Truth - Al Franken [65]
For all-American clothing manufacturers like the Gap, Liz Claiborne, Wal-Mart, Old Navy, JCPenney, Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie and Fitch, Brooks Brothers, and, appropriately, Banana Republic, Saipan was a secret haven from annoying American labor laws. But facing constant threats from do-gooder, anti-sweatshop busybodies on the mainland that could force Wal-Mart to pay American wages for the manufacture of its American flag T-shirts, Saipan’s garment factory owners needed powerful allies in Washington.
Fortunately for them, in 1994, just as Democrats in Congress and the Clinton White House were closing in on Saipan’s sweatshops, the Gingrich Revolution swept a new crop of business-friendly Republicans to power. Saipan’s elite would turn to two emerging heavy hitters: former exterminator and born-again ex–party boy Tom DeLay, the incoming House majority whip, and a new and handsome face on the Washington scene: the hard-charging Orthodox Jewish lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who had spent the better part of his last ten years battling Communism. In Hollywood. As the producer of the 1989 Dolph Lundgren film Red Scorpion, Abramoff had ignored the then-fashionable anti-apartheid views of the civilized world by filming his action-adventure epic in South Africa–occupied Namibia and by using extras and military vehicles provided by his friends in the apartheid regime.
When the sequel, Red Scorpion 2, failed to garner even the tepid response of Red Scorpion 1, Abramoff was out of ideas. There would be no Red Scorpion 3. Fortunately, on the Saturday after the 1994 elections, the phone rang. Abramoff was being recruited by the prestigious Washington lobbying and law shop Preston Gates Ellis. It wasn’t that they were big fans of the Red Scorpion series. No, they were fans of Abramoff’s close ties to conservative power brokers like Grover Norquist and Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed, both of whom had served under him when he chaired the College Republican National Committee from 1981 to 1985. He was also friends with Tom DeLay.
The second Battle of Saipan was about to begin. On one side, you had Liz Claiborne, Brooks Brothers, JCPenney, Tom DeLay, and Jack Abramoff. And on the other, you had a few principled leaders in Congress and some officials in Clinton’s Interior Department. At stake: thousands of powerless workers trapped in a system of horrific sweatshops, de facto slavery, and a practice not normally associated with the religious right: forced prostitution.
I broke this story myself, in the spring of 2005. As I reported on my radio show, Brian Ross of ABC News’ 20/20 had traveled to Saipan with a camera crew in 1998. There, he found the very conditions that I reported to my radio audience and that you’re going to read about now. Ross’s 20/20 story and his 1999 follow-up provided the basis for my own investigation, which consisted of watching tapes of his reports and then reading some other documents in the public record. I’m proud to say that if it weren’t for my enterprising work as a journalist, no American would have ever heard about Ross’s landmark exposé, except those who saw it on network television or heard about it elsewhere.
Barbara Walters, as usual, demanded the opening lines—even though she, like me, had not done any of the actual reporting:
WALTERS: Tonight, we take you to a tiny American island, a gem where the beaches are gorgeous, the palm trees sway, but an outrage against common decency and American values is going on in the shadow of the American flag.
Way to set the scene, Barbara. Let’s go to the real journalist, shall we? Brian Ross found factories . . .
ROSS: . . . jammed full of low-cost workers brought in