Jack Abramoff:
The lobbyist's playbook
November 6, 2011 - CBS News – 60 Minutes - Ira
Rosen is the producer
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57319075/jack-abramoff-the-lobbyists-playbook/
Crooked lobbyist Jack Abramoff
explains how he asserted his influence in Congress for years, and how such
corruption continues today despite ethics reform. Lesley Stahl reports.
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Jack Abramoff, the notorious former lobbyist at the center of
Washington's biggest corruption scandal in decades, spent more than three years
in prison for his crimes. Now a free man, he reveals how he was able to
influence politicians and their staffers through generous gifts and job offers.
He tells Lesley Stahl the reforms instituted in the wake of his scandal have
had little effect.
The
following is a script of "The Lobbyist's Playbook" which aired on
Nov. 6, 2011.
Jack Abramoff may be the most notorious and crooked lobbyist of
our time. He was at the center of a massive scandal of brazen corruption and
influence peddling.
As a
Republican lobbyist starting in the mid 1990s, he became a master at showering
gifts on lawmakers in return for their votes on legislation and tax breaks
favorable to his clients. He was so good at it, he
took home $20 million a year.
Jack Abramoff: Inside Capitol
corruption
How corrupt is lobbying in Washington, DC?
Enough to get "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley
Stahl angry when she hears how Jack Abramoff bribed
and influenced legislators.
It all came
crashing down five years ago, when Jack Abramoff pled
guilty to corrupting public officials, tax evasion and fraud, and served three
and a half years in prison.
Today he's a
symbol of how money corrupts Washington.
In our interview tonight, he opens up his playbook for the first time.
And explains
exactly how he used his clients' money to buy powerful friends and influence
legislation.
Jack Abramoff: I was so far into it that I couldn't figure out
where right and wrong was. I believed that I was among the top moral people in
the business. I was totally blinded by what was going on.
Jack Abramoff was a whiz at influencing legislation and one way
he did that was to get his clients, like some Indian tribes, to make
substantial campaign contributions to select members of Congress.
Abramoff: As I look back it was effective. It
certainly helped the people I was trying to help, both the clients and the
Republicans at that time.
Lesley Stahl:
But even that, you're now saying, was corrupt?
Abramoff: Yes.
Stahl: Can
you quantify how much it costs to corrupt a congressman?
Abramoff: I was actually thinking of writing a book -
"The Idiot's Guide to Buying a Congressman" - as a way to put this
all down. First, I think most congressmen don't feel they're being bought. Most
congressmen, I think, can in their own mind justify the system.
Stahl:
Rationalize.
Abramoff: --rationalize it and by the way we wanted as
lobbyists for them to feel that way.
Abramoff would provide freebies and gifts - looking
for favors for his clients in return. He'd lavish certain congressmen and
senators with access to private jets and junkets to the world's great golf
destinations like St. Andrews in Scotland. Free meals at his own
upscale Washington restaurant and access to
the best tickets to all the area's sporting events; including two skyboxes at Washington Redskins games.
Abramoff: I spent over a million dollars a year on
tickets to sporting events and concerts and what not at all the venues.
Stahl: A
million dollars?
Abramoff: Ya. Ya.
Stahl: For
the best seats?
Abramoff: The best seats. I had two people on my staff
whose virtual full-time job was booking tickets. We were Ticketmaster
for these guys.
Stahl: And
the congressman or senator could take his favorite people from his district to
the game--
Abramoff: The congressman or
senator uh, could take two dozen of his favorite people from their district.
Stahl: Was
all that legal?
Abramoff: We would certainly try to make the activity
legal, if we could. At times we didn't care.
But the
"best way" to get a congressional office to do his bidding - he says
- was to offer a staffer a job that could triple his salary.
Abramoff: When we would become friendly with an office
and they were important to us, and the chief of staff was a competent person, I
would say or my staff would say to him or her at some point, "You know,
when you're done working on the Hill, we'd very much like you to consider
coming to work for us." Now the moment I said that to them or any of our
staff said that to 'em, that was it. We owned them.
And what does that mean? Every request from our office, every request of our
clients, everything that we want, they're gonna do.
And not only that, they're gonna think of things we
can't think of to do.
Neil Volz: Jack Abramoff could sweet
talk a dog off a meat truck, that's how persuasive he was.
Neil Volz was one of the staffers Abramoff
was talking about. He was chief of staff to Congressman Bob Ney,
who as chairman of the House Administration Committee had considerable power to
dispense favors. Abramoff targeted Volz and offered him a job.
