Since Shaffer opened his mouth to suggest that the vile, inhumane, sadistic, cruel and failure of a guest worker system on the CNMI was a model for the USA, his long record of ties to Jack Abramoff and the Pirates of Saipan have come under increased scrutiny.
The Denver Post has started a series examining Schaffer’s many ties to Abramoff and their sweatshop owning pals. Also in the hunt is the always excellent team at TPM MuckRaker (tonight they have added new details to the story).
And, of course, Colorado’s progressive bloggers, like Square State.net are also on Schaffer’s dirty trail.
I have been aware of Schaffer’s involvement with Abramoff for years. He didn’t come up in the 2006 cycle because he was not running for anything (although, I did count Marilyn Musgrave’s ties to Schaffer as evidence of a strong link between her and Abramoff—I still do).
Schaffer was/is a member of Team Abramoff. He is right there with Don Young, John Doolittle, Bob Ney, Dana Rorhabacher, Denny Hastert and Tom DeLay. I would rank him as in the Top Five Abramoff-connected Members of Congress over the last decade.
Now of course, Schaffer has denied knowing Jack, but as Jack told Vanity Fair:
"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn’t know me is almost certainly lying," he says. Such lies are not just, well, lies, but dumb to boot, he adds, for, as his own humiliations suggest, old e-mails never die; they just sit on hard drives, waiting to be subpoenaed and then to be leaked to the press. "This is not an age when you can run away from facts," he declares. "I had to deal with my records, and others will have to deal with theirs."
Schaffer can not run away from the facts and tonight some these facts are catching up to him.
Now, these details are not in the Mainstream Press—yet—but they will be. You can read them first here and at the source.
The source is longtime CNMI Human Rights worker Wendy Doromal. Her work to expose the corruption in the CNMI has been heroic. She has been at it for well over twenty years. And for most of that time she has been a target of Jack Abramoff, the Pirates of Saipan and the Republicans in Congress and Washington who have spent so many years protecting the a system of abuse for cold hard cash.
Wendy and the workers in the CNMI run a blog, Unheard No More. I link to it as part of my signature when I post a comment.
Over the years, Wendy has saved every CNMI document and every communication with Members of Congress about the CNMI she has sent off, including those to Bob Schaffer.
Tonight, Wendy has posted an epic post on the matter:
Bob Schaffer - Foot Soldier for Abramoff Team
There are many new details about Schaffer, including Witness Tampering and his incredible ability to ignore evidence of forced abortions, labor abuse and human trafficking while following Abramoff’s wishes to attack guest workers, human rights advocates and DOI staff members.
Here are a few excerpts from Wendy’s post:
:
Schaffer, a true foot soldier for the A-Team, followed the lobbyist's play book as outlined in the "secret memo." Schaffer and his wife visited the CNMI on one of the Abramoff junkets a month before the September 16, 1999 hearing. The timing was important as the memo noted:
"With the cancellation of the Young trip, it would be wise for the CNMI to host a group of Resources Committee members at some time prior to the hearings. Otherwise Miller will be the member of that committee most recently in the CNMI and this will place us at a distinct disadvantage."
Schaffer claimed to have visited 20 factories on his trip to Saipan according this Denver Post article:
"Bob Schaffer, accompanied by his wife, said he visited more than 20 textile factories during the trip to investigate claims of labor violations and found problems in only one. He also described the protectorate's guest-worker rules as a "model" for the U.S. immigration system."
Twenty factories? Really? It would be logistically impossible to visit 20 garment factories considering that he was on the island for four days, and went para-sailing, attended meetings including those with Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association and the Western Pacific Economic Council, and visited historical sites according to the Denver Post article.
He was quoted in this Post article as saying:
"There were some examples of problems that we found, and we raised those with the equivalent of the attorney general," Schaffer said of his visit. But in many others, "the workers were smiling; they were happy."
