E-Mail Notes Say Lobbyist Met President Many Times

[BILL53]

February 10, 2006

E-Mail Notes Say Lobbyist Met President Many Times
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff told a magazine editor in recent days that he had met with President Bush many times and was invited to the president's Texas ranch for a gathering of campaign contributors in 2003, the editor said Thursday.

The journalist, Kim Eisler, national editor of Washingtonian magazine, said in an interview that he had received the information in e-mail messages from Mr. Abramoff, a major Republican fund-raiser who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to bribe public officials. The messages suggest an effort by Mr. Abramoff to cast doubt on Mr. Bush's insistence that he does not recall the two of them meeting and that whatever contact they might have had was fleeting and for the purposes of a handshake and a picture.

In one message, Mr. Abramoff is reported as saying that Mr. Bush had "one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met" and that he "saw me in almost a dozen settings and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids." It added: "Perhaps he has forgotten everything. Who knows."

An Abramoff defense spokesman, Andrew Blum, said he could not comment on the e-mail messages or confirm their authenticity.

Mr. Eisler said he had been in contact with Mr. Abramoff since interviewing him six years ago for research for a book Mr. Eisler was writing about Indian reservation gambling; Mr. Abramoff's most lucrative lobbying clients were Indian casinos.

Parts of the messages became public this week, Mr. Eisler said, after he shared them with a writer for a political Web site, thinkprogress .org, without realizing that the Web site would make them public. The portions of e-mail messages posted on the site do not provide details of any meetings between Mr. Bush and Mr. Abramoff and do not refer to the substance of any conversations between them except for pleasantries about their families.

"I considered them confidential e-mails, and it was a slip on my part to release a portion of them," Mr. Eisler said.

The White House has tried to distance itself from Mr. Abramoff, and at a news conference last month, Mr. Bush said that while he might have had photographs taken with the lobbyist, "I don't know him." He addedm." He added, "I frankly don't even remember having my picture taken with the guy."

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, was asked about Mr. Abramoff's e-mail messages on Thursday and said, "I think what the president says still stands: Mr. Abramoff is someone who was involved in wrongdoing, he has acknowledged that himself."

According to the messages, Mr. Abramoff wrote that he was invited to Mr. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., in 2003 for a gathering of fund-raisers but was unable to attend because he does not travel on the Jewish Sabbath.

"I would have had to travel on Saturday (Shabbos)," he wrote. "Yes, I was invited, during the 2004 campaign. It was Saturday Aug. 9, 2003 at the ranch in Crawford."

Mr. Abramoff wrote that Mr. Bush "has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met" and that his memory was one of Mr. Bush's "trademarks, though of course he can't recall that he has a great memory!"

Mr. Eisler said that Mr. Abramoff had told him details of the conversations between the lobbyist and his wife and Mr. Bush and Laura Bush, including discussions of the fact that both couples had twins.

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