Monday, 9 June 2008, 12:52 pm
The Crimes And Cover-Ups Of John McCain Part 3
Senator McCover-Up: Abramoff & the GOP Foreign Money Machine
By Mark G. Levey
Part 1, Part 2
I. Background: GOP Foreign Influence Peddling
Senator John McCain has proved to be Jack Abramoff’s best friend.
As Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee from 2005-2007, McCain
was instrumental in
suppressing evidence of Jack Abramoff’s role in directing illegal foreign
payoffs to ranking
members of the Republican Party.
McCain also did a big favor for Abramoff’s principal partners in crime,
Grover Norquist and
Ralph Reed , identified in the 2006 Committee re****t as key players in the
Choctaw Indian and
Marianas Island scandals. Not one of the principal witnesses in the matter
were compelled to
publicly testify by McCain's panel. The Committee also sequestered 99
percent of the do***ents
it received, and these remain locked away, unseen by the public, in Senate
files.
But there’s much more to the scandal than the Indian tribes rip-off McCain
did disclose. The
strand that runs through all the Abramoff-McCain relation****p is foreign
money – many, many
millions – that Jack, Grover and Ralph funneled to GOP leaders from some
of the world’s worst
bad guys as part of a foreign influence-peddling operation.
Until Jack was finally indicted on August 11, 2005, he did some truly
sinister deals with a
long list of bad guys, from al-Qaeda bankers, to Russian intelligence
officers, to a South
Asian leader involved with rogue nuclear programs. McCain’s role was to
limit the disclosures
and the political damage that still threaten to destroy the GOP’s foreign
funding base and the
party’ hopes of ever regaining control in Wa****ngton.
This is Part 3 of a series, The Crimes and Coverups of John McCain,
“Reformer” . See, Part 2,
“McCain’s 30-Years of Service to Saudi Bank Raiders and Junk Bond Kings” ,
Link ; Pt 1, "McCain
Had Key Role in Iraq WMD Deception", Link
II. Senator McCover-up: Why McCain Was Chosen by GOP Leader****p to Oversee
the Abramoff
Investigation
By late 2005, it was becoming clear as the Justice Department started
scratching the surface of
Abamoff's influence-peddling network that its exposure was going to be
politically explosive,
and that it was going to blow up the Republicans. Details started coming
out that showed the
scandal was more sinister than the mere rip-off of Indian tribes by their
Wa****ngton lobbyists.
The Wall Street Journal, observed in article entitled, “Abramoff Scandal
Threatens to Embroil
GOP” :
“The Justice Department's probe is far broader than previously thought . .
. its focus on
prominent Republicans raises the risk of serious embarrassment to the
party before next year's
congressional elections.”
The Republican Congressional leader****p recognized the problem. McCain was
perfectly positioned
to be the one to manage it. He had previously served as the Chairman of
the Indian Affairs
Committee, and most im****tantly, he had some credibility as a “maverick”
reformer and a track
record of highly publicized enmity with one of the primary suspects as a
base to build on.
McCain’s talent for damage-control was demonstrated early-on in his Senate
career, when he
survived his involvement in the Keating Savings & Loan scandal. (See, Pt.
2)
IV. McCain Covered Up the Malfeasances of his Fellow Senators
So, in 2005, “Straight-Talk” McCain was the natural pick as Chairman of
Indian Affairs to
replace the former Chair Ben Nighthorse Campbell after his sudden
resignation. Campbell’s
sudden retirement from the Senate has never really been explained. What we
do know is what
followed: Link
By the time McCain took control of the investigation started by Ben
Nighthorse Campbell, who
retired from the Senate in 2005, investigators knew that Ralph Reed had
taken large amounts of
Indian casino money in more than one state. What Reed and Abramoff did to
one small tribe in
Texas justified bringing Reed before the committee and putting him under
oath, as was done with
Abramoff. Perhaps Reed was never called because he was too powerful to
confront, or because he
was still considered a prospect for elected office. But he got a walk, and
the Tigua tribe in
El Paso never got a full accounting of what Reed and Abramoff had done to
them.
The inquiry initially had a limited mandate. The committee stated it would
look into the
exploitation of several American Indian tribes by Abramoff and a close
circle of GOP lobbyists,
including Michael Scanlon, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist. Amazingly,
none were ever put on
the stand under oath and publicly questioned by the Senate Committee.
Norquist and Reed were
never issued subpoenas to appear. Abramoff and Scanlon refused to testify
after being
subpoenaed. Link Chairman McCain settled without much apparent fuss on
hearing from a few
underlings.
