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Reed e-mails upset allies

ATLANTA — For months, Ralph Reed offered a consistent — albeit carefully parsed — account of his anti-gambling work across the South.

The political consultant acknowledged he had conducted the campaigns for his friend Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist. Reed said he knew Abramoff's law firm represented American Indian tribes. And when asked whether the millions of dollars he collected came from tribes that operate casinos, he repeatedly said he had "no direct knowledge" about Abramoff's clients or "their interests."

Documents from a congressional investigation released last week seem to contradict Reed's frequently told story, however, complicating his attempts to distance himself from a scandal involving Abramoff and the Indian money. Reed finds his veracity under attack just as he is seeking to define his campaign for lieutenant governor of Georgia by citing his personal values.

Reed, a former leader of the Christian Coalition, knew as early as March 1999 that his anti-gambling work in Alabama was being bankrolled by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, according to documents released by a U.S. Senate committee looking into allegations that Abramoff swindled tribal clients. The Choctaw, who owned one casino near Philadelphia, Miss., in 1999 and have since opened a second, feared competition if neighboring Alabama authorized new forms of gaming, records show.

In about a dozen e-mails released last week, Abramoff and Reed discussed the Choctaw and the tribe's money. The documents, released after a Senate committee hearing on the subject Wednesday, show Reed was intimately involved in planning the campaigns against gambling in Alabama, providing budgets, invoices and advertising scripts that Abramoff passed to tribal officials. They also reflect Reed's efforts to help Abramoff find nonprofit groups that would funnel Choctaw money to Alabama while obscuring the true source of the contributions.

The earliest e-mail was dated March 29, 1999. Abramoff wrote to Reed that he had just spoken with a Choctaw official about Reed's offer to work for several hundred thousand dollars.

"They are not scared by the number," Abramoff told Reed, "but want to know precisely what you are planning to do for this amount. They are very sophisticated, by the way."

Reed — who had described gambling as "a cancer on the American body politic" — kept his connection to the Choctaw quiet.

Anti-gambling activists in Alabama, for whom Reed helped raise the money and provided grass-roots services, say they had no idea the tribe was helping pay for their campaigns against a state lottery and video poker.

And when Reed enlisted James Dobson, chairman of the influential religious organization Focus on the Family, to record radio ads against one Alabama gambling proposal, he never mentioned the Choctaw's involvement, said Ron Reno, Dobson's special assistant.

Had Dobson known, Reno said Friday, he would not have lent his name to the effort.

"We have no desire to work with the gambling interests," said Reno, who was the organization's gambling analyst in 1999. "We believe it compromises our integrity."

'Attempt to divert'

Reed declined last week to take questions about the latest developments in the Washington lobbying scandal.

His spokeswoman, Lisa Baron, said Friday that any contradictions stem from Reed's giving specific answers to narrow questions.

"Sometimes he knew [Abramoff's] clients but didn't know the interests," Baron said. In Alabama, "he knew the client but didn't know the interest."

She added: "Ralph's opponents are disappointed that the [Senate] hearing revealed no wrongdoing, so they are left to complain about how he has publicly commented on it. It's just another failed attempt to divert from the fact that Ralph's opposition to casino gambling expansion was legitimate, lawful and effective."

Nevertheless, gambling opponents say the matter reflects a conflict within the conservative movement as such figures as Reed and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) deal with questions about their ethics.

"It really begins to suggest that conservative Christians who are principled are being asked to say, 'There's a higher value. These people are so good on other issues, how can we not protect them?' " said Tom Grey, a Methodist minister and executive director of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, based in Washington.

"Once you do that, your ability to speak on moral issues is gone."

Reed compiled a mixed record as a campaign strategist in November 1998, the first major election after he started his Duluth-based political consulting business, Century Strategies Inc. Seven of Reed's clients won their races; five lost.

A few days later, Reed e-mailed Abramoff, an old friend from their days of working in the national College Republican headquarters in the early 1980s.

