Just days before George W. Bush took office in 2001, lobbyist Jack Abramoff was busily working with Ralph Reed, his longtime friend, political sidekick, and business associate, to place a key ally in the Interior Department.
Reed, an elite "Pioneer" fundraiser for the Bush campaign and a campaign adviser, had already helped Abramoff land his own plum slot on Bush's Interior transition team. Abramoff coveted the slot because Interior was overseeing the lobbyist's two biggest clients at the time -- the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
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Abramoff was trying to improve ties between Kuala Lumpur and Washington, a daunting task because Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was under fire from the State Department and some human-rights groups for his government's jailing of political opponents and for his anti-Semitic views. Mahathir wanted a chance to talk with President Bush at an upcoming meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and to secure a Washington meeting with Bush.
That day, Abramoff e-mailed Reed: "I have a one-month subcontract for you if you can help me. We need to get Rove to see if we can break through the current posture of State on Malaysia and the PM meeting with Bush at the APEC meeting at the beginning of October.... If it works there will be a lot more." Reed wrote back, "Sure."
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http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0707nj2.htm
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