Stahl:
You're the chief of staff of a powerful congressman. And Jack owns you and you
haven't even left working for the congressman.
Volz: I have the distinct memory of, you know, negotiating with
Jack at a hockey game. So we're, you know, just a few rows back. The crowd's goin' crazy. And Jack and I are havin'
a business conversation. And, you know, I'm-- I'm wrestlin'
with how much I think I should get paid. And then five minutes later we're--
he's askin' me questions about some clients of his.
Stahl: When
you look back was that the corrupting moment?
Volz: I think we were guilty of engaging in a corrupt
relationship. So there were several corrupting moments. There isn't just one
moment. There were many.
Abramoff: At the end of the
day most of the people that I encountered who worked on Capitol Hill wanted to
come work on K Street, wanted to be lobbyists.
Stahl:
You're telling me this, the genius of figuring out you could own the office by
offering a job to the chief of staff, say. I'm having two reactions. One is
brilliant. And the other is I'm sick to my stomach.
Abramoff: Right. Evil. Yeah. Terrible.
Stahl:
'Cause it's hurting our country.
Abramoff: Shameful. Absolutely.
It's the worst thing that could happen. All parts of the system.
Stahl: I'm
mad at you.
Abramoff: I was mad at me--
Stahl: I'm
not kidding. I'm not kidding.
Abramoff: Look I did things and I was involved in the
system I should not have been in. I'm ashamed of the fact I was there, the very
reason why now I'm speaking about it. And now I'm trying to do something, in
recompense, is the fact that I thought it was-- it was wrong of me to do it.
One of the
offices he keyed on was that of his good friend, the Majority Leader Tom Delay,
eventually hiring his deputy chief of staff and his press secretary, and going
into business with Delay's chief of staff.
Stahl: Did
you own his staff?
Abramoff: I was as close to his staff as to any staff.
I had a very strong personal relationship with a lot of his staff.
Stahl: How
many congressional offices did you actually own?
Abramoff: We probably had very strong influence in 100
offices at the time.
Stahl: Come
on.
Abramoff: No.
Stahl: A
hundred offices?
Abramoff: In those days, I
would view that as a failure. Because that leaves 335 offices that we didn't
have strong influence in.
Stahl: Did
he own you?
Bob Ney: Oh, I don't believe Jack Abramoff
owned me. But were we involved in the culture of corruption together? Absolutely.
Former
Republican Congressman Bob Ney was ambitious and
looked at Abramoff as a way to build alliances with
the White House and the majority leader.
Ney: I wanted to be
speaker of the House and Jack Abramoff was the
beautiful light of day for me to get to the person who I had had some conflicts
with, Tom Delay.
Abramoff began inviting Ney
on golf trips including one to Scotland and to his restaurant Signatures,
where Ney was given food and drinks on the house, a
violation of the congressional gift limit laws. Ney says he was hardly the only one crossing the line.
Ney: But I will still tell you, at that point in time, in order
to get a drink at Signatures you had to shove White House staffers of
George Bush the heck away from the bar. And it was packed with people. And
there were members. Now that doesn't mean everybody did everything for Jack.
But if you wanna talk about strict interpretation of
violation of the-- of-- of the laws of drink and food, Katey
bar the door, she was wide open, two shotguns blarin'.
After months
of taking handouts, Ney was approached by Neil Volz, his former chief of staff, by then a lobbyist for Abramoff.
Volz: I let you down man and I'm sorry...
Volz asked Ney to insert some language
into a reform bill that would give a backdoor license to an Indian casino owned
by one of Abramoff's clients. You often hear about
lobbyists getting special secret deals for their clients like this. It's an
insidious technique that Abramoff perfected.
Abramoff: So what we did
was we crafted language that was so obscure, so confusing, so uninformative,
but so precise to change the U.S.
code.
Stahl:
Here's what you tried to get tacked on to this reform bill.
Abramoff: Yeah.
Stahl:
"Public law 100-89 is amended by striking section 207 (101 stat. 668,
672)."
Abramoff: Right. Now isn't that obvious what that
means? It was perfect. It was perfect.
Stahl: So
that's what you tried to get inserted?
Abramoff: Yes.
Stahl: And
that was gonna provide for a casino?
Abramoff: Yes.
Stahl: And
who on earth is gonna know that?
Abramoff: No one except the chairmen of the
committees.
Stahl: Who
stuck it in there?
Abramoff: Yes.
Stahl: And
that's one of the things you used to do?
Abramoff: Yes.
Stahl: And
it was deliberately written like that?
Abramoff: Precisely. Yes.
Stahl: And
that's done a lot?