It was an obvious conflict of interest to allow McCain to head a body
investigating Abramoff’s
Indian lobbying, as he had headed the Committee in 1995-97, a time when
Abramoff successfully
lobbied on behalf of the Choctaw to exempt tribal wagering earnings from
proposed federal
taxes. Link
Also perplexing is McCain’s decision in March to hire former Senator
Conrad Burns, who had
received $137,000 from Abramoff, as his Montana campaign chairman. Burns
lobbied the Interior
Committee to disperse some $3 million that had been set aside for
underprivileged Indian
schools to an Abramoff client, a relatively affluent tribal body in
Michigan.
Link /
Burns lost his seat in 2006, following publication of an article in The
Wall Street Journal
naming him, along with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, Rep. Bob
Ney (R., Ohio), Rep.
John Doolittle (R., Calif.), as the subject of an ongoing Justice
Department investigation into
Abramoff’s lobbying activities. When allegations of his own wrongdoing
spilled out, Burns was
quoted as saying he wished Jack “had never been born.” Link
Oddly, such indiscretions and outbursts by his Senate colleagues don’t
seem to bother the man
who, after his close call with the Keating scandal, “reinvented himself as
the scourge of
special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance
rules, a man of honor
chastened by a brush with shame.” Link
That McCain’s mission was primarily to contain political fallout and
minimize damage to the GOP
was never in doubt. Prior to hearings in 2005, Roll Call re****ted McCain
“assured his
colleagues that his expanding investigation into the activities of a
former GOP lobbyist and a
half-dozen of his tribal casino clients is not directed at revealing
ethically questionable
actions by Members of Congress.” Paul Kane, Roll Call, “McCain Won’t
Target Members” ( March 9,
2005), Link When a batch of Abramoff e-mails were released in March, 2006,
McCain’s office
redacted all the names of the members of Congress who had a “positive
response” to Abramoff’s
lobbying. Link
V. McCain’s Missing Do***ents
Indeed, the Abramoff scandal seems to have become “The Case of the Amazing
Vani****ng Corruption
Investigation”, as Scott Horton recently described it in Harper’s. Link
While the Committee never heard from the principals in the case, what it
did receive were their
records. As Committee Chairman, John McCain made shrewd use of Senate
rules to subpoena 750,000
pages of do***ents related to Abramoff’s lobbying -- literally tons of
Abramoff scandal
do***ents – billing records, memos, appointment calendars -- keeping 99.7
percent of them out
of the record, and buried the rest in locked files in the basement of the
Hart Senate Office
Building . Link
This scandal eerily parallels an earlier betrayal of Native American
peoples overseen by John
McCain while he was Chairman of that Indian Affairs Committee. McCain has
served on the
Committee since 1987, and previously headed the committee between 1995 and
1997, a period when
the Indian Lands Trust scandal was in full-bloom for the rip-off of
billions of dollars worth
of land leases supposedly held in trust by the federal government.
During that scandal, as well, McCain made many statements sympathetic to
the plight of
exploited native peoples, gaining his vaunted reputation as a “maverick”
Republican, but
nothing was really done for the victims by his committee. It was during
this period that the
tribes finally filed federal suit, Cobell v. Babbitt , and it was then
learned that the
Interior Department had destroyed 162 boxes of do***ents needed by
plaintiffs to prove the
cases in court. Link Further rounds of do***ent destructions came to
light, and the federal
government has continued to resist settling the case. Link This appalling
breech of trust led
to a comment in The National Catholic Observer: Link
The century of stalling meant the money owed increased exponentially and
no administration
wants to pay the billions back on its watch. Thus, both the Clinton
administration and the
current Bush administration tried to derail the Indian trust fund lawsuit.
A Jan. 26, 2004,
editorial in The New York Times called the refusal to pay half a million
Native Americans what
is rightfully theirs “a continuing shame.” Compared to a scandal of
comparable size such as
Enron, the federal government’s egregious conduct has been hidden from the
public.
Next, we see how McCain misused his power as Chairman to limit the scope
of public hearings
into how Abramoff, Norquist and a circle of GOP lobbyists and politicians
sucked up millions
from foreign sources linked to terrorism and espionage, violated lobbying
laws to change U.S.
policy, and then funneled huge wads of cash back to the Bush White House
along with Republican
Congressional campaign coffers.
