The other shoe is about to drop on the Republican leadership, now reeling from the indictment of House Republican Leader Tom DeLay and the imminent indictments coming down from the Plame Grand Jury.
These cases have overshadowed ongoing investigations surrounding GOP fixer and bagman, Jack Abramoff. Long a fixture of Washington GOP lobbying, Abramoff is now facing a variety of felony charges related to work he did while in the DC office of Greenberg & Traurig (GT), a Miami-based law firm which represented the Bush-Cheney election committee in the 2000 Florida recount court fight.
That legal work for the Bush-Cheney committee was billed out in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but was never paid back. Federal Election Commission rules say that unpaid campaign expenses must be counted as in-kind contributions after 2 years, far exceeding the limits for that law firm, making them illegal contributions to the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign. See,
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/abramoff_florida_r... Abramoff's influence-peddling operation out of the Greenberg & Traurig law firm are connected to multiple Washington scandals, the nexus of which is lobbying that either illegally benefited Republicans or which alledgedly cheated that law firm's clients.
What is less well understood is that Ambramoff also served as the registered Washington lobbyist for the Government of Pakistan and is a fixer for Saudi moneymen tied to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Shortly after 9/11, Abramoff registered as a lobbyist for the General Council of Islamic Banks. According to the National Journal (Aug 31, 2002), the consortium was funded to counter the Treasury Department and the FBI's efforts to put an unwanted public spotlight on global terrorist financing coming out of banks in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
Abramoff's lobbyists spread the lie that Islamic banks had not sheltered money used for terrorist networks. Their primary client, chairman of the Council, Saleh Abdullah Kamel, soon after 9/11 became the focus of intense government scrutiny over alledged ties to terrorist activity.
Kamel, whose fortune is estimated at $3 billion, is the chairman of Dallah al Baraka Group (DBG), which is accused of financing al Qaeda and other extremist groups, and he was also the co-founder and major shareholder of Al Shamal Bank in Sudan, an institution in which Osama bin Laden established a personal ownership interest.
Kamel was listed as being one of the seven "main individual sponsors of terrorism" in a report by French counter-terrorism exert Jean-Charles Brisard submitted to the UN Security Council in December 2002. Recall that Omar al-Bayoumi, who provided money to two of the 9/11 hijackers, was once an assistant to the Director of Finance for Dallah Avco, a DBG company that works with the Saudi aviation authority. And the WSJ has reported that the United States believes the Dallah al-Baraka Bank, another DBG company, was also used by al-Qaeda.
Kamel's name appeared in the "Golden Chain," a roster seized by Bosnian authorities in Sarajevo in March 2002 listing Saudi donors to bin Laden.
****
While at Greenberg & Traurig, Jack Abramoff set up a subsidiary lobbying group with a Director of the Islamic Institute, a Virginia group founded by Grover Norquist, a GOP strategy and fundraising heavyweight.
Abramoff and a partner, Kaled Saffuri, operated Lexington Group LLC. This was reportedly not a commercial success, according to The Hill newspaper (04/14/2005):
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Fro... Three years ago, Abramoff and a prominent Islamic activist set up a lobbying firm, the Lexington Group LLC, with the goal of developing more lobbying business for Abramoff’s employer at the time, Greenberg Traurig.
The firm existed for at least four months and boasted on its now-defunct website that it represented “major U.S. corporations before the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch every day.” But it never reported any clients, nor did it direct business to Greenberg Traurig, according to public records and an interview with Abramoff’s associate in the venture, Khaled Saffuri, now a government affairs adviser with Collier Shannon Scott.
“I expected business to come, and it didn’t. It just folded,” said Saffuri, who said he was hired by Abramoff to be the Lexington Group’s president from May until August 2002, when it closed.Reportedly, Grover "Norquist and Khaled Saffuri founded the Islamic Institute, which was instrumental in the creation of the Al Qaeda financial network in Virginia. Saffuri was the Executive director of the American Task Force for Bosnia, which lobbied for US military intervention in Bosnia. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization actively was recruiting and training Arab fighters to fight alongside the Bosnian Muslims. Bosnia had become the focus of the worldwide jihad after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_2004... ;
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=new... Norquist's ties to the Saudi-funded Islamist movement in the US go back to 1998, after which Norquist became the principal Washington bridge for radical Islamists to the Republican Party. Frank J. Gaffney writes:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID... The association between Grover Norquist and Islamists appears to have started about five years ago, in 1998, when he became the founding chairman of an organization called the Islamic Free Market Institute, better known as the Islamic Institute. The Institute’s stated purpose was to cultivate Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans whose attachment to conservative family values and capitalism made them potential allies for the Republican Party in advance of the 2000 presidential election. . . .
