THE INDIAN TRIBES FRAUDS - PIONEERING EXPLORATIONS IN ASTROTURF
“[W]e really need mo [sic] money. but you and I must meet and work out a strategy to get things moving. We are missing the boat. There are a ton of potential opportunities out there. there [sic] are 27 tribes which make over $100M a year ... can you have your guys do the research and find out which tribes these may be?... We need to get moving on them[1].” (Email from Jack Abramoff to Michael Scanlon, December 7, 2002)
The Indian Tribes frauds are remarkable, not just because of the astounding greed and utter moral bankruptcy exhibited by Abramoff, Scanlon and others, but because the subsequent hearings by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs provide a rare and very detailed account of a classic case of astroturfing. It is the story of how Abramoff and Scanlon, with the help of Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, Tom Delay, and a host of others, used phony front groups and other deceptive tactics to manipulate Christian fundamentalists into attacking proposed casinos that would have cut into the revenues of casinos owned by Abramoff’s and Scanlon’s Indian clients
The origins of the Indian Tribes Frauds go back to 1995 when Jack Abramoff first began to provide lobbying services for the Choctaw Tribe of Mississippi. Abramoff’s early work with the Choctaws, while a fine example of astroturfing, did not appear involve the truly outrageous frauds he perpetrated after teaming up with Michael Scanlon in early 2001. Once they discovered how easy it was to steal millions of dollars from the Choctaws, Abramoff and Scanlon moved quickly to launch similar frauds with the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan, the Agua Caliente Band of Cauhilla in California, the Tiguas tribe in Texas, the Louisiana Coushattat tribe, and the Pueblo of Sandia tribe in New Mexico. In the end, the six tribes paid well over $70,000,000 to Abramoff and Scanlon of which only a tiny fraction was used for the benefit of the tribes. Some of the money was used for illegal payments and gifts to Congressmen, Congressional Staffers, and Bush administration officials, but the lion’s share went straight into the pockets of Abramoff and Scanlon.
The frauds are described in painful detail in “Gimme Five”, a 350-page report by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs[2] released on June 22, 2006. Much of what follows consists of direct quotations from “Gimme Five”.
Abramoff Discovers the World of Indian Casinos
The Mississippi Choctaw tribe live on a reservation midway between Memphis, Tennessee and Jackson, Mississippi. After living in poverty for generations, the Choctaw became modestly successful in a variety of non-gaming business ventures before finally striking gold with the opening of the Silver Star Hotel and Casino in 1994. While Abramoff was involved with them, the Tribe became the third largest employer in Mississippi, with nearly 9,200 employees in 25 different enterprises including a second casino, a greeting card manufacturing business, a nursing home, a world-renowned golf course, and a company that manufactured wiring harness for the automotive industry
In 1995, a bill was introduced in Congress that would have imposed an “unrelated business income tax” (UBIT) to tribal enterprises. Confronted with this challenge, the Choctaw went looking for a lobbyist and, due to a chance connection between one of the tribe members and a friend of Abramoff’s father, they ended up in Abramoff’s office at Preston Gates.
Abramoff enlisted the aid of his long time friend and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and his organization, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), which Abramoff presented to the Choctaw as “...an effective vehicle for enlisting the support other groups that would fight the tax proposal.…it was ATR’s job to make contacts with those groups, to assist them in making contacts with members of the Ways and Means Committee or other committee members.” The Choctaw paid ATR a total of $60,000 in 1996 to oppose the UBIT tax. and the bill was ultimately defeated in the Senate
Impressed with these initial results the Choctaw came back to Abramoff on several occasions between 1996 to 1999 for additional lobbying assistance, mostly related to tax issues, and he developed a solid relationship with them.
Early in 1999, the Choctaws came to Abramoff once again for help in dealing with a new threat - a bill that had passed the Alabama House of Representatives authorizing dog tracks in the state to install video poker and other casino-style games. These potential gambling venues were close enough to the Choctaw’s casino operations across the State line to present a serious threat to their revenues.
Onward Christian Soldiers - Ralph Reed Mobilizes the Faithful
It just so happened that a few months before the Choctaws approached Abramoff for help with the Alabama threat, Ralph Reed had also reached out to Abramoff for help. Reed had left the Christian Coalition and was now looking for other ways to make money. In an email to Abramoff he wrote, “Hey, now that I’m done with electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts[3].” Abramoff immediately realized that Reed, with his broad contacts in the conservative Christian community, could be quite useful in mobilizing opposition to any potential gambling enterprises in Alabama.
Reed was more than happy to take on the Choctaw project and proposed that he receive a $20,000 monthly retainer. “He claimed that no firm had better relationships than his with the grassroots conservatives in Alabama, including the Alabama Christian Coalition, the Alabama Family Alliance, the Alabama Eagle Forum, the Christian Family Association, and leading evangelical pastors such as Frank Barker of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. Reed boasted that ‘Century Strategies [his political consulting firm] has on file over 3,000 pastors and 90,000 religious conservative households in Alabama that can be accessed in this effort.’”[4]
“Working closely with your existing team at Preston Gates, we can play on [sic] operational role in building a strong anti-video poker grassroots structure that will leverage the considerable contacts and reputation of our principals within Alabama, the conservative faith community, and state elected officials” (Letter from Ralph Reed to Jack Abramoff) [5]
“By May 10, 1999, the Choctaw had paid Reed $1,300,000 through Preston Gates, with
another $50,000 outstanding.”[6] Ultimately, Reed received payments of over $4,000,000 from various Indian tribes. Since Reed was presenting himself to the Christian conservatives as a man motivated by Christian values to fight the evils of gambling, he wanted to avoid being paid directly by the Choctaw casinos. Initially, the money was passed to Reed via Preston Gates, but for reasons that are unclear it became necessary to find other groups through which the money could be passed to Reed. For a time, Abramoff went back to Grover Norquist and ATR to perform this function, but by 2001, he was using Capital Campaign Strategies (CCS), a political consulting firm created by Michael Scanlon, and other entities created solely for the purpose of concealing the source of the money being funneled to Reed..
So there you have it - astroturf in all its shining glory - conservative Christians mobilized to oppose the evils of gambling in Alabama for the ultimate benefit of a gambling operation in Mississippi. It meets the first of the two criteria presented in Chapter 1 on the basis of the cynically deceptive representations to conservative Christian groups by Reed, Abramoff, and Scanlon. Reed tried to maintain that he too was duped by Abramoff and Scanlon, but for $4,000,000 it seems safe to assume that he did not feel strongly inclined to determine the source of his newfound income. It remains unclear just how much of the Choctaw money was actually used to mobilize Christian groups against gambling, but we do know that the Abramoff/Scanlon operation generally spent precious little of the payments received from the tribes to perform actual services for them. The Indian Affairs Committee report documents that of $54 million that paid by the tribes over a four-year period, $1.8 million was spent for actual services and the rest went to Scanlon, Abramoff and their network. In fairness to Reed, it appears that, compared to Scanlon and Abramoff, he spent a larger portion of the $4 million he received on actual lobbying activities for the Choctaws.
The Christian groups mobilized by Reed were no doubt sincere in their opposition to gambling in Alabama. They had no way of knowing that they were unwitting pawns in a cynical campaign to protect the profits of a casino just across the State line in Mississippi. One suspects that their enthusiasm would have been somewhat dampened had they known the real reason they were being called to action.
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Next Installment: Bring out the Wackos - Gimme Five Kicks into Hyper drive
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