Bert Lance

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Thomas Bertram Lance, known as Bert Lance, (Born June 3, 1931 in Gainesville, Georgia) is an American politician and businessman.

Lance was a close adviser and friend to candidate for President Jimmy Carter, during Carter's successful 1976 campaign. After Carter's victory, Lance was named director of the Office of Management and the Budget (OMB). Within six months of Lance's assuming this position, questions were raised by the press and Congress about mismanagement and corruption when Lance was Chairman of the Board of Calhoun National Bank of Calhoun, Georgia. He became an embarrassment to Carter's administration, especially given the reputation that Carter had tried to build of uncorruptablity in the wake of the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration earlier in the 1970s. Lance resigned as OMB director on September 21, 1977. In the very public trial that followed, Mr. Lance was subsequently acquitted of all charges.

[edit] Banking career and BCCI

In 1981, Lance returned to the Calhoun National Bank, again as Chairman. He left in 1986.

Press reports have established that Lance was at least peripherally involved in the BCCI scandal of the 1980s and early 1990s. He was in any case involved in deals with notable BCCI luminaries such as Agha Hasan Abedi, Mochtar Riady and Ghaith Pharaon^[1] and P. S. Prasad^[2], and joined with Arkansas-based power investor Jackson Stephens in facilitating BCCI's takeover of Financial General Bankshares. An article by Mike McAlary in the New York Post asserted that Lance and Stephens made millions in the wake of BCCI's collapse.^[3]

[edit] Popular references

Shortly after Lance's resignation as OMB Director, on the Saturday Night Live television show, John Belushi (playing Lance) and Dan Aykroyd (playing Jimmy Carter) performed an advertising parody. The skit was a commercial for the "National Express" credit card, a parody of then-current American Express commercials. ^[4]

One famous press article that contributed greatly to the groundswell against Bert Lance in 1976 was an article by William Safire, called Carter's Broken Lance, for which Safire earned a Pulitzer Prize.

[edit] References

^ http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/chronpop/2147
^ http://www.scu.edu/law/FacWebPage/Neustadter/contractsebook/main/cases/FDICparolevidence.htm
^ New York Post, Feb. 7, 1992, Bill Clinton Banker’s BCCI Link, by Mike McAlary
^ http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77alance.phtml

Directors of the United States Office of Management and Budget
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