FBI Follows Money in Tribe's Beltway Success (pombo again)

MASHPEE, Mass. — Everybody got something.
The Mashpee Wampanoags, famed for greeting the Pilgrims at Plymouth, will be named a nationally recognized tribe — a designation they sought for 30 years so that they could benefit from federal aid programs.
Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist embroiled in a Washington corruption scandal, and his firm championed the Indians' cause and pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in tribal money.
And Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), chairman of the influential House Resources Committee, landed a lucrative source of political donations: the small group of Native Americans whose ancestral lands are about as far from his Northern California district as one can get in the United States.
Pombo, whose congressional district straddles California's Central Valley, was clearly their biggest champion.
Now in his seventh term, he went to Washington on the cusp of the GOP revolution in Congress and soon hitched himself to Rep. Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who became House majority leader.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-pombo24dec24,1,5578693.story?coll=la-headlines-politics&ctrack=1&cset=true