This is a very detailed long article that connects McLame to the
Abramoff Scandal.
As Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee from 2005-2007, McCain was instrumental in suppressing evidence of Jack Abramoff’s role in directing illegal foreign payoffs to ranking members of the Republican Party.
I. Background: GOP Foreign Influence Peddling
Senator John McCain has proved to be Jack Abramoff’s best friend.
As Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee from 2005-2007, McCain was instrumental in suppressing evidence of Jack Abramoff’s role in directing illegal foreign payoffs to ranking members of the Republican Party.
McCain also did a big favor for Abramoff’s principal partners in crime, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed , identified in the 2006 Committee report as key players in the Choctaw Indian and Marianas Island scandals. Not one of the principal witnesses in the matter were compelled to publicly testify by McCain's panel. The Committee also sequestered 99 percent of the documents it received, and these remain locked away, unseen by the public, in Senate files.
But there’s much more to the scandal than the Indian tribes rip-off McCain did disclose. The strand that runs through all the Abramoff-McCain relationship is foreign money – many, many millions – that Jack, Grover and Ralph funneled to GOP leaders from some of the world’s worst bad guys as part of a foreign influence-peddling operation.
>>>>>>>>>>> ( This is a long article worthy of the read)
snip
About a year after it began its formal investigation, however, the Committee subpoenaed all of Jack Abramoff’s recent lobbying records, along with those of Norquist, Reed and Scanlon. The Committee staff received the electronic files from Jack’s former employers: the lobbying firm, Preston Gates, from 1995 to 2000, and Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a law firm with close GOP ties, where Abramoff worked from 2000 to 2004. These firms were tied to the scandal and McCain held their fate in his hands. When printed out, these amounted to an estimated 750,000 pages. McCain’s Committee would end up releasing only a small faction of these, a mere 4800 pages. Dozens of boxes of documents remain sequestered in Committee files pursuant to arrangements that McCain and the GOP majority imposed on the committee. See, page 6 of the Final Report; also, see, Dennis Greenia (“dengre”), Daily Kos, Jack Abramoff: John McCain’s other Lobbyist problem, ( Feb 22, 2008), Link
VII. Conclusion
By withholding most of the evidence received in response to his broad subpoena, McCain managed to cover-up the larger picture of the political work Abramoff did for his clients, some of which was clearly contrary to the U.S. national interest. This has thwarted the efforts of investigators outside McCain’s committee to independently examine the bulk of the record, which remains hidden.
However, it is completely consistent with McCain’s role as a career cover-up specialist for the foreign influence-peddling and financial frauds of the Republican Party.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0806/S00097.htm