that it was going to be a much bigger deal, because he was such a well-known figure on capitol hill, really an uber lobbyist, and his connections were so widespread both in the republican party itself and in the republican congress. >> the government says abramoff has admitted to bribing as many as 20 members of congress. >> his activities went far beyond lawful lobbying. >> he was the number one lobbyist in washington. he could get you in touch with the best and most influential members of congress. >> it was amazing how many members of congress wanted in with jack. >> when the story broke, president bush tried to distance himself from jack abramoff. >> i frankly don't even remember having my picture taken with the guy. >> all of a sudden, nobody remembered jack abramoff. >> i don't know him. >> of course bush knew him. absolutely. >> it's just amazing how close abramoff and his people got to the leaders of power in washington.+ >> we had no idea that it would lead to the resignation of

delay, to the conviction of bob ney, to tony rudy, to neil volz, so many people were pulled into this web. ralph reed, jjhn doolittle, karl rove, dick armey, conrad burns, don young. it was all about the money. >> almost everyone on that screen is gone from here they were when they either got in trouble or they were in office. a couple of them are still there. who did we just see and why did you starr with those people? >> i started with those people because it was interesting to me to show that jack abramoff wasn't on the periphery, that he was at a certain moment in time, his moment, the late 1990's, early 2000's, that he was at the center of washington. and so you saw a lot of people there, ralph reed, karl rove and others, and george w. bush who were right at the center of power in washington, because i

think there have been a pretty concerted attempt to use abramoff in a way to be the scapegoat. not that he didn't do things wrong. he did a lot that was dead- wrong. but to lay all the blame at his doorstep as if to say jack was a unique character who operated on the fringes of government, didn't have much affect on somebody. he was at the center, that's why i showed a lot of those people. >> you've done several other documentaries, but go back to the beginning of when you personally got interested in politics. >> i was always interested in politics. it was always about finding a way in. i think some years back, something happennd. i've done a number of tv documentaries, and then at a certain point in time, it seemed like there was an opportunity to say things in a more interesting way by doing documentaries that might be seen first in theaters. the first one of those i did was one i wrote and produced called "the trials of henry kissinger." then i did one that broke

through called "enron: the smartest guys in the room," which was about that famous scandal at enron. then i did a film called "taxi to the dark side," which was about the bush administration's policy of torture, which was a very important project to me because my father had been a navy interrogator in world war ii. and i did a film called "gonzo: the life and work of dr. hunter s. thompson" about the famous gonzo journalist. and recently "casino jack and the united states of money." >> how would you define your politics? >> hard to say. a skeptic. i wouldn't -- i tend to look at things skeptically. i try to seek out stories that have a kind of moral component rather than here's to the democrats or here's to the republicans. i think it's fair to say that i often give republicans a hard time, but at the same ime, in the film "taxi to the dark

side," some of the heroes of that film are republicans. so i tend to look at thinns from the point of view of a moralist. >> your father frank gibney, is he do, or what did he do for a living? >> my father frank gibney is no longer with us. he died a few years ago. he was a writer, an editor. he was vice chairman of the board of editors at britain ca. he worked at "time" and "newsday,, "life" magazine. he was a journallst. and during world war ii, he learned japanese as part of his experience to become an interrogator. that set him off as a journalist. he became the youngest bureau chief i think in tokyo. he had a big influence on me because he never lost his ability to be curious. >> from your documentary, here is jack abramoff and the college republicans.

>> you can't get a 35-year-old to teach the republican party how to get to young people. you just can't rely upon it. young people have got to reach other young people, and that's what we're seeking to do. first of all, voter registration is probably the most important function we're undertaking now. >> this is a generation that came on to campus in the 1970') rebelling against the whole ethos of the 1960's. >> we are hoping that mr. nixon through his past, we have seen that he is at least more anti- communist than the last administration. >> i was a young american for freedom. we were always working in+ ccordination with the college republicans, but they weren't idaho logically conserrativee enough for us. until jack abramoff became involved. then they became ideologically conservative. >> abramoff is a little older

than i am, but i was a college republican in the early 1980's. when the college republicans took that sharp turn to the right, that's the same direction i was going in. a lot of the same heroes. i thought ronald reagan was the greatest man who ever lived. >> in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. government is the problem. >> where do you find things like that clip of karl rove or dan rohrabacher? >> oh, man, we just dig and dig+ and dig. about my job. the fun things%- you start looking and you start believing that stuff is out there that hasn't been seen before and you usually find something. >> how do you find it? if i were sitting in your shoes, who would you call to find something like that? >> well, the first place you start is you go to the networks and you say, you know, send me

