[Mb-civic] Mr. Abramoff's Meetings - Washington Post Editorial

[William Swiggard]

Mr. Abramoff's Meetings

Wednesday, January 25, 2006; A18

HERE ARE SOME things we know about Jack Abramoff and the White House: 
The disgraced lobbyist raised at least $100,000 for President Bush's 
reelection campaign. He had long-standing ties to Karl Rove, a key 
presidential adviser. He had extensive dealings with executive branch 
officials and departments -- one of whom, former procurement chief David 
H. Safavian, has been charged by federal prosecutors with lying to 
investigators about his involvement with Mr. Abramoff.

We also know that Mr. Abramoff is an admitted crook who was willing to 
bribe members of Congress and their staffs to get what he (or his 
clients) wanted. In addition to attending a few White House Hanukkah 
parties and other events at which he had his picture snapped with the 
president, Mr. Abramoff had, according to the White House, "a few 
staff-level meetings" with White House aides.

Here is what we don't know about Jack Abramoff and the White House: whom 
he met with and what was discussed. Nor, if the White House sticks to 
its current position, will we learn that anytime soon. Press secretary 
Scott McClellan told the White House press corps: "If you've got some 
specific issue that you need to bring to my attention, fine. But what 
we're not going to do is engage in a fishing expedition that has nothing 
to do with the investigation."

This is not a tenable position. It's undisputed that Mr. Abramoff tried 
to use his influence, and his restaurant and his skyboxes and his 
chartered jets, to sway lawmakers and their staffs. Information 
uncovered by Mr. Bush's own Justice Department shows that Mr. Abramoff 
tried to do the same inside the executive branch.

Under these circumstances, asking about Mr. Abramoff's White House 
meetings is no mere exercise in reportorial curiosity but a legitimate 
inquiry about what an admitted felon might have been seeking at the 
highest levels of government. Whatever White House officials did or 
didn't do, there is every reason to believe that Mr. Abramoff was up to 
no good and therefore every reason the public ought to know with whom he 
was meeting.

Mr. McClellan dismisses requests for the information as an effort to 
play "partisan politics," and no doubt there is more than an element of 
partisanship in Democrats' efforts to extract this information. But 
Republicans wouldn't stand for this kind of stonewalling if the 
situation were reversed. We can say that with confidence because history 
proves it. During the 1996 scandal over foreign fundraising in the 
Clinton White House, Republicans demanded -- and obtained, though not 
without a fight -- extensive information about White House coffees and 
other meetings, including photos and videotapes.

"Any suggestion by critics or anybody else to suggest that the president 
was doing something nefarious with Jack Abramoff is absolutely wrong, 
and it's absurd," presidential adviser Dan Bartlett said on NBC's 
"Today" show. The best way to refute such "absurd" suggestions is to get 
all of Mr. Abramoff's dealings with the Bush White House and the Bush 
administration out in the open -- now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/24/AR2006012401532.html?nav=hcmodule
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