Casino Bid Prompted High-Stakes Lobbying

Christian Coalition

Meanwhile, Abramoff opened a second front to bring outside pressure on Interior against the Jenas.

He looked to Reed, the former Christian Coalition leader who operated several consulting companies. Reed has acknowledged receiving as much as $4 million from Abramoff and his associate, Scanlon, to organize grass-roots anti-gambling campaigns in Louisiana and Texas. The money came from casino-rich Indian tribes, including the Coushattas, but Reed said that although he knew of Abramoff's connection to the tribes, he did not know until media accounts surfaced last summer that his fees came from gambling proceeds.

Reed then turned to Dobson to marshal his vast network of evangelicals, Abramoff's e-mails show.

Abramoff wrote to Scanlon in a Feb. 20, 2002, e-mail that Dobson would make radio ads against gambling. Reed "may finally have scored for us! Dobson goes up on the radio on this next week!" He suggested giving Reed $60,000 for the ads to run in Louisiana and Texas. "We'll then play it in the WH [White House] and Interior," he told Scanlon.

The prospect that Dobson would become involved had an immediate impact at Interior. His regular radio show had a huge audience, and his Colorado-based Focus on the Family actively campaigned against gambling as a social evil.

One of Dobson's top aides, Tom Minnery, wrote to Norton saying Louisiana "already has an alarming number of gaming establishments" -- a letter he copied to White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. The Interior Department's White House liaison, Doug Domenech, sounded the alarm.

"Doug came to me and said, 'Dobson's going to shut down our phone system. He's going to go on the air and tell everyone who listens to Focus on the Family to call Interior to oppose the Jena compact,' " said a former senior Interior official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Federici, of CREA, stoked the nervousness at Interior. "From what I have been told," she wrote Norton spokesman Eric Ruff in a Feb. 21 memo, Reed "has been bending the ear of Karl Rove and possibly even the President about land-in-trust and gaming issues. I am also hearing that Ralph has involved James Dobson and Phyllis Schlafly with this. Supposedly Dobson is planning to run ads and they mention Gale by name."

Federici said she had also heard that conservatives in the House "have been asked to sign a letter to Gale and the President slamming DOI [Department of Interior]."

Federici declined to comment on why she had any involvement with the tribes or the gambling issue. Along with her memo to Ruff, she enclosed without explanation copies of e-mails on the issue that Reed had sent to Abramoff.

There is no evidence that Dobson's group knew of Abramoff's connection to Reed. But Dobson's involvement was discussed at a senior Interior staff meeting and "had its intended effect, which was to get everyone worried," the former senior official said. "Norton didn't want a spectacle involving the department, especially involving gambling."

Norton's predecessor, Bruce Babbitt, had endured a two-year probe by an independent counsel before being cleared of allegations involving an Indian tribe and campaign contributions.