Jack Abramoff/CNMI

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This is an article about the efforts of Jack Abramoff and lobbyists to change and/or prevent Congressional action regarding the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI).

Abramoff began lobbying for CNMI, a self-governing U.S. territory subject to acts of Congress, in 1995. Between 1995 and 2002, he collected $7.7 million in fees from the CNMI government. Among the issues he worked on was keeping Congress from imposing the federal minimum wage for workers in the CNMI.

• Jack Abramoff - uber lobbyist
• Roger Stillwell, the Marianas desk officer in the Interior Department's Insular Affairs Office. During the 1990s, before Stillwell joined the Interior Department, his communications firm did work for the Marianas government. Stillwell, a Democrat, said in the interview with The Washington Post that he worked closely with Abramoff when their representation of the island government overlapped beginning in 1995.
• Willie Tan - Owner of the Tan Holdings, a family conglomerate which owns numerous clothing factories on the islands, and is the largest private employer in CNMI. Tan Holdings was a member of the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association, an Abramoff client.
• Benigno Fitial -
  • Vice president of Tan Holdings –
  • Chairman of the Bush for President Committee for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
  • (picture of Fitial meeting Bush at http://www.atr.org/content/pdf/pre2004/summer2001tr.pdf, the newsletter for Norquists "Americans for Tax Reform" (on page 5) )
  • "An underdog contender" for speaker of the CNMI House in 2000; he won with help from Abramoff.
  • In 2005 he was elected Governor of CNMI
• Patrick Pizzella, a former Abramoff lieutenant, who President George W. Bush appointed as Deputy Undersecretary of Labor. Pizzella had aggressively worked the Marianas account with Abramoff, leaving Abramoff's lobby team just months before his federal appointment. According to the New Republic, the former conservative lobbyist handpicked Pizzella for his Marianas lobbying team. Raw Story writes: "Abramoff praised Bush’s appointment of Pizzella in a letter to the Commonwealth. Notably, Abramoff seemed to reference Pizzella’s new post in a January 2001 letter even though he wasn’t officially appointed until April 2001."
• Note: if other lobbyists, like Buckham, aren't listed here, then they need to be introduced (briefly) when they pop up in the article.

CMNI has a long history of disputes with Congress over human rights and working conditions.

During the 1990s, Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK) and Representative George Miller (D-CA) were frequent critics of the sweatshop conditions in factories in the Marianas that made clothes with the "Made in the USA" label for companies like Tommy Hilfiger USA, Gap, Calvin Klein, and Liz Claiborne.

American officials and human rights advocates testified before Congress that workers, 91 percent of whom were immigrants from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, were working below the CMNI minimum wage ($3.05), often seven days a week and up to 12 hours a day, and living in shacks behind barbed wire and without plumbing. Many workers also paid $5,000 to $7,000 in "recruitment fees" to gain employment, often with money borrowed from loan sharks who took all of their wages until the fees were paid back.

In 1992, the Department of Labor sued five garment factories owned by Willie Tan for workplace abuses. The eventual settlement required the Tan companies to pay $9 million -- the largest fine that the department had ever imposed.

In 1993, the government of CNMI hired Preston Gates to lobby for it. Between October 1993 and September 2001, the firm was paid about $6.7 million by the government, about 72 percent of the government's overall lobbying payments. The government was one of the firm's biggest clients.

