Time: "The President's memory may soon be unhappily refreshed"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

When George Met Jack
White House aides deny the President knew lobbyist Abramoff, but unpublished photos shown to TIME suggest there's more to the story
By ADAM ZAGORIN AND MIKE ALLEN

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1151747,00.html

As details poured out about the illegal and unseemly activities of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, White House officials sought to portray the scandal as a Capitol Hill affair with little relevance to them. Peppered for days with questions about Abramoff's visits to the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said the now disgraced lobbyist had attended two huge holiday receptions and a few "staff-level meetings" that were not worth describing further. "The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him," McClellan said.

The President's memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed. While TIME's source refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team's for the past several months: that a picture of the President with the admitted felon could become the iconic image of direct presidential involvement in a burgeoning corruption scandal—like the shots of President Bill Clinton at White House coffees for campaign contributors in the mid-1990s.

In one shot that TIME saw, Bush appears with Abramoff, several unidentified people and Raul Garza Sr., a Texan Abramoff represented who was then chairman of the Kickapoo Indians, which owned a casino in southern Texas. Garza, who is wearing jeans and a bolo tie in the picture, told TIME that Bush greeted him as "Jefe," or "chief" in Spanish. Another photo shows Bush shaking hands with Abramoff in front of a window and a blue drape. The shot bears Bush's signature, perhaps made by a machine. Three other photos are of Bush, Abramoff and, in each view, one of the lobbyist's sons (three of his five children are boys). A sixth picture shows several Abramoff children with Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is now pushing to tighten lobbying laws after declining to do so last year when the scandal was in its early stages.

Most of the pictures have the formal look of photos taken at presidential receptions. The images of Bush, Abramoff and one of his sons appear to be the rapid-fire shots—known in White House parlance as clicks—that the President snaps with top supporters before taking the podium at fund-raising receptions. Over five years, Bush has posed for tens of thousands of such shots—many with people he does not know. Last month 9,500 people attended holiday receptions at the White House, and most went two by two through a line for a photo with the President and the First Lady. The White House is generous about providing copies—in some cases, signed by the President—that become centerpieces for "walls of fame" throughout status-conscious Washington.

[leesa]

1. So why can't Time get to the bottom of the visit he made to theWhite House

Is that beyond their investigative capabilities? Similar to how they couldn't get to the bottom of the 196 visits of the male hooker/White House corespodent Gannon?

[acmavm]

2. Yeah, the people this guy (or Snotty) says he doesn't know Somehow

they end up proving to have been, well you know, about as close to bush** as his underwear. It's sort of like Ken Lay. He went from not knowing him to just having met him a time or two. Then the correspondence and the proof that he used the Enron Corp. jet during his campaign.

Biggest liar on earth. Supported by people who don't have a qualm about getting out there in public and lying their asses off for him.

[Scout1071]

3. Is Jack Abramoff himself pimping these photos out for sale?

I mean, who else would have possession of 5 photos of him and Bush? Photos with Jack and his kids with Bush! So, either Jack is selling them or there is a leak in the one-hour photo in the basement of the White House.

[sallyseven]

4. I am sure that Abramoff is going to spill

the beans or go to jail for 40 years. He will tell. He has no morals or scruples.

[gratuitous]

5. Bush is untouchable

Remember all the foofaraw about Ken Lay's overnights in the Lincoln bedroom during the Clinton years? Lay never spent the night at the Clinton White House, but that didn't stop the media from blabbing that lie for weeks before it was conclusively disproved. By then, of course, Lay had somehow become the Democrats' best friend, and Bush had never heard of Kenny boy.

They're trying it again with Abramoff, but maybe they won't be quite so successful this time. We're learning, and we've gotten a little smarter in the intervening years.

[LiberalPartisan]

6. Thom Hartmann mentioned this article

on AA today. It's very damning and details just how involved Bush was in selling access to the Oval.

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1969

Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

[randome]

7. "...tens of thousands..."

"Bush has posed for tens of thousands of such shots..."

Isn't that something like...impossible?