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Why Did "Straight-Talk" McCain Lie About Jack Abramoff?
Sen. John McCain, for many, is an appealing presidential candidate, because he seems to have followed his conscience, not Republican Party dogma, on so many issues. These include his support of campaign finance reform, and his opposition to the Bush tax cuts, drilling in the Arctic Wilderness, and a constitutional amendment banning abortion. He touts himself as a "straight talker" whose word can be trusted.
Before launching his probe into Jack Abramoff -- one of the most prominent and powerful Republican lobbyists in Washington -- McCain claimed that he had never heard of or met Abramoff. This claim certainly stretches credulity.
In the course of doing extensive research for my new book, I was surprised to discover that McCain's Senate Indian Affairs Report on Indian Lobbying -- which he had touted as "fair, accurate, and neutral" -- was not at all as he had described. This 373-page document -- the culmination of an investigation into Abramoff's tribal lobbying practices -- was actually misleading and deceptive.
McCain's report -- released in June 2006 -- appears to have been a well-orchestrated vengeful attack against Abramoff, who was McCain's long-time political foe. McCain was retaliating against Abramoff for his role in the infamous "black-baby" smear campaign during the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary, which Abramoff had unwittingly funded. (In an effort to block McCain's bid for the nomination, Abramoff had raised $3 million at the urgent request of his close friend Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and a notorious political assassin. Reed and Karl Rove, unbeknownst to Abramoff, allegedly used it to make anonymous claims -- via phone calls and flyers on windshields -- that McCain had fathered an illegitimate daughter with a black prostitute. The black child who had appeared on stage with McCain at many campaign events was in fact his daughter, adopted from a Bangladeshi orphanage founded by Mother Theresa). McCain lost the South Carolina primary and as a result the Republican nomination and his bid for the presidency. But his indignation over this smear campaign continued to fester for many years.
One day in late February, 2004, McCain picked up the Sunday Washington Post and read that his arch foe had allegedly ripped off $45 million from several Indian tribes. The very next morning, McCain launched his probe against the man he claimed he had never heard of.
McCain's report employed the typical tactics of fraudulent exposition: omission, ellipses to conceal exculpatory information, interviews with only those willing to attack Abramoff, exaggerations, outright falsehoods, and the exclusion or minimization of anything positive about the lobbyist. McCain refused to allow testimony from many of Abramoff's Indian supporters who had asked to speak on Abramoff's behalf. (Abramoff's many victories for his tribal clients, some of whom gratefully rehired Abramoff year after year, were staggering. For example, for three successive years, he successfully fought back Republican-sponsored legislation in Congress that would have taxed tribal casinos at 33%. In a 10-year period, this conservatively saved Indian Country $33 billion, an amount that increases every year in perpetuity. In another example, Abramoff obtained over 9000 acres for one of his tribal clients, who had originally applied to the lethargic Bureau of Indian Affairs for the "land in trust" back in 1927!)
What really caught my attention was the fact that McCain had only released 1% of the 745,000 pages of the Abramoff documents -- e-mails, billing records, memos, etc. -- that McCain had subpoenaed. It made me wonder what he was trying to conceal. Apparently, he figured that with his "straight-talk" reputation, no one would challenge his conclusions. On that score, he was correct. Until now.
If Abramoff was such an evil man and a master manipulator of "unsophisticated" Indian tribes, not to mention gullible members of Congress, why did McCain have to go out of his way to produce such a fraudulent report? Why did he feel compelled to go to such extremes to falsify what appeared to be a black-and-white and open-and-shut case against Abramoff, the international pariah? Why didn't McCain simply present all of the facts -- good and bad -- in support of his conclusions that Abramoff was the most underhanded creature that ever crawled out of the slime?
My guess is that it's not a question McCain will choose to answer.
Gary S. Chafetz is the author of The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, which has just been published. (Please see theperfectvillain.com for updates.)
