From the Baltimore Sun

A peach of a scandal in Georgia
By Garrison Keillor, July 6, 2006

LINK

If a preacher secretly accepts a bucket of money from a saloonkeeper to organize a temperance rally at a rival saloon and maybe send in a gang of church ladies to chop up the bar with their little hatchets, this would strike you and me as sleazy, but others are willing to make allowances, and so Ralph Reed's political career is still alive and breathing in Georgia. He has bathed himself in tomato juice and hopes to smile his way through the storm.
The facts are fairly simple.

Mr. Reed left the Christian Coalition in 1997 as it was sinking, and he was paid by Jack Abramoff to organize opposition to a gambling bill in the Texas legislature, which would have opened the door to competition for Mr. Abramoff's client casinos in Louisiana.

So Mr. Reed got the good Christians of Texas to bombard the legislature with phone calls and letters denouncing gambling, for which Mr. Reed was paid millions of dollars in gambling money, by way of Mr. Abramoff's bagman, Grover Norquist.

Mr. Reed also helped defeat a state lottery and video poker in Alabama, in behalf of casinos in Mississippi. In Alabama, he told Mr. Abramoff, he had "over 3,000 pastors and 90,000 religious conservative households." He enlisted these Baptists in a fight against one saloon while he was on the payroll of another.

Imagine if Ralph Nader had solicited money from Ford and Chrysler when he went after General Motors' Corvair. Or the Southern Baptists raising money from Sony and Universal to condemn movies by MGM.

A true party loyalist would withdraw from the Republican primary for lieutenant governor of Georgia and say, "I will not allow this mess to distract people from the good work of my party." But Mr. Reed is no quitter.

"Had I known then what I know now, I would not have undertaken the work," he said, when the details came out in a Senate Indian Affairs Committee report.

Mr. Reed insists he didn't know it was gambling money, which, given the e-mail traffic between him and Mr. Abramoff, is a thin twig on which to hang a defense. Either Mr. Reed understands English or he does not. Mr. Abramoff tells him that he'll get a check as soon as the Coushattas send in the money. The Coushattas were in the casino business. You don't come up with $5.3 million from selling beaded coin purses.

Mr. Reed also argues that his stopping gambling in Texas and Alabama was a good thing in and of itself, even though he was hired by rival casinos to do it. Using the same reasoning, Lucky Luciano was on solid moral ground when he knocked off Dutch Schultz.

The sexual trespass of a president is a story any mortal can understand, and the use of your father's influence to sneak you into a military unit where you're less likely to face combat is an act of cowardice all of us cowards can appreciate.

But the chutzpah of Mr. Reed in wheedling money from Mr. Abramoff to snooker Christians into an uproar against gambling is cold-hearted greed. And his work in behalf of the sweatshops and sex factories of the Marianas, arguing that the Chinese women imported there were being given the chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, takes us to yet an entirely new level.

Mr. Reed is a Presbyterian, and the Westminster Confession says, "He that scandelizeth his brother, or the Church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended; who are thereupon to be reconciled to him, and in love to receive him."

But Mr. Reed is running for office, and that's no time for repentance. Time to hunker down and hope that the prosecutors are occupied with other matters. Smile and shake hands and keep changing the subject. If a reporter mentions Mr. Abramoff, smile and say, "I've said as much as I'm going to about that, and now I want to talk about my plan to strengthen families in Georgia."

Gambling? "I've always been opposed to gambling."

Deceit? Greed? "No charges have been filed. I have been exonerated of wrongdoing."

Will it work? We shall soon see.

Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country. His e-mail is keillorj@prairiehome.us.

The Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal is a United States political scandal relating to the work performed by political lobbyists Jack Abramoff, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., Grover Norquist and Michael Scanlon on behalf of Indian casino gambling interests for an estimated $85 million in fees. Abramoff and Scanlon grossly overbilled their clients, secretly splitting the multimillion-dollar profits. In one case, they secretly orchestrated lobbying against their own clients in order to force them to pay for lobbying services.
In the course of the scheme, the lobbyists are accused of illegally giving gifts and making campaign donations to legislators in return for votes or support of legislation. Representative Bob Ney (R-OH) and an aide to Tom DeLay (R-TX) have been directly implicated; other politicians, mostly Republican lawmakers, with connections to Indian affairs have various ties.
Scanlon and Abramoff have both pled guilty to a variety of charges related to the scheme.
On Friday, November 25, 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported the expansion of the investigation to four members of Congress: in addition to Ney and DeLay, the report includes Rep. John Doolittle (R., Calif.) and Sen. Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) (1) On December 2, 2005, the New York Times reported that federal prosecutors were considering a plea bargain arrangement that would give Abramoff some consideration if he provided evidence that would implicate members of Congress and their senior staffers in receiving job offers in return for legislative favors.
On January 3, 2006, Abramoff pleaded guilty to three felony counts — conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion — involving charges stemming principally from his lobbying activities in Washington on behalf of Native American tribes. In addition, Abramoff and other defendants must make restitution of at least $25 million that was defrauded from clients, most notably the Native American tribes. Further, Abramoff owes the Internal Revenue Service $1.7 million as a result of his guilty plea to the tax evasion charge.(2). The court filing is available as a PDF.(3)

