Why provenance matters
As some long-term Wampum readers may know, I'm an archaeologist by training (hence this blog's title, as my specialty is gender and shell, including the production of wampumpeag.) And as an archaeologist, it's tremendously difficult for me to shake off the golden rule of scientific digging: Provenance matters.
As I've ranted and raved now for at least a year, the documents in the Abramoff case which have been released by Congressional committees beginning in late September, 2004, have been in the possession of Committee chairmen, in particular, Senator John McCain, since March, 2004, when Greenberg Traurig was subpeonaed and cooperated fully. So why is it that so many of these documents are only now being released to the public and the press? (Though, to be clear, some have been previously leaked to the media, including many of the latest dump, over a year ago.)
If we look at the pattern of document release by McCain during the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings, from September, 2004 until November, 2005, a clear narrative develops. The first release, six weeks before the highly contested 2004 election, set up Abramoff and his cronies and racist, arrogant, and immensely greedy hucksters, who ripped off their poor, naive tribal clients of millions, and bought huge beach houses with the proceeds. No mention of the intricate connections between Abramoff and nearly every facet of the Republican money and power machine in Washington; no mention even of Abramoff's close ties with the Council for Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, the National Center for Public Policy Research, and, stunningly, members of the Interior Department, including the Deputy Secretary, Solicitor General and a slew of Assistant Secretaries and department counsels. The documents released were essentially personal in nature: Abramoff was a bad man. Period.
It wasn't until the following summer (2005) that SIAC hearing document dumps indicated that the story moved well beyond the flaws of a handful of lobbyists. The narrative became much more salacious, drawing in a number of longer term McCain nemeses, including those central to his 2000 "swiftboating", such as Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed. In addition, those known for their vocal opposition to McCain's work on global warming, such as Amy Ridenour and Italia Federici, were put in the hot seat in the SIAC hearings of 2005. McCain threatened to subpeona Norquist's own 501(c)3, Americans for Tax Freedom, a recipient of tribal cash through Abramoff. The key word here, however is threatened; though it was clear Norquist was up to his neck in the Abramoff scandal, McCain huffed and puffed, but never used his ace, neither subpeonaing AFT's records, or calling Norquist to testify. Same goes for Reed.
By the apparent end of the SIAC hearings last fall, less than a thousand documents, out of over 10,000, were released by McCain. Within those documents, the names of all McCain's Congressional peers were redacted.
So what are we to make of the latest dump of documents by the House Committee on Government Reform, ostensibly by Democrats, led by ranking member, Henry Waxman, though Chairman Tom Davis had no problem piling on in the official Committee press release, though with an amazingly apt double entendre:
Government Reform Releases Report on Jack Abramoff's White House Lobbying Davis: "The silence speaks volumes..."Washington, D.C., Sep 29 -
The House Government Reform Committee today released a bipartisan investigative report on the nature and extent of the lobbying of White House officials by Jack Abramoff and his associates. As part of its six month investigation, the Committee obtained more than 14,000 pages of billing records and e-mail communications from Abramoff and his associates at Greenberg Traurig L.L.P. related to instances of lobbying White House officials.
Of course, the silence of the committee report does speak volumes, particularly on the part Congressional members and their staffs played in the near decade-long free-for-all. However, the very next paragraph of the press release indicates the true target of the investigation:
The review offered a detailed glimpse into a sordid subculture of fraud and attempted influence peddling. The Committee was primarily concerned with two questions: To what extent were executive branch officials influenced by Abramoff's elaborate schemes? And, in view of Abramoff's admitted crimes, what reforms would better protect the integrity and increase the transparency of government processes and decisions?
Once again, just as in the documents released by SIAC and McCain, the redactor's pen was used widely, eradicating all evidence of participation by current members of Congress - former Majority Leader Tom Delay didn't get off so easy, part of the cost of his taking his peer's contributions, knowing he'd be resigning, I suspect.
But the unanswered questions address motive here: Not on the part of Abramoff or any of his cronies, but House leadership. Democrats can't say "boo" without Republican permission, and they certainly couldn't conduct hearings, let alone release a report, which exposed the filthy underbelly of the Republican K-Street Project. So what motivated Congressional Republicans to toss dozens of Bush Administration officials on the Abramoff pyre, particularly when it seems their own electoral fate is tied with that of their party's figurehead? Sue Ralston's connection between Abramoff and Rove has been public knowledge for years; why is she suddenly being made the fall-guy, er, gal?
So what would appear to be a Democratic victory is potentially nothing more than Congressional Ds being used as pawns in intra-party (Republican, that is) war-games. Or is the plot even more twisted, so as to look like there's strife between the Administration and Congress, allowing House Republicans to distance themselves from Bush ("See, see, we have no problem slapping Bush around. Now please re-elect us." Are the faction involved playing out some pre-2008 primary kabuki?
I don't think any of us yet know the answer. But for sure, it has nothing to do with Democratic success as Congressional watchdogs. Provenance matters. And the Democratic power substrate in Congress is as firm as dry sand.
It's not about us, it's not about Abramoff. So just who is it all about?