December 17, 2005
Columnist Resigns His Post, Admitting Lobbyist Paid Him
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT and PHILIP SHENON, NY TIMES

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - A senior scholar at the Cato Institute, the respected libertarian research organization, has resigned after revelations that he took payments from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing columns favorable to his clients.

The scholar, Doug Bandow, who wrote a column for the Copley News Service in addition to serving as a Cato fellow, acknowledged to executives at the organization that he had taken money from Mr. Abramoff after he was confronted about the payments by a reporter from BusinessWeek Online.

"He acknowledges he made a lapse in judgment," said Jamie Dettmer, director of communications at Cato. "There's a lot of sadness here."

Copley suspended Mr. Bandow's column.

Efforts to reach Mr. Bandow through the Cato Institute and at home were unsuccessful.

The revelation caps a year of disclosures about partisan payments to seemingly independent writers, including Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist and television host, who received payments from the federal Education Department at a time when he was promoting the Bush administration's education policies in his columns. The administration has been under mounting pressure to become more transparent in its communications after accounts that it paid for and printed articles in Iraqi periodicals as part of its overseas propaganda effort.

Mr. Bandow did not take government money, but the source of his payments - around $2,000 an article - is no less controversial. His sometime sponsor, Mr. Abramoff, is at the center of a far-reaching criminal corruption investigation involving several members of Congress, with prosecutors examining whether he sought to bribe lawmakers in exchange for legislative help.

A second scholar, Peter Ferrara, of the Institute for Policy Innovation, acknowledged in the same BusinessWeek Online piece that he had also taken money from Mr. Abramoff in exchange for writing certain opinion articles. But Mr. Ferrara did not apologize for doing so. "I do that all the time," Mr. Ferrara was quoted as saying. He did not reply to an e-mail message seeking comment on Friday.

At Cato and similar institutions, adjunct scholars are not always prohibited from accepting outside consulting roles. But at Cato, said Mr. Dettmer, and at the American Enterprise Institute, said a spokeswoman there, rules require scholars to make public all their affiliations, and there is an expectation that scholars will not embarrass the institution.

"Our scholarship is not for sale," Mr. Dettmer said.

Glenda Winders, the vice president and editor of the Copley News Service, said in a statement that the company was immediately suspending Mr. Bandow's column pending further review.

Mr. Abramoff, who built a powerful lobbying business largely through his affluent Indian tribe clients in the late 1990's, paid Mr. Bandow during those years to advance the causes of such clients as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

In one column in 2001, Mr. Bandow extolled the free-market system that had allowed the Marianas to thrive, saying that fighting terrorism was no excuse for "economic meddling" - the same position that Mr. Abramoff was being paid to advance.

The federal government "should respect the commonwealth's independent policies, which have allowed the islands to rise above the poverty evident elsewhere throughout Micronesia," Mr. Bandow wrote.

In an earlier column, in 1997, Mr. Bandow defended the gambling enterprise of the Choctaws. "There's certainly no evidence that Indian gambling operations harm the local community," he wrote.

Mr. Abramoff, whose work has already been the subject of Senate hearings, is suspected of misleading the tribes about the way he used tens of millions of dollars in payments. He has been indicted in a separate case in Florida, where he is scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 9 on charges of defrauding a lender as he tried to buy a fleet of gambling boats.

Although Mr. Abramoff has not yet been charged in connection with any lobbying case, his money is considered so tainted that on Friday, for a second time this week, a member of the Senate who had received large political contributions from Mr. Abramoff's clients and partners announced that he was returning the money.

The latest announcement came from Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, who is up for re-election next year and who said he would return about $150,000 in contributions from Mr. Abramoff, his clients and his associates. Earlier in the week, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, said he was returning $66,000 in contributions from Mr. Abramoff's partners and Indian tribe clients.

"The contributions given to my political committees by Jack Abramoff and his clients, while legally and fully disclosed, have served to undermine the public's confidence in its government," Mr. Burns said in a statement. "From what I've read about Jack Abramoff and the charges which are pending or about to be brought against him, he massively deceived and betrayed his clients."