Other statements from former Saipan garment workers who were truly not "happy" were submitted with the 1998 report. As a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Schaffer had access to these. Here are some excerpts from their statements:
"She reports that the workers were treated like machines.
They were given one gallon of water for personal use a day during the wet season. During the dry season they were given some, but not enough drinking water on the factory floor, none was provided in our barracks.
The workers were denied work breaks and given only a limited time to go to the bathroom and they were not allowed to talk among themselves.
When she arrived in Saipan, she was initially housed with her co-workers in a "container" which was not air-conditioned.
They were not allowed to obtain medical treatment outside the factory.
Workers were prohibited by their contracts from attending religious services so we didn't go."
Schaffer also had access to the report Global Survival Network, a March 1998 report by Congressman George Miller, and US Department of Labor lawsuits which detailed similar experiences.
One controversial topic the A-Team wanted to suppress was that there were incidences of Chinese garment workers coerced to return to China to have an abortion if they became pregnant, or coerced to have one in a Chinese clinic on Saipan. In an April 11, 2008, Rocky Mountain News article, Bob Schaffer claims he talked to the Bishop and others and no one knew of coerced abortion:
"Schaffer said he discussed that issue with the Catholic bishop and other Catholic leaders."
"None of them could confirm any examples or episodes of this," he said.
Perhaps he should have read the 1998 report and the hundreds of attachments which contained a statement by a woman who was told she must have an abortion. Her story was told in the Philadelphia Inquirer on February 8, 1998. The article reads:
"She fell in love with a Chinese laborer and became pregnant. When her factory found out Tu said, it pressured her to go back to China to have an abortion. She said a supervisor summoned her four times to deliver the same message.
"She didn't say you must go back to China to have an abortion," Tu said, "but she always said, "think about it."
...Tu refused to have an abortion and was fired after missing several days of work because of pregnancy-related illness. Her boss at the factory owned by mainland Chinese and Hong Kong investors told her not to come back she said."
Also, in the report are statements and documentation from investigators who uncovered clinics on Saipan that performed abortions in 1998. One investigator interviewed a former Chinese factory worker about working conditions in the factories. The worker confirmed that pregnant Chinese workers were told to have an abortion. From her statement:
"According to Miss Y, if the company found out a worker became pregnant they would fire her and return her to China where she would be "forced to have an abortion." Knowing this, workers who became pregnant either tried to self abort or fond someone in Saipan to perform the abortion. Some women ran away and hid so they didn't have to have an abortion."
Of course, Schaffer could not admit that there may be evidence of coerced abortion. That was not in the game plan. One of the key players at the 1998 Senate Hearing was the Traditional Values Coalition, an organization said to be tied into the Abramoff web. In fact, it was the Traditional Values Coalition who funded the $13,000 trip that Schaffer and his wife took to the CNMI in 1999. Executive Director, Andrea Sheldon-Lafferty was also an Abramoff foot soldier and took a junket to the CNMI.
Andrea Sheldon appeared outside the hearing room in 1998. She was distributing a handbill calling the hearing a "sham" because their prepared witnesses who wanted to refute the documented incidences of coerced abortions and religious persecution were not asked to testify. I watched her confront one witness, Eric Gregoire who testified that as the former human rights advocate for the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa.
She yelled at him, "Why didn't you tell me about forced abortions when I was in Saipan?"
Former Chinese garment worker, Sui Jian Wei also testified that day concerning coerced abortions. From his testimony:
"I see Chinese workers have to get an abortion. I know Chinese doctors who do the abortions."
Schaffer ignored all the evidence of abuse.
He traveled to the CNMI ahead of a Hearing to explore the many reports that had come out detailing the abuse. Instead of exploring these crimes, Schaffer worked overtime to change the subject and attack the victims of abuse.
One of these victim’s who testified at the 9-16-1999 Hearing was a young man from Bangladesh.
