Truth - Al Franken [68]
It was these Indians that Jack Abramoff set his sights on. Some of them were getting their casinos shut down by busybody bureaucrats. He offered to help them out. Other Indians wanted to get bureaucrats to shut down the casinos of neighboring tribes in order to drive out the competition. Jack offered to help them, too. Sometimes, he was able to do both at once, with competing tribes. If that sounds like it might be a conflict of interest, then you don’t know “Casino Jack” Abramoff. Jack, you see, was interested in one thing: making money.
Abramoff didn’t work alone, just like I don’t work alone. I have a staff of researchers and producers that make sure that all my facts and figures are on the level. In the same way, Abramoff had a partner named Michael Scanlon, a former Tom DeLay aide, who made sure that they made as much money as possible off the Indians.
Jack and Mike liked to write each other e-mails. Lots of people use e-mail. It’s very convenient. Just today, I sent an e-mail to my publisher asking them to take a little bit off my chin in the cover photo. But some e-mails just shouldn’t be sent. Especially e-mails about the types of things that might provoke massive investigations from multiple subpoena-brandishing federal agencies—things like stealing money from Indians.
The Senate Indian Affairs Committee, chaired by John McCain, conducted one such investigation, and posted many of the incriminating e-mails on its website. If you look hard enough, even the untrained eye is able to detect a certain lack of respect in the way Abramoff and Scanlon discussed their Native American clients.
For example, look at the phrasing in this February 7, 2002, e-mail from Abramoff to Scanlon regarding the billing on a contract with Mississippi’s Choctaw tribe:
We need to get some $ from those monkeys!!!!
Or this April 11, 2002, message, again from Abramoff, pertaining to the Saginaw Chippewa of Michigan:
These mofos are the stupidest idiots in the land for sure.
The Chippewa, in particular, seemed to inspire a certain bluntness in Casino Jack. Here’s an interchange from December 17 and 18, 2001, in which Abramoff described his hope that the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Council would vote to retain his services:
3:51 P.M., Abramoff: Can you smell money?!?!?!
(Abramoff was not afraid to use a little extra punctuation to get his message across.)
4:11 P.M., Scanlon: Did we win it?
4:56 P.M., Abramoff: The f-ing troglodytes didn’t vote on you today.
5:52 P.M., Scanlon: These knuckleheads are never going to do it.
6:09 P.M., Abramoff: Yes they will.
7:16 P.M., Scanlon: What’s a troglodyte?
7:12 A.M. the next morning, Abramoff: What am I, a dictionary? It’s a lower form of existence, basically.
Though Scanlon might seem younger and dumber than Abramoff in this interchange, you’ll note that he is somewhat more restrained. That might be because Scanlon had been burned by inartfully worded electronic mail before.
In 1998, when Scanlon was running the Clinton impeachment “war room” in his capacity as Tom DeLay’s communications director, he fired off a missive that turned into something of an embarrassment when it was reported in the Washington Post. Watching President Clinton testify to a grand jury on television, Scanlon ruminated on the most prudent way to deal with a wounded political adversary.
This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is BS—Not only do you kick him—You kick him until he passes out—then beat him over the head with a baseball bat—then roll