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Yet again, we find a story where John McCain claims he puts country first but with more analysis, it is revealed that he is putting his own agenda first. Abramoff was bad for America Mr. McCain and that alone should have motivated you; forget his unwitting use as a financier of a racist campaign against you.
The other thing that is striking is that John McCain seems not to have a problem going to bed with the same people who attacked him in such a despicable fashion. It speaks to his character and his honor to bed down with such racist and vile people, yet he wants me to think he is for all Americans. If I was McCain and those men (Rove et al) had done what they did to my daughter, I would not have them working on my campaign.
I want to feel sorry for him, but his unbridled ambition will not allow me to do that. He has become the very thing he says he is against as one who supposedly puts country first. That is pure and classic hypocritical GOP if ever there were a case of that impediment to healthy mind and peaceful soul. The man is a tragic figure even if he wins. He is a real case study in compromise complete and disturbing.
Get help Mr. McCain for you are sick with a case of ambition run amok. There is still time and hope for you as a human being.
If Abromoff is such a hero, how come he's in jail? It sure wasn't John McCain that put him there.
[PART III]
The perfect storm then becomes a tornado, when the Justice Department decides that an example must be made. It terrorizes you into pleading guilty to crimes you don't really think you're guilty of. (They will find you guilty or some technicality, give you the maximum sentence, put you in jail with violent offenders for 30 years. Or you can save yourself going bankrupt with legal fees by pleading guilty to whatever they say, cooperating, serving your time in a somewhat cushy prison camp, and getting a much reduced sentence.) My only point is that just because Abramoff pleaded guilty does not necessarily mean that he is guilty.
I was extremely lucky to talk Abramoff into secretly allowing me to interview him so extensively and unconditionally over the past two years. But it was the facts and documents that led me to my unexpected conclusions, not Abramoff's attempts to charm me.
This post is already way too long. If you are interested in knowing more about this complex, but fascinating, case and the kind of cruel and merciless world we live in, please read The Perfect Villain. Abramoff is hardly a saint. But McCain, the Washington Post, and the Department of Justice were paradoxically much worse.
Thanks,
Gary S. Chafetz
Talk about the fox guarding the hen house!
Actually, McCain's "investigation" of Abramoff is an example of his complete lack of any moral compass.
Please read http://www.dengre.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/8/222648/0915/57/433195 for details on the extent to which this so-called investigation was in fact a cover-up.
[PART II]
It is an incontrovertible fact that Abramoff literally saved Indian Country tens of billions of dollars. The perfect storm grew into a hurricane when John McCain opened the newspaper and read the Post's first story about Abramoff. McCain immediately used his senior position on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to launch an investigation, because Abramoff was one of McCain's chief political foes. It was Abramoff who had unwittingly funded the notorious (and unforgivable) "black baby" smear campaign against McCain in the South Carolina 2000 Republican primary. So now McCain had a golden opportunity for political revenge. He produced a 373-page report that is essentially a lie. (I'm not thrilled about saying that. I would have preferred that everything McCain said about Abramoff was true, but it simply was not the case.) When Abramoff testified before McCain at the Senate Indian Affairs hearing, Abramoff would have loved to have given his side of the story. But his lawyer instructed him to remain silent, because it is so easy for your statements to be compared to some e-mail you wrote two years ago and as a consequence be charged with perjury. Better not to take the chance, so you plead the 5th. [CONTINUED]
Now that McCain has revealed his true character, it's critical that Obama make honesty in the White House a key issue of the campaign. Please write to the campaign and urge them to do this.
Those Abramoff files are political gold for McCain. Ever wonder why so many Republicans--many of whom clearly dislike the "Maverick"--managed to get in line behind his candidacy? There must be some sweet dirt in that pigpile, and I'm guessing most of it's stuck to the right-wing, as we haven't seen much of it surface to be flung and Obama & Co.
It's less about getting even, and more about winning at all costs.
"...he seems to have followed his conscience, not Republican Party dogma, on so many issues. These include his support of campaign finance reform, and his opposition to the Bush tax cuts, drilling in the Arctic Wilderness, and a constitutional amendment banning abortion."
