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But in at least one instance, Reed acknowledges he used his White House access for Abramoff. In December 2001 the lobbyist was eager to prevent Angela Williams from being appointed head of the Interior Department's Office of Insular Affairs, which oversees the government's dealings with the Northern Mariana Islands, an important Abramoff client. Williams is married to former Federal Trade Commissioner Orson Swindle, who was a Vietnam POW with Senator John McCain. The subject header of Abramoff and Reed's e-mail exchange (it is unclear who initiated it) contained a misstatement about Williams that is practically Freudian in what it reveals about their animosity toward McCain: "Were you able to whack McCain's wife yet?" Reed assured Abramoff he had "weighed in heavily" with the White House personnel office to block her appointment but had received no commitment. "Any ideas on how we can make sure she does not get it?" Abramoff asked. "Can you ping Karl on this? I can't believe they just don't get this done?" Reed replied, "I am seeing him tomorrow at the WH and plan to discuss it with him as well." Baron says, "Ralph passed the information on to the White House. He is confident the Administration's decision was based on the merit." As for Rove, White House spokeswoman Erin Healy tells TIME, "It is my understanding that Mr. Rove does not recall any of these incidents."
Williams didn't get the job. She and her husband wrote it off to hard feelings from the bruising 2000 Republican presidential primaries. "I just assumed it was my close friendship with Senator McCain and her being married to me," Swindle tells TIME.
Abramoff was not without his own ties inside the White House--including his former executive assistant Susan Ralston, who now works in that capacity for Rove. Although Abramoff repeatedly tried to contact Rove, sources tell TIME, he had been able to arrange only one private meeting with Bush's top political strategist, early in 2001. Ralston subsequently referred his occasional requests to the White House intergovernmental-affairs office. When Abramoff pleaded by e-mail in February 2003 for her to help arrange a "quiet message" from Rove to the Interior Department on behalf of a tribal client, Ralston rebuffed him: "Karl and others are aware, but the WH is not going to get involved." So Abramoff sent a copy of Ralston's curt e-mail to Reed, who replied, "this is ridiculous. want any help ...?"
Abramoff's friendship with Reed goes back to their political organizing in the early 1980s, when Abramoff was national chairman of the College Republicans and Reed was executive director. Reed slept on Abramoff's couch at one point and introduced him to the woman he married. After Reed started his consulting firm in 1997, Abramoff threw him what would end up being as much as $4 million worth of business on campaigns to stop gambling--which Reed had once called "a cancer on the American body politic."
However mutually beneficial that relationship was, it has returned to haunt Reed in his first campaign for elected office. Reed, a former Georgia G.O.P. chairman who was considered the engineer of an impressive sweep of Republican victories in that state in 2002, has tapped his national connections and swamped his rivals at fund raising in his race. Lieutenant Governor is largely a ceremonial job, but it could give Reed, 44, a leg up for a gubernatorial bid in 2010.