A note from TPM Reader AK ...
Rwanda/Bosnia/Lebanon/IraqAs I heard NPR's reports about Sunis pulling shiites out of their homes (and prbably vice-versa), a chill went up my spine. I have no doubt that the worst is about to begin in Iraq with ethnic cleasnsing / mass murders/ Lebanon-style (Sabra and shatilla) civil war about to begin. And the US is stuck in the middle. While it would be great to get out right now (last month would have been better), the responsibility for everything is on us. We can't leave now, and we will be blamed (mostly correctly) for all that is about to happen. I am filled with dread. Our leadership is still saying to hold the line, when the line is not there.
Fear and hate is a vicious combination, each feeding off the other, like a well-built fire.
--Josh Marshall
More details on Mitchell Wade's guilty plea.
First off, we can identify the two members of Congress: Reps. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and Katharine Harris (R-FL), who
are reportedly "Representative A" and "Representative B," respectively, in Wade's plea.
According to the USAO's press release and the guilty plea, Wade made about $78,000 in "illegal campaign contributions" to these two - $32,000 to Harris and $46,000 to Goode. The contributions were illegal because Wade had his MZM employees and their spouses contribute under their own names, and then reimbursed them.
Wade says he did not tell either Harris or Goode that the contributions were illegal. But that doesn't mean they come out of this looking good, either.
Wade asked that Goode request appropriations funding for an MZM facility in Goode's district soon after he'd just delivered most of the $46K. This was at some unspecified time "in the spring" - the contributions were mostly made in March of 2005, so it can't have been long. By June 2005, "Representative A [Goode] confirmed to Wade that the appropriations bill would include $9M for the facility and a related program." Here's a picture of Goode and Wade at the facility's opening.
Harris comes out looking a little better. Wade approached her after delivering the $32K and the two dined at a "Washington D.C. restaurant." According to the plea:
"At this dinner, Wade and [Harris] discussed, among other topics, the possibility of MZM's hosting a fundraiser for [Harris] later in the year, and the possibility of obtaining funding and approval for a Navy counterintelligence program in [Harris's] district and locating an MZM office in that district. Wade later prepared a proposal for the Navy counterintelligence program and submitted it to Harris's staff."
But, and here is where Harris gets off the hook a little: "The program was not funded."
There's also an an unidentifed Department of Defense official in the plea, whose son went to work for MZM (the job was paid for by the government in a reimbursement agreement with MZM) and who himself ultimately went to work for Wade. According to John Bresnahan of Roll Call, "Media reports have identified that official as William S. Rich Jr., former executive director for the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center, and his son as William Scott Rich III."
--Paul Kiel
Up to 135 months incarceration for Mitchell Wade. And he's admitting to more than just bribing Duke Cunningham in his guilty plea. From the U.S. Attorney's Office's press release today:
Wade was able to exploit the [defense] procurement system in three distinct ways: by bribing a sitting United States Congressman; by conspiring to give favors to Department of Defense officials responsible for procuring services from Wade's company; and by funneling illegal campaign contributions to two Members of Congress.
Read all about it here.
--Paul Kiel
A new call for a special prosecutor in the Abramoff investigation, and Rep. Don Young (R-AK) asks us to imagine him in Bermuda shorts. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
$3,617,238.
Marina Nevskaya and Alexander Koulakovsky, two executives of the Russian energy company Naftasib with close ties to the Russian government and security services, appear to have funneled at least that much money to three DC GOP lobbyists between 1997 and 2004.
Almost $3.4 million went to Jack Abramoff and Ed Buckham of Alexander Strategy Group, arguably the two most powerful Republican lobbyists in town at the time, both with close ties to dethroned House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).
So what were Nevskaya and Koulakovsky looking to buy?
Let's break it down.
Way back in 1997 and 1998, Naftasib used a Bahamian company called Chelsea Enterprises for its purposes. Besides $440,000 in lobbying fees paid through the company to Abramoff ($260K) and another lobbyist ($180K), they spent at least $57,238 paying for a trip to Russia by Tom DeLay and four of his staff. The details are murky. But this April 2005 article from the Post puts Naftasib at the center of that operation and strongly suggests that Naftasib and its two executives were the ultimate source of the cash.
