Interview With Former Lobbyist and Convicted Felon Jack Abramoff
MORGAN: For years, Jack Abramoff was one of Washington's most influential power brokers, a prominent lobbyist with the friends and cash to help people get what they wanted, until he went too far and took a huge fall, sentenced to four years in prison for fraud, corruption and conspiracy. The once all-powerful lobbyist then helped the Justice Department clean up influence-peddling in the nation's capital. He's now out of prison, has a new book called "Capitol Punishment," and he joins me now. Jack, welcome.</s>JACK ABRAMOFF, AUTHOR, "CAPITOL PUNISHMENT": Thank you.</s>MORGAN: The book's curious, in the sense that there aren't large dollops of contrition, necessarily. It's more a, Look, this is what Washington was like, I got caught. But a lot of it is kind of not vainglorious, but you're certainly pumping up the good times more than I perhaps would have done if I had done a book for you, in the sense that, you know, a lot of it is, Wow, it was great, and we were going on golfing trips and I was meeting all these people. And there are pictures of you with presidents and governors and celebrities, and so on, when actually, at the heart of all this, people will be reading it, going, Well, hang on a second, one of the reasons many people believe America is in the shambles it's in now financially and politically is because of people like you. And I would have expected a bit more mea culpa.</s>ABRAMOFF: I think the book has an extraordinary amount of mea culpa.</s>MORGAN: Do you?</s>ABRAMOFF: Yes. I basically -- what I try to do with the book is tell the story of what happened. Not necessarily to give an editorial but to talk about what I did, what I went through in part as a way to teach people what goes on there. And I didn't intend for the book to be some sort of cheer leading book for lobbying, quite the contrary. Or even for what I did. I made mistakes, I crossed the lines, I did stuff that I shouldn't have done, I stuff I regret immensely and I talk about that and for which I was severely punished -- and properly so. However, this is going on still and I thought it was important that people should know what does go on, at least in terms of my experience.</s>MORGAN: What adjectives would you use it about the Jack Abramoff before you got caught? What was that man really like?</s>ABRAMOFF: He was somebody who didn't know of any boundaries really, that didn't quite clearly see the lines, the lines that all of us need to see in life, the line between right and wrong.</s>MORGAN: I mean, the contradictions I guess are that you're clearly a strong family man, that resonates through in the book. You're clearly a very religious man, a good-fearing man. That, too, resonates in the book. What went wrong?</s>ABRAMOFF: Well, I think that with me, a couple things went wrong. I entered the arena to achieve certain things, I didn't set out certainly to break the law or do things that were wrong. I set out to achieve paths and goals that were consistent with my philosophies as a conservative and as a free marketeer and limited government person and eventually participating within the system, having success, having an ability to have power, got to me as it gets to others. And I stopped thinking about, again, where those lines in the sand were. And as a consequence, I, in a tragic sense set myself up for the grand fall and I'm not the first that that's happened to and I won't be the last.</s>MORGAN: That's certainly true. I mean, what people said about you at the time was -- well, he had this coming. He used to strut around the place like he owned it. You know, you're kind of like a Mafioso version of a lobbyist it was sense that it was all about patronage, you'd have these restaurants and the great and good would come pay homage. And in return, out went the cash and out went the freebies and out went the golf trips and so on, and that was how you played that system.</s>ABRAMOFF: I think that's partially accurate. That was in small part how this was played. I think when my career became a headline and when my e-mails were exposed to the press, I sent 850,000 e-mails during the course of the few years that I was a lobbyist. Virtually everything I did was on email. When that first became available to the media, there was a sensation of look what's really going on inside the factory (ph) that makes sausages.</s>MORGAN: On the emails, what people were more offended by was the contempt you appeared to have for your own clients. I mean, here are people paying you 10 times the going rate for your services and not necessarily getting a bad job, you were certainly helping them but then they were being described as morons in your emails. I mean, that to me was -- it isn't worse than the corruption, but it certainly left a pretty bad taste when you read that, you know?</s>ABRAMOFF: I'm not going to defend my e-mails. I'm embarrassed about some of the things I wrote on the email. I'm ashamed of some of the things I wrote. I regret them and will regret for the rest of my life. I wound up using my e-mail, my primary communicator. And I was a very emotional and passionate advocate of my causes. My clients I love, and just as I love my children and would give my life for them. At times my wife and I would exchange e-mails talking about our children doing things that were idiotic or things that we disagreed. I sent 850,000 e-mails, a hundred of them were taken that were a little salacious and jocular and stupid and I can't un-ring the bell. They were sent.</s>MORGAN: What do you think was the worst thing you did?</s>ABRAMOFF: Well, a number of things. First of all, I entered a system that I think inherently has structural issues. And because of my personality, I'm a hyper-competitive individual. I operated within a system where some of the rules are vague and some of the rules are made purposely vague by the way in terms of the gifts and how a lobbyist can interact with legislatures and I pushed them --</s>MORGAN: They have now been changed -- I mean, 2007.</s>ABRAMOFF: In part. There was some tweaking. But the truth is all of the reform efforts to date are effectless. They're not -- they're not exactly things -- do we think there's no corruption in the system any longer? Do they think just because Jack Abramoff went to prison and Tom DeLay, who is constantly picked on as the archetype legislator who's is evil is sitting in Houston that corruption is gone? It's not. The system still contains vast, vast amounts of loopholes.</s>MORGAN: Did you know as you were doing it you were breaking the law?</s>ABRAMOFF: I didn't consciously feel I was doing that.</s>MORGAN: Really? Because you're a smart guy.</s>ABRAMOFF: Well, even brilliant people, not that I am one, but even brilliant people can go over the line. I'm an aggressive person. I'm somebody who wanted to win. I wanted to win for my clients. I felt the greatest dishonor was defeat. So, therefore, when I took client and when I was their advocate, nobody was going to hurt them, nobody was going to beat them. And in doing that, as a consequence, I went over the line.</s>MORGAN: H many other people at the time were crossing the line do you really think?</s>ABRAMOFF: Well, there are a lot of lines and a lot of these lines --</s>MORGAN: I mean breaking the law.</s>ABRAMOFF: I don't know.</s>MORGAN: What would you guess from your knowledge of the system?</s>ABRAMOFF: A healthy percentage.</s>MORGAN: What kind of percentage?</s>ABRAMOFF: Twenty.</s>MORGAN: Twenty percent of every lobbyist was doing the same kind of thing?</s>ABRAMOFF: Yes.</s>MORGAN: And how many have actually been held to account?</s>ABRAMOFF: Have been held to account?</s>MORGAN: Yes.</s>ABRAMOFF: Well, none. Not a lot yet. There's a difference and I think a lot of people become critical of why aren't more congressmen in prison, why were there --</s>MORGAN: Only one congressman went to jail.</s>ABRAMOFF: My experience with the Justice Department is they are very careful to not proceed with prosecutions, based on what I know, unless they have actual evidence that somebody's broken the law and it's very difficult to get. They happen to have my emails, every one of my emails, 850,000 e-mails. So, it's not hard to paint a picture --</s>MORGAN: The crime sheet there was for you.</s>ABRAMOFF: Yes.</s>MORGAN: Let's take a short break. I want to come back to you and talk about the moment you were caught.</s>ABRAMOFF: All right.</s>MORGAN: How you felt then. And also the moment you knew you were going to prison because that must be pretty much the worse moment of your life I would think.