Time: FBI email says Abramoff case 'far from over'

[kpete]

Time: FBI email says Abramoff case 'far from over'
RAW STORY


Abramoff Viewed as ‘The Middle Guy,’ Official Involved in Probe Tells TIME, Suggesting There Are Bigger Targets in Their Sights

New York - In an internal e-mail obtained by TIME, the director of the FBI’s Washington field office, Michael Mason, congratulated some 15 agents and 15 support staff under him on the case for “a huge accomplishment” in squeezing Jack Abramoff to make a deal after 18 months of investigation and negotiation, one that made “a huge contribution to ensuring the very integrity of our government.” But he added that “the case is far from over,” TIME’s National Political Correspondent Karen Tumulty reports in Monday editions of the magazine, RAW STORY has learned.

Another official involved with the probe told TIME that investigators are viewing Abramoff as “the middle guy”—suggesting there are bigger targets in their sights. The FBI has 13 field offices across the country working on the case, with two dozen agents assigned to it full time and roughly the same number working it part time. “We are going to chase down every lead,” Chris Swecker, head of the FBI’s Criminal Division, told TIME.


Sources at the Interior Department tell TIME that its inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation into Abramoff’s dealings with the Cabinet agency — which oversees many of the Indian-related issues Abramoff built most of his career around. In particular, the agency is looking into the ties between Abramoff and former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, who has been accused of intervening in agency deliberations on behalf of the Coushattas. Griles has denied it, and his attorney says Abramoff was wildly exaggerating their relationship when he referred to Griles in an e-mail to lobbying colleagues as his man at Interior, TIME reports.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Time_FBI_email_says_Abramoff_case_0108.html