JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.
In 1981 and 1982, five executives of The Boeing Company, Inc. (Boeing), resigned or took early retirement to accept important positions in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Upon termination of employment by Boeing, and shortly before formation of an employment relationship with the Government, Boeing made a lump-sum payment to each in an amount that was intended to mitigate the substantial financial loss each employee expected to suffer by reason of his change in employment. The question we must decide is whether these payments violated a provision of the Criminal Code that prohibits private parties from paying, and Government employees from receiving, supplemental compensation for the employee's Government service.
The essential facts are not disputed. Each employee resigned because he planned to accept a specific federal position. These shifts required forgoing the higher salaries that each employee would have earned at Boeing and also
In 1986 the United States filed a civil complaint alleging that the payments had been made "to supplement each individual defendant's compensation as a federal employee" and that they "created a conflict of interest situation which induced the breach of the fiduciary duty of undivided loyalty [which] each individual defendant owed to the United States, as measured by 18 U. S. C. § 209 and/or the common law." App. 12. The complaint sought relief from Boeing in the aggregate amount of the payments made and the imposition of a constructive trust on the moneys received by each of the individual petitioners.
After a full trial, the District Court ruled against the Government on several alternative grounds. 653 F.Supp. 1381 (ED Va. 1987). First, it held that § 209(a) had not been violated
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals reversed. 845 F.2d 476 (CA4 1988). It held that employment status at the time of payment is not an element of a § 209(a) violation and that the District Court's finding that the payments were not intended to be supplemental compensation for services as employees of the United States was clearly erroneous. Id., at 480. It further held that the prophylactic character of the conflict of interest laws made it unnecessary for the Government to prove any actual injury and that the defendants' disclosure of the payments did not constitute a defense to an action for their recovery. It therefore concluded that both the individual defendants and Boeing were liable, "although double recovery by the government is not permitted." Id., at 482.
We granted certiorari to review the Court of Appeals' construction of this important statute. 490 U.S. 1003 (1989).
I
At the outset, we note that Congress has not created an express civil remedy for violations of § 209(a). The Government
In determining the meaning of the statute, we look not only to the particular statutory language, but to the design of the statute as a whole and to its object and policy. K mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 486 U.S. 281, 291 (1988); Pilot Life Ins. Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U.S. 41, 51 (1987). Moreover, because the governing standard is set forth in a criminal statute, it is appropriate to apply the rule of lenity in resolving any ambiguity in the ambit of the statute's coverage. To the extent that the language or history of § 209 is uncertain, this "time-honored interpretive guideline" serves to ensure both that there is fair warning of the boundaries of criminal conduct and that legislatures, not courts, define criminal liability. Liparota v. United States, 471 U.S. 419, 427 (1985); see also United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 347-348 (1971).
II
Section 209 is one of almost two dozen statutory provisions addressing bribery, graft, and conflicts of interest that were revised and compiled at Chapter 11 of the Criminal Code in
Section 209(a) contains two prohibitions, neither of which directly specifies when a payment must be made or received. The first paragraph is directed to every person who "receives" any salary supplement "as compensation for his services as an officer or employee" of an executive agency of the Government. The second paragraph is directed to every person who "pays," or makes any contribution or supplement to the salary of, "any such officer or employee" under circumstances that would make the receipt of the contribution a violation of the subsection. A literal reading of the second paragraph — particularly the use of the term "any such officer or employee" — supports the conclusion that the payee must be a Government employee at the time the payment is made. Similarly, the paragraph's additional prohibitions on one who "makes any contribution to, or in any way supplements the salary of," also refer to "any such officer or employee." Indeed, since the prohibited conduct is merely the receipt or the payment of the salary supplement, it follows that a violation of § 209(a) either is, or is not, committed at the time the payment is made. Despite the awkward drafting of the paragraphs, they appear to be coextensive in their coverage of both sides of a single transaction. The text of § 209(a) thus indicates that employment status is an element of the offense.