Also in 1998, there was the $1 million that the pair funneled through a London law firm to the US Family Network, a front operation run by Buckham for various political work on behalf of Tom DeLay and others.
Finally, with yesterday's Boston Globe story, we can add another $2.12 million paid to Abramoff through a Dutch front called Voor Huisen.
We've just added the lobbying disclosure documents for Voor Huisen to the TPM Document Collection. There you can see two $300K payments in 2001, two $300K payments in 2002, one $600K and one $300K payment in 2003, and then a meager $20K in 2004, when Abramoff was forced to leave Greenberg Traurig. As the Globe reports, "Abramoff resigned from Greenberg Traurig in March 2004. Within days, Voor Huisen was dissolved, according to Dutch records."
The question of the hour, of course, is just what the Russians were after, especially since, in every case, Naftasib's true role as the source of the money remained hidden.
A wide assortment of lobbying issues are listed on the various forms, including things like "promote pilot housing loan program in Russia," and others as vague as "Appropriations Matters." We also know that, according to Christopher Geeslin of the U.S. Family Network, the $1 million in 1998 was meant to "influence DeLay's vote in 1998 on legislation that helped make it possible for the IMF to bail out the faltering Russian economy." (DeLay did in fact vote for it.)
In any case, a million here and a million there and suddenly you're talking real money, even in Washington.
What did they get for it?
--Paul Kiel
Hmmm. Rep. Don Young (R-AK) keeps telling the press up in Alaska that he "never had any personal or professional relationship with [Jack] Abramoff." 
Now, as regular readers of TPM know, we have a cache of unpublished Team Abramoff emails from back in the day.
So this evening, after we heard about the Bermuda shorts dispute, I started leafing through the emails to see if Rep. Young's name came up.
It didn't take long.
The first one that caught my attention was an internal Team Abramoff email from Jennifer Calvert, a lobbyist who worked for Jack Abramoff, to Abramoff and Susan Ralston, Abramoff's then-executive assistant.
It's dated February 2nd, 2000 and the subject line reads "Suites - Don Young".
The text of the email reads ...
Don Young has asked for the use of our suites for some upcoming fundraisers. At this time, could we reserve the following events for Don Young?Thursday, March 30, Caps vs. Pittsburgh game 7:00 p.m.
Monday, July 24, Orioles vs. NY Yankees game 7:35 p.m. (assuming we have the box)
So Young asked Abramoff's deputy to ask Abramoff if he could use Jack's skyboxes to hold his fundraisers. But Young doesn't know Jack Abramoff from Adam.
Go figure.
(ed.note: For a breakdown of who footed the bill for the Abramoff skyboxes, see this July 2000 email from Ralston to Abramoff.)
--Josh Marshall
So the real core of the Cunningham defense contracting bribery scandal gets underway. Mitchell Wade, the flashiest of the Duke's bribers, but not the guy at the core of the scams, will enter a guilty plea U.S. District Court in Washington tomorrow morning. It's certainly not a surprise in itself. As we've reported previously, Wade began cooperating with prosecutors very, very early in the course of the case. But we'll be very interested to see what gets mentioned in his plea agreement and how far (and how high -- as some close to the case have long speculated) he takes this into the Pentagon.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Young (R-AK) Loses Shorts Over Abramoff Ties!
On February 10th, TPMmuckraker.com's Paul Kiel reported on the Abramoff-organized congressional delegation that Rep. Don Young (R-AK) led to the Marshall Islands in February 1999.
One of the more colorful details of Paul's report was the fact that Rep. Young actually addressed the Marshallese legislature wearing Bermuda shorts. Apparently, for someone so used to the frosty climes of Alaska, the South Pacific warmth just got the best of him.
We based our report on the eyewitness account of Tony de Brum, then-Finance Minister of the Marshalls, who witnessed Young's speech and his attire.
Late this afternoon, however, we receieved the news that at a press conference this morning back in Alaska, Rep. Young was asked about the Bermuda shorts incident and he denied wearing Bermuda shorts at any time during his brief sojourn in the Marshalls.
We thought Abramoff's clients were the only ones who lost their shorts because of their association with the disgraced lobbyist. But it seems they're not alone.
We'll keep an eye on the local press and keep you posted on how this late-breaking shorts controversy develops.
--Josh Marshall
Money well spent?