In 1995, Abramoff, employed at Preston Gates, took on CNMI as a client. The government sought to retain exemptions from U.S. immigration and labor laws. ^[1]

In his lobbying efforts, Abramoff portrayed the Marianas as a case study of the success of the free market unfettered by wage and immigration laws. Representative Tom DeLay became Abramoff's strongest ally, leading the fight against Democratic efforts to impose wage, hour and immigration regulations on the protectorate. (The White House and U.S. Senate were Democratic-controlled; the House was Republican-controlled, from January 1995 to January 2001.) On a trip to the Marianas, DeLay told officials: "When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made." ^[1]

In October 1996, the contract with Preston Gates expired. The CNMI government broke its own laws by continuing to pay the firm - The initial Preston Gates contract with CNMI was from June 1 1995 - June 30 1996, for about $860,000. After the expiration of the contract, then Governor Pedro Tenorio's office continued to pay Preston Gates, despite the lack of a valid contract, until January 11 1998, a grand total of $5.21 million. (Between October 1996 to October 1997, the total was just over $3 million. [1]) The payment without contract was later judged illegal in an investigation by the CNMI Office of the Public Auditor.

In January 1997, Tan's network of companies wrote five checks of $10,000 each to the U.S. Family Network (USFN), a non-profit controlled by Ed Buckham. Buchkam's wife was paid $10,000 in commissions from this money. These were the first of 23 payments by Tan's companies to USFN, totalling $650,000. Buchkam's wife took at least another $30,000 of this in commissions.

In March 1997, USFN sent director Robert Mills, the manager of DeLay's 1996 Texas reelection campgain, to CNMI. He was accompanied by Buckham (still on DeLay's staff), and met with Willie Tan.

In April 1997, Tan aid and politician Fitial travel to DC and sing "happy birthday" to DeLay

• 1996-7 Abramoff bills CNMI for 187 contacts with DeLay's office, including 104 conversations with Buckham and 16 direct meetings with DeLay

• 1997 - In their book The Hammer, Lou Dubose and Jan Reid report that "In 1997 the Marianas taxpayers picked up the tab for 88 week-long junkets at a reported $5,500 per traveler." These trips included seven members of the House, five wives, one child, and 75 aides. Because CNMI is a U.S. Territory and the trips were paid for with taxpayer funds, the members were not required to disclose the trips. In a memo obtained by ABC News, Abramoff described these congressional trips as "one of the most effective ways to build permanent friends on the Hill."

• A total of $6.7 million more was paid to PG&E from CNMI, 1994-2001.

• In December 1997, during one of many trips that Abramoff arranged that year for lawmakers and aides to take trips to the Marianas, DeLay calls Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends." DeLay went with his wife and daughter, played golf with Tan and others, attended a dinner in DeLay's honor sponsored by Tan's company. Reiterated the promise that no wage and immigration legislation would be passed. Trip "organized by Abramoff and paid for by the commonwealth government and the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association." [2]

• The Western Pacific Economic Council was a non-profit in CNMI which was also a client of Abramoff - might look into that.

(Source: "Survey of CNMI-Contracted Lobbyists Activities January 1994 through September 2001", Report no. M-01-05, Office of the Public Auditor, CNMI (November 9, 2001)

• late 1998 Abramoff's first lobbying arrangement with Islands ends

• 1999 Preston Gates begins representing the Western Pacific Economic Council, an association of garment workers including Tan

• In February 1999, a congressional delegation visited the islands in February of 1999; it included Representative John Doolittle, who would get significantly more involved in 2001.[3]

• In June 1999, Doolittle and Representative Joel Hefley write a "Dear Colleague" letter, saying that a May 1999 show on ABC's newsmagazine, 20/20, "The Shame of Saipan", had numerous inaccuracies, and that "Tom DeLay has consistently engaged government leaders in taking steps toward reform in the Mariana Islands to ensure and maintain a vibrant economy under local control." [4]

• December 1999 - DeLay staffer Michael Scanlon and former DeLay Chief of Staff Ed Buckham traveled to Saipan in December 1999 armed with federal incentives to convince two members of the commonwealth legislature, to change their vote for Speaker and elect Benigno Fitial. Fitial was expected to reinstate Abramoff's expired lobbying contract. (A Ney staffer followed in January 2000.)