December 17, 2005
Excerpt From a Column Favorable to a Client
NY TIMES

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Following is an excerpt from a syndicated column written by Doug Bandow for the Copley News Service in June 1997. Mr. Bandow has resigned from the Cato Institute after it was learned that he took payments for such columns from a Washington lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. The Choctaw Indians were clients of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying firm.

This century has showcased two widely divergent strategies to alleviate poverty. One views poverty as the lack of money. The obvious answer is for government to give cash and other benefits to the poor. The result has been dependency, family and community collapse, and more poverty.

The other strategy treats poverty as the failure to generate wealth. The solution, then, is to encourage people to be self-supporting. The result is responsibility, independence and prosperity. These contrasting strategies have been evident among Native Americans. Dispossessed of their land and restricted to reservations by the expanding American nation last century, Indians have ended up among the poorest residents of the U.S. One-third are in poverty; most rely, either as individuals or communities, on federal hand-outs.

However, a number of tribes are increasingly choosing entrepreneurship. Some are developing natural resources on their lands. Others are using their relative autonomy to establish casinos. A few are developing manufacturing and service enterprises.

Nowhere does this strategy appear to have been a greater success than in central Mississippi, where the Choctaws have created a multifaceted business empire that has enriched not only themselves, but also the surrounding community. Per capita tribal income has quadrupled since 1982. Unemployment has dropped from over 20 percent to near zero over the same period.

The Choctaws have created electronics, greeting card and printing companies, a shopping center and construction firm, and a golf club. These and other enterprises generate sales of over $152 million annually, employ 2,400 people, and have pulled numerous tribe members out of poverty.

December 17, 2005
After Scandal, McCain Offers Bill to Tighten Lobbying Rules
By GLEN JUSTICE, NY TIMES

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who heads a committee in the Senate that helped uncover this year's lobbying scandal, introduced a bill on Friday to increase the restrictions and disclosure requirements that apply to lobbyists and public officials.

If enacted, the measure will compel the release of new information about how Washington's 27,000 registered lobbyists influence the administration and Congress, including new reporting requirements for campaign contributions, gifts and travel. It would also tighten rules for public officials who leave the government to lobby.

The bill comes in the wake of investigations into the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners amid accusations that they used donations, meals and lavish trips to curry favor with public officials as they made millions of dollars representing Indian tribes and other clients. Michael Scanlon, a former partner, pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to bribe a member of Congress and other public officials.

"This bill will toss some disinfectant on those practices," said Mr. McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which uncovered many of the details.

The bill's prospects are unclear as members of Congress prepare to head home for the holidays, but Mr. McCain is no stranger to long legislative battles. He and his allies fought for sweeping changes to the campaign finance system for almost a decade before succeeding in 2002.

The new bill, which Mr. McCain introduced on the Senate floor on Friday, would require lobbyists to disclose money they contributed to public officials, report fund-raisers they sponsored, list any gift they gave worth $20 or more and disclose when they helped finance travel.

Grass-roots lobbying groups would also be required to report their activities, including how much they raised, where it came from and where it was spent.

The bill would also affect public officials who left government to lobby, doubling to two years the amount of time they must wait before they can lobby their former office and requiring them to disclose job negotiations that take place while still in office.

Doug Bandow
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., is a nationally syndicated columnist with Copley News Service, and is the former editor of Inquiry magazine. Before that, he served as a special assistant to President Reagan and as a senior policy analyst in the office of the president-elect and the Reagan for President campaign.

Mr. Bandow has written and edited several books, including: The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology (Transaction); Perpetuating Poverty: The World Bank, the IMF, and the Developing World (Cato Institute); The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington (Transaction); Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway); Human Resources and Defense Manpower (National Defense University); and The U.S.-South Korean Alliance: Time for a Change (Transaction). He has also been widely published in such periodicals as Foreign Policy, Harper's, National Interest, National Review, The New Republic, and Orbis, as well as leading newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He has also appeared on numerous radio and television programs, most notably ABC Nightly News, American Interests, CBS Evening News, CNN Crossfire, CNN Larry King Live, Good Morning America, Nightline, and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Mr. Bandow received his B.S. in economics from Florida State University in 1976 and his J.D. from Stanford University in 1979.

Mr. Bandow is a frequent contributor to FFF's journal Freedom Daily and is a frequent speaker at FFF events.

