Suppressed Report On Security Risks of Abramoff Client Finally Released

Somewhat mysteriously, a 2002 Justice Department report that warned of the national security risk posed by the weak immigration standards in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands never saw the light of day.

And as Bloomberg reported last October, the two officials who completed the report were reassigned – and Members of Congress never saw it.

Probably not coincidentally, Jack Abramoff was representing the Marianas at the time.

Well, now that Abramoff is spending his long days cooperating with Justice Department prosecutors, the report has finally been released. You can read it here.

It’s no mystery why Abramoff would have wanted the report suppressed: his job was to keep the federal government’s hands off the islands — even, he apparently believed, at the cost of his country’s safety. And the report is unequivocal in its recommendation that the U.S. should have its hands very much on the islands, which the authors deemed a national security risk.

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who was Abramoff’s great enemy on the Marianas for many years, released the report today. He’s taken the occasion of DeLay’s retirement to reintroduce legislation to reform labor and immigration laws on the Marianas – legislation DeLay and Abramoff were able to foil for a decade.