Indian Affairs panel hears 'tale of betrayal'
By Josephine Hearn
Embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff was an avatar of greed and contempt who betrayed his friends and associates, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asserted yesterday.
McCain, presiding over the third of four scheduled hearings by the Indian Affairs Committee on Abramoff’s questionable business dealings with Indian tribes involved with gambling, turned the spotlight on Abramoff client the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, which he represented from 1995 to 2004.
“Today’s hearing is about more than contempt, even more than greed,” McCain said. “It is simple and sadly a tale of betrayal.”
McCain traced the trail of money from the Choctaws’ coffers to a private company controlled by Abramoff, a private Jewish school founded by Abramoff and even paramilitary groups in Israel.
According to an e-mail released at the hearing, Abramoff and his associate Michael Scanlon charged the Choctaw tribe $7.7 million in 2001 for public affairs and grassroots lobbying. After Scanlon spent $1.2 million on the activities, the two split the rest.
Much of the money Abramoff and Scanlon solicited from the Choctaws was filtered through various nonprofit groups, allowing Abramoff to conceal the fact that most of it was not spent on lobbying or public-affairs activities benefiting the Choctaws, records show.
For example, the Choctaws paid $1 million in 2002 to the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank of which Abramoff was a board member.
Although the tribe was led to believe it was paying for “professional services” performed as part of Scanlon’s public-relations duties, half of the money went to a company controlled by Scanlon, Capitol Campaign Strategies; $50,000 went to repay a personal loan Abramoff incurred during his days as a filmmaker; and the remaining $450,000 was a donation to a charity controlled by Abramoff, the Capital Athletic Foundation.
The great majority of the contributions to the foundation were later passed on to the Eshkol Academy, an all-boys Orthodox Jewish school in Columbia, Md., that Abramoff founded. The foundation also paid a monthly stipend and Jeep payments to a high-school friend of Abramoff who conducted sniper workshops for members of the Israeli Defense Force in Israel’s West Bank.
The Center’s chief executive officer, Amy Ridenour, a friend of Abramoff’s from their time as College Republicans in the early ’80s, testified that Abramoff told her the money was part of an “educational project to tell the American people … the very impressive story of the … Choctaw Indians.”
She accepted an additional $1.5 million contribution in 2003. Abramoff directed her to route that money to the Capitol Athletic Foundation and a company named Kaygold.
“I completely trusted Jack,” she testified. “So much so that I still trusted him after the negative press stories appeared in 2004. It was not until September 2004, when The Washington Post published that Jack owned Kaygold, that I knew in my heart that something was seriously wrong.”
Representatives of the Choctaws said they were engaged in settlement talks with Greenberg Traurig and Preston Gates Ellis Rouvelas & Meeds, both law firms that employed Abramoff during his dealings with the tribe.
A spokesman for Abramoff could not comment on specific allegations, but said, “With an ongoing political investigation being directed by the U.S. Senate and an investigation at the Department of Justice, Mr. Abramoff is put into the impossible position of not being able to defend himself in the public arena until the proper authorities have had a chance to review all accusations.”
Two of Abramoff’s former colleagues — Kevin Ring, now a lobbyist at Barnes & Thornburg, and Shawn Vasell, now with Hewlett-Packard — were called as witnesses but declined to testify after exercising their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Although many observers had expected this hearing to focus on the Choctaws’ payments to prominent conservative groups, including Americans for Tax Reform and a company led by Christian conservative activist Ralph Reed, McCain instead steered toward less politically sensitive targets.
Fellow Republicans have expressed displeasure with McCain’s investigation, suggesting that he may be using the probe to strike back at conservative political foes.
As has become the norm in hearings focused on Abramoff, the Indian Affairs Committee released a slew of embarrassing e-mails and documents. Abramoff and Scanlon repeatedly refer to the personal kickbacks they apparently received as “gimme five.”
In a 2000 e-mail, Abramoff asks Scanlon, “So there is more gimme five coming on all these [projects], right?”
Another e-mail, apparently unrelated to the rest of the hearing, showed Abramoff asking a Daniel Lapin, a prominent Republican rabbi, to give him an award to help him gain entry into an exclusive Washington social club.
“I hate to ask your help with something so silly, but I have been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club. … Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards, and I have received none,” Abramoff wrote. “I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from [Lapin’s group] Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies. … Indeed it would be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean.”
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/The...305/indian.html