True Colors: Abramoff and Apartheid

Jack Abramoff "was a willing asset of the apartheid government" and may have learned some of his lobbying techniques from South African intelligence members working against Nelson Mandela and the antiapartheid movement. I wonder if any of the members of congress accepting money from Abramoff or his clients were aware of this relationship:

The Making of a Lobbyist, by Ken Silverstein, Harpers: Before Jack Abramoff was sentenced on charges of fraud ..., his friends sent character references to the court to show the kindler, gentler Abramoff—a man who would get you a drink of water or help you look for a lost hamster, a basically good person who lost his moral compass after getting caught up in the high-stakes world of Washington lobbying. But Abramoff's career in apartheid South Africa shows that he never had a moral compass at all.

David Margolick's recent Vanity Fair profile of Jack Abramoff omits a key part of the story, whitewashing Abramoff's past service on behalf of South Africa's apartheid government. Margolick wrote that in the mid-1980s Abramoff went into “show business” and produced Red Scorpion, “an anti-Communist parable filmed in Namibia” ... But saying that Abramoff was in show business is like describing Jeffrey Dahmer as a man who “dabbled in nouvelle cuisine.” Red Scorpion was not simply a sloppy piece of propaganda; it was a project of South African military intelligence, and Abramoff, according to my sources, was a willing asset of the apartheid government.

It started when Abramoff, as Chairman of the College Republican National Committee, visited South Africa in 1983. There, he came to know Russel Crystal, a South African intelligence asset who headed a government-funded student front group. Presumably, it was Crystal who in 1986 brought Abramoff in as the first chairman of the International Freedom Foundation (IFF)—a seemingly independent right-wing group headquartered in Washington, D.C., that was effectively run from Johannesburg and given the code name “Pacman” by South African intelligence. I spoke to a source who was intimately familiar with the IFF... “The South Africans needed front men,” he told me. “Abramoff was identified early on as an ambitious, up-and-coming American conservative who could be useful.”

The IFF/Pacman advocated for the contras in Nicaragua and the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. But its primary interest was South Africa, and much of the group's energy was spent attempting to discredit Nelson Mandela and the global antiapartheid movement, ... and building support for Jonas Savimbi, the loopy but murderous Angolan faction commander backed by Washington and Pretoria...

Abramoff ran the IFF until he reportedly left in 1989, the year he released Red Scorpion. ... South Africa was careful to cover its tracks, and some people who worked at the IFF were apparently clueless as to their funding's actual source. ... Abramoff has never acknowledged that he knew of South African government support for the IFF, and told Newsday that the allegations that he accepted South African funds for Red Scorpion were “outrageous.” ...

But according to my source, Abramoff was briefed by South African representatives about the nature and importance of the foundation's work. ... Another IFF member, Craig Williamson, was a South African spy ... Williamson acknowledged earlier this year to South Africa's Mail & Guardian that the money for Abramoff's movie came from South Africa.

“Yes, some people were duped by the IFF,” said my source. “But Jack was not one of them. As chairman [of the IFF], he understood where the money was coming from. He knew exactly who he was playing with.” A second source, who also asked not to be identified, agreed: “The ... movie was an official propaganda project.”

Abramoff has said he was embarrassed by the violence and profanity in Red Scorpion ... he even created the short-lived Committee for Traditional Jewish Values in Entertainment to fight sex and violence in film. But his values didn't preclude him from taking a helping hand from the apartheid government of South Africa. And certainly it appears that Abramoff learned the tricks he brought to the lobbying trade—cut-outs, bogus charities, financial trickery, and double- and triple-budgeted projects—from his friends at South African intelligence. ...