Pierce to Again Refuse to Testify in HUD Probe

WASHINGTON — Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr., who refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing last month, said Thursday that he will invoke his constitutional rights and maintain his silence at sessions scheduled for today and next week.

Pierce urged the panel to cancel plans for today’s scheduled hearing, but he was rebuffed by the subcommittee investigating scandals at his department during the Ronald Reagan Administration.

“Mr. Pierce is concerned that there continues to be an atmosphere wherein he remains a target of the subcommittee’s hearings,” his attorneys wrote to Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), chairman of the housing and employment subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee.

They said: “It is our hope that some time in the near future the present level of tension may be reduced such that Mr. Pierce can reconsider” his decision not to answer questions.

Three other former top HUD officials also have refused to testify in the 6-month-old congressional investigation. The panel has heard from dozens of developers, consultants and attorneys who did business with the department about mismanagement and political favoritism during Pierce’s tenure but has received little testimony from former high agency officials.

Pierce based his refusal on the constitutional provision, found in the Fifth Amendment, that no one may be compelled to give evidence that may tend to incriminate him.

Pierce’s attorneys, meanwhile, released documents they obtained from HUD and said the papers raise questions about the testimony of a former HUD official, Shirley McVay Wiseman.

Wiseman has testified that she was ordered by Pierce to release money for a North Carolina housing project, a claim that has prompted several lawmakers to accuse Pierce of perjury because he had previously testified that he never personally ordered any individual project to be financed.

Wiseman told Congress in July that, when she refused to approve the project, she was called by Pierce. “I want the project funded,” she quoted him as saying.

The documents, however, show that Wiseman told department investigators that Pierce’s top aide, Deborah Gore Dean, called her and ordered the project funded.