III
The predecessor of § 209(a) was enacted in 1917 as an amendment to the Bureau of Education's legislative appropriation and provided that "no Government official or employee shall receive any salary in connection with his services" from a non-Government source.
We attach greater significance to two other changes that Congress made when it revised the bribery and conflict laws in 1962. In § 201 it added language extending the prohibition against bribery of a public official to a "person who has been selected to be a public official," which it defined as "any person who has been nominated or appointed to be a public official, or has been officially informed he will be so nominated or appointed."
Further evidence confirming that § 209(a) requires employment status at the time of payment is found in subsections (b) and (c) of § 209.
IV
Congress appropriately enacts prophylactic rules that are intended to prevent even the appearance of wrongdoing and that may apply to conduct that has caused no actual injury to the United States. Section 209(a) is such a rule. Legislation designed to prohibit and to avoid potential conflicts of interest in the performance of governmental service is supported by the legitimate interest in maintaining the public's
A special committee on the federal conflict of interest laws of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York prepared a scholarly report in 1960 that the Government and the petitioners agree accurately describes the policies implemented by § 209(a). The report stated:
It is noteworthy that this report characterized the relevant rule as one "prohibiting two payrolls and two paymasters for the same employee on the same job." At least two of the three policy justifications for the rule — the concern that the private paymaster will have an economic hold over the employee and the concern about bitterness among fellow employees — apply to ongoing payments but have little or no application to an unconditional preemployment severance payment. Of course, the concern that the employee might tend to favor his former employer would be enhanced by a generous payment, but the absence of any ongoing relationship may mitigate that concern, particularly if other rules disqualify the employee from participating in any matter involving a former employer. Thus, although the policy justifications for § 209(a) are not wholly inapplicable to unconditional preemployment severance payments, they by no means are as directly implicated as they are in the cases of ongoing salary supplements.
An important countervailing consideration also cannot be ignored. As President Kennedy recognized in 1961 when he sent his message to Congress calling for a wholesale revision of the conflict of interest laws:
The President described some of the statutes that were then on the books as wholly inadequate, while others "create[d] wholly unnecessary obstacles to recruiting qualified people for Government service." Id., at 3.
Attorney General Kennedy commented on this same concern in his memorandum on the 1962 legislation. After explaining that one of the "main purposes of the new legislation" was "to help the Government obtain the temporary or intermittent services of persons with special knowledge and skills whose principal employment is outside the Government," he predicted that the new legislation would "lead to a significant expansion of the pool of talent on which the departments and agencies can draw for their special needs."
The severance payments made to the petitioners in this case have a somewhat nebulous character. On the one hand, as the Government correctly argues, they give rise to a possible appearance of impropriety that is certainly one of the concerns
Finally, as we have already observed, we are construing a criminal statute and are therefore bound to consider application of the rule of lenity. To the extent that any ambiguity over the temporal scope of § 209(a) remains, it should be resolved in the petitioners' favor unless and until Congress plainly states that we have misconstrued its intent.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is accordingly reversed.
It is so ordered.
