Republicans gone wild

"Ethics reform" gestures and suddenly hazy memories can't hide the truth: Abramoff is an integral part of the GOP machine that revved up with the '94 "revolution."

By Sidney Blumenthal

Read more: Newt Gingrich, Politics, Sidney Blumenthal, Dennis Hastert, Tom Delay, Opinion, John Boehner, Jack Abramoff

Photos by AP/Wide World

From left: Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich

Jan. 19, 2006 | Hardly anyone in the Republican Party, in Congress or at the White House, seems to recall ever having met Jack Abramoff. Collective amnesia has suddenly descended upon the capital. The super-lobbyist, whose plea bargain with prosecutors requires the extensive naming of names of members of Congress, staffers, ex-staffers, lobbyists, friends, colleagues and his own personal assistants, is spending his days racking his memory for details of their relationships that may become the basis for bills of indictment.

Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, has left a trail of hard evidence in addition to his sworn confessions. At the end of every business day his former assistant wrote a summary of all his contacts and their conversations, e-mailed it to him and carefully saved it; these documents mapping the days and ways of Jack Abramoff are now in the hands of the prosecutors. (Abramoff's former assistant, Susan Ralston, moved seamlessly from his employ to the White House to become Karl Rove's assistant, where she regularly vetted supplicants to Rove through Grover Norquist, Abramoff's longtime political associate and business partner.)

Abramoff's appearance at the federal courthouse in Washington on Jan. 3 attired in black fedora and black trench coat, like an old-style "Mustache Pete" Mafioso, was bizarre but brilliant self-casting. He was not only his own producer but also his own dresser. In fact, Abramoff loved to recite lines from "The Godfather." One of his favorite bits was Michael Corleone's reply to a politician seeking a cut of his illegal businesses: "Senator, you can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this: nothing."

Abramoff's theatricality is intertwined with his politics. The graduate of Beverly Hills High School is the son of the president of the franchises division of the Diners Club and close to Ronald Reagan's kitchen cabinet of California millionaires. The father financed young Jack's takeover of the College Republicans. After depleting the treasury of Citizens for America, a conservative group founded by drugstore mogul Lewis Lehrman, Abramoff produced a violence-packed, B-grade Cold War movie, "Red Scorpion." With the capture of Congress by the Republicans in 1994, he hustled to Washington for the barbecue.

For more than a decade, Abramoff ran wild. From the offices of two major law firms, Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig, he traded in politicians and clients with abandon. He used false charities and phony think tanks, doled out all-expenses-paid trips, and opened his own Capitol Hill steakhouse called Signatures, where he picked up congressmen's tabs, to become wealthy and influential. He moved effortlessly from being a "friend of Newt," former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, to being a "friend of Tom," former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. His associates from his College Republican days, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, were his musketeers. Reed, former president of the Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, became Abramoff's instrument for buying and manipulating leaders of the religious right to grease his elaborate schemes to bilk Indian tribes that had hired him to help them win approval of their casinos. These were just a few of the Abramoff ploys now being untangled by prosecutors.

In his brazenness, extravagance and heedlessness, Abramoff was one of a kind. Almost all lobbyists earning the kind of money he raked in follow the Washington rule of melting into the scenery. But Abramoff is not simply unique; he is also symptomatic. Abramoff's crimes are not illustrations of Washington generically gone haywire. He was not an accident waiting to happen. Nor was he just the latest in a dime-a-dozen scandals. Nor does he represent the vice of both parties. Above all, what he is not is a lobbyist who "bought Washington."

Abramoff has been an integral part of the Republican political machine that has flourished since the 1994 takeover. He has created vast slush funds at the disposal of DeLay (for example, the U.S. Family Network, financed by Russian oil tycoons), worked hand in glove with DeLay's political operatives, and supported the Republican congressional leadership with funds and favors. Abramoff's lobbying and politics are inextricable, one and the same, allowing him to simultaneously serve as a valuable member of the Republican machine and be out for himself. He was not the most significant player; nor was his tens of millions more money than bigger figures made. (Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and former senior partner of a major Washington law firm, and currently governor of Mississippi, comes to mind.) But Abramoff, more than those with more influence or wealth, has the distinction of being the culmination of the recent history of the Republican Congress.

The Abramoff affair is the greatest congressional scandal in American history since the Crédit Mobilier. In 1873, a congressional investigation revealed that the holding company of the Union Pacific Railroad had dispensed stock to 30-some members of Congress; two were censured, none indicted. Undoubtedly, the punishments arising from the Abramoff affair will be more extensive than those from the Crédit Mobilier.

The latest Republican talking point on Abramoff is: I can't recall. DeLay had previously called him a "close personal friend." But an article last month in the Washington Post strangely reported: "The two met at a DeLay fundraiser on Capitol Hill in 1995, according to a former senior DeLay aide. The aide recalled that Edwin A. Buckham, then DeLay's chief of staff, told his boss: 'We really need to work with Abramoff; he is going to be an important lobbyist and fundraiser.' DeLay, a Christian conservative, did not quite know what to make of Abramoff, who wore a beard and a yarmulke. They forged political ties, but the two men never became personally close, according to associates of both men." The anti-Semitic undercurrent of DeLay's revisionism in his belated effort to distance himself is a piquant touch.

On Tuesday, in his first press conference of the new year, at his Capitol Hill office, Speaker Dennis Hastert described Abramoff as completely unfamiliar: "Well, you know, a year ago most people around Congress couldn't tell you who Jack Abramoff was and didn't know who his associates were or what connections there are." Meanwhile, that same day, at the briefing conducted by the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan gave murky explanations of Abramoff's dealings at the Bush White House. Abramoff had been one of Bush's top fundraisers (designated a "Pioneer" for raising more than $100,000 for the reelection campaign), been a member of the transition team for the Department of the Interior, and billed two tribal chiefs $25,000 for a White House lunch and meeting with President Bush. McClellan conceded Abramoff had been invited to a couple of Chanukah parties. At his Jan. 5 press briefing, when asked about Abramoff's participation in staff meetings, McClellan had said, "I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that. And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon." Asked again by a reporter, "Who was in the staff meetings?" McClellan replied, "I don't get into discussing staff-level meetings." Thus Abramoff's history, and that of the Republicans, are being distorted, airbrushed or stonewalled.

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