Truth - Al Franken [67]
“Suddenly,” Marshall Wittmann, a former Christian Coalition official, later explained, “the Mariana Islands became one of the critical conservative causes of the mid-nineties.”
Leading the pack was the number three Republican official in the House. Tom DeLay, his wife, his daughter, and several aides enjoyed an all-expense-paid Christmas vacation to Saipan in 1997. At a lavish New Year’s Eve dinner thrown in his honor, DeLay sang for his supper, toasting his hosts and promising to fight to preserve the Saipan manufacturers’ way of life. Brian Ross, reporting exclusively for 20/20 and The Al Franken Show, caught him on tape.
DELAY: You are a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we’re trying to do in America and in leading the world in the free market system.
Let me quote that again.
DELAY: You are a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party.
One such shining light was Willie Tan, whose particularly sweaty sweatshop had a history of, among other problems, contaminated water that made workers sick.
ROSS (voice-over): When Steve Galster of Global Survival Network went undercover posing as a garment executive, he heard all about Congressman DeLay from the Mr. Big of Saipan garment manufacturers—this man, Willie Tan. Tan claims he is close to DeLay and boasted of the assurances he said the congressman had given him that the proposed laws on Saipan would be killed.
TAN: Do you know what Tom told me? He said, “Willie, if they elect me majority whip, I make the schedule of the Congress, and I’m not going to put it on the schedule.” So Tom told me, “Forget it, Willie. No chance.”
When DeLay’s office was contacted for that report, you might have expected some fancy footwork. But no.
ROSS (voice-over): A spokesperson for DeLay says it’s no secret he opposes the legislation.
DeLay was as good as his word. Even when Republican Senator Frank Murkowski returned from Saipan “appalled” and succeeded in passing a bill through the Senate, DeLay killed it in the House. It never even got a vote.
Odd that DeLay would fight to preserve a system involving forced child prostitution. After all, he was in the middle of cementing his reputation as the champion of the Christian right. As he told the Washington Post two years later, his goal in life was building a more “God-centered” nation, because “our entire system is built on the Judeo-Christian ethic.”
If DeLay was the Christian, his friend Jack Abramoff was the Judeo. And although he didn’t celebrate Christmas, he was in Saipan for the holiday in 1998 as well, probably for a late Hanukkah. DeLay toasted him, too:
DELAY: When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free market success and the progress and reform you have made.
Abramoff was not representing Saipan for free. All told, he received $7 million—almost twice what Red Scorpion made at the box office. Jack Abramoff had clearly found his calling.
It was the Abramoff connection that brought the Saipan story to my attention in the spring of 2005. Tom DeLay wasn’t the only Republican heavyweight facing charges of corruption during the time of the Schiavo controversy. Sure, DeLay had been reprimanded three times in 2004 by the House Ethics Committee. But Abramoff was in even worse trouble. He had used his personal credit card to pay for luxurious hotels and lavish dinners during Tom DeLay’s $120,000 fact-finding mission to St. Andrews Links in Scotland,3 which was illegal.
Also, he had bilked a number of Native American tribes to the tune of $82 million. Let’s leave sunny Saipan for a moment, and walk a mile in Jack Abramoff ’s moccasins.
Eighty-two million