all your material that has stuff about either jack abramoff or karl rove or others, and sometimes you get stuff. but then sometimes there's certain incidents you're interested in, and there's another incident in the film about this famous sort of right-wing woodstock that jack abramoff held in angola. we knew about it, the networks had a tiny clip, but we kept asking people who had been there if they knew of anybody who was shooting it. and lo and behold, we got a name, we tracked that name down, we found a person in london. we asked him if he still had footage. lo and behold, he had 20 hours of it. it's a lot of shoe leather. >> where were you based and how many people would work on someehing like this documentary? >> i'm based in new york city. i live in the great state of new jersey. and i have an office in chelsea in new york city. we have a very small core of dedicated crew. i'd say the core group is about

six people. it stands massively to be about 50 by the time you bring in cinematographers, assistant editors, the people who mix the film, some of the outlying researchers. we employ people sometimes in different places all over the world to do this or that for us as we're putting something together. >> here's some more familiar faces. it's a republican national convention. don't have the year. maybe you can remember it. and some faces that we haven't seen for a while. let's watch this and get your reaction to it. >> ladies and gentlemen, the chairman of the college republican national committee, jack abramoff for purposes of addressing the convention. >> part of me wanted to give a rah rah rah, we're all young people. they rejected my speech, and i got up to the podium, and their speech went up on the teleprompter. >> fellow republicans, i come before you today representing american students, the future of our republican party.

>> and as i deviated from that text and went back to my text, teleprompter fellow was looking for this on the speech, so the teleprompters are going up and down, up and down. >> the first political experience of my generation was an america drooping with hostage shame and shoulders burdened with the democrats' no- growth, no-win future. >> all of a sudden, i felt rumbling on my feet. i was told they're going to lower the floor to get rid of so i'm grabbing hold of the podium, holding it as hard as i am to give the speech. >> the support of anti-soviet over communism guarantees us security for our nation. thank you. >> did you have to manipulate that video to show that? >> you mean the little shaking of the podium?

>> either the shaking of the podium or the fact that they were lowering the podium. >> the shaking of the podium i think was there. the lowering was a little bit of poetic license. >> why did you pick that? >> again, it was interesting to me to see young jack. this was a guy who didn't just pop on to the scene. this was a guy who was a very confident, political activist. really a zealot. you can kind of see both the poise he had, his willingness to go before a big crowd, but also the sense he wasn't going to play by the rules or do what other people said. i thought those were the two interesting things about that. he was very interesting in power, very interesting in politics, but not willing to play by other people's rules. it seemed a pretty instructive episode. >> as you know, when he went to prison, he was supposed to be there i guess according to what i read until 2012. he got out this week. hhw well do you know him and

why did he get out early? >> well, my understand is the sentence was revised to a four- year sentence with time already served, so he was supposed to be in for another six months and he went through a drug rehab program and got out early to go to a halfway house near baltimore. i think that -- i mean, i knew him. i had met him very briefly long ago prior to going into prison. but i did in fact go visit him while he was in prison. we had a number of very long talks. it was very interesting and instructive for me. i tried very hard to interview him on camera, but the department of justice took a very dim view of that and intervened. >> why? >> i don't know why. we tried very hard to get an answer from the department of justice to say why would you resist us? and of course their point of view would be they didn't resist. officially, jack -- at one time

jack said yes, we want to do it, and we put everything in motion. and then the word came back from abramoff, no, i do not wish to be interviewed by mr. gibney. i discovered in the interim, the department of justice had leaned veey hard on abramoff and said, you know, you do the interview, and we're going to make life difficult for you. so, you know, a little abuse of power in my view. allo i think something that did not accrue to the best public interest. i think the department of justice's view is we want our truth to emerge from jack abramoff. we don't want other people to be able to get their hands on testimony that jack abramoff mmy have given to somebody else besides our lawyers. you know, that's a traditional lawyer's point of view. i don't think in this instance it served the public interest very well because, you know, jack had been sentenced and there were no -- there was no abridgement on his freedom of speech, his first amendment

rights, so he should have been able to talk to us by all accounts, and i think the public interest would have been served. >> describe how far it is from washington to the prison and exactly what you saw when you got there. is he in a cell? how big is it if he is? and how much time could yoo spend talking to him when you >> for me from new jersey, it took about six hours, maybe a little bit more. it's a long way. it's in a funny sliver of maryland that is way west. it's a very antiseptic prison. it looks almost like a mini mall. officers and you enter asome%- visiting room area, which is a bunch of chairs unadorned, many of them facing each other. they call the prisoner, the prisoner comes in, and you talk.

