eltway insider and lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty Tuesday to a battery of federal charges including tax evasion, conspiracy, mail fraud and influence-peddling.

   U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle said that the influential power broker who has ties with both political parties as well as the White House, engaged in a blatant conspiracy involving "corruption of public official" through a systematic campaign of financial contributions, junkets and gift "in exchange for certain official acts."

   In what was described as a "heavily scripted court appearance," Abramoff responded to each of the three charges with a curt "I plead guilty, your honor."

   The scandal has fueled speculation that as many as 20 members of Congress from both parties could be indicted, as Abramoff "names names" for federal prosecutors. Already former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a booster of conservative and religious right causes, is under investigation for accepting campaign donations, free golf trips and other pleasure excursions over a three-year period.

   But while news reports and much of the federal probe centered around Abramoff focuses on members of Congress, there are indications that another key figure in the story, former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, may also have forthcoming legal problems.

   Reed is a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, and has served as Chairman of the state Republican Party. His expertise as a campaign strategist is widely credited with helping in the election of Sen. Saxby Chambliss, putting Sonny Perdue in the governor's mansion, and allowing the Republicans to win control of the state senate for the first time since the days of Reconstruction.

   Reed is also founder and president of Century Strategies, a public relations and political advisory firm based in Washington, DC and Atlanta, GA. He and his company have worked on 88 campaigns for the U.S. Senate, Congress and governorships in two-dozen states.

   A trail of money, charges of illegal lobbying and a greedy effort to maintain a lucrative gambling monopoly link Reed, an almost self-righteous booster of Christian family values, with Jack Abramoff and partner Michael Scanlan. Testimony, legal documents and news reports show that Reed, with his network of contacts throughout America's religious right evangelical churches -- especially in the deep South -- was heavily involved in a behind-the-scenes lobbying effort on behalf of a $300 million-a-year gambling enterprise operated by the Coushatta Indian tribe of Louisiana.

   In 2002, the tribe was threatened by plans of the rival Jena Band, part of the Choctaw Indian nation, to construct a competing casino in southwestern Louisiana. Jena Band had hired former GOP National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour to win approval for the project from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. At this point Abramoff and Scanlon were already under contract to the tune of $32 million to stop the Louisiana gambling complex. According to Jack Newfield of The Nation, what Abramoff needed was someone with enough political "juice" in the conservative South and contacts with corporate and political insiders to quash the proposal.

   Enter Ralph Reed.

   In 1997, Reed resigned from the Christian Coalition after transforming the evangelical political advocacy group into an electoral machine capable of pumping out tens of millions of "voters guides" and mobilizing congregations from evangelical, Pentecostal and fundamentalist churches across the country on behalf of ambitious political hopefuls. It was estimated at the time that over half of state Republican organizations were either outright controlled or heavily influenced by the Coalition. The group had promoted its "Contract With the American Family" as a religious cure-all for the alleged shortfalls of secular modernity, and lavished evangelical conservatives with a new and awesome political influence everywhere from local school boards to the corridors of power in Washington, DC.

   After his departure from the Coalition, Reed reinvented himself as a campaign strategist and corporate lobbyist. His dedication in supporting George H.W. Bush at a time when many religious conservatives were wary of his political credentials, and mobilizing support behind son George Bush in 2000, began to pay off. Even before the younger Bush moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, campaign guru Karl Rove was putting the boyish Reed in touch with one of his first clients, the Enron Corporation. According to Neufield, Enron paid Century Strategies more than $300,000 to lobby on behalf of energy deregulation. Bigger contracts followed when Reed took over Bush's 2004 campaign in the Southeast running up $3.7 million in fees. Time Magazine dubbed him "the right hand of God."

   In 1981, Reed moved from Georgia to Washington, D.C. to become an intern for Jack Abramoff who had just been elected Chairman of the College Republican National Committee. Reed quickly moved up the GOP organization ladder, and in 1983 Abramoff promoted his protoge making him Executive Director of CRNC. Reed replaced Grover Norquist, who later would become President of Americans for Tax Reform, one of the fundraising pipelines in the Indian gaming debacle.

