your honor but we’re gonna do it the Arab way. The Arab way is that you have to pay for it.' He says, 'What do you mean, I have to pay?' So I explained to him the Arab way and how we don’t want to insult the Emir Yassir Habib by making him pay for the party. The mayor says, 'Well, hey, Mel, no problem.' Then he conned a Mafiso figure who has a produce business, supplies all the restaurants, the mayor cons him out of the food and the mayor himself buys the booze.”
The night was a stunning success, highlighted by the presentation of a knife bought by Weinberg for $2.75 at a flea market. They cleaned it up, put some chrome on it, and presented it to the mayor by Emir Yassir Habib (an FBI guy) as an Arab symbol of everlasting friendship.
Unlike the recent Miami event, the political types were not snared all at once. The FBI only ended its work when news media began to pick up the story. Weinberg, whose contempt for public servants was manifest, told Fonzi that given enough time he could have done better. Weinberg explained: “I think we would have gotten one-third of Congress. I once said Congress was a bunch of perverts, crooks and drunks. You may laugh at that, but it’s true.”
Although probably not part of his contract, Weinberg found himself tutoring the FBI agents in the art of the con.
“The FBI had never done anything like this before,” Weinberg told Fonzi. “The only one who was used to setting things up like that was me. They went along but they had second thoughts a lot of times. They used to fight me. I mean they still believe in wearing Sears & Roebuck suits. Their way of thinking and doing business is not the way a con man does it. Every time you suggested something - like using a limousine, for instance – you had to argue like mad to get them to go along. I used to get aggravated sometimes so much that they were gonna blow it.”
The FBI men involved in the recent sting likely benefited from the Abscam experience. Probably they dressed a little better, possibly in Jos. A. Bank suits. Buy one, get one free.
