The 10 Worst Congressmen

8. THE CONSPIRACY NUT
CURT WELDON (R-PA.)

Weldon might be laughed off as a harmless crank if he weren't vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee. When he doesn't like the intelligence he hears from America's spy agencies, he makes up some of his own. He continues to insist that Saddam Hussein had WMDs -- and smuggled them to Syria prior to the U.S. invasion. He promotes the moonbat theory that a Special Forces unit called "Able Danger" flagged three 9/11 hijackers prior to the attack on the Twin Towers -- a flight of fancy discredited by the 9/11 Commission. He even developed his own super-secret source -- code-named "Ali" -- to provide him with intelligence on Iran. The problem was, Ali turned out to be a pal of Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iran-Contra go-between rejected by the CIA for fabricating intelligence.

"Curt Weldon has outlived his usefulness to the country," says House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. "He's seeing ghosts and conspiracies."

A former fire chief who speaks fluent Russian, Weldon was instrumental in keeping Ronald Reagan's fantasy of a missile-defense system alive during the Clinton years. But Weldon isn't just crazy. "He's one of the slimiest members of Congress," says Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Companies with business before Weldon's committees have directed $1 million in lobbying deals to his daughter and sponsored his son's race-car operation.

Weldon also has an ugly streak that would make Karl Rove blush. During his current re-election campaign, he criticized his opponent, retired Vice Adm. Joe Sestak, for seeking treatment for his daughter's brain tumor at a hospital outside of Pennsylvania. "Using my daughter's illness for political purposes," Sestak responds, "is simply beyond the pale."

TIM DICKINSON