The New Hampshire Union Leader reports that the RNC has now apparently spent some $2.8 million mounting its aggressive defense of convicted phone-jammer and election tamperer James Tobin.
--Josh Marshall
One bit from today's Boston Globe piece about Jack Abramoff and his Russian energy mogul clients that shouldn't be missed:
Abramoff's work on Russian affairs began in the mid-1990s, according to J. Michael Waller, the former editor of a Washington-based newsletter, Russia Reform Monitor. Waller said he was contacted by two Abramoff associates in 1997, and was asked to help organize Abramoff's trip with DeLay to Russia."I was told by two of Abramoff's colleagues that he wanted to represent the Russian government," Waller said. He said Abramoff's colleagues explained that Abramoff was working for Naftasib, the Russian energy company, and that "if he performed well on Naftasib then the Russian government would retain him."
That made Waller uncomfortable, he added, because he had read Russian documents that said Naftasib supplied oil to the Russian military, so he declined to help Abramoff plan the trip.
"I was concerned that Abramoff was going to become an agent of influence for the Russian government and that he would mask that relationship," Waller said.
Who's to say he wasn't? According to the Globe, Naftasib filtered at least $2.1M to Abramoff through a Dutch company that existed only on paper. That in itself suggests a strong element of subterfuge.
Naftasib is closely tied into the Russian government. Abramoff may have been trying to use his connection to them as a stepping stone to formally representing the Russians. But it's not clear that would have made much of a difference. After all, look at what he was working on, nominally on behalf of Naftasib, an energy company:
Abramoff's lobbying records also suggest that the money paid to Abramoff by Voor Huisen [the Dutch shell company] was used to promote Russian interests. One lobbying report said Abramoff was hired by Voor Huisen to "promote private housing in the former Soviet Union and other projects in energy and economics." Other reports that Abramoff filed said he lobbied for Voor Huisen on matters ranging from aviation safety to disaster preparedness to unspecified issues ''pertaining to defense and security."
And:
[The subpoena] asks for records relating to Naftasib's interest in legislation, tax policy, and the International Monetary Fund.The IMF, which is financed partly by the US government, has provided billions of dollars in loans and loan guarantees to the Russian government.
Geeslin said he had been told that the money was aimed at influencing the vote of DeLay, the former House majority leader, on legislation that shored up the IMF's financing for Russia.
In reality, Abramoff seems to have been representing Russia, in practice if not on paper. He just never made it official. Then again, why bother? He wasn't even officially representing Naftasib.
--Paul Kiel
Bush at cabinet meeting: "And so people don't need to worry about security. This deal wouldn't go forward if we were concerned about the security for the United States of America."
--Josh Marshall
Bingo! Finally we're getting details on Tom DeLay's and Jack Abramoff's work for Russian nationals buying influence in DC. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
I think you can still put me down as officially agnostic on the security risk posed by allowing Dubai Ports World to assume the management of six major US ports of entry. But even if the fears are more nativist than real, it seems like the White House will still not leave critics hanging -- if nothing else, on old-fashioned and true-to-form insider and cronyism grounds.
Looking at the "secret agreement" the White House seems to have leaked this afternoon, here's one point that sort of stands out.
The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.
The failure to require the company to keep business records on US soil sounds like a pretty open invitation to flout US law as near as I can tell. Forget terrorism. This is the sort of innovative business arrangement I would think a number of Bush-affiliated American companies might want to get in on. Perhaps Halliburton could be domiciled in Houston, pay its taxes in Bermuda, do its business in Iraq and keep its business records in Jordan.
In the rest of the 'secret agreement' you can see other reasons why -- in addition to trade secret regs -- they chose to keep this pitiful deal a secret.
Read this ...
Under the deal, the government asked Dubai Ports to operate American seaports with existing U.S. managers "to the extent possible." It promised to take "all reasonable steps" to assist the Homeland Security Department, and it pledged to continue participating in security programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.
That paragraph is a beaut for the White House. "All reasonable steps" seems like a rather tepid standard of compliance with the Department of Homeland Security, doesn't it? And didn't we figure they'd want to help out regardless? Also, didn't we figure they'd keep helping out trying to prevent loose nukes from coming into the country? Did we just want to be sure?