i went and visited him a number of times, maybe three times, i with him for about two or three hours. >> how would you describe his attitude about all this at this point? >> about all what? >> what's happened to him, the sentence he got. was it fair? the restitution, he has to give back $25 million? all that kind of thing. >> look, i think he felt victimized. but i also -- at least to me, he seemed very contrite. i think he felt he paid a heavy price. i'm not sure that the price was so heavy. you know, prison is not a nice place. and, you know, so -- but the way -- his point of view on it was that he had been unfairly singled out. and i must say to some extent i agree with that. i think that there were many

people involved in what jack abramoff did who didn't pay a price, and it surprises me. you know, i don't know everything the department of justice knows, but i think ven jack abramoff was surprised that certain people weren't indicted, particularly some congress people and senators. but i think jack felt contrite. he felt very deeply burdened. you know, i think there was a certain amount of rather unglamorous self-pity. he got himself into this mess, nobody else did. and i think he accepted that to some extent, though there were other times he felt victimized. >> if you look at the list, and i think there have been something like 18 people or 19 people that have either pled guilty to a felony or charged. there was a former aide to don young, former tom delay aide, a former aide to senator thad cochran.

former aide to istook. most of those are gone from the congress. were those the people you thought should have been indicted? any of those? >> not really. to me i'm surprised that only the minnows showed up in court, that the really big fish got away. now, you know, i can't be the judge of whether or not there were indictable offenses for people like former congressman john doolittle, for tom delay, for former senator conrad burns. but some of these people i think were at the heart of jack abramoff's dealings, and it's a little surprising to me that more of the big fish didn't get netted by the federal investigation. >> from your documentary "casino jack and the united states of money," here's a one-minute clip. you're introducing us to neil

volz. >> this is truly a wildly historic night. >> i was a college student, and i was a true believer in the whole republican revolution. >> neil volz came to washington with bob ney from ohio. >> the move was electric. this was probably one of the most exciting elections in 40- some yeers, of democrat control which i and others at one point in time said it won't change in our lifetime, and it did. >> the democrats had run the congress for 40 years. there was a certain level of corruption that had taken hold, so we're rallying against that. and it's so ironic that years later, i would be a face a similar type of corruption to a

whole different group of people. >> neil volz said there was a certain kind of corruption that had taken hold. was there ever a documentary done on them? >> no, and i think it long, it was deeply corrupt. a former senator from new jersey was in the corruption scandal. >> are you talking about seller? steve went to jail. >> right. >> we're talking about a documentary now. i think it will be a healthy nd useful documentary to dig into that kind of institutionalized corruption on the part of the democrats.

more power to somebody to do it. >> do you have a hero in your life in politics? somebody that was in elected office? >> martin luther king. sorry, that's not elected office. it was more of a ground swell. i like -- in terms of hero, i mean, that's a good question. and i should have a bettee answer. there are some people in congress now i like. but a hero, i don't know. i guess i still go with the outsider. >> could you give us an example of somebody you like now? >> well, you know, i was very impressed with carl levin's investigation when he was on the armed services committee into the torture scandal. i felt that was very mpressive. i think dick durbin and some of

his recent attempts to try to staunch the flow of money in politics have been interesting. those would be two examples of a couple of people that i think are pretty good. >> we go back to the last clip, you saw the young man neil volz. why did he talk to you, where did he talk to you, and why did bob ney who was a congress who went to prison talk to you? >> those are good questions. neil volz was bob ney's chief of staff. he came to bob -- you know, as he said, very idealistically, which was interesting to me and important for me to hear. they were rightfully trying to institutionalized corruption in washington.3 and bob was a very interesting one in the film because you can see how the corruption sort of gnaws away at them and their

relationship, you know, it's like something out of "lord of the rings" where frodo and sam begin to go at each other's throats because of the corruption of the ring. so did neil and bob. what's really instructive about their relationship too is that in the case of neil, he did the classic washington journey where he comes to congress as a staffer with a congressperson, but then over time, realizes oh, my god, i really need more money, i need to do better with my life, so he crosses to k street where he can make the really big bucks. he starts to work for jack abramoff. then even though he's not supposed to, he starts immediately lobbying his former boss, bob ney. and it's the use -- it's the corrupt use of those personal relationships that lobbyists excel at. and so it was very important to have in the midst of the story.