I agree with the Court that the Government has failed to prove that any of the petitioners violated 18 U. S. C. § 209 (a), and that its claim to a common-law remedy premised upon such a violation accordingly must fail. My reasons, however, are somewhat different. I do not think that payments which are made before or after the term of federal employment are necessarily excluded from § 209(a); but I do think that payments which are neither made periodically during
I
Subsection (a) of § 209 makes criminally liable:
I agree with the Court that these two clauses are "coextensive in their coverage of both sides of a single transaction," ante, at 159, so that if the phrase "such officer or employee" in the second clause implies a requirement that the payment be made while the recipient was an officer or employee, such a requirement must have been meant in the first clause as well. Surely, however, the evidence of such an implication should be fairly clear before one concludes that Congress has slipped in an additional requirement in such an unusual fashion, importing it retroactively into the earlier clause from a provision that is otherwise only the mirror image of what preceded. To my mind the evidence is not only not fairly clear; it is nonexistent. The Court is led astray, I think, by its perception that the statute "is directed to every person who `pays' . . . `any such officer or employee,' " ibid. — which leads to the reasonable enough contention that unless the recipient is an officer or employee at the time of payment the provision is not violated. But in order to make "any such officer or employee" the object of the verb "pays," the clause must be rendered ungrammatical, reading "[w]hoever pays. . . any such officer or employee under circumstances which
The Court apparently concedes that when the first clause of subsection (a) refers to someone who "receives any salary, or any contribution to or supplementation of salary, as compensation for . . . services as an officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States," it does not imply that the recipient must be an officer or employee at the time of receipt. There is no more reason to think that the second clause imports such a requirement when it refers to someone who "pays, or makes any contribution to, or in any way supplements, the salary of any such officer or employee." Perhaps it is not possible to pay an officer when he is not an officer;
For a different reason, unaddressed by the Court, I agree that the payment in the present case is not covered by § 209(a).
II
It is an ancient and sound rule of construction that each word in a statute should, if possible, be given effect. An interpretation that needlessly renders some words superfluous is suspect. In seeking to hold the present petitioners liable, the Government treats § 209(a) as though it read "[w]hoever receives compensation for his services as an officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States Government. . . from any source other than the Government of the United States." But it does not read that way. Another of the ethics statutes, 18 U. S. C. § 203, does read that way, covering the receipt or payment of "any compensation" for services as a Government employee relating to a particular matter. Subsection 209(a), however, does not refer to "whoever receives compensation," but to "whoever receives any salary, or any contribution to or supplementation of salary, as compensation." The second clause, as we have seen, is likewise entirely tied to salary. It would be bad construction to ignore this language (if it can be given reasonable meaning) in the interpretation of any statute; but it is particularly bad construction to ignore it in a criminal statute, where the rule of lenity applies. See Adamo Wrecking Co. v. United States, 434 U.S. 275, 284-285 (1978).
Salary is not the same as compensation, but is one species of that genus. It is "[t]he recompense or consideration paid, or stipulated to be paid, to a person at regular intervals for services . . . ; fixed compensation regularly paid, as by the year, quarter, month, or week." Webster's Second New International
Under the original version of § 209(a), enacted in 1917, it was even clearer that "contribution to" or "supplementation of" salary envisioned regular, salary-like payments. That read in relevant part as follows:
Even when Congress amended the provision in 1948, it left the structure substantially the same, making criminally liable:
In each of these versions, if one interpreted the phrase "make(s) any contribution to, or in any way supplement(s) the salary of" to include not only periodic payments but also lump-sum payments, then the prohibitions upon payor and payee would not match: the Government official who received a lump-sum payment would be guiltless (since he did not "receive