More pointedly for the White House, the 'secret agreement' seems to have included a series of pledges, albeit rather feeble ones, of cooperation with security and counter-terrorism measures.
See the problem here? They aren't just hoisted on their own petard here; the petard is engaging them in an unnatural act, presumably pre-detonation. The White House's whole premise seems to be that the DPW just isn't involved in the security side of port management. Since that's the case, the whole security argument is bogus.
But if they need to pledge to cooperate and assist with security and counter-terrorism then clearly they are involved in port security.
--Josh Marshall
You asked for it. And here it is: our new Grand Old Docket, Ohio Sub-Docket.
--Josh Marshall
Earlier this evening I took this Matt Yglesias post and made it the featured post at TPMCafe.
It's about Larry Summers' resignation at Harvard and specifically the Washington Post's fatuous column decrying his departure.
I went to two of what the Post editorial calls "elite coastal campuses." And I spent the better part of my twenties at Brown, a very liberal college campus in what is probably the most Democratic state in the country. Nobody needs to tell me about campus liberalism with its foibles and insularities or its frothiness and escapism.
Believe me, I've seen it.
But there's just nothing more precious than seeing the faux-populist poseur Post editorial writers standing tough against an entrenched "establishment" of thirty-something, tenure-desperate semioticians and lit geeks in defense of "mainstream American values", a well of mores and beliefs with which the Post is no doubt deeply in touch. (Peel away the Fred Hiatt mask and underneath it's Bruce Springsteen; cut a little deeper and he's an Iowa farmer.) This is especially so when, as Matt, with a light touch, points out, they seem to know little about what actually happened beyond what you could crib from a studious reading of the 2005 edition of the Collected Transcripts of the O'Reilly Factor.
In their ability to be so completely out of touch with who they are, the Posties have finally accomplished what so many campus lefties struggled so long in vain to do: give real meaning to the phrase 'false consciousness'.
--Josh Marshall
So now it seems that the UAE folks have signed on Bob Dole to help them ride out the port storm, or find a port in the port storm, or something like that. But until today, who was the lobbying arm of the UAE in the United States? Who worked the press on their behalf?
I rung up the Foreign Agents Registration Unit at the Justice Department. And as of the last required filing (covering the first half of last year), there were four firms lobbying on behalf of the UAE and state-controlled UAE entities.
Hunton & Williams for the Ministry of Finance and Industry of the UAE; Global USA, Inc. for the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of the United Arab Emirates; Clark & Weinstock for the plain old United Arab Emirates; and Patton Boggs for UAE.
The one of those deals which seemed most tied to working Congress, the executive branch and media circles in DC is the Clark & Weinstock contract. They bill themselves as specializing in "reputation and crisis management."
We pulled the agreement and it's set forth in a January 18th, 2005 letter which former Rep. and W&C's DC Managing Partner Vin Weber (R) wrote to the UAE ambassador. The above excerpt details the two main goals of their representation of the UAE as outlined in their contract.
We called Clark & Weinstock's New York office to see if they're still working the UAE PR and lobbying account. But they didn't return our call.
--Josh Marshall
Is this Administration willing to break the law to get this Dubai port deal through?
The NY Times reported today that the law governing this sort of deal, when "the acquiring company is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government," requires a "mandatory," 45-day investigation. That was never done, and what's more, "Administration officials ... could not say why a 45-day investigation did not occur."
But here's the thing: it's not too late. The President can still order the investigation. And Sens. Schumer (D-NY) and Clinton (D-NY), along with Mayor Bloomberg, have asked for it.
--Paul Kiel
Watch out for that falling shoe: White House says Bush didn't know about Dubai ports deal until after it was approved. "He became aware of it over the last several days," says Scott McClellan.
--Josh Marshall
Isn't offshoring port management and security sort of like offshoring the shore?
--Josh Marshall
So did Jack Abramoff arrange that 1999 trip that Rep. Don Young (R-AK) led to the Marshall Islands or not?
Last week, we told you about a Congressional Delegation (or "CODEL") Jack Abramoff organized to the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) in February of 1999. The trip was led by Rep. Don Young (R-AK). After our story was picked up in the Anchorage Daily News, Young's spokesman told the paper in no uncertain terms that Abramoff wasn't involved in planning the trip.