in terms of hhw i got him to talk, i mean, i went to neil right after he had been sentenced and just said, look, and let's talk off the record, let's just talk. and i told them about what i was trying to do. i said i was interested in him. and would he be interested in talking to me in sort of a broad way about his own experience, but with a larger context involved. and i think after a number of conversations, we got to a kind of trust level wherr he felt that would be a good idea. i think the same thing happened with bob ney. when i initially wrote him, i wrote him in prison. he tried to shred my letters. prison is a scary place. if yyu do things that the prison officials don't like, you can be punished. he didn't want to have anything to do with me. after he got out, one of my producers met him and talked to he then actually went and watched some of my films, and i was able to persuade him with

dana's help that i would honor would not try to cheapen it and to give him sort of vent to what he wanted to say and put him in a broader perspective. i think also after having spent that much time in prison, bob was interested in trying to find a way to tell his story in a way that would have some larger impact. it was not just here's some juicy jack abramoff story. it's about, you know, what's really wrong with washington. for all those reasons, i think bob and neil came forward. i'm glad they did. they're the beating heart of the film. >> where did you interview them and where are the two of them today? >> i interviewed neil in washington, d.c., and bob came to new york. bob is still in ohio. he has a radio show. he's a radio show host. neil lives in florida now and he has a -- he works for a

community group and also works at a restaurant, i believe. >> a minute and 32-second clip for you from your documentary on the background of abramoff and his access to tom delay. >> abramoff gave up movie producing to become a lobbyist. a republican in washington, jack was the right man at the right time. >> his credentials with the conservative movement gave him access and entree with the new leadership, and iistantly, he saw how he could build a client base and then that client base in turn could fund the leadership politically with campaign contributions. it became sort of symbiotic relationship. >> the relationship became ever more important. pis campaign costs began to soar.

>> the cost of campaigns went through the roof in the modern era in the last 35 years. it's just a staggering increase. the trouble is the new technology of politics, commerccals on television, polls and focus groups to design the commercials for television, aae just very expensive. and no serious candidate or incumbent can say, no, i'm not going to do that, that's beneath me, i'm not going to put myself into 30-second spots. they all do it. one of the dirty little secrets in washington today is how much time members of the house and senate spend every week, nnt just in the election season, but all the time, year-round, on the telephone begging for money. >> a question about the technique there. you often have an interviewee with a shadow on one side of their face. what's that technique? >> to some extent, it's a photographic technique, a sculpting of the face, which makes the face more interesting.

it's not a technique uncommon to still portraiture. there's something about that that brings out the face a little bit more. also to some extent, there is a way in which that shadow emphasizes a sense of moral ambiguity, that people -- i don't want to get too symbolic about it, but that there is a shadow, there is a light. i'm interested in that.+ but i didn't really do it particularly for those symbolic reasons. i think it's beautiful actually to look at. but there is in the elements of the shadow a sense that things happen in the shadows that we don't always know about. >> the music, where does that come from? >> the music, you know, one of the most fun things about my job really is picking the music for these films. i generally have a lot of music in my films. it often acts in two ways.

one is a kind of toe-tapping greek chorus, and it stands in for my point of view sometimes. sometimes it acts as a way of revealing character, of being a kind of theme song for character. and i find it also gives the film a little bit of energy. in terms of where i get it, i spend a lot of time listening to all sorts of music from all sorts of different genres, everything from hip-hop to blues to country to regular old rock 'n' roll to classical or jazz and tty to find songs that seem to fit both the mood and the character and sometimes my own point of view. >> who's the narrator? >> i am. >> jack abramoff was born in atlantic city in 1959. his father dabbled in the casino business and then moved to beverly hills when abramoff was 10. surrounded by children of the movie industry, jack was a film buff at beverly hills high where he was also active in

student politics. a tough competitor, jack was an all-conference lineman on the football team, and a championship weight lifter. he could power squat 510 pounds. >> that may be the biggest flaw in the film. it started for me with "taxi to the dark side," and, you know, we wereegoing to get a celebrity narrator for that film, but then i included a short clip of my father at the very end of the film, a video of him just before he died, and that made that film very personal to me, so i decided to do the narration on that film myself. in fact, i often do the temp narration before the actor comes in. on this one, i worked on it a long time. i just decided to do it myself as well. it may not be the world's greatest voice, but it has the virtue of being authentic, as to say it is truly my voice. >> and how long is this documentary? >> 118 minutes.

>> here's some more. >> you had to get to one man, tom delay. >> jack abramoff was a committed conservative. he was well-known in the conservative movement, and i dealt with him no differently than i dealt with any other lobbyist. >> jack was not like any other lobbyist. he had a very special relationship with tom delay. he took him on trips to russia, scotland, and the south pacific. he made sure that his clients showered money on delay's foundation and employed his wife. in return, delay let jack market himself as the man who had access to delay's power. >> the first time i met jack abramoff was in the majority whip's office at an event. >> jack is one of a kind. he comes in for five minutes, sits down next to somebody who is willing to spend millions of

dollars to lobby washington, ann then he leaves in five minutes. and the guy or the woman thinks that jack's talking to the president, but he's probably playing solitaire on his computer, and then he comes back in and he's like, sorry about that, but he's got two more minutes. by the way, i need about $250,000 month. and then walks out the door. one of a kind. one of a kind. >> has jack abramoff seen this doccmentary, and if so, what's his reaction to it? >> i don't know if he's seen it. and now that he's in a halfway house, i'm going to see if i can get him a copy. his lawyer abbe lowell saw it. said he liked it. said there are a few issues he had with it, but he never told me exactly what they were. so i don't know yet. i know a number of people close to jack have seen it. some like it, some don't. >> if they don't like it, what's the reason? >> well, some people like jack feel it's too tough on him.