FFF articles by Doug Bandow.
Articles by Doug Bandow at The Foundation for Economic Education.
Articles by Doug Bandow at the Cato Institute.

Books By Doug Bandow
Tripwire : Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World (1996)
Perpetuating Poverty : The World Bank, the IMF, and the Developing World (1994)
The Politics of Envy : Statism As Theology (1994)
The U.S.-South Korean Alliance : Time for a Change (1992)
The Politics of Plunder : Misgovernment in Washington (1990)
Beyond Good Intentions : A Biblical View of Politics (1988)

Tom DeLay's Smiling Mug Shot and the Domino Theory of Moral Nonresponsibility

Indicted Republican Lobbyist Jack Abramoff Attests to "Good Relationships With Members of Congress

December 19, 2005
Rice Defends Domestic Eavesdropping
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU, NY TIMES

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday defended President Bush's decision to secretly authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without seeking warrants, saying the program was carefully controlled and necessary to close gaps in the nation's counterterrorism efforts.

In Sunday talk show appearances, Ms. Rice said the program was intended to eliminate the "seam" between American intelligence operations overseas and law enforcement agencies at home.

"One of the most compelling outcomes of the 9/11 commission was that a seam had developed," Ms. Rice said on "Meet the Press" on NBC. "Our intelligence agencies looked out; our law enforcement agencies looked in. And people could - terrorists could - exploit the seam between them."

"So the president is determined that he will have the ability to make certain that that seam is not there, that the communications between people, a limited number of people with Al Qaeda links here and conversations with terrorist activities outside, will be understood so that we can detect and thereby prevent terrorist attacks," she said.

Ms. Rice also said Mr. Bush decided to skirt the normal process of obtaining court-approved search warrants for the surveillance because it was too cumbersome for fast-paced counterterrorism investigations, an assertion that some national security experts, members of Congress and civil liberties advocates have challenged.

Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency must obtain search warrants from a special court before conducting electronic surveillance of people suspected to be terrorists or spies. Ms. Rice said the administration believed that it needed greater agility in investigating terrorism suspects than was possible through that process.

"These are stateless networks of people who communicate, and communicate in much more fluid ways," she said. But several national security law experts and civil liberties advocates note that government officials are able to get an emergency warrant from the secret court within hours, sometimes minutes, if they can show an imminent threat.

Under "extraordinary" circumstances, the government also can wait 72 hours after beginning wiretaps to get a warrant, but the administration did not seek to do that under the special program, which monitors the international communications of some people inside the United States.

The USA Patriot Act made it easier for the government to get warrants from the court for wiretaps and physical searches, changing the standards in some critical areas.

But the law is specific in banning any searches without warrants on Americans except in extraordinary circumstances, like within 15 days of a formal declaration of war, said David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in national security law.

The Bush administration has not cited any of those exemptions for the domestic eavesdropping program. The White House and other defenders of the program maintain that the president has the authority to allow such searches in the interests of national security.

"If the president thinks the process under FISA was insufficient in the wake of 9/11, the appropriate response would have been to go to Congress and expand it, not to blatantly violate the law," Mr. Cole said in an interview.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, questioned whether the administration was criticizing the warrant system because cases in which the National Security Agency focused on Americans would not have met the standard of proof for intelligence warrants, which requires that the surveillance target be linked to a foreign terrorist group.

"It's insufficient to simply take at face value the president's claim that these people under surveillance by the N.S.A. had known links to terrorism," Mr. Romero said in an interview. "This entire program makes a mockery of our system of checks and balances."

In talk show appearances on Sunday, one Democratic lawmaker disagreed with Ms. Rice's assertions that the special court process was too cumbersome, and argued that the White House appeared to be acting in ways that conflicted with long-established laws and regulations. Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said the administration was "playing fast and loose with the law in the area of national security."

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was not certain whether the eavesdropping program was legal. He said he expected to hold hearings on it early next year.

On CNN on Sunday, Mr. Specter struck a cautious tone. "Let's not jump to too many conclusions," he said. "Let's look at it analytically. Let's have oversight hearings, and let's find out exactly what went on."

"Whether it was legal, I think, is a matter that has to be examined," Mr. Specter said. "When you deal with issues as to legality, what advice the president got from the attorney general and others in the Department of Justice, that's a matter within the traditional purview of the Judiciary Committee."

