In this political season, people talk a lot about the influence of lobbyists and corporate special interests. This brings to mind the Washington, DC "Inside the Beltway" mentality that my favorite Op-Ed writer, Frank Rich, loves to skewer. I know that mentality well, having lived in DC for 15 years and having spent nearly seven of those years in a white-shoe law firm two blocks from the White House. And I have to tell you: it's at least as unsavory as you think. With this blog entry, I now commit to print things I should probably never say -- and admit. But what the hell.
I worked with Jack Abramoff. Well, "worked with" in the sense that I was at the same law firm, which was not all that large and thus brought me into contact with Jack and his minions. I was an associate at Preston Gates & Ellis in DC from 1991-1998. Jack arrived at Preston Gates around 1996, bringing with him a retinue of slick staffers and lots of swagger. I was out at Preston by early 1998, for reasons I'll get to.
The partners at Preston brought Abramoff in because of his connections to the hard right, particularly Newt Gingrich (yuck), Ralph Reed (double yuck), and Tom DeLay (barf!). Preston had traditionally been a Democratic party shop but now wanted to whore itself out equally to Republican interests -- that's where the lobbying money was as of the mid-1990's because Newt Gingrinch and his crew on the Hill had decreed that the only way for lobbyists to influence legislation was to line up behind the Republicans solely; everyone else would be blacklisted. Washington watchers will recall that Texas Rep. Tom Delay was one of Gingrich's lieutenants and helped enforce the new rule.
Abramoff was slick. When he first arrived at Preston, fresh from producing propagandistic B-movies, he was, literally, really fat. However he managed to do it, though, he quickly shed something like 80 or 100 pounds and got into flashy, expensive suits and pommade. Slick. I remember he walked around the office very fast -- he was always sweating to get somewhere -- trailed by minions, looking very important. The definition of swagger.
It wasn't long before Abramoff was arranging these very weird junkets to the Northern Mariana Islands, whisking elected officials (Reps, mainly, as I recall) and other VIPs off to fancy digs, golf, one suspects other things, and "tours" of garment sweat shops. The firm was representing the Northern Mariana Islands, a US possession, in trying to fend off labor regulations that would have improved working conditions on the garment workers and imposed various taxes. The "tours" were staged events intended to "prove" how great the workers had it. I don't know the truth of what was happening there, though I have read that it was a pretty dreadful scene, like something out of Dickens. The VIPs that went on the junkets were treated very well (I have visions of vaguely Polynesian women, very willing and able, being involved in these junkets) and, as I recall, came back to Washington to report favorably on the labor situation on the islands.
At Preston during this early period of Jack's reign, it was all LA Law drama. Jack demanded and got his own limo and driver. Jack wanted a better office and pushed an established lawyer out. Jack wanted this, Jack wanted that. Jack Jack Jack. Everyone spoke about Jack.
I wasn't involved much in lobbying at Preston; I mainly litigated. However, the tone of the whole firm changed. It became more mercenary and much more nasty. One saw people like Ralph Reed stalking the halls -- my god that guy is evil. Weirdly, however, the firm became much more PC. One could not talk openly about the reality of racial, gender, religious, or other difference, even in a factual way. We would all learn, much later, that Abramoff at this time was more or less butt fucking several American Indian tribes and generally being a sleazy bastard, but woe to the employee at Preston who spoke about anything remotely real in the lunch room! Ralph Reed was in the house, but, Shhh!, don't talk about Jews!
One day, I went to a senior partner of the firm, one who had been very kind to me, even mentoring, over the years, and I asked him, "Why have you brought the devil here?"
"What do you mean," he asked.
"Jack Abramoff is the devil," I said. "He doesn't belong here."
This was the beginning of the end for me at Preston. Unbeknownst to me at the time I said those words, the senior partner to whom I complained had been the one who brought Abramoff into the firm and got a big fat finder's fee (I heard it was $250,000) for doing so. Abramoff and this partner had connections through the Orthodox Jewish community in the northern suburbs of DC (Abramoff famously started his own Orthodox boys' school with proceeds from his raping of the American Indians). My work pretty much dried up after that; I had very little to do.
Moreover, I admit I was a talker, and I often got in trouble at Preston during my tenure there for, well, talking, about things like race, gender, religion, etc. That, too, is really weird, because I was the only card-carrying deconstructionist with serious leftist credentials at the firm. The firm as of 1996 or 1997 had finally rid itself of black lawyers -- one partner had told me that hiring black lawyers had never worked out for them and that they wouldn't do it again. The only color left in the place was among the staff. However, secretaries among the staff had learned from Preston's management policies over the years that the surest way to a golden parachute was to cry race or gender. Preston had paid off a number of staff people over the years, giving them large checks just to leave quietly. What happened, because of this pattern, was that some people on the staff would basically just sort of check out of actual work: come in late, take long lunches, leave early.
This was untenable, but the firm had trouble firing staff people without giving them a golden parachute. As an attorney at the firm who needed secretarial support, I found it crazy that I couldn't do anything to actually force a secretary to do work. What the secretaries did, instead of work much, was keep their ears open for any hint of discussion among the attorneys about race, gender, or religion, and if they heard it, they pounced. Woe to me.
Now, what you're dealing with at law firms is a tier of highly educated, privileged professionals who are supported by a separate tier of staff people with generally less education, fewer means, and some amount of resentment. I'm sorry to put it that way, but that's what a large law firm is. So, the professional tier tends to have lively discussion among its denizens about whatever it is that educated professionals talk about (race, gender, religion, etc), and these discussions often happen in hallways, or with one lawyer standing at another lawyer's door. The staff people are not supposed to have discussions among themselves in the halls because, well, they don't own the place, they just work there.
To make a long story short, the last straw for Preston when it came to keeping me around was when a secretary with some amount of native american blood overheard me say, to a rather attractive female colleague that I was forever flirting with, "Hey, you're as tan as an Indian!"
Sutton, you're out. Abramoff, let's get some native Americans in here and show them how it's really done!
Abramoff is in prison now. Several other people -- members of Congress and other Washington insiders -- have been convicted of crimes involving Abramoff. Preston Gates couldn't make it once all the stuff about Abramoff came out -- it has been absorbed, twice, into larger, more stable firms.
I have worked for myself since 1998. Sometimes, when I'm alone in my office, I make outrageous comments just to see if anyone's listening.