it doesn't go very easy on jack, but i think that's fair and just. >> is it accurate to describe the prosecution of jack abraaoff as coming from a justice department that was run by republicans? >> yeah. i think that's accurate. there's no doubt that the department of justice that came after jack abramoff was during the -- was during the period of george w. bush. that's a republican administration. >> we heard a lot of criticism of the justice department during george bush's administration. have we heard any positive things about the fact that inside that justice department, jack abramoff and the rest of these people we've been talking about were prosecuted? and iffso, if we haven't heard it, why not? >> i think to be honest, i have to say that it's a mixed bag in terms of the prosecution.

there was an attempt to go after this influence pedaling, but i'm not sure they did the world's best job. i know alberto gonzalez of bob ney told me a very funny story about how he was in prison when they were broadcasting the hearings of alberto gonzalez bragging bought how he put bob ney in jail. it's true, bob ney is a republican congressman and he's in jail, but i'm not sure that the department of justice really got to the bottom of the abramoff scandal. i should say got to the top of the abramoff scandal. at the same time, the department of justice is a funny place. there are a lot of career people who are there. there are a lot of people who do a very good job. and yet there is a lot of political interference. i think that was one of the things we saw in the bush administration, particularly with the attorney scandal, and i would say the torture scandal. >> i watched your documentary in

a theater, and it wasn't very crowded. and i've seen most of your documentaries at one time or another. often documentaries don't have big crowds. what's your reaction? did you make money off of this? i know it's early in the process. how much did your need for making money drive you in making the documentary in the first place? >> well, i always hope that my documentaries will make money because in a way, that's what keeps me going. if they don't make any money at all, then i don't make them. i think it's fair to say that "casino jack" is not one of my more financially successful documentariis, at least so far. you know, i think the suuject for people is tough. it's a little bit mystifying to me. most people i know who actually go see the film call me and tell me how much they like it. they could be flattering me, i don't know. but it's been hard to get people to go to this film. with a film like "enron: the smartest guys in the room," that made quite a bit of money for

investors, and that was a good thing for them and for me. in a way, i don't believe that the market is the only force that we should pay attention to, but the market is an important force, and i think to some extent, the market has given me freedom, because some of my films really have made money. >> here's a clip on the relationship between jack abramoff and the commonwealth of northern mariana islands. >> we were told that nobody could go through tom delay without going through jack abramoff, and it cost us millions of dollars. >> for their services, abramoff and his firm preston gates charged the cnmi over $200,000 a month. part of the plan was to mount tours to cnmi for conservative writers to sympathetic congressmen. >> we went out there to take a look at some of these clothing factories that had come in from

various parts of the world in order to set up operation there, and it looked like to me that it was working. >> what they would do is take a quick tour of the garment factories and emerge in the front doors of the factory saying, hey, there's nothing going on out here. we don't see any abuses. so what are you guys talking about? >> and what would they do the rest of the time? >> r&r. generally they would stay at the hyatt regency hotel, five stars. there are at least five ccampionship golf courses. >> at some point, jack must have realized that that's how you this abominable labor basically. it's one step from slavery. but you bring people over there. it's beautiful, the golf courses, nice hotels. they fell for it.

>> we've been out here a week now, and i think the first day will help us maybe enlighten some of the others that haven't been pushing in our direction. >> by day, there were ssorts and games. by night, cocktails, cockfights, and clubs. >> this thing about the marianas is absolltely preposterous. we didn't find anyyhing that was described. to suggest that i'm for slavery and human trafficking is ludicrous. >> one member of congress after another was going out there looking around saying, looks good to me. jack abramoff said, i can help you. >> by the way, all that video, directly related to northern mariana islands? or when you saw an asian there, the prostitutes obviously, was that from there or from somewhere else? >> it was all from the marianas. there was some production