I must acknowledge that subsections (d) and (e) of § 209 exclude from the coverage of subsection (a) some payments that are not periodic payments, so that the interpretation I have described is no more successful than the Government's in giving effect to all the language of the section. But superfluous exceptions (to "make assurance doubly sure") are a more common phenomenon than the insertion of utterly pointless language at the very center of the substantive restriction. Moreover, since (as I shall discuss in Part III below) the Government is not so foolish as to apply literally its interpretation that all lump-sum payments as compensation are covered, subsections (d) and (e) turn out to be largely superfluous under its view of the statute as well. See May 31, 1961, Memorandum of Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) (advising that the proposed subsection (d) would be "a clarification of existing law" rather than "an exemption" from 18 U. S. C. § 1914 (1958 ed.)); 33 Op. Atty. Gen. 273 (1922); 42 Op. Atty. Gen. 111, 125 (1962). In any case, granting that the only reasonable implication of subsections (d) and (e) is that subsection (a) applies to payments in addition to periodic payments, it remains true that the only reasonable meaning of subsection
It may seem strange nowadays that Congress should think of categorically criminalizing only periodic payments (salary or supplementation of salary), rather than all payments, to Government employees. But it would not have seemed strange in 1917, when the substance of subsection (a) was originally enacted. There existed at that time, in apparently more than one Government agency, a regular practice of hiring, at nominal salary, individuals whose real compensation would be paid by private organizations. 54 Cong. Rec. 2039-2047, 4011-4013; B. Manning, Federal Conflict of Interest Law 148-149 (1964). Cf. 31 Op. Atty. Gen. 470 (1919); 2 Comp. Gen. 775 (1923). Apart from the fact that Congress often acts only "one step at a time" to eliminate one abuse that has become the focus of its attention but not all allied abuses, there are good practical reasons why the payment or supplementation of salary would have been singled out. Surely receipt of a regular salary from a private source poses the greatest risk of corruption; one commonly characterizes the corrupt official by saying that "he is on someone's payroll." Moreover, the payment or supplementation of salary can be categorically eliminated (as lump-sum payments cannot) without criminalizing a large number of harmless, perfectly innocent, and often desirable, arrangements. For example: It is rare, I think, for well-to-do parents to make periodic, salary-like payments to their child so that he might continue in a low-paying Government job that they are proud of his performing and wish him to continue. I suspect it is not at all rare, however, for such parents to make occasional gifts to the child, or to leave a particularly generous bequest, with precisely that end in mind. Under the interpretation of § 209 adopted by the Government, each such act of generosity,
III
I must address at some length what seems to me the strongest argument against interpreting § 209(a) to mean what it says: the fact that it has long been interpreted differently. On analysis, that proves to be a weaker consideration than one might suppose. Indeed, the long and unsatisfactory experience with a countertextual interpretation is one of the prime reasons for adhering to what Congress enacted.
Two points must be made clear at the outset: First, the substantial history of interpretation that exists is not a history of judicial interpretation. In the more than 70 years that § 209 and its predecessors have been in existence, this Court has discussed them, in passing, only three times, see Muschany v. United States, 324 U.S. 49, 67 (1945); United States v. Myers, 320 U.S. 561, 567 (1944); International R. Co. v. Davidson, 257 U.S. 506, 515 (1922). Prior to the present litigation, the Courts of Appeals have discussed them only three times, see United States v. Oberhardt, 887 F.2d 790, 793-794 (CA7 1989); United States v. Raborn, 575 F.2d 688, 691-692 (CA9 1978); United States v. Muntain, 198 U. S. App. D. C. 22, 27-28, 610 F.2d 964, 969-970 (1979), and the District Courts only four times, see United States v. Pezzello, 474 F.Supp. 462, 463 (ND Tex. 1979); Exchange National Bank of Chicago v. Abramson, 295 F.Supp. 87, 89-91 (Minn. 1969); United States v. Gerdel, 103 F.Supp. 635, 638-639 (ED Mo. 1952); United States v. Morse, 292 F. 273, 276-277 (SDNY 1922). Only one of these scarce judicial references, a 1952 District Court opinion, explicitly discusses the issue of salary versus lump-sum payment, agreeing with the Government's position here; that discussion, moreover, was by its own admission "gratuitous,"
Second, the vast body of administrative interpretation that exists — innumerable advisory opinions not only of the Attorney General, the OLC, and the Office of Government Ethics, but also of the Comptroller General and the general counsels for various agencies — is not an administrative interpretation that is entitled to deference under Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837 (1984). The law in question, a criminal statute, is not administered by any agency but by the courts. It is entirely reasonable and understandable that federal officials should make available to their employees legal advice regarding its interpretation; and in a general way all agencies of the Government must interpret it in order to assure that the behavior of their employees is lawful — just as they must interpret innumerable other civil and criminal provisions in order to operate lawfully; but that is not the sort of specific responsibility for administering the law that triggers Chevron. The Justice Department, of course, has a very specific responsibility to determine for itself what this statute means, in order to decide when to prosecute; but we have never thought that the interpretation of those charged with prosecuting criminal statutes is entitled to deference.