The agreement alleges that Abramoff bribed public officials. One of the cases of bribery described in detail involves a person identified as "Representative #1," who was reported by the Washington Post to be Representative Bob Ney (R-OH). Ney's spokesman confirmed that Ney was the Representative identified, but denied any improper influence.(4) The agreement also details Abramoff's practice of hiring former congressional staffers. Abramoff used these persons' influence to lobby their former Congressional employers, in violation of a one-year federal ban on such lobbying.(5) (6)

After Abramoff's guilty plea, investigations were shifted early January 2006 to focus on the lobbying firm Alexander Strategy Group (7), founded by a "close friend of DeLay's and his former chief of staff."(8) The lobbying firm announced its closure come the end of the same month due to "fatal publicity"; it had represented such large firms as Microsoft and PhRMA. On May 1st, 2006, the Secret Service agreed to release logs of all meetings with Jack Abramoff on or before May 10th.

On June 22, 2006 the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs released its final report on the scandal. The report states that under the guidance of the Mississippi Choctaw tribe's planner, Nell Rogers, the tribe agreed to launder money because "Ralph Reed did not want to be paid directly by a tribe with gaming interests." It also states that Reed used non-profits, including Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, as pass-throughs to disguise the origin of the funds, and that "the structure was recommended by Jack Abramoff to accommodate Mr. Reed’s political concerns."

Bush's Eavesdropping, Abramoff's Deception, Delay's Bribes, Fake News and Secrecy: It's a Cultural Thing

New Links Between Abramoff, White House
Logs Show 6 Appointments There
By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi, Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 8, 2006; A02

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff had a half-dozen White House appointments in the early months of the Bush administration, according to logs released yesterday by the U.S. Secret Service.

The appointments included a meeting with a domestic policy aide to Vice President Cheney and a meeting in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives attended by about 40 people. The logs also reflect that Abramoff attended one or more social events, as well as a gathering of Indian tribal officials and state legislators at which President Bush appeared.

The lobbyist, once one of the most powerful Republicans on K Street, pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy and fraud. He is a cooperating witness in the Justice Department's wide-ranging investigation of corruption in Congress and the executive branch.

The Secret Service released the White House visit data yesterday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and a lawsuit filed by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch.

In May, the Secret Service released partial data showing two White House visits by Abramoff. In a letter faxed to Judicial Watch yesterday, a Justice Department lawyer said that the Secret Service had recently learned of other visits when it "unexpectedly discovered computer files" containing entry and exit logs on the visits.

In one of the previously disclosed visits -- March 6, 2001 -- Abramoff met with presidential adviser Karl Rove in an unsuccessful effort to have two allies placed in Interior Department jobs. That visit appears to have been the only one with a senior official.

The new data, combined with the two visits disclosed in May, show that Abramoff had appointments to attend White House events or meetings on seven occasions -- six in 2001 and a seventh in January 2004, on Inauguration Day. The Secret Service said the data reflect appointments but "do not necessarily reflect actual visits to the White House complex."

Among those with whom Abramoff met in the spring of 2001 was Cesar Conda, then assistant to the vice president for domestic policy, and Catharine Ryun, executive assistant to the director of the faith-based office and daughter of Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kan.).

Conda, now a lobbyist, said in an interview that he invited Abramoff to a "casual social lunch" at the White House mess. "It was so long ago I don't remember anything about it," Conda said. "He was just a guy that I knew from the Hill. I invited folks from around town, K Street, think tanks, to chitchat."

The purpose of a March 1, 2001, appointment from 4 to 6 p.m. could not be determined from the logs. An appointment on Dec. 10, 2001, appeared to have been a holiday party for 300 guests attended by the president.