"Hey, now that I'm done with the electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts!" Reed wrote. "I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."

Abramoff quickly delivered. By March, he had lined up a deal for Reed to campaign against legalized gambling in Alabama. The documents released last week show Abramoff made no effort to conceal his clients or their objectives.

Tribal money discussed

On April 4, 1999, a few days after telling Reed about meeting with Choctaw official Nell Rogers, Abramoff asked for "a total budget figure with category breakdowns."

"Once I get this," he wrote to Reed, "I will call Nell at Choctaw and get it approved."

Two days later, Abramoff e-mailed Reed: "It would be really helpful if you could get me invoices as soon as possible so I can get Choctaw to get us checks asap."

Reed wrote back with a list of "what we are out already" — $101,000 in expenses related to radio ads, postcards and phone banks.

"Please get me as many updates as regularly as you can," Abramoff wrote back on April 9, "which I can pass on to Nell Rogers."

On April 21, Reed submitted a bill for an additional $122,000. That amount, he told Abramoff, covered expenses for a rally by pastors and anti-gambling activists, as well as inserts in church bulletins. He said he would need $250,000 to $300,000 for additional work.

"We are opening the bomb bays and holding nothing back," Reed wrote. "If victory is possible, we will achieve it."

By May 10, records indicate, Reed's company had been paid $1.3 million for work that Abramoff's firm billed to the Choctaw.

Reed's work for the Choctaw continued into 2003, when Alabama lawmakers again considering allowing video poker machines at dog-racing tracks, records show. In March that year, Abramoff and Reed discussed difficulty in getting the tribe to pay additional bills.

"I have a call in . . . to get some $ on this," Abramoff wrote to Reed. "They are really hurting for money right now, though. The economy is dead there. . . . This really sucks."

"Let me know," Reed responded. Then he changed the subject.

"Give me some dates on Jordan/Wizards," he wrote, referring to plans to attend one of basketball great Michael Jordan's final games with the Washington NBA team.

'No direct knowledge'

The scandal surrounding Abramoff caught up with Reed last summer in New York, where he was attending the Republican National Convention.

The Washington Post reported Abramoff had paid Reed with money from a Louisiana tribe that wanted to close or block competing casinos belonging to other tribes in Louisiana and Texas.

Reed acknowledged to reporters he had worked in a group of gambling opponents organized by Abramoff's law firm at the time, Greenberg Traurig.

But, he said: "While we knew that Greenberg Traurig was also recruiting coalition members, we had no direct knowledge of their clients or their interests."

That statement set the tone for Reed's comments over the succeeding months as news stories and congressional testimony revealed more details about his work with Abramoff in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama.

As recently as late May, Reed told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that while he knew Abramoff's law firm represented Indian tribes, "as a subcontractor to the firm, I did not have direct knowledge of all their clients and I did not know the details of their clients or their interests."

The Choctaw, he said, paid his bills with money earned through the tribe's non-gaming interests. Tribal officials confirmed that during the Senate hearing last week. In fact, federal law allows tribes to spend gaming revenues in only five areas, which do not include lobbying or political activity.

Regardless, the Choctaw's business interests overwhelmingly revolve around gaming. Tribal officials have said 85 to 90 percent of their income comes from the two casinos and related entertainment enterprises.

Both Alabama groups that received donations from the Choctaw — funneled through a Washington anti-tax group — to pay Reed say they were clear in insisting they would accept no money "directly or indirectly" related to gaming.

Despite Reed's contentions, "nothing has come out that has changed my previous position," Jim Cooper of Birmingham, who headed a statewide anti-lottery group, said Friday.

At Focus on the Family, officials assumed Reed had no ties to gambling interests and never asked where his funding came from, said Reno, the assistant to Dobson.

"We're disappointed" to learn otherwise, Reno said.

Alan Judd writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. E-mail: ajudd@ajc.com