Casino Jack: An Abramoff Scandal Reunion on Film

It's Press Day in Washington for a new documentary, "Casino Jack and the United States of Money," opening Friday at a theater near you. Bob Ney, looking just like a former congressman in his crisp suit (and nothing like a former prison inmate), is sitting at a tiny cocktail table in a niche off a long hallway at the Westin. His former chief of staff, Neil Volz, is sitting in another, dressed for his new life cleaning restaurants and helping the disadvantaged: beard, wire-rims and fleece jacket. And at the end of the hallway, alone at a large table in a large conference room, is the man who reunited the pair on film and in life: Alex Gibney, the Academy Award-winning director who decided the Jack Abramoff scandal would be good cinema.

Most of Gibney's career has been spent probing what he calls "the dark heart" of people and politics, in films about financial and moral corruption. He earned his Oscar in 2008 for "Taxi to the Dark Side," about U.S. torture in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before that he made "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room." "My Trip to al-Qaeda," based on Lawrence Wright's book and play about the rise of al Qaeda and "the road to 9/11," will be shown on HBO this fall. A&E bought TV rights to a nearly-done film about fallen New York governor Eliot Spitzer; theatrical rights will be sold soon.

Making a documentary about the Abramoff affair was a natural but in some respects risky choice. The imprisoned protagonist was not available to be in it (he's scheduled for release in December after serving four years for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials). There's a fictional version of the saga coming this fall and it doesn't have that problem; Kevin Spacey stars as Abramoff.

Gibney finesses Abramoff's absence by using audio, video and photos of him, augmented by dramatic readings of offensive, macho e-mails between the lobbyist and his sidekick in corruption, Michael Scanlon. The readings – against pounding on a racquetball court and a rap song about e-mail -- are done by Stanley Tucci as Abramoff and Paul Rudd as Scanlon. "I thought they really inhabited that avarice," Gibney said in a recent live-chat online. Agreed, but probably it was not their greatest acting challenge. These are e-mails where the characters are trashing native Americans as morons and worse, and calling each other obscene names like "F---o" as they hatch greedy schemes.

The stickier problem for Gibney is the scale and complexity of Abramoff's many seamy adventures, and their white collar nature. How do you render this subject interesting and comprehensible without making a 12-part series? And in fact Gibney's movie does feel long.

That said, there is plenty of colorful material and Gibney plumbs it all, from gambling cruise ships and Indian casinos to Saipan sweatshops and the golf course at St. Andrews in Scotland. He further dresses up the movie with opening clips of Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and closing clips of Tom DeLay gyrating to "Wild Thing" on "Dancing With the Stars." "Were we more innocent once, or just naïve?" a narrator asks at the outset.

Gibney is a committed liberal who says the money problem is systemic and further believes the GOP's free-market philosophy makes Republicans particularly open to this type of corruption. In our interview, Gibney, who met several times with Abramoff, said he was "terrified and horrified" at the prospect of the movie. The man who once "delivered" a meeting with President George W. Bush to Malaysian officials for $1 million now sees lobbying as "a very deeply corrupt practice ... Greasing people with money he finds now to be detestable," Gibney said. Abramoff is working on a book. The Oscar-winning director advised Abramoff to make a movie as well. "I'd pay to see you talk," he told him.

Ney, the Ohio Republican who spent 17 months in prison as a result of his role in the Abramoff affair, twice refused to appear in Gibney's film but finally relented. Like Gibney and Abramoff, he believes the system – "the fundraising, the push, the pressure," the dollar quotas if you wanted to be a committee chairman under DeLay's iron hand -- "it's all still there."

When I asked if what he'd done was different from others, Ney replied sarcastically that "I was the only mastermind in the United States Congress that did anything like this." He said others could have ended up just like him "very easily, with the snap of a finger." As for himself, "Did I have a bright-line, cross-the-line moment? No. Were there things that started to not feel right? Yeah."

The former chairman of the House Administration Committee, Ney lost his marriage, his home and his career to the scandal. He's now a talk show host on Talk Media News, a liberal network whose owner is a longtime friend.

Ney prepared for prison by meeting for five hours with Webb Hubbell, the Clinton-era figure who spent 18 months in jail for defrauding his law firm. "I entered as terrified as the next human being. You can easily go mentally ill over it," Ney said. But he followed Hubbell's advice to "make something productive of this. Utilize this to learn and to grow." He read "more books in 12 months than in 12 years," including Hubbell's book and one by Dan Rostenkowski, another former representative who served time.

Ney now plans to write his own book about how he coped, details of daily prison life, and how misguided he believes U.S. corrections policy and his own former position to be. He witnessed firsthand "rampant" racism, addicts who needed treatment, and "the warehoused walking dead," he said. "Lock 'em up – I've morphed big-time on that. We're failing."

His other major change of heart: He now supports public financing of campaigns.

In 1994, Volz said in our interview, he was the typical gung-ho young Republican listening to Rush Limbaugh's radio show and Newt Gingrich's training tapes, determined to overthrow corrupt Democrats who had controlled Washington for 40 years. At 29, he was the youngest staff director on Capitol Hill.

By his last years in Washington, he had left Ney to work for Abramoff. In the film, a teary and regretful Volz says that "I just lost track of what brought me here." He told me his desire for money had corrupted him. "Did I put the stupid in young and stupid? Yeah." Was it him, or the system? "I wasn't alone, nor was I the norm," he said. Bottom line: "I'm responsible for my own decisions. I could have ended this scandal by changing my behavior."

Like Ney, Volz also lost his career, marriage and home. His sentence was probation and community service. Now 39, he is starting over in Fort Myers, Fla., where he mops restaurants and works on Falling Upstairs, a startup its website calls "part advocacy organization, part think tank and part direct service provider." The goal is to use social networking to help the disadvantaged.

In his new life, Volz doesn't have to hide his longstanding support for abortion rights, open borders and gay marriage. Also in his new life, Volz has a book coming out -- on Oct. 1. He said it will be "an insider's look at how corruption happens" and a cautionary tale for others. "The slippery slope is real," Volz said.

"Casino Jack" features a furious, hostile voicemail Ney left for Volz after Volz said he could not speak to him on the advice of his lawyer. The two did not talk for five years. But that's all over. At Sundance in January, with prodding from Gibney, they met, talked and reconciled. At Press Day, they embraced in a long, seemingly heartfelt bear hug.

They've moved on. But money is still sloshing around Congress, and lobbyists are still jamming up bills on health, energy, education and Wall Street regulation. Now the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations can spend freely in political campaigns. Gibney would like to see public financing. Short of that, he suggests that members of Congress wear NASCAR jackets emblazoned with the names of their major donors. At this point, that seems as good a solution as any.