Move Over, Buddhist Temple: Here's A Real Scandal

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.

During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.

Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman's former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.).

The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay's vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy.

A spokesman for DeLay, who is fighting in a Texas state court unrelated charges of illegal fundraising, denied that the contributions influenced the former House majority leader's political activities. The Russian energy executives who worked with Abramoff denied yesterday knowing anything about the million-dollar London transaction described in tax documents."

NaftaSib is a Russian oil and gas company about which the American Foreign Policy Council wrote (back in 1997, before people seemed to feel the need to conceal that it paid for Tom DeLay's trip to Moscow):

"The Moscow portion of the DeLay trip is sponsored by A.O. NaftaSib, a Russian oil company tied to Chernomyrdin. NaftaSib describes itself as "a major shareholder" in Gazprom, and says that two of its "largest clients" have been the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). According to its promotional literature, "NaftaSib met all of the needs for oil products for the Black Sea Fleet, the Baikal Military district and the 14th Army located in Moldavia [sic] from 1992 to 1995." One of the escorts in Moscow is NaftaSib Executive Vice President Marina V. Nevskaya, whose NaftaSib biography describes her as having taught at the Military Diplomatic Academy. The Military Diplomatic Academy is a training school for GRU military intelligence." (h/t Matt Yglesias at TAPPED. Yglesias helpfully adds: "The Russian Interior Ministry doesn't run parks like our Department of the Interior; it's a domestic security agency which oversees paramilitary and intelligence forces.")

So: we have a Russian firm with close ties to the Russian military and domestic intelligence services funneling a million dollars to Tom DeLay's charity. What does this charity do? According to the Post, not much:

"But the records show that the tiny U.S. Family Network, which never had more than one full-time staff member, spent comparatively little money on public advocacy or education projects. Although established as a nonprofit organization, it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to Buckham and his lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group.

There is no evidence DeLay received a direct financial benefit, but Buckham's firm employed DeLay's wife, Christine, and paid her a salary of at least $3,200 each month for three of the years the group existed. Richard Cullen, DeLay's attorney, has said that the pay was compensation for lists Christine DeLay supplied to Buckham of lawmakers' favorite charities, and that it was appropriate under House rules and election law.

Some of the U.S. Family Network's revenue was used to pay for radio ads attacking vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 1999; other funds were used to finance the cash purchase of a townhouse three blocks from DeLay's congressional office. DeLay's associates at the time called it "the Safe House.""

Buckham is an ex-DeLay staffer. His firm paid DeLay's wife around $115,000 to find out the favorite charities of members of Congress. When that story came out, I did some math:

"There are 535 members of Congress, and 1095 days in three years. By my calculations, Christine DeLay had to find out roughly one member's favorite charity every two days. How much work would it take to find out? I would guess: one phone call. Maybe two or even three, if a member of Congress suddenly decided that not returning phone calls from the Majority Leader's wife was a good idea. Let's be generous to Mrs. DeLay, and suppose that she had to make twice as many phone calls as there are members. In that case she was making over $3,000 a month for making one phone call a day.

Nice work if you can get it."

But the money paid to DeLay's wife is chicken feed compared to the sums the American taxpayers paid for the IMF bailout for Russia. And any impropriety involved in Christine DeLay being paid $5,000 a phone call is insignificant compared to the staggering impropriety of a charity controlled by DeLay, which apparently did little except rent rooms ofr him to use and target his political opponents, getting a million dollars from a firm connected to Russian intelligence. (Anyone want to argue that Nevskaya taught at a training school for GRU military intelligence without herself being an intelligence officer? I didn't think so.) It's only made worse if it's true that the purpose of the gift was to influence DeLay's vote on the IMF bailout.

Corruption of any sort is despicable, but corruption in the service of the intelligence agencies of a foreign power is vastly worse.

I've left out the parts of the Post story detailing contributions to the charity from manufacturers on the Mariana Islands, various tribal clients of Abramoff, etc. But the whole story is worth reading.

Comments

[Frank]

I vaguely remember hearing about Tom DeLay getting money from the Russians about that time but it wasn't for getting them $15 billion in IMF money, it was for cutting off funds for American troops in Kosovo...

I'm not even sure how to google up more info on this. Can anyone help?

[Gary Farber]

Also worth mentioning here, since if anyone did, I missed it, which is entirely possible, and in which case I apologize, is the major summary of Abramoff I blogged -- will this work? -- here (I updated it with the piece this post I'm commenting is about on Sunday morning.)

[KCinDC]

Frank, Mark Kleiman and some others were talking about the Kosovo connection a while back.

[Bernard Yomtov]

From the Post articla as quoted by hilzoy:

There is no evidence DeLay received a direct financial benefit, but Buckham's firm employed DeLay's wife, Christine, and paid her a salary of at least $3,200 each month for three of the years the group existed. Richard Cullen, DeLay's attorney, has said that the pay was compensation for lists Christine DeLay supplied to Buckham of lawmakers' favorite charities, and that it was appropriate under House rules and election law.

What are the people at the Post smoking? No evidence of financial benefit to DeLay when his wife got $3200/month for doing nothing? Does whoever wrote this seriously claim to be a reporter?