‘Bury Their Hearts on K Street’

In all my seasons of exposing Master of the Universe predators, I have not seen a creature as low as the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who took the Fifth Amendment all morning one day last week before the Senate’s committee on Indian affairs.Senators called him “scuzzy” and “disgusting” as they charged that he and his partner, Michael Scanlon, fleeced and coerced six Indian tribes out of $66 million in fees, while Mr. Abramoff was labeling these Native Americans “monkeys,” “idiots,” and “morons” in bigoted e-mail messages.Most of this $66 million came from federal funds intended to improve education and housing on impoverished Indian reservations.I published a lengthy investigative report on Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Scanlon, and Ralph Reed in the September 8 edition of The New York Sun. But Wednesday’s hearing, led by a Republican, John McCain, convinced me that that my dispatch had been too kind, that the size of this perfidy is much bigger than I understood.After the hearing, the Senate committee’s staff made public thousands of e-mail and Blackberry messages from Mr. Abramoff, and copies of checks issued by companies operated by Mr. Scanlon, who dodged a subpoena and did not testify.Mr. Abramoff’s compulsive electronic messages to Mr. Scanlon constitute a colonoscopy of the soul of a lobbyist obsessed with money and filled with contempt for clients who were paying him millions of dollars for nothing.Thirty years ago there was a best seller about the suffering of Native Americans, called “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” Mr. Abramoff’s e-mail should be collected in a book called “Bury My Heart on K Street.” It would be a character study told through an e-mail addiction.Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, the only Native American in the Senate, asked Mr. Abramoff directly, “Why do you refer to your clients as morons?”The lobbyist’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, invoked the Fifth for Mr. Abramoff to that question, too.The e-mail shows how Mr. Abramoff generated more business from a Michigan tribe with the made-up scare tactic that “racinos” – gambling at racetracks – were coming and they had to block the interlopers in the state legislature, with more money.The e-mail also shows how Messrs. Abramoff and Scanlon spent tens of thousands of dollars to intervene in tribal elections to elect factions who favored casinos and would hire them, for $185,000 a month.After installing a faction of California’s Agua Caliente tribe that hired him, Mr. Abramoff sent an e-mail to Mr. Scanlon on March 5, 2003, saying: “The key thing to remember with all these clients is that they are annoying, but that the annoying losers are the only ones who have this kind of money, and part with it so quickly.”Sen. Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, told Mr. Abramoff, “I think all of us know that this is the most extraordinary pattern of abuse and misconduct to come before this committee in the 18 years I have served here.”The Senate committee also made public copies of checks from Mr. Scanlon’s companies and fronts to Mr. Reed’s company Century Strategies, which proved how the anti-gambling founder of the Christian Coalition has been a covert partner of Mr. Abramoff, getting paid more than $4 million to help gambling-rich tribes kill competing casinos.In one e-mail Mr. Reed informed Mr. Abramoff, “We have the Tiguas,” a tribe in Texas.Two minutes later Mr. Abramoff replied by e-mail, “Great, thanks Ralph.”On February 6, 2002, Mr. Reed sent Mr. Abramoff an e-mail saying, “wanted to just let you know we’ve not received the payment yet.”The next day Mr. Abramoff e-mailed Mr. Scanlon: “We need to get some $ from those monkeys!!! As to Ralph, go ahead and pay him, so I can get him off my back.”Mr. Reed did not return phone messages – which has been his tactic since June, when he denied receiving any gambling-related money from Mr. Abramoff.In his opening statement, Senator McCain declared:“Every type of charlatan and crook has deceived and exploited America’s native sons and daughters. While these accounts of unscrupulous men are sadly familiar, the tale we hear today is not.“What sets this tale apart,” the Arizona senator said, “is the extent and degree of the apparent exploitation and deceit.”After Mr. Abramoff finished, Bernie Sprague, sub-chief of the Michigan tribe Mr. Abramoff had repeatedly ridiculed as “idiots,” told the senators:“There is not a word in my language strong enough to describe what these people have done to my tribe.”

‘Bury Their Hearts on K Street’

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