Besides being unentitled to what might be called ex officio deference under Chevron, this expansive administrative interpretation of § 209(a) is not even deserving of any persuasive effect. Any responsible lawyer advising on whether particular conduct violates a criminal statute will obviously
The body of administrative interpretation is nonetheless useful in the present case, for one purpose: It demonstrates beyond question the unmanageable problems that arise when § 209(a) is not interpreted as it was written, limited to the payment or supplementation of salary. The administrative history of § 209(a) is a record of poignant attempts by the Attorney General and the OLC to derive reasonable results from the rigid and undiscriminating criminal statute they have invented. To follow their logic is to glimpse behind the looking glass.
An example is employee receipt of cash awards from nonprofit organizations for meritorious public service. Unless one believes that the statutory term "as compensation" (or its predecessor term "in connection with") imports the commonlaw requirement of bargained-for consideration — which no one contends — it is difficult to imagine any lump-sum payments more clearly covered by § 209(a) than cash grants conferred specifically to reward the work of Government officials. But the Justice Department has approved them. The first OLC opinion doing so, rendered on June 26, 1959, exemplifies the benign if unpredictable discretion that has guided the administrative interpretation of this criminal statute. The opinion quotes a 1922 Attorney General's opinion to make the obvious point that the " `object of the provision . . .
There would certainly be no objection to this "we'll-look-at-all-the-circumstances-and-see-if-it-looks-dangerous" approach if it were applied in the exercise of the President's discretion-laden power to "prescribe regulations for the conduct of employees in the executive branch," 5 U. S. C. § 7301. But it is an unprecedented way of interpreting the criminal law.
Of course the same could have been said of the private payment of the salaries of federal employees that was prevalent in 1917, see supra, at 175, so long as the amounts were no more than necessary to induce the employees to continue in their federal jobs, and (in combination with their federal salary) no more than they could have earned elsewhere.
Finally, I may mention the 1940 opinion from Attorney General Robert Jackson to President Roosevelt, advising that the predecessor of § 209(a) did not prohibit universities from granting leave with pay to faculty members serving as consultants to the Government — not as part of a regular sabbatical program, but only to enable the rendering of consulting services to the United States during the wartime emergency. That opinion is genuinely devoid of analysis, unless one gives that name to the ipse dixit that "[t]he payments in
As the last example shows, the liberties that the Government has taken with its interpretation of § 209(a), to the extent they appeal to anything more concrete than the "spirit" of the statute, rely upon the phrase "as compensation for" (or its predecessor, "in connection with"). The proper interpretation of § 209(a) will not eliminate that troublesome phrase, but it will eliminate most of the temptation to give it something other than a clear and constant meaning. If § 209(a) covers only the payment of salary, there would be little difficulty in following the principle that the statute is violated when the reason for paying the salary is, in whole or in part, the recipient's status as, or work that the recipient has performed or will perform as, a federal officer or employee. But one balks at applying such a clear principle to, for example, the reimbursement of transportation and lodging for a
IV
I come, finally, to applying § 209(a) as I think it must be interpreted to the facts of the present case: The payments to all the recipients here were in lump sums. Perhaps there is room for argument that they would nonetheless fall within the statute if their existence and their amounts were strictly tied to a period of federal service — that is, if they had been computed on the basis of so much per month or so much per year that each recipient promised to serve. But even this argument is eliminated by the District Court's finding that
FootNotes
"(a) Whoever receives any salary, or any contribution to or supplementation of salary, as compensation for his services as an officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States Government, of any independent agency of the United States, or of the District of Columbia, from any source other than the Government of the United States, except as may be contributed out of the treasury of any State, county, or municipality; or
"Whoever, whether an individual, partnership, association, corporation, or other organization pays, or makes any contribution to, or in any way supplements the salary of, any such officer or employee under circumstances which would make its receipt a violation of this subsection —
"Shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." 18 U. S. C. § 209(a) (enacted as Act of Oct. 23, 1962, Pub. L. 87-849, § 1(a), 76 Stat. 1125).
