One of the key players in the Abramoff/Republican Corruption Scandal is in Washington DC tonight. He was there for the bribes, the payoffs, the secret deals between Jack and the Bush White House. He benefited from the crimes and did his part to further the GOP Criminal Conspiracy.
He is an architect of the system of human trafficking and abuse that has flourished on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) for over 25 years. The sweatshops, forced prostitution, money laundering, gambling, graft, corruption and incompetence that have become synonymous with the rogue US Territory in the Western Pacific are all by-products of his criminal career.
His name is Benigno R. (Ben) Fitial. He is the Governor of the CNMI. Jack and Tom got him the gig.
Can we arrest him now?
To the jump...
Ben Fitial is uniquely corrupt. He has made it an art form. He has been on the take for so long that it is possible that he was lining up bribes on the day he was born.
The Marianas Islands were part of the Pacific Trust Territories. After World War II most of these islands were under the control of the United States. By the late 1960s the United Nations was urging a resolution of political status for the sparsely populated and isolated islands of the Western Pacific. The Marianas Island were the political center of the Trust Territories back then and Fitial was a news director at a local radio station.
Somehow he parlayed that experience to get a job as a Budget Analyst for the Trust Territories. By the 1970s the various island groups were voting in plebiscites to choose between independence or becoming a territory of another Nation. The Marinas Islands voted to become part of the United States while Gerald Ford was still President.
All that was left was to negotiate the terms of the relationship. And Fitial was at the table. He was a delegate to the First CNMI Constitutional Convention in 1976. When the first CNMI legislative body was formed (1978-1980), Fitial became their Chief Administrative Officer and Special Consultant to House Appropriations Committee. In the second CNMI Legislature he was a Member of the CNMI House of Representatives and served as a member of the Rules Committee, R&D Committee, and Minority Leader. By the 3rd CNMI Legislature, he was elected Speaker for the House. By the 4th CNMI Legislature he was in charge.
Meanwhile, the details of the agreement between the United States and the CNMI were still being hammered out. Back in the 1970s it was thought that this process would only take a few months or years. By the mid Eighties it was still being debated. Reagan appointed Fitial to Chair the Northern Mariana Islands Commission on Federal Laws in 1985-1988 that hammered out the final details on the agreement. It became know as the Covenant.
The Covenant provided temporary exemptions to US labor, immigration and custom laws. In theory, this was done to protect the Chamorros and Carolinians who made up the indigenous peoples of the CNMI. The hope was that local control would help these folks protect, maintain and preserve their cultures.
This has failed BIG TIME and has led to an influx of guest worker/immigrants who now outnumber the Chamorro/Carolinian populations almost 3 to 1. The labor system on the CNMI is a form a modern slavery that has harmed the guest workers and laid waste to the Chamorro/Carolinian culture in the process. It is a disaster, but some folks have gotten very rich and powerful as a result.
One of them is Benigno R. (Ben) Fitial. In addition to local control of labor, custom and immigration laws, the CNMI also was granted the right to ship goods to the mainland USA without a tariff. This was done to help boost a local economy.
Chinese entrepreneurs had a different idea. They saw the CNMI as a way to exploit a loophole and ship their goods duty free to the States. In Fitial they found a willing partner to run the scam.
In his role as a CNMI Legislator, Fitial pushed through legislation to allow foreign investment on the CNMI and the importation of "guest workers" from the Pacific Rim to run their factories.
To get buy-in from the local Chamorro/Carolinian population, he made sure that even folks on food stamps could afford their very own Filipino maid. Even today, almost 70% of the indigenous population has their own live in maid—even if they are still on the dole.
This system of abuse quickly got out of hand. The Reagan administration complained to the CNMI about the growing abuse as stories of rape, sweatshops and neo-slavery filtered back to Washington.
When Reagan left office, so did Fitial.
He took a job with one of the Chinese Families he helped to establish on the CNMI. For eleven years he worked for the Hong Kong based Tan Family. It was a lucrative payoff for Fitial and has earned him the local nickname of Ben-Tan. In addition to his day job, Fitial was also able to run strip joint and control a number of video poker machines as added perks. (Comparisons between the CNMI and HBO’s The Sorparnos and/or Deadwood are justified).
The work of Fitial to help the Tan Holding Companies run their sweatshops was noticed by the George Bush the Elder. Back in 1992 his Department of Labor levied the single largest fine in US Labor Department history—$9.2 million—against the Tan Family.
By 1995 it looked like the US Congress was on the way to passing bi-partisan reform to close the loophole in the CNMI Covenant that was allowing the system of abuse to flourish. The Pirates of Saipan hired Jack Abramoff to block any reform. Willie Tan of the Tan Family became Jack’s patron and Ben Fitial became the contact point between the two.
By 2000, the gang decided they needed their own man back in charge of the CNMI Government, so Fitial re-entered local politics. The first step was to get him "elected" Speaker of the CNMI House. He didn’t have the votes to win, but for Team Abramoff and their GOP partners in crime it was just a matter of finding out who they could bribe to fix the election.
