The Bug Man must be buggin'.

This week's edition of Newsweek has a most interesting piece by Michael Isikoff entitled "With Friends Like These..." It tells of a conversation between Jack Abramoff and a "former colleague." For those of you without a scorecard, Abramoff is the big time lobbyist who used to be very close to DeLay. Indeed, Abramoff is directly involved in some of the ethically and legally questionable events in which DeLay has been a player.

Anyhoo, here's the real meat of the article:

As stories of his alleged excess dribble out...some of Abramoff's old friends have abandoned him and treated him like a pariah. They claim they knew nothing of his questionable lobbying tactics. So last week, glumly sitting at his corner table at Signatures, the tony downtown restaurant he owns that remains his last redoubt, Abramoff lashed out in frustration.

"Everybody is lying," Abramoff told a former colleague. There are e-mails and records that will implicate others, he said. He was noticeably caustic about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. For years, nobody on Washington's K Street corridor was closer to DeLay than Abramoff. They were an unlikely duo. DeLay, a conservative Christian, and Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, traveled the world together and golfed the finest courses. Abramoff raised hundreds of thousands for DeLay's political causes and hired DeLay's aides, or kicked them business, when they left his employ. But now DeLay, too, has problems—in part because of overseas trips allegedly paid for by Abramoff's clients. In response, DeLay and his aides have said repeatedly they were unaware of Abramoff's behind-the-scenes financing role. "Those S.O.B.s," Abramoff said last week about DeLay and his staffers, according to his luncheon companion. "DeLay knew everything. He knew all the details."

(emphasis added). Oh, my...

There are reasons to take this with at least one grain of salt. Abramoff apparently did not say these things to Isikoff. Instead, it seems the "former colleague" told Isikoff what Abramoff said. In world of law, that is not just hearsay, it is double hearsay. Also, Isikoff does not identify his source, so there is no way of directly checking the credibility of the story. Moreover, Abramoff clearly has an ax to grind. Abramoff raised a boat load of money for The Bug Man, helped him to establish his power, and now DeLay is leaving him to twist in the wind--the point being that Abramoff could be exaggerating just to get back at DeLay.

On the other hand, there are reasons to think that the story told to Isikoff is credible. DeLay is a master at manipulating schedules, people, and money. You cannot do that without knowledge of all the details. The only ways DeLay could not have known about Abramoff's activities are 1) he is moron, or 2) he was completely ignorant about money coming to him and people who wanted to court his influence. Now all you wingers tell me if you think either of these is a plausible possibility.

Isikoff also examines the latest allegation of illegal funding of a foreign trip by DeLay--a 1997 trip to Moscow which was allegedly paid for in part by a Russian oil company, Naftasib. This trip is examined in more detail in an April 5, 2005, Washington Post article. Taken together, the two articles say that J. Michael Waller--who at the time was with the American Foreign Policy Council--wrote a piece for the AFPC's Russian Reform Monitor which raised concerns about DeLay's Russian trip shortly after it took place. Specifically, Waller said that

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) goes to Russia on a "fact finding" trip bankrolled by influence peddlers tied to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. The trip is part of a lobbying effort to promote Chernomyrdin among conservative leaders in Washington[.]

*******

The Moscow portion of the DeLay trip is sponsored by A.O. NaftaSib, a Russian oil company tied to Chernomyrdin.

Waller wrote that in August of 1997, and more than seven years later, DeLay claims he still knows nothing about Naftasib paying for the trip. Yeah, right. Moreover, according to Isikoff, Waller faxed and emailed his description of the trip to congressional staffers. In other words, people in Congress have known for over seven years that the trip might have been illegally funded, yet the Republican-controlled House did nothing about it. Nice.

Waller was not finished. In May of 1999, he had more to say about Naftasib:

The Russian oil company that has supplied fuel to the Liman, the Kildin, and the rest of the Black Sea Fleet, has been bankrolling a political influence operation in Washington. Working through a cutout in the Bahamas, NaftaSib is paying a prominent D.C. law and public relations firm, Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, to influence congressional staff, lawmakers, editorial writers and journalists. A NaftaSib executive involved in the influence effort is tied to GRU military intelligence. Most of the targets are conservative Republicans. In 1995, the same lobbyists were paid to represent the then Milosevic-controlled government of Montenegro, Yugoslavia.

(Thanks to Laura Rozen of War and Piece for the link.) And just in case you wingers think that the American Foreign Policy Council is some sort of leftist, freedom-hating organization, think again. The Heritage Foundation--part of the Right Wing elite--has the AFPC as one of its recommended think tanks, and there ain't no liberals or lefties anywhere in that list. Also, Townhall.com--which describes itself as "the first truly interactive community on the Internet to bring Internet users, conservative public policy organizations, congressional staff, and political activists together under the broad umbrella of "conservative" thoughts, ideas and actions"--lists the AFPC as a source for conservative internships.

And there is oh so much more, but I think I have made my point, which is that a conservative think tank was saying there was something wrong with DeLay's Russian trip more than seven years ago, and it is just not plausible that DeLay to this day still is blissfully ignorant as to who funded that trip.

And that tends to lend credibility to Isikoff's story that Abramoff said that "DeLay knew everything."

I am The Bug Man...goo goo g'joob...