Newsweek has learned that investigators probing supperlobbyist Jack Abramoff's finances have found some of the money meant for a charity he started for inner-city kids went instead to fight the Palestinian intifada. In 2002 alone, records show, three Indian tribes donated nearly $1.1 million to the Capital Athletic Foundation. The group of Indian tribes had hired Abramoff to protect their interests in Washington, after they opened up lucrative gaming casinos. Donating to the fund had a side benefit, Abramoff told his clients: it was a favored cause of Rep. Tom DeLay.
More than $14,000 of foundation funds were actually sent to the Israeli West Bank where they were used by a Jewish settler to mobilize against the Palestinian uprising, reports Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff in the May 2 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 25). Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as "security" equipment. The FBI, sources tell newsweek, is now examining these payments as part of a larger investigation to determine if Abramoff defrauded his Indian tribe clients. The tribal donors are outraged. "This is almost like outer-limits bizarre," says Henry Buffalo, a lawyer for the Saginaw Chippewa Indians who contributed $25,000 to the Capital Athletic Foundation at Abramoff's urging. "The tribe would never have given money for this."
Abramoff, a legendary lobbyist particularly close to DeLay, is also a fierce supporter of Israel -- "a super-Zionist," one associate says. That may explain why Abramoff's paramilitary gear ended up in the town of Beitar Illit, a sprawling ultra-Orthodox outpost whose residents have occasionally tangled with their Palestinian neighbors. At least some of the equipment appears to have come from Abramoff's law firm. An August 2002 invoice obtained by newsweek shows that $773 worth of paramilitary gear -- including sniper shooting mats and "hydration tactical tubes" -- was shipped to one of Abramoff's aides at the law firm where the lobbyist then worked. Reached last week, Schmuel Ben-Zvi, an American emigre who, the lobbyist told associates, was an old friend he knew from Los Angeles, angrily denied any knowledge of Abramoff or being involved in any efforts to obtain security gear.
The West Bank security payments are not the only foundation expenditure being eyed by investigators. The bulk of the foundation's money, about $4 million, was used for a now-defunct Orthodox Jewish school in suburban Maryland that two of Abramoff's sons attended. Buffalo says his tribe had no idea its donations were being used for this purpose, either. A spokesman for Abramoff vigorously defended all of the expenditures. Abramoff, says spokesman Andrew Blum, "is an especially strong supporter of Israel and has tried to find ways to help Israelis and others to be less susceptible to terrorist attacks."