• • “Using promises of U.S. tax dollars as bartering chips, [former DeLay chief of staff] Edwin A. Buckham [then a lobbyist with Alexander Strategy Group] and Michael Scanlon traveled to these remote Pacific islands in late 1999 to convince two local legislators [Alejo Mendiola and Norman S. Palacios] to switch their votes for speaker of the territory's 18-member House of Representatives,” the Los Angeles Times revealed in May 2005. “They succeeded.” Benigno Fitial was “an underdog contender” for speaker of the House, the Times wrote. [5]

• • • From the LA Times article

      In an interview, Fitial called Buckham a longtime friend and said the former DeLay chief of staff offered to help and bring along Scanlon. "They supported me and wanted me to be speaker," Fitial said. He said he met with the Washington visitors after they arrived, and targeted two key members of the Legislature for persuasion efforts — Alejo Mendiola and Norman S. Palacios. Both said in separate interviews that Buckham and Scanlon promised to help get money for needed projects in their impoverished island districts. For Palacios, it was assistance repairing a dilapidated, 50-year-old breakwater on the island of Tinian. Palacios agreed to switch and backed Fitial. "They said they would lobby for money for the breakwater," he said of his meeting with Scanlon and Buckham. Asked why he, a longtime Democrat would switch support to Fitial, the head of the rival Covenant Party, Palacios said, "That's politics."

      Added ending to blockquote - may not be in right place - JB

In 2000, the Fitial-led House passed two resolutions enjoining the island’s governor to hire a lobbyist, “including a July 26, 2000, resolution calling for selection of Abramoff's firm,” the Times wrote. [[6] ]

• In April 2000, Fitial travels to Washington D.C.. He meets with Doolittle and others.[7]

• June 30, 2000 - Fitial e-mailed top Marianas officials pressuring them hire Abramoff: "Please urge Teno [the island's governor] to execute the agreement as we will continue to encounter problems...if the contract is not executed. We need P & G [Abramoff's law firm] to help save our economy...Please help!!"

• July 26, 2000 - the Marianas House passed a resolution urging the Governor to rehire Abramoff.

• Late July, 2000 - Abramoff and Preston Gates are hired again, for $100,000 a month.

• In 2000, the Senate unanimously passed Sen. Murkowski's CNMI worker rights reform bill. Rep. DeLay prevented the House from considering the bill.

In 2000, after visiting the Northern Mariana Islands, Representative Don Young blocked a bill that would have made the garment industry there comply with federal labor laws. Abramoff represented garment manufacturers and the local government of the islands, which did not want the federal laws applied. Again, Young said he worked with the governor of the islands, not Abramoff.[8]

• October 2000 - Congress passes federal appropriations bill for energy and water that included $150,000 for the first steps in the breakwater restoration project for CNMI (specifically, the island of Tinian, a project that Palacios had wanted). DeLay, then a member of the House Appropriations Committee, was on the conference committee approving the allocation.

• December 2000? Abramoff gets spot on transition team for Interior Dept (which oversees territories). Tries to place several officials in Interior, including former Marianas officials

• January 2001 Abramoff switches lobbying firms to Greenberg Traurig. "'Our standing with the new administration promises to be solid as several friends of the CNMI (islands) will soon be taking high-ranking positions in the Administration, including within the Interior Department,' Abramoff wrote in a January 2001 letter in which he persuaded the island government to follow him as a client to his new lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig." [9] Patrick Pizzella, former Team Abrmoff with Preston gates, joins the Bush-Cheney transition team, and in April 2001 is nominated to Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management at the Department of Labor.

• 2001: The Republic of the Marshall Islands balked at paying nearly $500,000 in lobbying fees. Abramoff's old firm, Preston Gates and Ellis, sued in 2001. To support its demands, the firm wrote that among the lobbying services it provided was "organizing a visit by a congressional delegation led by Representative Don Young (R-AK) to the RMI ... and coordinating the delegation's activities with the RMI military.[10]

• Early 2001: Abramoff befrields J Steven Griles who he calld "our guy Griles", and Roger Stillwell, the Marianas desk officer at Interior, who he mentions as "Roger G. Stillwell, an employee of the department's Insular Affairs Office".