footage we took out there. >> did you ever ask anybody why they would go that far to play golf? >> well, i did ask congressman rohrabacher. he said it was a miserable experience for me because i'm a surfer and the surf wasn't that+ good. i don't know. but it didn't look like from the footage that we had that they were suffering that much. i think they went out there because it was fun. it was a long way, but it was fun. they got to play golf, they got to go snorkeling, go out to the clubs at night, and they got a little take-home gift usually in the form of some kind of campaign contributions or, you know, a reminder that this would help them down the line in terms of influence with tom delay. >> did you find out whether or not they flew out there on an air force plane? >> i didn't. i didn't find that out. >> and did you find out how much

jack abramoff made off of that whole event out there? >> you know, i'm not going to remember the figure, but it was millions of dollars. it's kind of an ironic thing really for a free market ideologue like jack abramoff, because a lot of the federal dollars flow into the commonwealth of the northern marianas and they were using in many ways some of those federal dollars to pay jack abramoff to lobby against federal influence. it's kind of ironic. but also there was a certain amount of money from the factory owners that was going to congress people and senators. >> can you give us a ballpark figure on how much this documentary cost you? >> sure. the documentary cost about $1.6 million. >> and where do you get finaaced for something like that? >> well, in this case, the film was co-financed by two people. magnolia pictures, which is a

film distribution and production company that's owned by todd wagner and mark cuban, the guy who owns the dallas "enron: the smartest guys in the room" and also "gonzo," so we have a relationship. also participant, which is a group that has funded a number of fiction and non-fiction films, notably "an inconvenient truth" by al gore. not by al gore. starring al gore. it's by davis guggenheim. and "good night and good luck." those were the two key partners that came onboard. to the participant's credit, they've put together a website that people can investigate to explore the issue of money and politics in a way that i think is very helpful. that outreach aspect of this enterprise is very interesting to me. >> you mentioned guggenheim, is that the charlie guggenheim family? >> yes, i believe it is. >> and you also mentioned mark cuban. i saw your documentary at his

theater here, theelandmark theaters in washington, and he's got theaters as you know in over 15 cities in the united states. if he wasn't in this business and if he wasn't financing something like this, would you stilllbe doing documentaries? would there still be places in this country to go see these things? >> i think there would bee but i'm glad he's out there. i think he's doing a great job. i also like the landmark theater chain. it's a good, healthy outlet for independent films. he's not the only one doing it, but he's an important force. >> back to your documentary. this is ralph reed, a name that people watching this network will remember. let's watch it. it's a minute and 30 seconds. >> abramoff got ralph reed to not only mount public opposition to this plan, but to congress who then put pressure on the department of interior to prevent the yana tribe from opening that casino.

>> it was very interesting to us in indian country when a letter came out signed by a number of representatives to department of interior saying please stop what they were trying to achieve. >> most of them got campaign checks from competing casinos. >> ultimately, the yana lost. the yana did not get their casino. abramoff lost. >> jack used tribal money from all his indian clients as a piggybank to send over $5 million to political causes and candidates, mostly republican. some of the biggest recipients were top names. tom delay, john doolittle. j.d. heyward, patrick kennedy, conrad burns.

jack abramoff was so skillful at convincing a lot of indian tribes or companies to donate all kinds of money to political candidates and political parties as he saw fit. so yeah, jack abramoff was a huge rainmaker, one of the largest rainmakers in town. >> you know, there are a lot of names that popped up on there. first of all, how did you dd that? >> how did i do what? >> that whole scene with the slot machine. >> oh, well, we worked with a great design firm called big star in new york, and we had the concept, and they helped us to execute it, to actually put the photographs in, to composite it and put the shadows sooit has a -- we actually shot a real slot machine, which turned out to be more difficult to do than i thought, and then we put it all together in a post- production process. it was fun. >> i know i've said this a couple times, but it's amazing how many people in your

documentary are no longer in politics, no longer in power. but some are. john doolittle was on that list. thad cochran. harry reid. congressman kennedy is leaving office. on and on. did you get any sense as you saw all these names come by you that thhs scandal had the impact of chasing people out of congress? >> i think it did have the impact of chasing people out of congress. that was probably a positive development. so i don't want to minimize or overdue the idda that jack abramoff was scapegoated in the sense that there was no other impact. i think the abramoff scandal so called really did have an impact and people left. on the other hand, what's interesting about washington is you see them coming bark and j.d. hayworth would be a good example of that. he may unseat john mccain, who was the guy that went after abramoff, in a kind of bitter irony.

j.d. hayworth now touts the fact that mccain's committee didn't find anything wrong with what he was doing during this influence pedaling scandal. maybe john mccain wishes he had dug a little deeper and released a few more e-mails that might have revealed more about j.d. hayworth's role. but anyway, there's no doubt, your question is very good, and there was definitely an impact and a lot of people lost their jobs. >> there are a lot of connections and names that you've been using, and there's another one i want to ask you about. that's the name william sloane coffin. >> the activist minister was my stepfather. he was the chaplain at yale. he married my mother when i was around 14. 196, he was charged with conspiracy, i believe, with dr. spock, the famous baby doctor. he had known my mother before.