I'll let Wendy pick it up from here:
It was Schaffer's role and behavior in the September 16, 1999 House Hearing that demonstrated his obedience to the game plan outlined in the Abramoff memo. Part of that plan was to attack Allen Stayman who was the Deputy Secretary of Insular Affairs for the Department of Interior. Schaffer's most insidious act was the badgering of a hearing witness, former CNMI guest worker, Nousher Jahedi.
I first met Nousher in January 1998 when I was hired by the Clinton Administration's Department of Interior to lead a seven-member team of human rights advocates and attorneys to investigate and document the current status of the foreign contract workers in the CNMI. After video-taping and interviewing over 400 guest workers, including Nousher, a report, entitled CNMI Labor and Human Rights Abuse Status Report, was issued. The report had hundreds of pages of attachments which included police complaints, labor cases, workers' testimonies, statistical data, video footage, audio tapes, and newspaper articles. It was given to key members of Congress, cabinet members, members of the House Natural Resource Committee and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Former Rep. Bob Schaffer must have seen that report because he was a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
In January 1998, Nousher was living in a ramshackle house with 25 other Bangladeshi guest workers. They crammed into the small rooms and shared a tiny bathroom. Their kitchen consisted of a tiny refrigerator and a two burner hot plate. They had running water only in the small bathroom. I was struck by Nousher's intelligence and gentleness. He assisted me with interviews and helped to connect me to others to document their stories. I have over one hour of video interviews and one box of documents just from interviewing Nousher and those living in his house.
In 1996 Nousher and 11 other Bangladeshis paid a Bangladeshi broker, M.A. Gafur Miah $7,000 to be commercial cleaners in "United States of America." Miah and his partner, CNMI resident Margie Tudela, of The Pyramid Enterprises ran the recruitment scheme issuing fraudulent CNMI entry and work permits.
Nousher and other victims of the scam were issued entry permits, and were told they would enter the United States via the Philippines. Recruiter Margie Tudela, a Filipina, kept them in Laguna Philippines for four months where they were virtual slaves. They were told that the entry permits for them to enter the CNMI were fake, and she needed to exchange them for valid ones with her friends who worked in the CNMI Department of Immigration. Ramon O. Llamzon, a friend of Tudela, filled out an affidavit of support to keep the men in the Philippines "working" under Tudela's sponsorship.
Finally, on October 19, 1996, Nousher and the other Bangladeshi men were flown to Saipan where they learned that there was no job for them. They were told they must pay an additional $29,000 to secure work. None of them had the money. A few of the men were given work for 8 days in November. That was it - eight days of work in exchange for a $7,000 recruitment fee. To pay for the recruitment fees, some of the victims had sold their land, some sold family jewels, and most took out high interest loans. All were deeply in debt and were afraid to return to their homelands where their owed money that they could never repay. Between 1992 and 1999 dozens of illegal recruiters raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars, bilking hundreds of innocent Asians looking for work and seeking the American dream. Nousher was one of many.
In a Saipan video interview in February 1998, I asked Nousher why he accepted the job. He explained that he had worked in Saudi Arabia on a US Air Force base, and had excellent employers and good pay. So when the recruiter told him that Saipan was in the United States - just a train-ride away from Los Angeles, he jumped at the chance to work on U.S. soil. He was shocked when the plane was going to land on the small island. He realized at that moment that he had been scammed. You can hear Nousher briefly describe his ordeal in an NPR interview from 2006.
In 1999, I was contacted by Melanie Orhant and Steve Glaster of the Washington, D.C. based non-profit organization, Global Survival Network. They were interested in writing a report and producing a video about the status of the CNMI guest workers, saying that they would educate the grass roots, and help end the abuses. I copied hundreds of documents for them, sent them video footage from 1992 - 1998 containing guest worker interviews, and put them in contact with key guest worker leaders who could help them with their investigation. One of those guest workers was Nousher who had become very close to me and my family.
Here is where things get even worse for Schaffer.