Vice President Dick Cheney defended the program on Sunday as necessary and legal.

"It is consistent with the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief," he said in an interview that will be broadcast Monday night on the ABC program "Nightline."

"It's consistent with the resolution that was passed by the Congress after 9/11," Mr. Cheney said, referring to the resolution authorizing the president to wage the war on terror. "And it has been reviewed repeatedly by the Justice Department every single time it's been renewed, to make certain that it is, in fact, managed in a manner that's fully consistent with the Constitution and with our statutes."

Mr. Cheney said the program had "been briefed to the Congress over a dozen times," referring to briefings given to Congressional leaders.

"It's the kind of capability if we'd had before 9/11 might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11," he said.

Administration defends NSA eavesdropping to Congress
Letter: Secret court lacks 'speed and agility required'
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Justice Department lawyers have sent a letter to key congressional leaders providing legal arguments they say justify President Bush's decision to authorize the National Security Agency to intercept communications between people in the United States and potential terrorist contacts abroad.

The five-page letter, sent late Thursday to House and Senate Intelligence committee chairmen and their Democratic counterparts, asserts that national security interests must be paramount when weighing the interests of security and privacy.

The letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, repeats administration reliance on Article II of the Constitution, which gives the commander in chief authority to protect the nation, and the post-9/11 law that authorized the president to take steps against al Qaeda.

The letter reiterates the president's contention that the court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, could not have been used to seek intercepts in cases where time was critical.

"FISA could not have provided the speed and agility required for the early warning detection system," the Justice Department letter argued.

"Nevertheless I want to stress that the United States makes full use of FISA to address the terrorist threat, and FISA has proven to be a very important tool, especially in longer-term investigations," it said.

The Justice Department apparently was designated to assure Congress that the administration was not violating privacy rights as critics in both parties have charged.

"There is undeniably an important and legitimate privacy interest at stake," the letter said. "That must be balanced, however, against the government's compelling interest in the security of the nation."

The letter was sent to Sens. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, and John Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, and to Reps. Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan, and Jane Harman, D-California.

During his end-of-year press conference Monday, Bush called the NSA eavesdropping program essential, saying it was limited to international communication to known terrorists and their associates.

"We know that a two-minute phone conversation between somebody linked to al Qaeda here and an operative overseas could lead directly to the loss of thousands of lives," Bush said.

But Democrats and Republicans have questioned the legality of the program, and some lawmakers have called for an independent investigation or congressional hearings.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, said Sunday that he believes Bush's action violated the law.

"[The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] says it's the exclusive law to authorize wiretaps," Feingold said. "This administration is playing fast and loose with the law in national security. The issue here is whether the president of the United States is putting himself above the law, and I believe he has done so."

Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, said the president could have gone back to a FISA court after the wiretaps if he was concerned about speed.

"I'm just stunned by the president's rationales with respect to the illegal wiretapping," Reed said. "There are two points that have to be emphasized with respect to the FISA procedure: They're secret, and they're retroactive.

"There is no situation where time is of such an essence they can't use the FISA proceedings. And so the president's justification, I think, is without merit."

CNN's Terry Frieden contributed to this report.

Bipartisan call for wiretapping probe
Cheney says Bush has right to authorize secret surveillance

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Three Democratic and two Republican senators have sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate's Judiciary and Intelligence committees, asking for an "immediate inquiry" into President Bush's authorization of a secret wiretapping program.

"We write to express our profound concern about recent revelations that the United States government may have engaged in domestic electronic surveillance without appropriate legal authority," says the letter, which was signed by Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin and Ron Wyden, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe.

"We must determine the facts," says the letter, which was sent Monday.

President Bush confirmed Saturday that he had authorized the National Security Agency to intercept calls to or from people inside the country with known ties to al Qaeda or its affiliates, when the other party on the call is outside the United States.

The surveillance is conducted without obtaining warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, which the president said was necessary because authorities needed to move against terrorists more quickly than that court could allow.

"I just want to assure the American people that, one, I've got the authority to do this; two, it is a necessary part of my job to protect you; and three, we're guarding your civil liberties," Bush said in a news conference Monday.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that the program is within the president's authority.