But our source in the Marshalls, Tony de Brum, has a very different recollection of what happened.
According to de Brum, who was the Marshall Islands Minister of Finance in 1999 and worked with Abramoff while Abramoff was representing the Islands, not only did Abramoff offer to arrange the congressional visit, he also sent over two of his associates from his then-law firm of Preston Gates prior to the trip to make sure everything went smoothly.
De Brum told us that Shawn Vasell and another Abramoff associate actually did the 'advance' work for the trip, "to work with us on preparing for the trip and making sure that the Congress people heard what they wanted to hear, and coordinate with the military on Kwajalein."
Vasell did not return our call seeking comment.
Yesterday, we again asked Don Young's office for comment. Young spokesperson Meredith Kenny reiterated that "Abramoff did not plan the CODEL," and went on to explain that "CODEL's are planned and executed as official government travel in strict compliance with the law." She added that "Mr. Young has no personal or professional relationship with Mr. Abramoff."
According to de Brum's account and the court papers later filed by Preston Gates, the folks from the Marshall Islands needed help making their claims before the US government. They heard that Jack Abramoff was the guy to go to. When de Brum and his colleagues met with Abramoff, he suggested and offered to arrange for members of Congress to visit the Marshall Islands. Less than two months after they signed a contract with Abramoff, the congressmen touched down on Marshallese territory.
They hired Abramoff to arrange it. Abramoff made it happen. And his staffers even came out to the Islands to make sure everything came off as planned.
If Young didn't know that Abramoff was the guy who made the trip happen, he seemed to be the only one not in the loop.
--Paul Kiel
TPM Reader BR from Houston ...
Josh,This is the moment when the mask comes off, the curtain is pulled, and everyone—but especially Bush supporters—gets to see the sad little wizard pulling the strings and relying on his megaphone.
Leave aside the question of whether having our ports controlled by UAE will actually make us less safe—I don’t like it, but I don’t have hard evidence. The larger political point is that Bush has lived and died by the war on terror. He has accused those he believed to be less zealous of, virtually, treason. Etc. etc.
Being a War President, and the War on Terror itself, eclipses everything.
Except when it doesn’t.
The people who voted for him genuinely believed that he would keep them safer than any alternative we could elect. And now he’s blowing it all off, under the guise of “fair play” for countries that have “played by the rules.” Aside from the cribbing from Clinton, just which rules is it he thinks the UAE has played by?
The cynicism of his defense of the port deal is just staggering. He’s not even interested in pretending he didn’t know, or hadn’t considered the psychological ramifications, etc. Not even a nod to “maybe we should review this one more time.”
Could be it’s money—there is clearly some conflict of interesting running around the Treasury Dept.
But maybe they just don’t care. It’s all been a show, from day one. Or, I should say, Day 911.
I hope this knocks some sense into Republican heads. From what I heard on Sean Hannity today, perhaps it has.
I'm still interested in finding out a bit more about just what this deal would leave the UAE company in charge of. But what stands out about the president's talk tough statement today is that it really does amount to -- "The fact we're doing this means that we've looked into it and it's fine. So what's your problem?"
Here's an actual quote: "They ought to listen to what I have to say about this. They ought to look at the facts and understand the consequences of what they're going to do. But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it, with a veto ... they need to know that our government has looked at this issue and looked at it carefully. Again, I repeat, if there was any question as to whether or not this country would be less safe as a result of the transaction, it wouldn't go forward."
In the most generous reading, it's like he's insulted when we don't take his word for it that he's got us covered.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, so too many goofs for the Secretary of DHS. Like Reed says, he should go. But every so often when you're thinking of all of Michael Chertoff's goofs, you've got to remember who George W. Bush really wanted to get the job.
--Josh Marshall
In which I am put in my place ...
Dear TPM,I think you're being unfair to suggest the President is being inconsistent with his position on the port issue. I don't see the President implying that we have to in any way respect ordinary people of Middle Eastern origin. This is a corporation we're talking about, and Bush has always held a deep respect for the rights of corporations, regardless of their background, or criminal record for that matter.
CH
Point taken.
--Josh Marshall
"I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British (sic) company. I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to people of the world, we'll treat you fairly. And after careful scrutiny, we believe this deal is a legitimate deal that will not jeopardize the security of the country, and at the same time, send that signal that we're willing to treat people fairly."