It seems that on the eve of the September 16, 1999 he called Nousher and threatened him (emphasis added):
The Global Survival Network brought Nousher to Washington, D.C. to testify at the September 16, 1999 House Committee Hearing. At around 12:30am on the morning of the hearing, I was awakened by a call from Nousher. He was very concerned that Congressman Bob Schaffer had called him earlier that evening to quiz him about how he got to Washington, DC, what kind of visa he had, what he was doing in the states, who helped him write his testimony and similar questions. I thought it was very unusual that a U.S. Congressman would call a witness before a hearing. I had never heard of this before.
The September 16, 1999 hearing was a total mockery of justice. I planned on going, but canceled my flight because a hurricane was set to hit the East Coast. Nousher told me he was drilled relentlessly by Schaffer with questions about federal officials, Department of Interior officials, who paid for protests conducted by guest workers in Saipan. The transcript of the hearing reveals that House Resources Committee Chair Don Young, and members Bob Schaffer and John Doolittle turned the hearing upside down by following the memo's strategy of going after Mr. Stayman and other DOI officials, while ignoring the purpose of the hearing.
In February of 1999, Rep. Don Young led a delegation to the CNMI.
They were met by thousands of guest workers pleading for justice. Even though the workers had written to the delegation in advance, Young and his team would not meet team or take their complaints seriously.
By the time of the September 16, 1999 hearing, Schaffer used his time to grill Nousher and try to imply that the workers meeting the Young delegation had been staged and paid for by the DOI to make the CNMI look bad. Chairman Young was really upset that workers demanding justice intruded on his island junket.
Schaffer was Team Abramoff’s attack dog. Wendy sets the record straight about how the workers of the CNMI learned to work together in Unity to demand justice:
It was not DOI officials who helped to organize or fund the rally that Schaffer quizzed Nousher about. After we returned from the CNMI in 1998, we saw a great need to unify the workers. We had interviewed Filipinos, Chinese, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Sri Lankan, Indians, Pakastani and other guest workers. All shared similar problems with illegal recruitment, payless paydays, and denial of due process; many were victims of hate crimes and criminal acts. Yet, the groups were isolated by nationality and language. We felt that there was power in numbers and strength in being united, so we proposed the idea for a United Worker Alliance to the leaders of each group we had met. They embraced the idea. We helped initially by connecting them through telephone numbers and addresses, and soon the group was established.
When we learned that Don Young and some others would be visiting Saipan on yet another junket, I sent a letter to the committee chair requesting that he meet with the workers during his visit. I attached letter from the workers. As always, he did not respond.
We also helped the United Workers Alliance to organize the demonstration. The congressmen who accepted the junkets continually said they saw no abuses or problems. With a demonstration they could not deny seeing or hearing the protesters. It was my husband, myself, Dr. Eddie del Rosario, a human rights advocate located on Guam, and Phil Kaplan, former human rights advocate for the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa who funded the protest when Don Young's junket arrived in February 18, 1999. Dr. Eddie even joined the demonstration to support the workers.
I have separated Nousher's testimony from the entire transcript. It detailed his story of his experiences and suffering at the hands of his illegal recruiter both in the Philippines and in the CNMI. Congressman George Miller(D-CA) stopped the ridiculous line of questions, and acknowledged the plight of the guest workers and the conditions in the CNMI.
Another player in Schaffer’s work to protect the abuse was the Head of CNMI’s Department of Labor and Immigration, a fellow named Mark Zachares.
Last year, Zachares plead guilty to his role in the Abramoff scandal, a role that began on the CNMI. If Schaffer toured any factories on the CNMI one can be sure that Zachares was involved. And he was also at the September 16, 1999 Hearing.
The CNMI Department of Labor and Immigration under Zachares was a cruel and inhuman place. A person who lived on the CNMI back then has told me that Zachares enjoyed being cruel to the workers.
