Blood in the water

Abramoff is the gift that keeps on giving. The latest to enter the chum slick is fan favorite Grover Norquist.

At the heart of his troubles is the Indian Affairs Committee report, which depicted Norquist as an avid participant in Abramoff's schemes to channel money from affluent clients, especially Indian gaming interests, to former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed.

"Call Ralph re Grover doing pass through," Abramoff wrote in an e-mail reminder to himself in 1999, a year in which Norquist moved more than $1 million in Abramoff client money to Reed and Christian anti-gambling groups. In another e-mail, from 1995, Abramoff told a colleague that Norquist would fight a tax opposed by a beverage company client, if the firm became "a major player in ATR."

"What is most important however is that this matter is kept discreet," Abramoff wrote in the e-mail. "We do not want the opponents to think that we are trying to buy the taxpayer movement."

In 1999, when ATR was receiving large donations from the Choctaw tribe, Norquist e-mailed Abramoff: "What is the status of the Choctaw stuff? . . . I have a 75g hole in my budget from last year. ouch."

Norquist said McCain and his aides "dishonestly" and selectively published e-mails that take ATR's work out of context. The group's collaboration with the Choctaws went back more than a decade, as the tribe sought to create a low-tax, free-enterprise government, he said. The $75,000 referred to in the e-mail, he said, was simply a promised contribution that was late.

But for Norquist, defending his business practices rather than fighting political battles is a vulnerability. Rivals and foes in the conservative movement have pounced on the report to stir up suspicions that Americans for Tax Reform may not be the pure free-market, small-government group Norquist says it is.

L. Brent Bozell III, president of the conservative Media Research Center, has been pushing hard for legislation that would allow cable subscribers to purchase channels "a la carte," rather than in large packages prescribed by cable companies. That way, he said, indecent and profane channels will not be subsidized by consumers who have no interest in viewing them.

Now, Bozell is accusing Norquist of forsaking his principles by opposing a la carte cable choice. Norquist says the bill would give federal regulators the ability to set prices and play favorites with cable programming.

"With cable choice, you do have to wonder whose interests Grover is serving," Bozell said.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr., the firebrand director of the Center for Security Policy, has developed an anti-Norquist presentation, complete with charts and graphs, that he has shopped around to other conservatives, saying it shows Norquist's ties to terrorist sympathizers.

"This is the perfect moment to get the truth, because guys like Abramoff . . . have a powerful incentive to cooperate and get out the truth. At the very least, the questions should be asked," Gaffney said.

At issue is the Islamic Free Market Institute, which Norquist created in 1998 to steer Muslim voters to the GOP. To run the institute, Norquist tapped Khaled Saffuri, whose dealings with the American Muslim Council linked him to Abdurahman M. Alamoudi, a founder of the council, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from top Libyan officials and admitted participating in a Libyan plot to assassinate then-Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Norquist dismisses Gaffney's charges as anti-Muslim bigotry and part of a long-standing vendetta against him. And he says he has never violated his small-government principles to raise a buck.

It sure doesn't take much for these guys to turn on one another.