Boeing staff estimated payments for petitioners Kitson and Crandon using both procedures and for petitioners Jones, Paisley, and Reynolds using solely the first procedure. Each petitioner's anticipated length of Government service was thus a component of the calculation of his final payment. Final amounts were approved by Boeing's chief executive. 845 F. 2d, at 478.
"Whoever, being a Government official or employee, receives any salary in connection with his services as such an official or employee from any source other than the Government of the United States, except as may be contributed out of the treasury of any State, county, or municipality . . . ." 18 U. S. C. § 1914 (1958 ed.).
"That no part of the appropriations made for the Bureau of Education, whether for salaries or expenses or any other purpose connected therewith, shall be used in connection with any money contributed or tendered by the General Education Board or any corporate or other organization or individual in any way associated with it, either directly or indirectly, or contributed or tendered by any corporation or individual other than such as may be contributed by State, county, or municipal agencies; nor shall the Bureau of Education receive any moneys for salaries . . . ." 54 Cong. Rec. 2039 (1917).
The proviso that passed, although still located in the section addressing the Bureau of Education's appropriations, contained much broader language:
"[N]o Government official or employee shall receive any salary in connection with his services as such an official or employee from any source other than the Government of the United States, except as may be contributed out of the treasury of any State, county, or municipality, and no person, association, or corporation shall make any contribution to, or in any way supplement the salary of, any Government official or employee for the services performed by him for the Government of the United States . . . ." Act of Mar. 3, 1917, ch. 163, § 1, 39 Stat. 1106.
See International R. Co. v. Davidson, 257 U.S. 506, 515 (1922) (reading § 1 of the uncodified statute independently). This language was codified in 1934 at 5 U. S. C. § 66 (1934 ed.). For a legislative history, see Hearings on H. R. 1900 et al. before the Antitrust Subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 738-740 (1960) (Memorandum for the Attorney General Re: Conflict of Interest Statutes (1956)).
Deletion of the phrase "being a Government official or employee" had been suggested at least once before in a proposed amendment that the House Antitrust Subcommittee considered in 1958, but that did not pass. The Subcommittee staff had found the phrase did not clearly cover Members of Congress or the Judiciary, and had recommended that the section be revised to address "[w]hoever receives any salary, or any contribution to or supplementation of salary, for or in connection with his services as a Member of or Delegate to Congress or a Resident commissioner, or an officer, agent, or employee of the United States in the executive, legislative, or judicial branch . . . ." House Committee on the Judiciary, Federal Conflict of Interest Legislation, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 45, 61, 82 (Comm. Print 1958). Like § 209(a), this proposed amendment dropped the "being a Government official" clause and left the unqualified "[w]hoever receives" subject, yet its drafters did not contemplate any effect on persons not yet employed by the Government.
"(b) Nothing herein prevents an officer or employee of the executive branch of the United States Government, or of any independent agency of the United States, or of the District of Columbia, from continuing to participate in a bona fide pension, retirement, group life, health or accident insurance, profit-sharing, stock bonus, or other employee welfare or benefit plan maintained by a former employer.
"(c) This section does not apply to a special Government employee or to an officer or employee of the Government serving without compensation, whether or not he is a special Government employee, or to any person paying, contributing to, or supplementing his salary as such." 18 U. S. C. §§ 209(b), (c).
It is interesting to note that three years before this OLC opinion the Comptroller General had given the advice that receipt of the Rockefeller Public Service Awards would violate § 1914. 36 Comp. Gen. 155 (1956). At that time the grants were not lump-sum cash gifts, but continuing grants for tuition, travel, and living expenses at educational facilities. It is hard to see why, on the Government's theory, that should have made any difference.
"Donations of cash to employees by private sources are, therefore, prohibited, even though the money is to be used to purchase transportation tickets or hotel accommodations. However, where the services are furnished in kind, we believe a different conclusion is justifiable." 36 Comp. Gen. 268, 270 (1956).
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