The Peregrine Gallery
presents
DONALD P. HODEL
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
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“INDIANS DON’T KNOW JACK”
The Ghostlady, June 2006
There are many reasons why the secretary of interior should not be given unilateral authority to approve utility rights of way for Indian tribes. The top four reasons are: Jack Abramoff, Secretary Donald Hodel, Secretary Gale Norton and Secretary Albert Fall.
And they are only the icing on the cake.
The secretary of interior and high-level officialdom are mired in conflict of interest. Indian tribes’ primary enemies are within the department of interior: Bureau of Reclamation, the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife and Bureau of Land Management. Policy, Management and Budget is also added to the mix.
On a bad day, Indians’ external enemies are also present. They infiltrate the bowels of MIB through the grace and favor of party politics, patronage, cronyism and lucre. The Navajo breach of trust suit is a case in point. At the upper echelons of Interior, it is not what but who you know and what you have done for them. On the worst day, the conflicts of interest, cross and re-cross wiring of interests, shadow groups and influence peddlers are so labyrinthine a score card is needed to simply keep track of the incestuous menagerie.
Jack Abramoff, the infamous lobbyist who ripped off tribes for multi-millions, got access to Gale Norton through now indicted Tom “the Hammer” Delay. Steven Griles, Norton’s second banana, a former lobbyist himself, was openly dubbed “our guy” by kick back king, Michael Scanlon, Abramoff’s cohort in crime.
A strange outfit called “creepy” CREA (Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy), “[i]t turns out…was a laundry” or suspected to be “by a chain of e-mails from indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.” CREA, it is now known, is “an industry front group founded by [former] Secretary of Interior Gale Norton.” It was also a conduit for back door departmental access by Abramoff facilitated by Delay’s office. Abramoff was a member of Delay’s “kitchen cabinet” and raised money for the former congressman through his (Abramoff’s) private charity, the Capital Athletic Foundation.
Among the strangest and ethically challenged aspects of the Abramoff scandal was the deployment of tribal gaming money to pay Christian conservative activist, Ralph Reed, a Bush political advisor and gaming opponent, to work against certain tribal gaming. “Casino Jack,” as Abramoff had come to be known, was “a longtime friend of Reed.” Reed clearly had his uses. If a competitor got in the way of a client, according to Scanlon, they “brought out the wackos.”
Reed is a master at summoning grassroots activists en masse through low tech methods like phone trees. It was Reed’s job to gin up opposition and block whatever target Abramoff identified. Reed however wanted to pretend not to be taking gaming money so “he and Abramoff arranged to have millions of dollars laundered through a series of non-profits.” A strategy similar to that which ultimately triggered the downfall of Delay.
Abramoff also insinuated himself into the fee-to-trust arena writing correspondence for members of Congress who then filed nearly identical objections to trust applications opposed by the lobbyist.
The ultimate perfidy, however, was Abramoff’s and Scanlon’s organization of opposition to the Texas Tigua’s casino resulting in its closure. The pair then subsequently solicited $4.5 million dollars from the Tiguas with the promise of reopening. They did so while contemporaneously receiving $32 million dollars over a three year period from the Louisiana Coushatta. A portion of that jackpot was paid to Ralph Reed to mount a campaign against reopening. They worked both sides of the street adding insult to injury in the process.
In “private emails, Scanlon and Abramoff referred to the Tigua as “troglodytes” and “monkeys.” Abramoff, calling the Tiguas “moronic,” wanted “to get his mitts on their money.” A series of hearings were held in the wake of l’affaire Abramoff. Senator Dorgan described Abramoff and Scanlon as lurking in a cesspool of greed. Abramoff and Scanlon were paid $45 million dollars by only four tribes. One northern band said that “no one seems to know what our money was being spent on” so they “ended the costly relationship.”...
For more > > > The U.S. Interior Dept: Descending into the Heart of Darkness
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JACK ABRAMOFF - HENRY PAULSON - GALE NORTON
FAYE KURREN - NANCY JOHNSON - PETER SAVIO
BRUCE BABBITT - BEN BENSON - DAVID COLE
HAUNANI APOLIONA - JEFF WATANABE
COLBERT MATSUMOTO - LINDA LINGLE
(...with more to come!)
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Last Updated on May 25, 2007 by The Catbird