he came up to be in the trial and would come by the house and they fell in love and they got married, and i moved to new haven and ultimately went to yale, and bill was a big influence on my life. i remember he also wass-- he died as it happened right around the same time that my father died. it was a big blow. i think in the obituary of "the washington post," my father was on the top of the page and william sloane coffin was on the bottom of the page. my father would have been annoyed that bill booted him off the obituary page of "the new york times." but, you know, there you go. bill was a very important influence on my life and he also, when i was making "taxi to the dark side," urged me to hurry up. he felt very strongly about that issue. >> another quick connection here. your father had seven children, i understand, and one of them is a brother that's here at the "national journal" -- the

"atlantic monthly"? >> that's right. he's an editor at the atlantic monthly, james gibney. and i have anotherrbrotherr frank gibney jr. who is also a journalist. so three out of the seven went -- and i'm not a print journalist, i work in film, but nevertheless, i have, i am told, so journalistic tendencies. po three of us followed in our father's footsteps, and i have i think three sisters and one other brother. >> another name in your documentary, we haven't seen much of him yet, but it's michael scanlon, who is awaiting sentencing, i understand. let's watch. >> in washington, jack's huge fees angered rival lobbyists. they began to leak information to "the washington post's" sue schmidt. >> i got a call from a well- known lobbyist in washington, a republican, and he told me, you ought to look into jack abramoff. he's representing these indian tribes, and charging millions of dollars and he's working

with this young guy mike scanlon, who came off tom delay's staff, and scanlon is, you know, living like a sultan. >> an irresistible pitch man, scanlon because jack's go-to guy for selling grass roots political campaigns to the indian tribes. >> what we have built is a political grass roots data base. say, for example, we had a problem with a particular state senator. let's say you wanted to make sure that somebody didn't win. we might not have enough to get our candidate enough votes guaranteed to win it, but we can certainly, certainly prevent somebody from getting elected. \[laughter] >> scanlon's political work paid off. only a couple years after he left delay's office, scanlon was flying in private jets, dressing in hand-tailored european suits, and buying more than $20 million in real estate, including a sprawling compound in ehoboth once owned by the

duponts. >> michael scanlon. where is he today? >> michael scanlon, so far as i am aware, is still living there in rehoboth. one of my producers actually went up and chatted with him briefly, not to any consequence. but last i looked, he was still there. and he's awaiting sentencing. i believe one of the reasons that's taking so long is they're waiting for the result of the anna service fraud case that's going up before the supreme court very soon, as i understand it. so that would be a tough irony, i think, for jack abramoff, if the supreme court overturns anna service's fraud. it's possible he might go free and not serve any time, which if i were jack abramoff would be a bitter pill to swallow. because i think -- jack abramoff, in my view, was a zealot who became corrupt. scanlon was closer to a washington criminal.

>> we're going to show a clip, and had a lot of debate whether or not to run it. it's bad language. if you don't want to hear it, please turn this off now. we're doing it because it shows the strength of the language behind the scenes that you found in e-mails. it's only a minute 10 seconds. >> everyone should learn one thing, don't put all this in writing. >> they are ripe for the picking. can you meet me tomorrow? >> it's at least 100k. >> how can i say this strong enough? you is the man. >> i couldn't believe he was talking about thissthrough e- mail. >> i can't believe they're e-

mailing back and forth about something like this. >> they are cheap motherfuckers's that don't want to pay our fee. i say fuck them. >> i almost dropped to the floor. i couldn't believe it. >> 2.75 is chump change. what the hell were we thinking? >> according to your e-mails, you and mr. scanlon referred to tribes as morons, stupid enemies, which you say is a lower form of existence. >> i told cherokee to come up with the dough or prepare for another trail of tears. >> why did you use that? >> because i thought very much like the audiotapes of the california grid that it betrayed -- the language itself betrayed a kind of lawful bankruptcy, really.

and you can hear the viciousness -- it's the viciousness of the language that i think is telling, and that's why it was important to use it and not just bleep it. sometimes it's hard to hear the face of immorality, but that would be it. >> people want to buy this and watch the whole thing. what's it cost and can they do it now? >> i don't think they can do it yet. it will be out on video. it's still depending on where you live making the rounds in theaters around the country. and the best place to find out about that is to go to the website, magnolia pictures website. i think it's magpictures.com. >> you had a lot of reviews. one is rather critical. i'm sure you read it, by gary chafetz. you know him? >> sure. i played tennis with him. >> and this was on june 5 is when we pulled it down. he's a former boston globe recorder, on the "the huffington post," which you've also written for. >> i have.