• Mid-February 2001: Abramoff visits the islands. [11]

• 2001 "In President Bush's first 10 months, GOP fundraiser Jack Abramoff and his lobbying team logged nearly 200 contacts with the new administration as they pressed for friendly hires at federal agencies and sought to keep the Northern Mariana Islands exempt from the minimum wage and other laws, records show. The meetings between Abramoff's lobbying team and the administration ranged from Attorney General John Ashcroft to policy advisers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, according to his lobbying firm billing records. [12]

• in 2001, CNMI contracted with Greenberg Traurig, part of the justification given for the sole source procurement/"no-bid" contract was:

While Preston Gates had previously provided this expertise, Jack Abramoff, the CNMÍs primary contact at Preston Gates, and nine other members of his team have now relocated to Greenberg Traurig. Preston Gates therefore no longer has the specialists familiar with Commonwealth issues. Accordingly, the expertise needed to adequately represent Commonwealth interests now lies with the firm of Greenberg Traurig, which claims they can provide the contracted scope of work more expeditiously and at a lower cost than others. A firm without the above described expertise would require months to educate itself to the minimum level required to competently represent the CNMI.

• Abramoff reported his 2001 lobbying activities for CNMI as:

1. Initiated activities to combat application of a minimum wage to the CNMI,

2. Prevented the passage of Senate Bill 507 (Immigration Takeover),

3. Initiated effort that could lead toward eventual passage of the 2002 Interior Appropriations Bill dealing with compact impact, and infrastructure improvements,

4. Worked on legislation addressing the ìMade in USA/Tariff Issue,

5. Educated staff of the new administration about issues affecting the CNMI, and

6. Advanced the CNMIís interests in the 107th Congress when confronted with a change in party control of the U.S. Senate.

(Source: "Survey of CNMI-Contracted Lobbyists Activities January 1994 through September 2001", Report no. M-01-05, Office of the Public Auditor, CNMI (November 9, 2001)

• Page 55: "Thanks for calling me today. I appreciate your help with the CNMI governor's race and ensuring that the President does NOT endorse anyone in the race, in particular the liberal "Republican" Juan Babuata, who is running against the Speaker and former chairman of the Bush campaign there, Ben Fitial." - email dictating a letter from Jack Abramoff to Steven Griles, Deputy Secretary of the Interior - October 17, 2001.

• On March 13, 2001, Doolittle wrote a "Dear Colleague" letter to other House members concerning the findings of a report by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The inspector had found the conditions in the islands' garment factories to be improving. It was a sign, Doolittle wrote, that the factories were "well on their way to becoming a model for the rest of the world." Comments by Doolittle were printed in the Saipan Tribune. [13] Records from Abramoff's firm show that Kevin Ring, Doolittle's former chief of staff who went on to work for Abramoff, billed the islands on March 12, 2001 for "work with Rep. Doolittle office regarding letter on OSHA report." [14] (In a January 31, 2001 email, Abramoff had called Doolittle "another hero for the CNMI". [15])

• On May 25, 2001, the Saipan Tribune printed a letter from Doolittle to Fitial, which noted a recent $150,000 earmark, mentioned two possible Army Corps of Engineers projects on the islands, and said "I will urge the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee to include funding for the feasibility study for both projects in the FY 2002 appropriations bill."^[2]

• In 2001, Fitial ran for governor. Abramoff gave $5,000 to his campaign.

• In August 2001, Doolittle openly backed Fitial's candidacy for governor, saying this in yet another letter printed in the Saipan Tribune. ^[3] Doolittle had accepted $14,000 in contributions from Jack Abramoff just weeks before.

