Abramoff's Stealth Columnists. Check this out from Business Week, via Romenesko: Cato Institute fellow and Copley News Service columnist Doug Bandow admits he secretly got paid by Abramoff to write up to 24 favorable columns:

Copley News Service syndicated columnist Doug Bandow says he accepted money from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing as many as 24 op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients. "It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it," says Bandow, who has resigned his senior fellow position with the Cato Institute. (Read some of Bandow's columns.)

Lapse in judgment? And this brings into question which other of his opinions might have been for sale. Was he for instance paid by the Serbian government or its American friends for his advocacy against NATO intervention in the Balkans? These columns really stand out for their pro Serb line in extremis. Is he on their payroll too?

And who is the "one other think-tank expert" who Business Week says was also paid $2000 per column by Abramoff?

Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the conservative Institute for Policy Innovation, says he, too, took money from Abramoff to write op-ed pieces boosting the lobbyist's clients. "I do that all the time," Ferrara says. "I've done that in the past, and I'll do it in the future."

Ferrara began working at the Institute for Policy Innovation after the period during which he wrote the op-ed pieces for Abramoff. Earlier, he worked at the activist anti-tax organization Americans for Tax Reform.

Ferrara wouldn't say which publications have published pieces for which Abramoff paid him. But a review of his work shows that he wrote articles for The Washington Times that were favorable to the Choctaw Indians and the Mariana Islands.

Just one sub-strand of the Norquist-Abramoff-Reed-DeLay criminal enterprise, members of which seem likely to end up in prison. More here and here. This confuses me. Just how widespread is this practice of opinion pieces being paid for by interests groups that are not disclosed? Was Abramoff paying other columnists?

Update: Reader DF points out that Ferrara has also published in the National Review.

Posted by Laura at December 16, 2005 10:48 AM