That was part of the president's comments today about the UAE ports deal while on board Air Force One. With his coinage of the new adjectival phrase 'Great British' you sort of wonder whether the pressure may have brought back his earlier foreign name mangling tick.
But however that may be, set aside the merits of whether it makes sense for a government owned company from the UAE to manage major ports of entry into the US. Forget about that for a moment. Doesn't the president seem ... well, a bit laughable with his new decent respect for the opinions of mankind message?
Does he wear it well? I really did chuckle when I heard him with this stuff. I mean, with racial profiling pretty much the whole world, not outsourcing our foreign policy to people with funny accents, eavesdropping without warrants because that's what tough guys need to do to get the job done, a whole foreign policy framed around the premise that the rest of the world can blow it out their $#@#&.
Even if he's right on the merits, it just doesn't work from a president who makes his political coin of the realm not caring what anybody else thinks or even what the law might be so long as security is even conceivably at stake.
--Josh Marshall
This is one of those funny Bush Washington moments.
The budget cutters axed 32 jobs at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The employees were laid off two weeks ago.
But apparently no one told them that the political office at the White House had decided to make this energy independence squeeze-the-switchgrass-until-it-bleeds-gas week at the White House. And President Bush was heading over to the lab today to participate in a panel on the wonders of renewable energy.
The jobs got reinstated; the president says it was all a mix-up.
--Josh Marshall
1.2 mill to stand next to a Bush? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Josh Marshall
The question of the day is just what the Heritage Foundation and Jack Abramoff were doing getting former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad into see President Bush.
The Malaysians are actually fairly aggressive players in the DC lobbying through sham think tanks racket. I looked under this rock for an article I wrote for the New Republic back in early 2002.
The piece ('Pacific Whim') involves a slightly different set of players. But you can get a decent sense of how that scene works.
--Josh Marshall
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad confirms that Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to set up his meeting with President Bush.
--Josh Marshall
Every GOP corruption scandal does deserve its day in the sun.
When we debuted the Grand Old Docket a couple weeks back, there were some miffed Ohioans who deplored the absence of Tom Noe, arch-Coingate malefactor. Our initial thinking was that the Docket was about the current crop of Washington public corruption scandals and that ethical implosion of the Ohio Republican party was basically a separate story.
But we decided that that wasn't quite right, especially with Noe's recent indictment on state charges. So we're going to be setting up a special Ohio sub-Docket to keep you abreast of the wasteland of public corruption that is Republican party politics in the Buckeye state.
--Josh Marshall
UnionTrib: "Separated from his wife and awaiting sentencing, former congressman Randy 'Duke' Cunningham has been pulling weeds and regaining his strength at his friend Dan McKinnon's ranch in Lakeside. It isn't the first time McKinnon, 72, has saved Cunningham from himself. In Cunningham's 1984 book 'Fox Two: The Story of America's First Ace in Vietnam,' he wrote that he met McKinnon in 1973 when his life had hit 'rock-bottom.' Cunningham didn't give details. In disgrace, but not all alone McKinnon and a few of his friends encouraged Cunningham to turn his life over to God and stop the tailspin. 'They always encouraged me to face things with the Lordship of Christ in mind,' Cunningham wrote, 'rather than selfish ambition.'"
In other news, Duke supporters ask judge to remember Duke's legacy and mitigate sentence.
--Josh Marshall
Last week, we ran one of our first TPMmuckraker.com Advance Copy pieces on Rep. Don Young (R) of Alaska.
In the piece, one of our two new TPMmuckraker.com hires, Paul Kiel, reported on a congressional delegation Rep. Young led to the Marshall Islands in 1999 -- a trip that was put together by none other than Jack Abramoff.
On Sunday, Paul's story got picked up in the Anchorage Daily News.
ADN reporter Liz Ruskin reported on Paul's scoop and the trip. And Young's office denied that Abramoff had anything to do with it. (Young's office failed to return repeated requests for comment from TPMmuckraker.com.)
From Ruskin's article ...
Young's office says the article is wrong and that the trip was a normal part of his work then as chairman of the House Resources Committee, which has oversight over matters involving the Marshalls and other U.S.-affiliated islands....