These details from Wendy support that view:
Schaffer did not ask Nousher about labor and human rights abuses, corruption at the CNMI Department of Labor and Immigration headed by Zachares, or about the numerous other worker concerns. These are all issues that Schaffer and every House Resources Committee member should have known about because I had sent them a copy of a letter from the Bangladeshi guest workers. In that letter the workers spoke of illegal raids on workers' private homes being conducted by Zachares's employees:
"These raids, although characterized in the news as raids of work places employing illegal aliens, are usually raids on homes of workers -not barracks. These raids are not to arrest illegals, but anyone whom the officials decide to arrest, even those with legitimate labor complaints or legitimate employment status."
They also received numerous letters from me including a copy a letter I wrote to Governor Pedro Tenorio outlining serious concerns of the guest workers including problems with the Department of Labor and Immigration. That letter outlined concerns the guest workers had alerted me to including illegal deportations and arrests, Department of Labor and Immigration refusal to give temporary work authorizations to employees with valid labor cases, Muslims being served pork in the detention center, workers in the Detention center being denied of their due process and constitutional rights, an increase in unprovoked acts of hate crimes and violence, and a deceased Bangladeshi left in the morgue for months.
And it looks like Schaffer’s call to Nousher on the eve of the Hearing was part of an organized campaign to intimidate workers in the CNMI and those who might organize and/or testify for their rights:
A few days after the hearing, Sumon, Nousher's former roommate, called in a panic with news that immigration officials from Zachares's office had been searching for him to question him about Nousher and how he got to Washington, D.C., who paid for his trip etc. In the call he revealed that several guest workers had given Schaffer incorrect information. One of those people worked at the CNMI Department of Immigration according to Sumon. Was Zachares using his employees to get information for the Republican committee members and congressional leadership? Were these the two employees Schaffer was referring to in this statement made to the Denver Post?:
He [Schaffer] said in an interview Saturday that the issue of "illegal activity" by OIA staff was brought up by several island lawmakers and that they introduced him to the two workers who said Nousher had taken money. Any time spent looking into the activities of the OIA was "incidental" to the overall purpose of the trip."
An April 12, 2008, Denver Post story story reported:
"Schaffer met with Zachares, the islands' secretary of labor and immigration, during his tour, according to a draft copy of his agenda. (Schaffer said he couldn't remember whether he had met Zachares on the visit.)"
I sent some concerns I had about Schaffer calling a witness before a hearing, the hearing itself, and the CNMI immigration officers to a federal official in this email. The email also mentions the two men that Sumon and Nousher believed had given incorrect information to Schaffer.
Bob Schaffer’s ability to ignore facts to pursue Abramoff’s game plan while joining a conspiracy to intimidate witnesses may just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his involvement with Team Abramoff. And we haven’t even got to earmarks and special favors for Jack and his clients. I have a strong feeling that those details will come out later as more and more news organizations and netroots activists dig into the compromised Congressional career of Jack’s man from Colorado.
I am glad to see Schaffer on his way to getting the credit he deserves for his work with Jack. I can think of quite a few others who should also get their day in the Sun.
The best part of this is that it was Schaffer himself who open his mouth and invited people to look at his record. So this raises a question: why would Shaffer invoked a labor system infamous for sweatshops, human trafficking and widespread labor abuse as a model for the United States?
It could be because he is an idiot (and there is a lot of evidence to support this theory).
Or it could be that he was part of a last ditch effort by the Pirates of Saipan to block reform yet again and rally GOP Senators to oppose S. 2739.
Given what I know about Schaffer, I would suspect the latter.
I think Schaffer’s comments were part of a last ditch effort to rally the GOP to protect the Pirates of Saipan one more time. His comments were a trial balloon. When it sank, the Senate Republicans gave up on blocking the CNMI reform Bill.
Last Thursday, the Senate passed S. 2739. This is a great victory and I am still smiling every time I think about it.
Now the Abramoff story is back into the news and working its way into the 2008 election cycle. The story of the Republican Party’s deep ties to the Abramoff Scandal will drip out over the coming months: race by race, candidate by candidate.
It should be fun.
Cheers