Unfortunately, some associated with the Islamic Institute evidently had another agenda. Abdurahman Alamoudi, for one, a self-described “supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah,” the prime-mover behind the American Muslim Council (AMC) and a number of other U.S.-based Islamist-sympathizing/supporting organizations, saw in the Islamic Institute a golden opportunity to hedge his bets. ****
Abramoff is also tied in with the collapse of Tyco, Int'l, a huge US-based multinational conglomerate that operates in many countries, including Saudi Arabia. Abramoff is accused of bilking that company for millions of dollars in bogus or illegal lobbying expenses while at Greenberg & Traurig:
Tyco's former General Counsel Timonthy Flanigan's testified in late July to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Flanigan had been nominated as Number Two in the Bush Justice Department, and was recently forced to withdraw. This from Flanigan'confirmation hearing:
Durbin: Has Tyco conducted an investigation of Abramoff's activities on behalf of Tyco? If so, what were the results of the investigation?
Flanigan: Tyco has not conducted such an investigation. Greenberg Traurig, however, has conducted its own internal investigation and has informed Tyco of its conclusion that payments made by Tyco to GrassRoots Interactive, LLC were diverted by Mr. Abramoff. Specifically, Greenberg Traurig advised Tyco that Mr. Abramoff caused Tyco's payments to GrassRoots Interactive, LLC to be forwarded to a Greenberg Traurig trust account and, from there, ultimately to entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff. Greenberg Traurig informed Tyco that the funds diverted to the entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff were not used in furtherance of lobbying efforts on behalf of Tyco. This diversion occurred without my knowledge and was in violation of Mr. Abramoff's ethical, fiduciary, and contractual obligations to Tyco.
Tyco and Greenberg Traurig have reached an agreement in principle to settle Tyco's claims stemming from the diversion of funds as described above. Pursuant to the settlement, Greenberg Traurig will compensate Tyco for the funds diverted by Mr. Abramoff.***
Abramoff's former law firm was the site of other illegal contributions to GOP figures. The WashPost reports:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26015-2004Dec... "Jack Abramoff had one of the biggest schmoozing operations in town," said Rob Jennings, president of American Event Consulting Inc., an organization that raises funds for Republicans.
A list of skybox fundraising events maintained by Abramoff at his former law firm, Greenberg Traurig, lists 72 events for members of Congress between 1999 and 2003. All but eight were put on for Republicans, many of them members of the House leadership. Some of the fundraising events, including Doolittle's, were not reported as required under federal election laws.
SNIP
Abramoff, once one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, was forced to resign from Greenberg Traurig after disclosures earlier this year about the lobbying and public relations fees he and an associate charged a group of Indian tribes. The Senate Indian Affairs committee has tallied fees from six tribes that total $82 million over a three-year period.
SNIP
The big prize for members of Congress was in the more than $3.5 million in federal campaign contributions that six tribes made at Abramoff's direction, two-thirds of it to Republicans. The meals and the games were added perks that provided settings for Abramoff and the 10 or so lobbyists who worked for him to obtain access to members and ingratiate themselves to congressional aides.
SNIP
Abramoff not only lobbied staffers, he regularly hired them. Three former aides to DeLay worked as lobbyists for Abramoff at Greenberg Traurig: former deputy chiefs of staff Tony Rudy and Bill Jarrell; and former DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon, who formed a public relations company that worked in tandem with Abramoff. ****
Abramoff seems to be the spider at the center of much of the web of criminal influence peddling that have funneled money into the GOP during the past decade, creating ties between the Republican White House and terrorist-linked Persian Gulf bankers.
Grand Jury probes of Abramoff have resulted in a variety of charges. Bank fraud charges have already been filed against him; obstruction of justice charges against David Safavian, the Bush administration's former chief procurement official; and the scandal has resulted in the little-noted withdrawal of President Bush's nomination of Timothy Flanigan, a onetime associate of Abramoff, and General Counsel for scandal-plagued Tyco International, to be the Bush Justice Department No. 2 official.
Abramoff is close to most of the Republican leadership, and they have greatly benefited from that relationship. His ties include: President Bush; U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay; Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; party strategist Grover Norquist; and former Christian Coalition executive director and Bush campaign official, Ralph Reed.
Such close ties may soon turn out out to be a fatal embrace for these Republican leaders as details of Abramoff's multifaceted web of corruption become clear.
Copyright 2005, Mark G. Levey
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