Young's spokesman, Grant Thompson, said Abramoff didn't help plan the congressional delegation tour, or CODEL, as they're called.
"CODELs are planned and executed as official government travel. They are planned and executed in strict compliance with the law," Thompson wrote in an e-mail in response to the Daily News' questions.
He reiterated Young's previous assertion that he has had no personal or professional relationship with Abramoff. Further, he said, Young doesn't recall ever meeting the lobbyist.
We beg to differ.
Rep. Young's office says Abramoff had nothing to do with the visit. But in September 2001, Abramoff's former law firm Preston Gates filed court documents that say otherwise. They say Abramoff organized the trip right down to the delegation's schedule when they were in the Marshall Islands.
A former Marshall Islands government official familiar with the trip disagrees with Young too.
We'll be reporting more this week on Young's trip and the discrepancies surrounding his account of it.
--Josh Marshall
On Meet the Press today Mary Matalin claimed that Vice President Cheney never sent surrogates out to blame Harry Whittington for last weekend's hunting accident in the first days after the news broke ...
I don’t know what answers you pressed for that weren’t contained in this story. And you want to know why there’s bad faith because this human accident, this tragedy is conveyed as “Vice president”—she just characterized it—“The vice president sent people out for four days to blame the victim.” No such thing occurred. In the first story it was clear from his spokesman and Katharine Armstrong that he took responsibility and he was apologetic. He did not send anybody out to take the blame. I’ve explained how these stories go from putting out facts to issuing denials. He wasn’t out—he wasn’t out—and he wasn’t not out for four days. If you go through those four days, the first day the story was out there in as complete a fashion as we could humanly do.
How can she be serious 
when she was one of the lead surrogates sent out to do just that?
Right out of the box there was Katharine Armstrong (call her surrogate #1): Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself ... The vice president didn't see him. The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by God, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."
Then Scott McClellan who builds on Armstrong's initial point (call him surrogate #2): "I don't know all the specifics about it, but I think Mrs. Armstrong spoke publicly about how this incident occurred. And if I recall, she pointed out that the protocol was not followed by Mr. Whittington, when it came to notifying the others that he was there. And so, you know, unfortunately these types of hunting accidents happen from time to time."
Then Mary Matalin (call her surrogate #3): "The vice president was concerned. He felt badly, obviously. On the other hand, he was not careless or incautious or violate any of the [rules]. He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do."
This just isn't even up for debate. Until they were forced to switch course the party line was that Whittington screwed up by sneaking up behind the vice president.
About physical courage I don't know the answer. But all available evidence suggests that the Mr. Cheney is a man of deep moral cowardice. Makes a mistake and shoots his friend; blames the friend. Only he won't do it directly. So he gets underlings to do it for him. Forced to speak out publicly, he appears before a ringer-journalist guaranteed not to press uncomfortable questions.
It's all of a piece with the man's record. He's afraid of accountability. That's why he's such a fan of self-protecting secrecy. That's why he's big on smearing government whistle-blowers. It's really just two sides of the same coin. He's afraid of accountability. It's the same reason why he's such a notorious prevaricator -- lies to avoid accountability.
These are all the hallmarks of a moral coward.
--Josh Marshall
On Friday we noted that surreal headline about Harry Whittington apologizing to the vice president and his family for the anguish they had endured in the week since the vice president shot him in the face.
Now, put a benign gloss on that 'apology' and figure Whittington meant what he said only in the sense that he wished Cheney hadn't had to go through the media wringer for something that wasn't due to his recklessness or bad faith, etc. -- his fault perhaps, but something that happens in the course of an inherently dangerous activity.
But as we go from the mastication of the shooting event itself to the meta story about Dick Cheney's dark and dangerous shadow presidency, let's not let one salient fact disappear down the memory hole.
Even if Dick Cheney is blameless in this matter in any deep moral sense, let's not forget that his immediate reaction was to send out his surrogates to publicly blame what happened on the victim.
Actually, that may afford him too much credit since it wasn't actually his 'immediate' reaction. It was his considered reaction after the 24 hour cooling off period he gave himself between the shooting and when he chose to make it public.
By my count, he continued to have his public surrogates blame Whittington for fully three days. He only relented and took responsibility himself when the public and no doubt private political clamor became too much to sustain.
That's Dick Cheney.
--Josh Marshall
