[Dialogue] Abramoff's Last Stand

Harry Wainwright h-wainwright at charter.net
Fri Nov 4 11:45:16 EST 2005


Folks, I could not resist sending this. Peace, Harry 
  _____  




Published on Thursday, November 3, 2005 by The Nation
<http://www.thenation.com> 

Abramoff's Last Stand 

by Ari Berman 

Even in Washington, the rise and fall of Jack Abramoff is breathtaking. At
his peak he commanded $750-an-hour lobbying fees and maintained impeccable
ties to the leaders of the conservative movement, where he was known as the
"godfather" of Tom DeLay's lobbying network. DeLay himself once called
Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." 

Now Abramoff is perhaps the most radioactive figure in the nation's capital,
thanks to the revelations last year that he and partner Michael Scanlon, a
former DeLay aide, defrauded a half-dozen Indian tribes of $82 million in
lobbying fees between 2001 and 2004. He is the subject of a wide-ranging
interagency criminal probe in Washington and has been indicted in Florida on
wire fraud and conspiracy charges in the purchase of SunCruz Casinos, whose
previous owner was shot dead months after Abramoff acquired the company. 

The Indian probe, focused on the exorbitant fees tribes were charged by
Abramoff and Scanlon to lobby on Indian gaming issues, has implicated DeLay,
House Administration Committee chairman Bob Ney, antitax activist Grover
Norquist and former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, among others. The
government's top procurement official, David Safavian, was arrested in
September for obstructing the Justice Department's investigation into
Abramoff. Bush's nominee for Deputy Attorney General, Tyco executive Timothy
Flanigan, withdrew his nomination after disclosing that Abramoff had lobbied
on Tyco's behalf. 

The Senate's Committee on Indian Affairs, chaired by John McCain, has
prompted a flurry of headlines about Abramoff since its investigation began
in September 2004. It has opened a window into Abramoff and Scanlon's lurid
world of bogus Christian front groups, self-enriching charitable
organizations, expletive-filled e-mails and lavish Congressional junkets,
all seemingly driven by Gordon Gekko's famous mantra from the movie Wall
Street: "Greed is good." The investigation has provided a dizzying insight
into how Washington works--or doesn't. Abramoff, as the chairman of the
Coushatta tribe of Louisiana testified Wednesday, "is the
golden-boy-gone-bad of the American political system." (For the full
backstory, see Michael Crowley's "A Lobbyist in Full.") 

Wednesday marked the last of four scheduled committee hearings, and the
first time a high-ranking Bush Administration official, former Deputy
Secretary of the Interior Steven Griles, has been caught in the committee's
crosshairs--a precursor, perhaps, of things to come. A GOP source involved
in the federal investigation called his testimony "a big deal, a really big
deal." 

According to earlier reporting by the Washington Post and testimony
Wednesday by Michael Rossetti, former counsel to Interior Secretary Gail
Norton, Abramoff repeatedly lobbied Griles in 2002 and 2003 to deny land
rights to the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, whose plan to build a casino in
Louisiana threatened the livelihood of the neighboring Coushatta tribe,
which Abramoff eventually milked for $36 million in lobbying fees. 

Griles, like so many Washington insiders enmeshed in this scandal,
immediately sought to distance himself from Abramoff. "My relationship with
Mr. Abramoff was the same as with other lobbyists, nothing more and nothing
less," he testified Wednesday. 

Rossetti flatly disagreed. "I am aware that Mr. Griles in late 2003 became
very interested in the decision-making process and the Secretary's meetings
with respect to the Jena's in Louisiana," he testified. A series of e-mails
released by the committee back Rosetti up. "We have e-mails and e-mails and
e-mails where Abramoff says he is meeting with you," the committee's ranking
Democrat, Byron Dorgan, told Griles. At one point Griles allegedly accepted
a thick binder of anti-Jena literature from Abramoff. Not only did Abramoff
meet with Griles at Interior; he also offered him a job, possibly in
violation of federal conflict-of-interest statutes. 

"This cannot be shared with anyone not on this distribution list," Abramoff
wrote in an email to colleagues with the subject head "Griles." I met with
him tonight. He is ready to leave Interior and will most likely be coming to
join us." Griles, a former lobbyist who spent half his time at Interior
under internal investigation for steering favors to former clients in the
energy sector, ended up becoming a partner in a different lobbying firm, a
prime example of a revolving-door culture between government and special
interests that has spun wildly out of control. "Clearly, lobbying reform is
one of those issues that will be addressed" after the investigation, said
McCain. 

Abramoff's conduit to Griles was Italia Federici, president of the Council
of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), a pro-industry front group
founded by Norton and Norquist in 1998. Thus far, Norton has not been
implicated in any of the wrongdoing. To woo Interior, Abramoff convinced
three tribes to donate $225,000 to Federici's organization, whose tax-exempt
status is now in jeopardy. (Federici dodged a subpoena Wednesday but will
likely appear before the committee next week.) When Abramoff held a
fundraiser for CREA at his restaurant, Signatures, Griles personally invited
colleagues at Interior. The circumstances of that dinner will be one of the
many questions Federici, publicly, and Abramoff, privately, will soon be
forced to explain. 

"All we did is follow the money," McCain said after the hearing. His
investigation is a testament to how much Congress can accomplish when it
simply does its job. 

Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation
<http://www.thenation.com> , based in Washington, DC, and a Nation Institute
Puffin Foundation writing fellow. 

C 2005 The Nation 

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