   From 1989-1997 he worked closely with televangelist Pat Robertson building the Christian Coalition into a political powerhouse for religious conservatives. In 1991, while boasting of the Coalition's success in sneaking "stealth" religious right candidates into office, Reed gushed, "I want to be invisible. I do guerilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag (Norfolk Virginia-Pilot newspaper, 11/9/91). When federal agencies began looking into the activities of the Coalition and its CFO, Reed abruptly resigned, moved back to George and opened Century Strategies.

   Reed's foray into the world of influence peddling and campaign consulting initially met with mixed results. He helped Fob James win a bitterly-fought nomination battle in Alabama, but James lost the general election. In the process of grooming candidates acceptable to the religious right, Reed quickly developed a reputation for "running some of the most vicious and racist campaigns of the election season," according to author Nina Easton.

   The Washington Post noted that after a round of bitterly-fought campaigns on behalf of the religious right, Reed turned to his old pal Abramoff for assistance.

   "Hey, now that I'm done with electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts," he wrote Abramoff in a 1998 e-mail.

   Reed and Century Strategies were soon catering to a host of corporate clients like Microsoft, many of them referred by Abramoff. Century Strategies also handled the fight against proposed federal decency standards on behalf of the cable industry, a position much at odds with Reed's vocal "family friendly" Christian politics. Some religious right groups began seeing Reed not as the choir-boyish activist destined to implement a godly, dominionist political agenda, but a rogue Judas who had betrayed his evangelical and fundamentalist faith in exchange for lucrative contracts.

   Despite the charge, however, (and the reply to his critics insisting that all of this was "legal"), Reed was still a seasoned political operative, and just what Abramoff needed in the battle over Indian gaming monopolies.

   The strategy was simple: Reed would serve as point-man in a well-greased campaign to mobilize Christian conservatives under the rubric of opposing casino gambling and stop the application of the Jenna-Band. An estimated $4.2 million changed hands.

   Reed's role in the affair was revealed in 2004 when according to Neufield, two gaming lobbyists -- Phil Thompson and Bill Grimes -- were attending a meeting in Baton Rouge. They heard Coushatta Tribe vice chair William Worfel boast that he was hiring Reed to lobby the Bureau of Indian Affairs to counter Haley Barbour's pull with the White House.

   "If they had Barbour," said Worfel, "We need Reed."

   Neufield continued: "A third casino lobbyist at the meeting, who requested anonymity, says Reed helped 'mobilize Christian radio and ministers against the casino.' But, he says, 'He (Reed) wanted to be able to deny it. Or if it came out, he wanted to be able to claim he was against the Jena casino without anybody knowing he was getting paid by a bigger tribe with a bigger gambling operation.' "

   In exchange for the support of Christian conservatives, Reed was passing the bills on to Abramoff and Scanlon. The latter's Capitol Campaign Strategies transferred $250,000 to Reed's company. Another Reed enterprise, Capitol Media, received a reported $100,000 from Abramoff marked "Louisiana Project Mgmt. Fee."

   All told, say investigators, $4.2 million dollars changed hands. Reed even took the anti-gambling campaign into neighboring Texas where pugnacious Congressman Tom DeLay was already deeply embroiled with Abramoff favoritism and contributions. The extent of Reed's effort became clear in a recent Cox News piece by staffer Jim Galloway. According to Suzii Paynter, lobbyist for the state Southern Baptist Convention and public policy director for the Christian Life Commission, she received a puzzling phone call for an unidentified senator telling her "Stop it, stop the phone calls!" Out of nowhere, his office was being swamped by angry Christians demanding the defeat of a measure to permit an Indian tribe to operate a casino.

   It was all part of the "TX Political Plan" that targeted three Democratic state senators and four House members. Reaching into his bag of political tricks from Christian Coalition days, Reed utilized automatic phone banks which bombarded key supporters with messages urging them to contact elected representatives.

   "Reed had three tasks in Texas," noted Galloway, "to push John Cornyn, then a Republican attorney general, to file suit in an effort to close an illegal casino operated by the Tigua tribe in El Paso; to push Cornyn to file a similar lawsuit against the Alabama Coushatta tribe in Texas; and to kill bills in the Legislature that would have allowed both tribes to operate their gambling establishments..."