VI. McCain’s Trusted Role in Protecting the GOP Foreign-Money Machine.
Abramoff and Norquist operated a foreign influence-peddling network that
funneled money to the
Bush White House and selected Republican Congressmen from the dirtiest of
dirty money sources,
including terrorist bankers and ex-KGB oil barons. According to Newsweek:
Link
During the 2004 campaign, Abramoff was a top fund-raiser for the Bush
re-election effort,
raising more than $100,000 for the campaign. While exact figures on how
much he raised for the
campaign aren’t known, Abramoff told The New York Times in July 2003 -
months before active
fund-raising began - that he had already raised $120,000 for the
Bush-Cheney campaign.
In addition, between 1999 and 2005, Abramoff, entities under his control,
and his clients “gave
a total of $4.4 million to more than 240 members of Congress.” Link The
largest recipient of
that largesse was Arizona Republican Congressman J.D. Hayworth, who
received $101,620, before
he was defeated in the 2006 election. Large amounts of cash, $217,000,
even filtered down to
two GOP Arizona State Senators. Link
Much of that money came out of GOP slush funds controlled by Abramoff and
his confederates.
What the public wasn’t told by McCain was that a large ****tion of the
income taken in by
Abramoff and others came from sources under investigation by U.S
intelligence and
counter-terrorism. McCain withheld from public release the vast bulk of
subpoenaed lobbying
records related to a period when Abramoff engaged in extremely serious
improprieties on behalf
of those non-Indian tribe clients, including:
In the months immediately after 9/11, Abramoff worked with Grover Norquist
to lobby the Bush
Administration on behalf of a Saudi banker, Saleh Abdullah Kamel, Chairman
of Dallah al Baraka
Group (DBG), accused of being a longtime financier of Osama bin Laden.
Kamel, who is worth a
re****ted $2.6 billion, was the primary owner of the Sudanese and Saudi
banks used by bin Laden
to build his al-Qaeda network after his 1991 expulsion from Saudi Arabia.
As owner of Dallah
Avco, Kamel employed Omar al-Bayoumi, who shepherded the Flight 77
hijackers immediately after
their arrival in the U.S. Link ; reproduced at: Link ? The 373-page Senate
Indian Affairs
Committee Final Re****t mentions neither Kamel’s name nor Dallah al Baraka.
(See, Link )
In 2002, Abramoff and Scanlon received a $1.2 million fee to set up a
White House meeting
between George W. Bush and the leader of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamed, who
was viewed as persona
nongratis by some in the State Dept. for human rights abuses and his
oft-repeated condemnations
of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. hv Mohamed’s visit, which was
arranged with the help
of Karl Rove, was also resisted by some in U.S. intelligence and law
enforcement as Malaysia
had not been fully cooperative in counter-terrorism operations against
al-Qaeda, including its
allegedly botched surveillance of the al-Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur in
early January 2000, at
which the 9/11 and USS Cole attacks were planned. Link ; c.f., Link
Malaysia was also a hub of
the nuclear proliferation network of A.Q. Khan. Link Western intelligence
services linked a
Malaysian holding company, Kaspudu Sendirian Berhad, which is owned by the
Malaysian prime
minister’s only son, Kamaluddin Abdullah, to Khan’s network. Time Magazine
re****ted that
Abdullah’s holding, Scomi Precision Engineering, fulfilled a $3.5 million
contract to build
components for 14 uranium enrichment centrifuges that ended up being
****pped to Libya’s nuclear
program. Link The 373-page Senate Indian Affairs Committee Final Re****t
mentions neither
Mohamed’s name nor makes reference to Rove’s involvement. (See, Link )
Abramoff and Scanlon set themselves up as intermediaries for deals
involving Malaysian gas and
oil interests in Sudan, where U.S. companies are legally banned from doing
business. The
Wa****ngton Post stated, “Another Abramoff financial vehicle was the
nonprofit American
International Center, a Rehoboth Beach, Del., ‘think tank’ set up by
Scanlon, who staffed it
with beach friends from his summer job as a lifeguard. The center became a
means for Abramoff
and Scanlon to take money from foreign clients that they did not want to
officially represent.
