Columnist Resigns His
Post, Admitting
Lobbyist Paid Him
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
and PHILIP SHENON, NYTimes on the Web, December 17, 2005
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 -- A
senior scholar at the Cato Institute, the respected libertarian research
organization, has resigned after revelations that he took payments from the
lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing columns favorable to his clients.
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Adele Starr/Associated Press
Senator
Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, said Friday that he would
return contributions from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. |
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The scholar, Doug Bandow, who wrote a
column for the Copley News Service in addition to serving as a Cato fellow,
acknowledged to executives at the organization that he had taken money from Mr.
Abramoff after he was confronted about the payments by a reporter from
BusinessWeek Online.
"He acknowledges he made a lapse in judgment," said Jamie Dettmer, director of
communications at Cato. "There's a lot of sadness here."
Copley suspended Mr. Bandow's column.
Efforts to reach Mr. Bandow through the Cato Institute and at home were
unsuccessful.
The revelation caps a year of disclosures about partisan payments to seemingly
independent writers, including Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist
and television host, who received payments from the federal Education Department
at a time when he was promoting the Bush administration's education policies in
his columns. The administration has been under mounting pressure to become
more transparent in its communications after accounts that it paid for and
printed articles in Iraqi periodicals as part of its overseas propaganda effort.
Mr. Bandow did not take government money, but the source of his payments --
around $2,000 an article -- is no less controversial. His sometime
sponsor, Mr. Abramoff, is at the center of a far-reaching criminal corruption
investigation involving several members of Congress, with prosecutors examining
whether he sought to bribe lawmakers in exchange for legislative help.
A second scholar, Peter Ferrara, of the Institute for Policy Innovation,
acknowledged in the same BusinessWeek Online piece that he had also taken money
from Mr. Abramoff in exchange for writing certain opinion articles. But
Mr. Ferrara did not apologize for doing so. "I do that all the time," Mr.
Ferrara was quoted as saying. He did not reply to an e-mail message
seeking comment on Friday.
At Cato and similar institutions, adjunct scholars are not always prohibited
from accepting outside consulting roles. But at Cato, said Mr. Dettmer,
and at the American Enterprise Institute, said a spokeswoman there, rules
require scholars to make public all their affiliations, and there is an
expectation that scholars will not embarrass the institution.
"Our scholarship is not for sale," Mr. Dettmer said.
Glenda Winders, the vice president and editor of the Copley News Service, said
in a statement that the company was immediately suspending Mr. Bandow's column
pending further review.
Mr. Abramoff, who built a powerful lobbying business largely through his
affluent Indian tribe clients in the late 1990's, paid Mr. Bandow during those
years to advance the causes of such clients as the Commonwealth of the Northern
Mariana Islands and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
In one column in 2001, Mr. Bandow extolled the free-market system that had
allowed the Marianas to thrive, saying that fighting terrorism was no excuse for
"economic meddling" -- the same position that Mr. Abramoff was being paid to
advance.
The federal government "should respect the commonwealth's independent policies,
which have allowed the islands to rise above the poverty evident elsewhere
throughout Micronesia," Mr. Bandow wrote.
In an earlier column, in 1997, Mr. Bandow defended the gambling enterprise of
the Choctaws. "There's certainly no evidence that Indian gambling
operations harm the local community," he wrote.
Mr. Abramoff, whose work has already been the subject of Senate hearings, is
suspected of misleading the tribes about the way he used tens of millions of
dollars in payments. He has been indicted in a separate case in Florida,
where he is scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 9 on charges of defrauding a lender
as he tried to buy a fleet of gambling boats.
Although Mr. Abramoff has not yet been charged in connection with any lobbying
case, his money is considered so tainted that on Friday, for a second time this
week, a member of the Senate who had received large political contributions from
Mr. Abramoff's clients and partners announced that he was returning the money.
The latest announcement came from Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana,
who is up for re-election next year and who said he would return about $150,000
in contributions from Mr. Abramoff, his clients and his associates.
Earlier in the week, Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, said he
was returning $66,000 in contributions from Mr. Abramoff's partners and Indian
tribe clients.
"The contributions given to my political committees by Jack Abramoff and his
clients, while legally and fully disclosed, have served to undermine the
public's confidence in its government," Mr. Burns said in a statement.
"From what I've read about Jack Abramoff and the charges which are pending or
about to be brought against him, he massively deceived and betrayed his
clients."
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