DeLay, Abramoff and the gang sent Ed Buckham and Mike Scanlon over to the Islands to promise two CNMI House members, Rep. Alejo M. Mendiola from Rota and Rep. Norman S. Palacios from Tinian a payoff (AKA a bribe) if they would switch their votes and elect Fitial Speaker of the House.
Mendiola and Palacios switched their votes.
And Tom, Jack and the GOP gang delivered the payoff (AKA a favor) in the form of appropriations from the US Congress. (This should be a count in Doolittle’s coming indictment).
Once in office, Fitial ensured that the CNMI Government rehired Abramoff as their lobbyist and that a power plant contract went to Enron as a payoff to Tom DeLay (and George W. Bush).
In 2001, the Criminal Conspiracy had Fitial running for Governor. The GOP pulled out all stops to get him elected. Efforts included the Bush White House. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s 2006 investigation of Abramoff/White House contacts revealed a number of contacts between Team Abramoff and the White House as part of the effort to get Fitial elected. The effort just missed.
By 2003 Fitial was back as Speaker of the CNMI House. In 2005 he became the CNMI’s Governor just as Federal investigators were paying more attention to his role in the Abramoff scandal. More details can be read here, here and here.
Just last February the Marianas Variety reported:
FBI probes Abramoff’s NMI deals
At least four U.S.-based agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation are on-island to question some local lawmakers and other officials on disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s work for the Northern Marianas.
The four met with Speaker Oscar M. Babauta, Covenant-Saipan, yesterday afternoon.
Variety learned that at least one more CNMI lawmaker will be questioned to shed light on what happened during the 12th Legislature when then-Rep. Benigno R. Fitial, now the governor, became speaker.
No wonder, Fitial has been avoiding Washington DC. With his deep involvement in the Abramoff scandal an almost endless series of investigators might subpoena or indict him at any moment.
So please, arrest the weasel while he is in town:
At the very least, haul him in for questioning.
Now you may ask, what would get Fitial to travel to DC when his presence here places him in a certain amount of legal jeopardy?
The answer is reform.
The 110th Congress is on its way to ending the abuse on the CNMI and that would put an end to Fitial’s legacy of corruption on the CNMI. So preserving the system of abuse is worth the trip to Ben-Tan. (Of course he did just make a trip to China to confer with his patrons, so perhaps he is just doing what he is told to do by his masters).
The big threat is Senate Bill 1634. This legislation would extend US Immigration laws to the CNMI. I have had some concerns about this Bill, but it looks like they are being address. The Bill, like all legislation, will not solve everything. But it will be a good start and FINALLY brings some law and order to the rogue territory and some justice to the abused workers and victims of human trafficking.
Of course Fitial has come to DC to oppose the S. 1634. He is running the same game plan that he created with Jack Abramoff over a decade ago. Only this time Jack is otherwise engaged and the Democrats control Congress. So Ben-Tan has found the Democratic equivalent of Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist named William Oldaker. According to the Saipan Tribune the:
government-hired Washington lobby firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, LLP is in-charge of arranging appointments on behalf of the governor.
Democrats who meet with Oldaker or his firm should keep lots of disinfectant around and remember they were elected to clean up the corruption in Washington—not embrace it. (If they need a lesson in how to do it, they could give Rep. Jerry McNerney a call.)
Fitial, Oldaker and their GOP allies will try and defeat S. 1634 by stalling for time, by delaying action until it is too late for any promise reform to help the workers of the CNMI. As they work to stall the legislation, back on the CNMI Fitial’s Government is conducting a purge of "guest workers". This low-level ethnic cleansing is well under way. Local CNMI labor laws are so convoluted that it is easy to judge a worker in violation of something. Once you do that you can create the legal fiction to deport them. This is especially easy as the local CNMI legal system is designed to deny workers any rights. If you can get rid of them, you never have to worry about them getting rights and holding the perpetrators of their long abuse accountable for that abuse. The purge also lets those who have stolen money from the workers get away with the crime.
Just the other week, the CNMI Government put a $1,000 bounty on the head of Guest workers trapped in the twilight of the shifting local CNMI labor laws.
A survey of the headlines of the local CNMI papers from just the last two weeks show a purge in progress (I've added more then a dozen new links from the latest CNMI papers that just went online this morning):
This system of abuse is what Fitial is coming to defend and why we must defeat him.
It is time to end the abuse on the CNMI—now—this year. Every week the legislation is delayed will mean that more workers—who should get the benefits of reform—will be purged from the CNMI.
This has to end.
According to press reports, the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will hold a hearing on S. 1634 on July 19.
I will be there and I could use your help to reform legislation passed.
And with luck, Fitial will be frog-marched out of the room.
A boy can dream.
Cheers
Addendum
A good indiction of the ties between Jack Abramoff and Ben Fitial would be the letter that Ben-Tan wrote the Judge to request a light sentance for Jack. Here it is:
And here is the letter from their mutual patron, Willie Tan:
Cheers