Part III: DeLay's Godfather

By Stephen Pizzo, AlterNet. Posted May 14, 2002.

Read Part I: DeLay's Axis of Influence

Read Part II: DeLay's Judge Dread

Read Part IV: DeLay's Unregulated Pacific "Paradise"

If a person can be judged by his choice of friends, then Tom DeLay should face harsh judgment indeed. Probably no single DeLay insider is more controversial than the man who has been described as DeLay's financial godfather, attorney/lobbyist/fundraiser Jack Abramoff. When DeLay kicked off his political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), Jack Abramoff pledged that he would raise "plenty" for the effort.

And when Jack says "plenty" he means just that. Abramoff routinely raises over $1 million a year for conservative members of Congress, donating up to $250,000 himself. Much of that money ends up in Tom DeLay's PACs. And the route that Abramoff took to become a conservative powerbroker is a strange one indeed.

Abramoff's conservatism stretches back to his college days, when he chaired the GOP's College Republicans in the 1980s. It was there that Abramoff, an orthodox Jew, bonded with evangelical Christian Ralph Reed, who would later go on to lead the Christian Coalition (and then to work for Enron).

Bwana Jack

In 1983, as the South African apartheid regime was fighting for its survival, Abramoff became chairman of the College Republican National Federation. The group passed a resolution condemning "deliberate planted propaganda by the KGB and Soviet proxy forces" against the South Africa regime. The resolution made no mention of apartheid.

The dawn of the 1990s found Abramoff in apartheid South Africa once again, this time producing an anti-communist thriller film, "Red Scorpion." The film depicted the South African army's fight against "pro-communist forces." The film was banned by the United Nations since it violated the UN's embargo on doing business with the racist South African regime.

Abramoff also helped direct the work of The International Freedom Foundation (IFF). The IFF presented itself as a conservative think tank whose stated goal was to "demonstrate the benefits of a parliamentary democracy and expose the failures of a people's democracy." But in explosive testimony before the South Africa Truth Commission, former South African intelligence officers revealed that the IFF was actually part of the apartheid regime's propaganda operations.

According to those who testified, the IFF served as an intelligence gathering and "political warfare" instrument of the government. They testified that the South African government funded the organization to the tune of $1.5 million through 1992 under the code name "Operation Babushka."

According to Newsday, which investigated the IFF and reported extensively on it in the wake of the Truth Commission hearings, "The project's broad objectives were to try to reverse the apartheid regime's pariah status in Western political circles. More specifically the IFF sought to portray the ANC as a tool of Soviet communism, thus undercutting the movement's growing international acceptance as the government-in-waiting of a future multi-racial South Africa."

It was reported that Abramoff attracted many other Washington conservatives to the IFF's cause, including Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), Senator Jesse Helms, (R-GA), Rep. Phillip Crane (R-IL) and Rep. Robert Dornan (R-CA)

South African intelligence even voiced satisfaction with the work the IFF did. "They (IFF) were all very good, those guys," testified former South African police official Vic McPheerson, who ran security branch operations for the apartheid regime. "They were not just good in intelligence, but in political warfare."

According to McPheerson, the IFF earned up to half its funding doing "jobs" for South African intelligence. He said the intelligence agency sent their fee payments directly to IFF's Washington office. And while Abramoff's IFF focused on tarnishing the image of Nelson Mandella and the ANC, it also supported the Nicaraguan Contras, defended Ronald Reagan aide Oliver North, and sought a British government investigation of the charity Oxfam for the political support it gave the ANC.

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