On Jan. 4, Scott McClellan promised reporters a “thorough report” on Jack Abramoff’s White House contacts “very soon.” Shortly thereafter, Time reported that Bush staffers were scrambling to “identify all the photos that may exist” of the president and Abramoff together.
And then, the White House decided to stop answering questions about Abramoff’s access. Time magazine has seen the five reasons why.
TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush’s aides have downplayed. While TIME’s source refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team’s for the past several months: that a picture of the President with the admitted felon could become the iconic image of direct presidential involvement in a burgeoning corruption scandal — like the shots of President Bill Clinton at White House coffees for campaign contributors in the mid-1990s.
In one shot that TIME saw, Bush appears with Abramoff, several unidentified people and Raul Garza Sr., a Texan Abramoff represented who was then chairman of the Kickapoo Indians, which owned a casino in southern Texas. Garza, who is wearing jeans and a bolo tie in the picture, told TIME that Bush greeted him as “Jefe,” or “chief” in Spanish. Another photo shows Bush shaking hands with Abramoff in front of a window and a blue drape. The shot bears Bush’s signature, perhaps made by a machine. Three other photos are of Bush, Abramoff and, in each view, one of the lobbyist’s sons (three of his five children are boys). A sixth picture shows several Abramoff children with Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is now pushing to tighten lobbying laws after declining to do so last year when the scandal was in its early stages.
McClellan has stonewalled the press now for 18 days. A White House official told Time, “The decision was made — don’t put out any additional information.” But when it comes to these pictures, Rove & Co. don’t have control anymore. It’s not up to the Bush gang to put out anything, except maybe some kind of explanation for why the president was tight with the most corrupt lobbyist in town.
In retrospect, the White House couldn’t have handled this much worse. (I don’t mean the access they gave Abramoff; I mean the media strategy now.) Once they knew there were pictures, the Bush gang should have released them and gotten it over with. Instead, they’ve built up the significance of the pics and alerted the entire political establishment, including every political reporter in town, to the fact that the pictures’ existence is embarrassing and damaging. Whatever happened to the leak-at-5-on-a-Friday scheme?
Stay tuned.