Abramoff: Members don't read the bills.
Stahl: You
didn't even know what it was for?
Ney: Had no idea. And then when we got the written language--
Stahl:
Well-- why didn't you know what it was for?
Ney: I didn't-- I didn't care.
Stahl: Oh!
Ney: It was a great big shell game. And I was in the middle of
it, whether, you know, knowing or not. I-- I was dumb enough to not say,
"What's this thing do?"
Ney would eventually serve 17 months in federal prison, the
only congressman who was ever charged in the scandal. But Abramoff
says that there were many other members that did his bidding that could have
been charged.
Stahl: Was
buying favors from lawmakers easy?
Abramoff: I think people are under the impression that
the corruption only involves somebody handing over a check and getting a favor.
And that's not the case. The corruption, the bribery, call
it, because ultimately that's what it is. That's what the whole system is.
Stahl: The
whole system's bribery?
Abramoff: In my view. I'm talking about giving a gift
to somebody who makes a decision on behalf of the public. At the end of the
day, that's really what bribery is. But it is done everyday and it is still
being done. The truth is there were very few members who I could even name or
could think of who didn't at some level participate in that.
Abramoff prided himself on being a man who did good. He was devoutly religious and exorbitantly charitable
and he says he gave away 80 percent of his earnings. When he fell from grace,
his reputation was in tatters because it was not just that he had corrupted
Congress - it was found he had cheated his clients, like the Indian tribes.
Abramoff: Most of the money I made I gave away, to
either communal or charitable causes. So I thought frankly I was one of the
most moral lobbyists out there.
Things began
to unravel for Abramoff when the Washington Post published a largely
unflattering portrait of him in 2004, reporting that he charged his clients 10
times more than any other lobbyist in town.
Abramoff: My first response was, "What's the big
deal? I don't understand what this is about. This is what lobbyists do.
What he
didn't understand was the part that said he and a former aide to Tom Delay had overbilled four of his Indian casino clients by $45
million.
In the end,
he was brought up on federal charges of tax evasion and ripping off Indian
tribes. On the day he went to court and pled guilty, Abramoff
looked grim. The judge sentenced him to four years.
Stahl: I
really think what you were doing was-- was subverting the essence of our
system.
Abramoff: Yes. Absolutely right.
But our system is flawed and has to be fixed. Human beings populate our system.
Human beings are weak.
Stahl: And
you preyed on that?
Abramoff: I did. I was one of many who did. I did. And
I'm ashamed of that fact.
He was sent
to a medium security facility in Cumberland,
Maryland. When he was released
last June, he began working as an accountant at a kosher pizza parlor. Turns out Jack Abramoff was broke,
partly because he is paying off nearly $24 million in restitution to the Indian
tribes. Today he lives in his old house in Maryland with his wife, five children and
the two doberman pinschers Mrs. Abramoff
bought to protect the family while he was away.
After the
scandal, Congress instituted a package of reforms, making what Abramoff did - like plying members of Congress with free
expensive meals - illegal. But he doesn't see the new reforms as being very
effective.
Abramoff: The reform efforts continually are these
faux-reform efforts where they'll change, they'll tweak the system. They'll
say, "You can have a meal with a congressman if they're standing up, not
sitting down."
Stahl: Is
that serious? Or are you joking?
Abramoff: Oh no, I'm not joking at all.
Stahl: So,
it's okay if you pay for lunch as long as you stand up?
Abramoff: Well, it's actually worse than that. You
can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak of
something like that. But you can take him to a fundraising lunch and not only
buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and
call it a fundraiser. And have all the same access and all the same interaction
with that congressman. So the people who make the reforms are the people in the
system.
Stahl: Could
you do the same thing today? I'm asking you whether you think the system's been
cleaned up?
Abramoff: Could do the same thing that I? Yeah. No,
the system hasn't been cleaned up at all.
Stahl: At
all.
Abramoff: There's an arrogance
on the part of lobbyists, and certainly there was on the part of me and my
team, that no matter what they come up we, we're smarter than they are and
we'll overcome it. We'll just find another way through. That's all.
He says the
most important thing that needs to be done is to prohibit members of Congress
and their staff from ever becoming lobbyists in Washington.
Abramoff: If you make the choice to serve the public,
public service, then serve the public, not yourself. When you're done, go home.
Washington's
a dangerous place. Don't hang around.
Former
Congressman Bob Ney now works part-time as a radio
host.
His former
chief of staff Neil Volz is currently working as a
night janitor at a Florida
restaurant.
And Jack Abramoff has written a memoir called "Capitol
Punishment."