"If we had been able to do that before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who were in San Diego in touch overseas with al Qaeda," Cheney said during a tour of earthquake damage in Pakistan. "The activity we've undertaken is absolutely consistent with the Constitution."

"It's good, solid, sound policy," the vice president added. "It's the right thing to do." (Watch Bush defend use of wiretaps -- 2:23)

Cheney said such measures were necessary because the United States needed to "aggressively go after terrorists" and that they had "saved thousands of lives."

"It is, I'm convinced, one of the reasons we haven't been attacked in the past four years," Cheney said.

Senators 'deeply troubled'
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and the ranking Democrats on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Patrick Leahy, sent a separate letter to Bush asking for more information on the program's scope and legal rationale.

The trio said they were "deeply troubled" by Bush's assertion Monday that both his constitutional powers as commander-in-chief and a congressional resolution passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks allowed him to authorize the program.

"In your public statements to date, you have not made a convincing legal argument for the authority to do so," the senators said.

The three senators asked for detailed information about congressional briefings on the program.

They also asked for an explanation of why administration officials didn't pursue changes in the procedures for obtaining warrants, if they found them insufficient "to protect Americans from terrorism."

The final decision on whether the Republican-controlled Congress will hold hearings on the surveillance program rests with its GOP leadership.

'Oversight issues' raised
A major source of contention between the White House and critics is whether administration officials sufficiently briefed members of Congress on the program, as required by a federal law governing intelligence activities.

On Monday, the president repeatedly said leaders of Congress had been consulted "more than a dozen times" about the use of the wiretapping, but some lawmakers questioned that assertion.

"At no time, to our knowledge, did any administration representative ask the Congress to consider amending existing law to permit electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists without a warrant such as outlined in the New York Times article," the letter said.

The Times first reported on the program Friday.

Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and Sen. Jay Rockefeller -- the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- said they had been briefed in a very limited, general manner about the secret surveillance.

The two Democrats said they didn't endorse the program and raised concerns about it, and say the White House has been misleading the public about what congressional leaders were told.

"For the last few days, I have witnessed the president, the vice president, the secretary of state and the attorney general repeatedly misrepresent the facts," Rockefeller said in a written statement.

The West Virginia senator on Monday also released a copy of the letter he had written to Cheney on July 17, 2003 -- the first day he learned about the wiretapping, he said -- in which he expressed serious concerns about it.

"Clearly, the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues," Rockefeller said in the handwritten letter.

"Given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities," he wrote.

Chairman rejects claims
Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, refuted Rockefeller's claims that there was nothing he could do about the wiretapping program if he was uncomfortable with it.

"A United States senator has significant tools with which to wield power and influence over the executive branch," the Kansas Republican said in a statement Tuesday. "Feigning helplessness is not one of those tools."

"If Senator Rockefeller truly had the concerns he claimed to have had in his two-and-a-half-year-old letter, he could have pursued a number of options to have those concerns addressed," he continued.

Roberts also said that Rockefeller had repeatedly expressed "vocal" support for the program, most recently just two weeks ago.

Another lawmaker who knew about the program, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, asked National Intelligence Director John Negroponte Tuesday to declassify a letter she wrote to the administration years ago expressing her "strong concerns," as well as the White House response.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, discounted the administration's contention that the program was necessary to ensure a swifter response than the FISA court would allow.

"That's why our law allows a president to go right away and apply for those warrants retroactively within 72 hours," she told CNN.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean went so far as to compare the program to "the dark days of President Nixon."

CNN's Ed Henry contributed to this report.

and the scandal widens:

Washington Post Dec. 20, 2005
RETURNING MONEY TIED TO LOBBYIST Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, is returning $18,892 in contributions that his office has found to be connected to Jack Abramoff, the indicted lobbyist, a spokesman for the senator said. Included in the returned sum was an estimated $1,892 never reported for the use of Mr. Abramoff's skybox at the MCI Center in 2001 in downtown Washington. Mr. Abramoff, charged with fraud in a case in Florida, is at the center of a federal investigation that has involved at least six lawmakers and administration officials. A spokesman for Mr. Baucus, Barrett Kaiser, said the senator had never met Mr. Abramoff and never took any contributions directly from him. The state's other two members of Congress, Senator Conrad Burns and Representative Denny Rehberg, both Republicans, returned their contributions last week.