Yesterday I highlighted a Roll Call article by Paul Singer about some of the questions surrounding Mark Zachares' ascension to a senior position on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Today comes the news that he did this with a little help from his predecessor, Duane Gibson, who left the committee to go work for Abramoff at Greenberg Traurig.
Beginning in 2000, Abramoff began looking for work for Zachares in Washington, D.C., according to the guilty plea, and "in June 2002, with the assistance of Abramoff and others, Zachares was hired onto the staff of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee."
One of those others was Gibson, who passed Zachares' name on to his former employers at the committee, said sources familiar with the case.
Gibson had worked for Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) when the Congressman chaired the House Resources Committee from 1995 to 2000, then moved to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee when Young became chairman of that panel in 2001. He left the committee in May 2002 to join Greenberg Traurig; Young hired Zachares in June.
So Abramoff's been trying to land Zachares a job that will help his lobbying efforts, but isn't having much luck. Then he offers Gibson a sweet lobbying job and Gibson accepts, recommending Zachares as his replacement on the Committee. How perfectly generous of him.
By the way, Duane Gibson has an interesting history in politics, especially during the 2000 election Florida debacle.
Who is this Mark Zachares character, and how did he get to his position on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee? This is the question Roll Call asks today (the article's subscription only, so I'll quote a little heavily).
Zachares' corruption plea last week includes the vague admission that he got his job on the committee "with the assistance of Abramoff and others." But the Justice Department has yet to explain how Zachares got the job, and then-Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) has declined to comment on the matter.
Sources said that Young met Zachares before he was hired, and that Zachares joined the committee about a month after a senior Transportation and Infrastructure staffer named Duane Gibson left to join Abramoff's lobbying practice at Greenberg Traurig.
So we come to Rep. Don Young (R-AK) again. It's not that suspect that the two knew each other, given Zachares' position as secretary of the Department of Labor and Immigration in the CNMI.
In that capacity, Zachares met Young on at least two occasions, sources said. In February 1999, Young -- then serving as chairman of the House Resources Committee with jurisdiction over the territories -- led a Congressional delegation to Guam and the Marianas to discuss economic development, labor and immigration issues....
..."We met in the federal office" in Saipan for briefings, [then-Guam Delegate Robert] Underwood recalled, "and there were different federal officials from [the Department of] Interior and the U.S. attorney's office giving these reports. ... Mark's position was labor or immigration for the Northern Marianas -- he was sitting in the room along with us."
Seven months later, during a Resources Committee hearing that Young chaired, Zachares sat at the witness table in the Longworth House Office Building hearing room and answered questions from the chairman about the labor force in the Marianas.
Still, it's something else to chew on. I'm especially interested in the tidbit that Zachares' predecessor on the House committee left to work for Abramoff, conveniently opening up a spot for Zachares.
Given the recent developments with former Rep. Don Young (R-AK) aide Mark Zachares, the Anchorage Daily News decided to take a close look at Young's ties with Jack Abramoff. What they found is actually kind of startling.
I get the sense it may have surprised them a little, too:
The guilty plea last week by a former senior committee aide to Rep. Don Young sheds new light on the circumstances surrounding Young's success seven years ago in blocking reforms of the sweatshop industry on the Mariana Islands.
But the plea also raises new questions about why Young, R-Alaska, took the actions he did.
Zachares worked for the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI) from 1994-1998; Jack Abramoff was paid $11 million to lobby for the CNMI from 1994-2001. It was during these years that their paths intersected and they became personal and political friends. At the same time, efforts were afoot to institute labor reforms to CNMI garment manufacturers, who were running sweatshops under the legal label of "Made In the USA." Abramoff's chief task was to derail this reform legislation.
Enter Representative Don Young, chairman of the House Resources Committee, the committee of jurisdiction over the CNMI.
Common Blog