• Doolittle was successful in securing $400,000 in Corps study funds in 2001, his first year on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. For reasons probably known only to Abramoff and his colleagues, the ports study was never funded, and Doolittle ended up earmarking the $400,000 for the water infrastructure project instead. ^[4] A February 6, 2002 article in the Saipan Tribune praised him for initiating the funding. [16]

• The final Abramoff donation to Doolittle came as the last CNMI lobbying contract was expiring in December 2001.^[5]

• Early 2002 - Juan N. Babauta is elected Governor of CNMI. He deferated several candidates including Fitial. Once in office, Babauta canceled the Greenberg Traurig contract;

• 2002 - Abramoff begins representing Willie Tan's interests through a shell company called Rose Garden Holdings. (TPM notes: "The Standard of Hong Kong reported that Rose Garden is not listed in Hong Kong's companies registry or telephone book, but its listed address is an apartment owned by Luen Thai Holdings, a publicly traded company controlled by Tan. Rose Garden paid Greenberg Traurig $1.4 million. If Abramoff listed Rose Garden as his client, but Tan or Luen Thai was directing the lobbying, he violated the US Lobbying Disclosure Act.")

Tan Holdings helped pay for Abramoff's skyboxes in Washington, which were used to entertain congressman and their staffers, including DeLay. An email exchange shows Abramoff charging Tan his quarterly bill of $55,919.

• May 2002? - Abramoff email regarding contacts with White House: "In the e-mail (ed: to Fitial?) in May, Abramoff writes: "I met with Rove tonight. They are not going to allow (Juan) Babauta to have his way and they are looking forward to your arrival. The House report says an entry in an electronic calendar indicates that the event probably occurred at a "Tax Policy Dinner" at Grover Norquist's home."[17]

• October 2002 - "The report says, on Oct. 9, 2002, Abramoff e-mailed Mehlman to seek an endorsement from President Bush for Republican candidates running in Guam."[18]

• "Within two weeks, Susan Ralston, an aide to Karl Rove, e-mailed Abramoff: "Ken asked me to let you know that he has the quote to be approved for your Guam candidates.""[19]

• 2003 Stillwell received gifts from a prohibited source, and failed to report them in a financial disclosure report filed in October 2004 (June 2006 he is charged, said to be pleading guilty in July)

• February 2004: The first major newspaper article detailing Abramoff's misdeeds (with Indian tribes) appears.

• March 2, 2004 "Greenberg Traurig accepted Jack Abramoff's resignation from the firm, effective March 2, 2004, after Mr. Abramoff disclosed to the firm personal transactions and related conduct which are unacceptable to the firm and antithetical to the way we do business," spokeswoman Jill Perry said.

From Wash Post

One of the first policy issues to be discussed by the [US Family Network]'s board, according to its March 1997 minutes, was a "free-market research project" in the Northern Marianas Islands, a U.S. protectorate in the Pacific Ocean.

At the time, Abramoff was under contract with the Marianas government to lobby against congressional legislation to impede the free flow of immigrant labor to the islands from China and elsewhere in Asia, and impose a minimum hourly wage exceeding the island's standard rate of $3.05.

To U.S. immigration officials and other critics, maintaining the Marianas' exemptions from these rules amounted to providing legal protection for sweatshops. But textile manufacturers, who dominated the islands' politics and profited heavily from paying immigrant workers less than required on the mainland, ardently opposed the legislation. The Marianas government paid Abramoff a total of $7.17 million in lobbying fees from 1996 to 2001, according to an audit there.

Abramoff focused on DeLay's office in his lobbying effort, billing the Marianas for 187 contacts in 1996 and 1997, including 104 conversations with Buckham and 16 direct meetings with DeLay, according to Abramoff's billing records. Buckham affirmed in a 1995 interview withNational Journal that Abramoff "is someone on our side. . . . He has access to DeLay."

So it was perhaps understandable that in the spring of 1997, USFN's board was eager to demonstrate that the economic policies that were good for the Marianas (pop. 53,552) could be good for America. To do so, it dispatched its first director, a former manager of DeLay's 1996 Texas reelection campaign named Robert G. Mills.