>> he prior to that says that -- he says you're both hardcore liberals. put all that into context for us. >> i'm not sure how to put it into context. gary and i had long arguments about this. gary wrote a book about this called "the perfect villain" in which he tried to make the wrongly accused, shouldn't have been prosecuted, shouldn't have gone to jail, and fundamentally didn't do anything terribly wrong. and i just disagree. in terms of was it objective or balanced, i think you have to say that, you know, a lot of

sides were represented in this. tom elay is interviewed for the film. bob ney is interviewed for the film. neil volz is interviewed for the film. i went out to the marianas. sue schmidt, who helped to break the whole monica lewinsky scandal is interviewed for the film. this is not like a packet of liberals ganging up on republicans. it's just the opposite. it's actually more or less from the inside-out of the republican party. and i did i think what gary didn't do. gary didn't go out to the marianas. gary didn't go to speak with the tribe in el paso, texas. he didn't go to l.a. he didn't talk to bob ney. he didn't talk to adam kidan. he didn't talk to a lot of people. my view is that i did a pretty thorough job of reporting and filming this story, and i just disagree with what gary says. >> by the way, he calls -- in here, the work that susan

schmidt did sleazy. why would he do that? what's his point on that one? >> that's a good question. gary, in his book, is very angry about sue schmidt's reporting. he believes that she grossly misrepresented the tigua affair. i think gary's argument is overwrought. susan schmidt and her colleagues won a pulitzer prize. i don't think it was sleazy. >> last clip before we say goodbye. you use "mr. smith goes to washington." let's watch. >> it has become so accepted, so part of our political culture now that it's normal. your average citizen doesn't would expect to have because these voices are much louder and they're much better financed.

>> this issthe story about human failure. i mean, i don't think that corruption as a part is an issue. the corruption i was involved in was the human failure. it's an issue of power. i became just a machine. a cog in the machine. like hey, get up, go do your thing, get yours. i just lost track of what brought me here. >> abramoff couldn't have flourished if the system itself was not corrupt. were the need for money, the members of congress and their need for money is so huge that they don't have their guard up. >> this has all gone into a feeding frenzy with money.

>> what do you expect me to do? >> i don't know what the solution is. i would have loved to have public financing. here's your money and here's your money. you don't have to raise any. this would end all of that if you had a different system. but right now, we don't. >> there's no place out there for greed or lies or compromise of human liberties. great principles don't get lost unless they come to light. they're all here. >> the price for a free society i think is to be vigilant about our democracy. influenced by jack abramoff and take advantage of the money he them. "mr. smith goes to washington." anything changed since that came out with jimmy stewart? >> the french have an expression. the more things change, the more things stay the same. i think things have gotten a lot worse in terms of the influence

of money in politics, a lot but corruption was always there. that's why i think melanie sloan's comment about how we have to be eternally vigilant is the right one. but jefferson smith is a really interesting figure and character because he embodies the american naivety, but it's important because the urge to create out of moral wreckage something good. ironically, i think he's also kind of an argument against term limits. one of the reason that jefferson smith in that great camera film "mr. smith goes to washington" gets manipulated is because he comes in and doesn't know that much. and who knows more and who knows how the machinery works? the lobbyists, the ones who always stay there. so if yoo have a rotating crop of congress people and senators, it's not really the best way to solve this problem. but i think that "mr. smith goes to washington" is still a very important film for us because we have to remember our ideals, our idealism and fight for it. that's what it's all about.

>> so when can we see in the theatres outside of the tribeca film festival earlier your documentary on eliot spitzer, now that he's a talk show host? >> has that been officially announced?+ is he officially a talk show host now? >> he has been one the last couple weeks. >> that's true. it's going to -- magnolia pictures will have the film out i believe later this year. so keep your eyes peeled. i think it's a pretty good one. >> alex gibney, our guest. documentary is called "casino jack and the united states of money." thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you, brian. good to be here. >> i've seen friends go over to go work for jack abramoff and kind of watch this operation get built, right? and jack was going from really big to the top. >> neil morphed from the origgnal neil who wanted to be the press secretary to the guy who wanted to be part of the

abramoff family. >> now, was it unusual to lose a staffer? >> i've had staffers come and go like a revolving door. >> i'm the poster child for the revolving door. >> the revolving door between government and k street is an essential part of the washingto+ game. >> there's a law that states you're not allowed to lobby your former bosses, and i tiptoed around the one-year ban and then i just flat out violated it. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] . .