Abramoff-Scanlon School of Sleaze

Wednesday's Senate hearings yielded more scandalous
revelations about how the dynamic lobbying duo bilked
American Indian tribes out of millions and used the money to
win elections for their Republican clients.

By Michael Scherer

Nov. 03, 2005 | Up-and-coming Republican hacks would do well
to watch closely the ongoing Senate investigations of
superstar lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his former business
partner Michael Scanlon. The power duo stand accused of
exploiting Native American tribes to the tune of roughly $66
million, laundering that money into bank accounts they
controlled and then using it to buy favors for powerful
members of Congress and the executive branch.

But they sure did know how to play the game.

Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing
Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-
Texas, sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his
strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business. In
plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent
Republican electoral victories: target religious
conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad
through complex initiatives.

"The wackos get their information through the Christian
right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone
trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the
public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs
Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to
vote against something and make sure the rest of the public
lets the whole thing slip past them." The brilliance of this
strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know
about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues,
but religious "wackos" could be tricked into supporting
gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they
were opposing it.

Another lesson from the Abramoff-Scanlon school: Pad your
public numbers. In October 2001, the lobbying team decided
to inflate the amount they were billing Indian tribes so
Abramoff could make it into a "top ten" ranking of Native
American lobbyists. They planned to tell the Coushatta tribe
that $1 million was needed for a "public affairs" strategy.
Then, by apparently falsifying an invoice from Abramoff's
law firm, Greenberg Traurig, they would reroute the money to
a charity Abramoff had founded, which was paying to build a
school for his children and give "sniper training" courses
in Israel.

It worked like a dream, mainly because nobody knew what was
happening -- not the tribe, not the law firm, and certainly
not the readers of the "top ten" ranking. Oversight was so
lacking that it did not even matter that someone misspelled
the name of Greenberg Traurig on the fraudulent invoice. "I
doubt we would be issuing an invoice with our name
misspelled," said Fred Baggett, the head of Greenberg
Traurig's governmental affairs shop, who once worked closely
with Abramoff. Asked to describe his former colleague,
Baggett offered this faint praise: "He is an amazingly
gifted person at having two sides to him."

Others were less kind. Kevin Sickey, the chairman of the
Coushatta Tribe, described Abramoff as greedy and corrupt.
"He is the golden boy gone bad of the American political
system," Sickey said. William Worfel, a former Coushatta
Tribal Council member, was even more blunt about the
lobbying team. "In my mind, they are educated thieves who
must be brought to justice," he said.

Wednesday's hearings provided just the latest in a long line
of scandalous revelations about Abramoff's lobbying
operation, which is now under investigation by two Senate
committees and the Justice Department. Sen. John McCain, R-
Ariz., who chaired the meeting, said his committee was
preparing "many" legal reforms that could prevent a repeat
of the Abramoff debacle. "We'll be coming out with that in
about a week," he said. The Indian Affairs committee is
scheduled to hold one more hearing on Abramoff before
issuing a report; it still needs to gather testimony from
Italia Federici, a close associate of Interior Secretary
Gale Norton. Federici is accused of setting up a meeting for
Abramoff with Interior Department officials after her
nonprofit company, Council of Republicans for Environmental
Advocacy, received six-figure donations from Abramoff's
clients. Environmentalists charge that Federici's company --
which was founded by Norton -- is a front for big industry
polluters. Federici was scheduled to testify Wednesday, but
has so far ducked a Senate subpoena. "I believe U.S.
marshals will do their duty," McCain said. "She has been
unable to be located."

Abramoff, meanwhile, is already facing the prospect of
significant jail time. He has been charged with fraud in
connection with an unrelated casino deal in Florida, which
ended in a gangland-style killing of the man Abramoff is
alleged to have defrauded. (Several people have been charged
with that killing, including two employees of a company
controlled by Abramoff's business partner, Adam Kidan.) At
the same time, the former top procurement official in the
White House, David Safavian, has been arrested on charges of
lying about a trip he took to Scotland with Abramoff.
Another former White House official, Timothy Flanigan,
recently withdrew his nomination to become deputy attorney
general, after it became clear that he would have to testify
under oath to the Senate about his relationship with
Abramoff.

On Wednesday, a third former Bush administration official,
J. Steven Griles, was asked to account for his relationship
with Abramoff, which is detailed in dozens of e-mails
obtained by the Senate. Griles claimed that he had never
done Abramoff's bidding, despite Abramoff's own boasts that
Griles was working on his behalf, and might even consider a
job at Greenberg Traurig after he left government. "I can't
reconcile what Mr. Abramoff put in e-mails to anyone," said
Griles, a former coal industry lobbyist who recently served
as deputy secretary of the interior.

Griles' denials were disputed by Michael Rossetti, a former
counsel to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who said Griles
had shown a "very keen interest" on one matter where
Abramoff had an interest. "Mr. Rossetti has a different
memory on that issue than I do," said Griles, who appeared
distraught, at times, during his testimony. "I don't want to
dispute a former friend of mine and a former colleague."
After the hearing, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the
conflicting testimony created confusion about the facts.
"Mr. Rossetti is very credible," McCain said. A reporter
asked if Griles was also credible. "He is certainly
sincere," said the senator.

There was much less doubt, however, about the skills of
Abramoff and Scanlon. They collected huge amounts of money
from their unwitting clients. In September of 2001, Abramoff
wrote to Scanlon asking how much money he was set to collect
from two of their Native American clients. "I need to assess
where I am at for the school's sake," he wrote, in an
apparent reference to his children's Jewish day school, the
Eshkol Academy, which Abramoff was secretly bankrolling with
the Indian money. Scanlon wrote back, "Your project on the
project as proposed is at least 800k." All in all, Abramoff
was set to earn "a total of 2.1" million dollars, Scanlon
wrote.

Abramoff responded to his business partner, "How can I say
this strongly enough: YOU IZ DA MAN."

If political infamy is the measure of a man, nobody in
Washington doubts that now.

-- By Michael Scherer

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/11/03/abramoff/