   Aside from showing the reach and breadth of the Abramoff-Reed-Norquist scheme as a powerful "axis-of-influence," the Texas abolitionist effort may also land the boyish ex-Christian Coalition mastermind in murky legal problems. Three government watchdog groups have called upon prosecutors to look into whether Reed violated a Texas statute requiring lobbyists to register with the state and disclose any client whose interests are being served.

   One lobbyist mused, "It doesn't take a lot to trigger that statute." If convicted, Reed faces up to a year in prison and a $4,000 fine. The findings of federal investigators are potentially damning.

    ¶       Despite no longer being head of the Pat Robertson operation, it appears that Reed utilized some phone-bank operations under the control of the Texas Christian Coalition. Others were linked to a shadowy group known as the Committee Against Gambling Expansion, described by the government as a "shell organization" set up by Abramoff and the Louisiana Coushattas.

    ¶       In an April 2, 2001 memo to Abramoff, Reed detailed how he was "moving forward" of the Texas plan, and would be "Meeting with Christian Coalition, (Texas) Family Policy Council (and) Eagle Forum" to ensure that anti-gambling legislation "has the total focus of conservatives..."

    ¶       On November 30, 2001, Reed informed Abramoff that he was staging an event where numerous Texas clergy would present Mr. Cornyn with a "letter of support" to stop legalized gambling in the state. "We have also choreographed Cornyn's response," boasted Reed.

   On January 7, 2002 Reed informed Abramoff that he was huddling with the head of the criminal division of Cornyn's office, and was enlisting support from "our tigers" in the state legislature to introduce a bill prohibiting vendors who do business with gaming establishments from winning state contracts.

   Investigators may have found only the tip of an influence-peddling iceberg by the Abramoff-Norquist-Reed "axis." Based on federal findings, news reports and other sources, however, it is clear that Christian evangelicals were "hoodwinked" into a campaign to protect a lucrative gambling monopoly, stifle competition, and line the pockets of savvy political operatives and "fixers."

   Some political and religious leaders are furious. While Reed was whipping up moral indignation over gambling by stopping casino-friendly legislation and a state lottery in Alabama, he was also charging lucrative fees to thwart potential competition for his confidential clients. In the Alabama effort, Reed "consulted" for $1.5 million to two anti-gambling groups working to defeat ballot proposals for a state lottery and legalized video poker. Bob Irvin, former Speakers of the Georgia legislature told reporters:

"Reed's M.O. is to tell evangelical Christians that his cause of the moment, for which he has been hired, is their religious duty, and therefore they need to write regulators, turn up at meetings, or whatever. As an evangelical myself, I resent Christianity being used simply to help Reed's business."

   The McCain Committee which has been un-masking the whole Abramoff affair reported:

"The committee (has) found 'numerous memos' between Abramoff, former head of the Christian Coalition Ralph Reed, and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform on 'how to move more money through (c)4s to obscure or deceive the source of the money.' "

   The latest scandal places Ralph Reed's campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia in jeopardy, especially now that Abramoff is singing to federal officials. Two partners, Adam Kidan and Michael Scanlon are also cooperating. The trail of possibly-tainted money, hidden contributions, in-kind favors and other potentially illegal activities leads to Capitol Hill and some of the biggest names in both parties. Many have been boisterous, strident cheerleaders of the religious right "family values" agenda, beginning with Rep. Tom DeLay. Others believed linked to the entangling web of influence include now Sen. John Cornyn, Rep. Bob Ney, Sen. Conrad Burns, Rep. Roy Blunt, Sen. Thad Cochran, Rep. Ernest Istook, Sen. Trent Lott and Rep. J.D. Hayworth. Many rushed to the podium of their respective legislative chambers whenever the opportunity presented itself to speak out on camera for school prayer, defense of slogan "One Nation Under God," or public funding of religious institutions.

   Behind the scenes, though, there was a river of questionable campaign contributions, junkets to exotic resorts, and quid-pro-quo deals and favorites.

   Part of the scheme depended on the naive aspirations of churches, prayer groups and individual Christians who thought they were doing the Lord's work at the ballot box and state capitol. In fact, they were credulous pawns in a sleazy manipulation effort involving wealthy business interests, powerful D.C. lobbyists and a campaign hit-man named Ralph Reed who oozed a religious wholesomeness but quietly talked about body-bags and worldly political power.

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