Blame the Victim, Kill the Messenger

That was Jack Abramoff's strategy on behalf of his sweatshop owner clients in the Northern Mariana Islands. After taking his $13,000 Jack Abramoff-financed parasailing junket to Saipan, the capital, Bob Schaffer gleefully implemented that strategy in Congress, going so far as to engage in witness intimidation the night before he was to testify at a Sept. 16, 1999 hearing, held in Washington even as most of the city had evacuated as a result of Hurricane Floyd. The witness was an indentured servant who had been rescued from his servitude by a human-rights organization and flown to Washington to share the plight of his fellow guest workers before Congress in hopes that people like Bob Schaffer would have a heart and actually do something. How naive he was, because Shaffer opened fire on him with both barrels.

Today, Schaffer is continuing to read from Jack Abramoff's playbook, attacking human rights champion Wendy Doromal. Today's story, an improvement over past articles in the Rocky Mountain News in that they actually spoke with people other than Dick Wadhams of the Schaffer campaign and Taylor west of the Udall campaign, fails to break much new ground in terms of information, but shines a bright light on Schaffer's strategy and intentions.

Schaffer's orders as a Congressman were to discredit the human rights workers, destroy the credibility of the victims of human rights abuse, and blame the whole thing on Bill Clinton. Today, the strategy is the same--discredit Wendy Doromal, cast aspersion on the victims of forced abortion, and blame the "left wing." Even today, Bob Schaffer continues to carry water for his sweatshop-baron benefactors--the ones who have given Schaffer over $30,000 either directly or via an Abramoff conduit such as the Traditional Values Coalition or disgraced former Rep. Tom DeLay.