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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (15367)	5/2/2005 4:06:24 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 362661

I had a feeling ya'll wouldn't be too gung ho over it.... A Lobbyist in Full By MICHAEL CROWLEY Published: May 1, 2005 It was December 2001, and he was a kingpin of Republican Washington, one of the city's richest and best-connected lobbyists. His former personal assistant had gone to work for Karl Rove, the new president's top political adviser; he was close friends with the powerful Republican congressman from Texas, Tom DeLay, a relationship most of his competitors would kill to boast of. He was making millions on fees of up to $750 per hour; he was the proprietor of two city restaurants; and he was even a man of good works -- a charitable giver and the founder of a private religious school in the Maryland suburbs. Dressed in expensive suits, he moved around the capital in a BMW outfitted with a computer screen, often headed to one of the countless fund-raisers he gave for Republican congressmen and senators at Redskins and Orioles and Wizards games in his private sky boxes. Jack Abramoff was a man in full. Advertisement But he was still expanding. The scent of money was coming from the Saginaw Chippewa, the owners of the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort -- a $400-million-a-year enterprise in Mt. Pleasant, Mich. Abramoff and his informal business partner, Michael Scanlon, an independent public-relations consultant who had been a spokesman in DeLay's Congressional office, had begun to specialize in representing Indian tribes with casino operations. They hoped for a contract with this tribe. ''Did we win it?'' Scanlon wrote back. ''The [expletive] troglodytes didn't vote on you today,'' Abramoff responded. ''What's a troglodyte?'' Scanlon asked. (In his early 30's, he had much to learn from his master.) ''What am I, a dictionary? :) It's a lower form of existence, basically,'' Abramoff wrote. ''I like these guys,'' he hastened to add, yet then continued: ''They are plain stupid. . . . Morons.'' Ultimately, the lower life forms would pay Abramoff and Scanlon $14 million -- just a fraction of the $66 million the two men's businesses would take in from six different Indian tribes over the next three years. (Abramoff would offer his lobbying services to tribes at relatively modest rates, but then tell them that they couldn't afford not to hire Scanlon, who charged astronomical amounts for his P.R. services and then subcontracted much of the work at budget rates; he also supposedly kicked back millions to Abramoff.) By last September, however, the ride was over. That's when dozens of Abramoff's ''Sopranos''-like e-mail messages were released at a hearing before the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. The e-mail messages, seized from Abramoff's computer, told a story of front groups, secret kickbacks, manipulated tribal elections and political payoffs. ''What sets this tale apart, what makes it truly extraordinary, is the extent and degree of the apparent exploitation and deceit,'' an outraged John McCain said at the hearing. ''Even in this town, where huge sums are routinely paid as the price of political access, the figures are astonishing.'' Nearly as shocking as the sums was the coarseness of the e-mail messages, especially given that Abramoff was a devout Orthodox Jew who presented himself publicly as a man of conservative values. About one tribal client Abramoff had written to Scanlon, ''These mofos are the stupidest idiots in the land for sure.'' In another e-mail message he wrote, ''we need to get some $ from those monkeys!!!!'' Money was always the imperative, the language of his desire strong enough to make the 46-year-old father of five sound like a frat dude in a beer ad: ''Da man! You iz da man! Do you hear me?! You da man!! How much $$ coming tomorrow? Did we get some more $$ in?'' At the hearing, Abramoff cut a handsome figure in a dark suit. His short black hair was neatly trimmed and combed. With his square jaw and dark eyes, he might have passed for a dashing Baldwin brother. But Abramoff had the look of a condemned man. (He would tell me later that the experience reminded him of ''that scene in 'Braveheart,' when he's brought in on a gurney to be cut up, with the crowd assembled.'') As the assembled senators lambasted his dealings -- ''a pathetic, disgusting example of greed run amok,'' said one -- Abramoff would merely invoke his right not to testify.