I Cogitate

"...The scent of money was coming from the Saginaw Chippewa, the owners of the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort -- a $400-million-a-year enterprise in Mt. Pleasant, Mich. Abramoff and his informal business partner, Michael Scanlon, an independent public-relations consultant who had been a spokesman in DeLay's Congressional office, had begun to specialize in representing Indian tribes with casino operations. They hoped for a contract with this tribe.

''Did we win it?'' Scanlon wrote back.

''The [expletive] troglodytes didn't vote on you today,'' Abramoff responded..."

---

  ''They are plain stupid. . . . Morons.'' Ultimately, the lower life forms would pay Abramoff and Scanlon $14 million -- just a fraction of the $66 million the two men's businesses would take in from six different Indian tribes over the next three years. (Abramoff would offer his lobbying services to tribes at relatively modest rates, but then tell them that they couldn't afford not to hire Scanlon, who charged astronomical amounts for his P.R. services and then subcontracted much of the work at budget rates; he also supposedly kicked back millions to Abramoff.)

---

''These mofos are the stupidest idiots in the land for sure.'' In another e-mail message he wrote, ''we need to get some $ from those monkeys!!!!''

---

Writing to Ralph Reed on Feb. 11, 2002, he declared: ''I wish those moronic Tiguas were smarter in their political contributions. I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!! Oh well, stupid folks get wiped out.''

---

When Abramoff was copied on a mass e-mailing apparently sent by Marc Schwartz, then a consultant to the tribe, he sent a livid message to Scanlon: ''that [expletive] idiot put my name on an e-mail list! what a [expletive] moron! he may have blown our cover!! Dammit. We are moving forward anyway and taking their [expletive] money.''

---

The deal had collapsed. But Abramoff never informed the Tiguas, who now claim he continued to hold out hope of victory even when he knew the battle was lost. Based on what he has learned subsequently, Schwartz told me that ''from July 25, 2002, it became an absolute fraud.''

Abramoff insisted to me that he kept working on behalf of the Tiguas: ''We were like flying Dutchmen going from bill to bill.'' He made a last-ditch effort to attach the Tigua provision to a huge budget bill, a plan he outlined in a Dec. 30 e-mail message to Schwartz: ''Our hope is that an omnibus bill is put together so we can work through our friends on the leadership staff to insert the language at the very end of the process, instead of working through the normal appropriations process -- which involves too many people and could jeopardize our legislative fix.''

---

Abramoff soon made his name representing an obscure client: the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States commonwealth in the remote western Pacific Ocean where businesses enjoyed a quirky status. American labor laws like the minimum wage did not apply, but manufacturers there could still affix the Made in the U.S.A. label to garments they produced for companies like the Gap and Tommy Hilfiger. Abramoff depicted the tiny islands as an entrepreneurial paradise, fighting Congressional attempts to impose pro-worker regulations there (and bringing in some $7 million to his company).

---

Abramoff also seems to see himself as an innocent victim. ''Of course, I have made mistakes,'' he told me. Yet it's not quite clear what he thinks those mistakes are. Abramoff insisted that his hunger for riches was driven by charitable impulses. ''I have spent years giving away virtually everything I made,'' he said. ''Frankly, I didn't need to have a kosher delicatessen. That was money I could have bought a yacht with. I don't live an extravagant lifestyle. I felt that the resources coming into my hands were the consequence of God putting them there.'' And he has a ready explanation for much of his behavior. When asked, for instance, how a religious man who reportedly loathed Hollywood profanity could send e-mail messages playfully calling Scanlon a ''big time faggot'' or declaring, apropos one intransigent tribal client, ''We need a beautiful girl to send up there,'' Abramoff suggested that he dumbed down his words to motivate Scanlon. ''I didn't have a lot of time to articulate things,'' he said. ''Sometimes I would find myself speaking to people in the language that they speak.'' He likened himself to the Biblical character Jacob, who dressed in his brother Esau's clothes. Jacob did this, Abramoff told me, as ''a more effective means of communicating with Esau.'' (In fact, Jacob's goal is to deceive his father.)
   
And the racism implied in calling tribal leaders ''monkeys'' and ''troglodytes''? Abramoff responded: ''That's probably the thing that hurts me the most about all this. It's just so opposite of who I am.''

---

''I have basically had my life obliterated,'' he said softly.

Put simply, Abramoff claimed not to see what he had done wrong. ''I've been shocked at how I've been portrayed in the media,'' he said. ''The Jack Abramoff who has been made into a caricature and a punching bag in the national media is not the Jack Abramoff who I think exists. If I read the articles about me, and I didn't know me, I would think I was Satan.'' The experience, he said, has been ''Kafkaesque.''

---

''I think there are people who would prefer that there are no political contributions, people who would prefer that all members of Congress live an ascetic, monklike social life. This is the system that we have. I didn't create the system. This is the system that we have.'' At another point in our conversation, he said something else about that system. ''Eventually,'' he said, ''money wins in politics.''

 RSS feed