I guess you're talking about the OLD McCain here, from the year 2000 or before. McCain has flipped on almost all of those issues in the past few years. For the 2008 presidential campaign, he has embraced the policies of the Bush administration almost entirely. He is now even using many of the same deplorable Karl Rove campaign tactics that had been used against him in 2000.
So now you guys are sticking up for convicted criminal Abramoff, of all people, just to go after McCain?
WTF?
I would not stick up for Abramoff for cash! However it just throws a little light on McCain's record, and goes to show that he is not above letting personal feelings dictate his actions.
Abramoff was a good at being a lobbyist, he just fell into that "I'm above the law" pit that so many politicos founder in.
[PART I]
Julie, please believe me I am not happy about sticking up for Jack Abramoff. His politics and mine are diametrically opposed. But as a reporter, my job is not to push my political views, but to do my best to impartially follow the facts--all the facts, especially those that go against the grain of my expectations and my political beliefs. As counter-intuitive and implausible as this may sound, I soon learned that Abramoff was exceptionally generous. Often, he gave away his money anonymously. He never even paid off his own home mortgage. He also got himself caught up in a black hole of a perfect storm. The Washington Post ran what I now realize was a sensational series of stories about an urbane greedy lobbyist who charged his unsophisticated tribal clients tens of millions of dollars when there really wasn't much going on in Indian Country to justify his high fees. (These stories played brilliantly into our latent guilt about what we had done to Native Americans for the past 500 years.) I soon came to understand that most of what was reported wasn't really accurate, not to mention the fact that the people who suggested the story to the Post were Abramoff's competitors and enemies. It turned out that his tribal clients were extremely sophisticated, far more sophisticated than Abramoff about Indian Country. They ran casinos that generated hundreds of millions of dollars. They could afford the best lawyers, accountants, and consultants. [CONTINUED]
The troubling part of this is the vindictiveness of you-know-who. Abramoff is no stellar character and he should have been prosecuted but it seems there was plenty of evidence to do that. It's the vindictiveness that both Mc and Spalin seem to relish that bothers me. Vendettas are not good things and the two of them seem to engage in this ugly practice quite a bit.
A. Defending Abramoff? Even if you were right and McCain had gone after Abramoff with unfair tactics, Abramoff would still be unquestionably guilty. You are now on the not-with-a-40-ft.-pole list. With you for a friend, a man would not need enemies.
B. Less than 1% is exactly the amount of subpoenaed documents you should expect to see in a final report. Have you ever seen the results of a subpoena? They are almost always 99% garbage and repetition.
Gary, thanks for this post. It's an angle on the Abramoff affair I hadn't seen. Just just put your book on my Amazon wish list.
He probably lied for the same reason Obama did about his relationship with William Ayers. Embarrassment.
Apples and oranges. The two are not at all analogous.
Stretch much?
It seems that burying the truth is a pattern of conduct with John McCain:
John McCain claims to support transparency, openness and honesty in government but his practices and conduct suggest otherwise.
John McCain said:
"A democratic government operates best in the disinfecting light of the public eye. Ethics and transparency are not election year buzz words; they are the obligations of democracy and the duties of honorable public service...”
Yet, when it came to “disinfecting” the suffering surrounding families of American patriots, who gave their life for this country, Sen. McCain had a very different response, in particular to Dolores Apodaca Alfond, whose only request was that information be released concerning all our Vietnam POW’s so that families could live the remainder of their lives with some measure of closure and peace. John McCain instead chose to seal those documents, making it virtually impossible for these families to experience the “disinfecting light” of truth, ethics and transparency that McCain spoke of, but failed to deliver to them.
The War Secrets Sen. John McCain Hides
Former POW Fights Public Access to POW/MIA Files
By Sydney Schanberg
http://www.vvof.org/mccain_hides.htm
Where is McCain's disinfecting light of ethics and transparency?
Where is McCain's duty and obligation to honorable public service and to democracy?
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