During the trip, Mills -- accompanied by Buckham, who was still on DeLay's staff -- met with Willie Tan, the islands' largest private employer. Tan's textile companies had settled a lawsuit filed five years earlier by the U.S. Labor Department charging workplace abuses, and he had long cultivated contacts in Washington to stop the immigration and wage legislation.

In April 1997, for example, a longtime Tan aide and island politician named Benigno Fitial went to Washington, where he sang "Happy Birthday" to DeLay in the whip's office. He sent Buckham an e-mail after the trip expressing appreciation for his support and recalling Buckham's explanation that one of his roles was to "stop legislation from getting on the floor of the House." Fitial signed the e-mail, "YOUR 'ADOPTED' BROTHER BEN."

Three months earlier, Tan's network of companies had written five checks of $10,000 each to USFN, and Buckham's wife had claimed $10,000 in "commissions" on these checks, according to the group's ledger.

These were just the first of 23 payments by Tan's companies to the group, which eventually totaled $650,000.

Later in 1997, Wendy Buckham claimed another $10,000 in commissions on Tan's checks, and in 1998, the couple's jointly owned consulting firm took another $20,000 in commissions explicitly attributed to the Tan donations, according to the ledger. Many other "commissions" collected by the couple were not linked in the ledgers to a specific donor.

DeLay saw Tan when he took his wife and daughter to the Marianas in a December 1997 trip arranged with the help of Abramoff and his lobby firm. After brunching with Tan on his first full day, followed by a round of golf with Tan and others, DeLay attended a dinner in his honor sponsored by Tan's holding company at the local Pacific Islands Club.

It was at this dinner that DeLay gave the speech in which he called Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends," according to a copy. DeLay also reminded Tan and his colleagues of his earlier promise that no wage and immigration legislation would be passed.

"Stand firm," DeLay said in his closing. "Resist evil. Remember that all truth and blessings emanate from our Creator." He then departed with Tan to see a cockfight, according to a written account by one of the trip participants.

In response to a reporter's question, Tan said in an e-mail Friday that "we hired [a] reputable firm, and we never ask[ed] the firm to do anything wrong." He said he was unaware of the commissions collected personally by the Buckhams.

No Marianas immigration or wage reform legislation passed Congress. Aides to Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a key sponsor, say that Senate-passed legislation was never taken up by any House committee.

^[6]

From Wash Post

Abramoff also counted on his father, who had a wealth of connections from his days as president of the Diners Club credit card company. Frank Abramoff had once looked into operating a casino in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. territory that includes Saipan. He introduced his son around, and the Marianas became one of the first important clients of the new lobbyist....

With Norquist's help, Abramoff secured a spot on the transition team for the Interior Department after George W. Bush was elected president in 2000. He tried to place several officials in Interior, including an unsuccessful attempt to land a former Marianas official in the top spot overseeing U.S. territories.

He was able to befriend J. Steven Griles, the deputy interior secretary, e-mails and interviews show. By the sum mer of 2001, Abramoff was referring to him in an e-mail to a client as "our guy Steve Griles." Federal investigators are now looking into whether Griles interceded on behalf of Abramoff and improperly discussed a job with the lobbyist while in a position to affect his clients. Griles denied any wrong doing in recent testimony to the Senate.

Abramoff's team also cultivated Roger Stillwell, the Marianas desk officer at the Interior Department. In a recent interview, Stillwell said he accepted dinners at Abramoff's restaurant, Signatures, and tickets to Washington Redskins games. But he said that all those actions occurred while he was a contract employee at Interior, not a federal worker. He also said he sent Abramoff copies of e-mails he sent to his boss, but he noted that none of them contained confidential information and that "there's nothing wrong with doing that." ^[7]

• The real scandal of Tom DeLay, Mark Shields, May 9, 2005