On tape: Stevems' friends plotted to hide free work

WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Stevens' friends went out of their way to help pay his bills, according to court testimony Tuesday, even conspiring to hide how much money they paid for something as minor as plumbing repairs at the senator's home in Alaska.

"I'll just tell Ted to give me a check," his friend Bill Allen said in a conversation secretly recorded in 2006 by FBI agents investigating corruption in Alaska politics.

"You don't have to deposit it, you just have to make a copy of it," said Stevens' friend, Robert Persons, who kept an eye on Stevens' home when he was out of town. "Then if it ever did come up, you can say, 'I didn't deposit that? Hell, I know I did.'"

The recorded telephone conversations, played in court Tuesday and near the end of the prosecution's case against the senator, came as close to a smoking gun as Stevens' corruption trial has had. Stevens, 84, is on trial for lying on his Senate financial disclosure forms about more than $250,000 in gifts and renovations to his home in Girdwood, Alaska. The gifts were largely from Allen, the star witness in the corruption trial that started Sept. 22.

Prosecutors used Allen to attack Stevens' claim that he didn't know the extent of free work that Allen and his company, VECO Corp., did on the cabin.

Before he left the stand, Allen quoted Stevens as saying during one of their many dinners together, "I know you're putting more work in there than what you're saying."

Judge reprimands witness

Anchorage attorney Robert Bundy, who has been sitting in the spectator section of the courtroom in Washington while his client has been testifying, was accused Monday by the judge of trying to signal to Allen on the stand.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said. "That's borderline obstruction of justice."

Stevens' chief lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, asked Allen whether he had seen Bundy in the courtroom Monday, and asked whether Allen saw him nodding his head when Allen gave certain answers.

"No," Allen said, "no, he did not do that."

Bundy's colleague, Creighton Magid, said Tuesday that the Anchorage lawyer and former U.S. attorney is "absolutely torn up by this" and "vehemently" denied signaling to his client.

With the jury gone but the room still filled with lawyers, reporters and other spectators, Sullivan demanded that Bundy identify himself. The judge also threatened Bundy with a contempt citation and an ouster from the courtroom.