Some of the funds came from the government of Malaysia. Banks and oil
companies there were
making deals in Sudan, where U.S. companies were barred on human rights
grounds. Sudan was
among several oil-rich nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East that
Abramoff eyed as venues
for lucrative energy deals. Abramoff told associates he wanted to become a
go-to person for
U.S. companies seeking to do business with oil-patch nations.” Link The
373-page Senate Indian
Affairs Committee Final Re****t makes no mention of Abramoff’s lobbying on
behalf of Malaysian
interests in Sudan. (See, Link )
The fees paid Abramoff and Scanlon by Malaysia funneled through AIC were
allegedly laundered
through Edward Fuelner, President of the Heritage Foundation. A re****t
issued on May 12, 2005
by Democrats.org stated that Fuelner had previously done business with
Abramoff with Malaysian
clients: “In August 2001, DeLay led a delegation to Malaysia where he
attended informal
meetings and a fancy dinner in his honor given by Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad in Kuala
Lumpur. Jack Abramoff attended the dinner thrown in DeLay's honor. Edwin
Feulner was president
of the Heritage foundation at the time of the trip. Feulner also went to
Malaysia , saying
that, "I sat by the pool while they played golf." Feulner worked for Belle
Haven Consultants as
a senior advisor. Official travel disclosure stated that the Heritage
Foundation sponsored the
travel. However, Time magazine re****ted that former Wyoming Senator
Malcolm Wallop, a Heritage
senior fellow who was on the trip, said Heritage did not pay for the trip
and that Belle Haven
Consultants, a for-profit, Hong Kong-based firm linked to the Malaysian
government, played a
key role. According to Wallop, "Heritage had nothing to do with it… Belle
Haven did." Both
DeLay's office and the Heritage Foundation insist Heritage paid for the
trip. (Time, 4/25/05;
Wa****ngton Post, 4/17/05; Member Travel Disclosure Form, 3/19/02]. “Link
The 373-page Senate
Indian Affairs Committee Final Re****t mentions neither Fuelner’s name, the
Heritage Foundation,
nor Belle Haven Consultants. (See, Link )
Also withheld by McCain were do***ents related to $3.4 million in fees
received from executives
of NaftaSib, a Russia energy company. According to The Wa****ngton Post,
NaftaSib “has business
ties with Russian security institutions.” Link Other sources specify that
Abamoff and DeLay
received that money from operatives working for the GRU (Russian military
intelligence) as part
of an influence operation. Link Abramoff worked from 1997-2005 with former
Tom DeLay advisor Ed
Buckham. About $60,000 was spent on a six-day 1997 Russian trip for Tom
DeLay, Buckham, and
Abramoff. In 1998, $1 million was sent to Buckham via his organization
U.S. Family Network to
"influence DeLay's vote in 1998 on legislation that helped make it
possible for the IMF to bail
out the faltering Russian economy." DeLay voted for the legislation. Link
The 373-page Senate
Indian Affairs Committee Final Re****t makes no reference to Abramoff’s
Russian lobbying,
Russian intelligence, or to NaftaSib. (See, Link )
Naftasib executives later assisted DeLay in obtaining sniper equipment and
evading U.S. ex****t
license requirements for ****pment to settlers groups on the West Bank. .
Link A footnote in the
re****t makes a brief reference to the diversion of funds from Indian
tribes to purchase sniper
equipment for ex****t to Israeli settlers. The 373-page Senate Indian
Affairs Committee Final
Re****t makes no reference to Abramoff’s Russian lobbying nor to the role
of NaftaSib in his
efforts to evade U.S. arms ex****t regulations. (See, Link )
McCain’s inquiry touched on issues that went far astray from a look into
the exploitation of
several American Indian tribes by Abramoff and a close circle of GOP
lobbyists, including
Robert Scanlon, Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist. However, where the
investigation unearthed
other, more serious illegalities, these were simply skipped over, and
omitted from the record.
About a year after it began its formal investigation, however, the
Committee subpoenaed all of
Jack Abramoff’s recent lobbying records, along with those of Norquist,
Reed and Scanlon. The
Committee staff received the electronic files from Jack’s former
employers: the lobbying firm,
Preston Gates, from 1995 to 2000, and Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a law firm
with close GOP ties,
where Abramoff worked from 2000 to 2004. These firms were tied to the
scandal and McCain held
their fate in his hands. When printed out, these amounted to an estimated
750,000 pages.
McCain’s Committee would end up releasing only a small faction of these, a
mere 4800 pages.
Dozens of boxes of do***ents remain sequestered in Committee files
pursuant to arrangements
that McCain and the GOP majority imposed on the committee. See, page 6 of
the Final Re****t;
also, see, Dennis Greenia (“dengre”), Daily Kos, Jack Abramoff: John
McCain’s other Lobbyist
problem, ( Feb 22, 2008), Link
VII. Conclusion
By withholding most of the evidence received in response to his broad
subpoena, McCain managed
to cover-up the larger picture of the political work Abramoff did for his
clients, some of
which was clearly contrary to the U.S. national interest. This has
thwarted the efforts of
investigators outside McCain’s committee to independently examine the bulk
of the record, which
remains hidden.
However, it is completely consistent with McCain’s role as a career
cover-up specialist for the
foreign influence-peddling and financial frauds of the Republican Party.
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