skirts awfully close. you re given a benefit to some your friends and neighbors or somebody off the street wouldn t get because they were members of congress or working for members of congress. what i found amazing in your report is that according to the report, these sweetheart deals basically came about because so many congressional staffers were actually complaining to the countrywide lobbyists about their own personal loans, so the lobbyists sort of spent the first 30 minutes of meetings dealing with people s personal complaints. that just seems outrageous to me. it does, particularly when you re on the committees that are charged with tightening up the rules and regulations as we were dealing with all these bad loans and whatnot. and these people, they were then so they took this program, internal program and called it friends of angelo and decided to go ahead and start helping these people. and it s just wrong. it didn t smell right, didn t look right because it w
angelo program. it names a string of lawmakers from both party, democrats and republicans who benefited from this vip treatment. kent conrad. former democratic senator chris dodd. republican house armed services committee chairman buck mckeon. all three deny any wrongdoing. the report also says the former ceo of fannie mae, officials at freddie mac and a secretary of housing and urban development were also in this friends of angelo program. so were congressional staffers from both parties that played a role in legislation that affected countrywide. these vips got, as i said, favorable mortgage rates and points. one, adolfous towns, was a chairman of the house oversight committee, the very same committee investigating countrywide. he also denies any wrongdoing. according to the house report, documents and testimony obtained documents and testimony obtained by the committee show the vip loan program was a tool used by country wide to build good will with lawmakers and other ind