Garment manufacturing mogul Willie Tan, a Jack Abramoff client whose Tan Holdings conglomerate is a major economic force in the Pacific Islands, boasted to ABC's 20/20 of Tom DeLay's assurances to him that any legislation aimed at cleaning up Saipan's labor laws would be killed.

[Photo: Floyd Takeuchi for Pacific Islands]

Sure. Do you know what Tom told me? He said, "Willie, if they elect me Majority Whip, I make the schedule of the Congress, and I'm not going to put it on the schedule." So Tom told me, "Forget it, Willie. No chance."

In 1998, DeLay and his family vacationed in the Marianas as guests of the Saipan government. At a lavish New Year's bash thrown in his honor, DeLay promised to do all in his considerable power to keep immigration and labor laws in the Marianas forced abortion-friendly.  He told his new Saipan friends, "[Y]ou are a shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we're trying to do in America, in leading the world in the free market system."

But the dark underbelly of DeLay's "shining light" is right across a busy Saipan street and a few yards down a dirt road. That's where garment workers live in tiny, corrugated-tin-roofed homes, with three women sharing a queen-size bed. Their "kitchen" is a few hot plates and water-filled plastic buckets set outside on a concrete counter. Nine people share one toilet.

If they get pregnant while working in Saipan, workers face another nightmare. According to a 1998 investigation by the Department of Interior Office of Insular Affairs, a number of Chinese garment workers reported that if they became pregnant, they were "forced to return to China to have an abortion, or forced to have an illegal abortion" in the Marianas. These days, many pregnant workers still feel they have little choice but to visit one of Saipan's underground abortion clinics -- or else lose their jobs.

Desperate to earn money and pay back their recruitment fees, some unemployed garment workers have found themselves turning to another lucrative industry on Saipan: sex tourism. There are no reliable statistics, but an estimated 90 percent of the island's prostitutes are former garment workers.

Tom DeLay still insisted as late as last year that he's never heard such stories. "Sure, when you get this number of people, there are stories of sexual exploitation. But in interviewing these employees one-on-one, there was no evidence of any of that going on. ...  It's a beautiful island with beautiful people who are happy about what's happening."

But none of the abuses rampant in the islands that DeLay calls "a perfect petri dish of capitalism" is a secret here in the U.S. Eight years ago, ABC, CNN, the BBC and the New York Times all verified that forced labor, sexual slavery and forced abortions were routinely imposed upon the woman euphemistically known as "guest workers" in the Marianas.

And members of Congress who pay less attention to Jack Abramoff and to Willie Tan than to reality, people such as Rep. George Miller, have heard plenty.

Representative George Miller meets with Chie Abad, a former Saipan garment worker who was in Washington, DC, to speak at a screening of Behind the Labels: Garment Workers on U.S. Saipan, a documentary exposing the abusive conditions garment laborers face in the Northern Marianas.

From an Democracy Now interview with ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross:

BRIAN ROSS: [T]he workers there who are all young women ... were ... barred from having children if they became pregnant. They knew where to go, and there were a few essential back-alley abortion mills on the island. And that's where these young Chinese women went in order to keep their jobs. ... That's part of the situation that was essentially endorsed by DeLay when he fought the laws. The laws were established essentially exempting Saipan, although it is a U.S. territory, from U.S. labor laws.
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Chinese workers ... lived in something akin to -- I don't want to call it a labor camp, but it was surrounded by barbed wire. They were taken on the backs of trucks to these factories. They work 10, 12 hours a day, then brought back to their camps. An ugly scene there, one that was defended effectively by the garment manufacturers and by the government of Saipan at the time, with the expenditure of millions of dollars on Jack Abramoff.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about how in a memo that ABC News got that Abramoff wrote to his law firm ... that was paid $1.36 million by Saipan officials, said such congressional trips, talking about Tom DeLay, are one of the most effective ways to build permanent friends on the Hill.

BRIAN ROSS: Exactly what they did. And, of course, [Jack] Abramoff has now admitted that he used these trips as ways essentially of providing favors to congressmen who in return would do favors for him on Capitol Hill.
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[W]hen people at the Department of Interior attempted to [change the labor and immigration laws in Saipan], DeLay actually tried to introduce a bill to cut off funding for that particular section of the Department of Interior, to stop them from essentially backing the workers' claims. And it became an ugly situation on Capitol Hill. And DeLay and others, but DeLay in particular, were involved in blocking the legislation.

To hear Tom DeLay tell it, he did it all not for Jack Abramoff or Willie Tan, but for God. As DeLay told a Baptist audience in 2002, "He is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am. He is training me, He is working with me."

Which is why, that same year, DeLay was honored as the Center for Christian Statesmanship's Distinguished Christian Statesman.

Dr. D. James Kennedy presented the award himself, along with some very kind words: "Congressman Tom DeLay is a man who is very obviously, to those that know him, a Christian. He doesn't hide his faith under a barrel. He is not ashamed of Whom he serves, and those in Congress know where he stands. He is very definitely an ambassador for Christ, rather than a secret agent, as so many are today."

That's their story, and they're still sticking to it. Since DeLay's indictment, his friends on the Religious Right have uniformly condemned the charges against him as just one more battle in the War on Christianity.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says, "I will proudly stand beside Tom DeLay and I commend him for his stalwart defense of American values in the face of criticism and threats to his elected office." Perkins urges FRC supporters to pray for DeLay because "DeLay has been a stalwart on OUR issues, working diligently for the family and for life."  That means that, as DeLay has assured Perkins so consistently, "top on his agenda, one of the reasons he's worked to build a conservative majority, is that he wants to see abortion outlawed in America. ... I know the work this man is doing. I vouch for his work, I vouch for his character, and I urge you to stand with him and support him in the work that he's doing for families, for life, for the unborn, here in our nation's capital."

Because as Perkins explained to Chris Matthews and the Reverend Al Sharpton on MSNBC, the real source of DeLay's present troubles is that he's a Christian.

SHARPTON: I would like Tony to tell me how what Tom DeLay is facing has anything to do with his religion or any religion at all.  I mean, I think it's an insult to Christians to act like because of his religion, he's been charged with what he's been charged with.  It has nothing to do with his religion.  

PERKINS:  What you find is that just in this case or whatever, there is a concern that those that identify with evangelical Christianity--and Tom DeLay was very closely affiliated with that as the House majority leader.  And there are those that say that was part of the motivation for going after him because he was an effective leader, in particular on issues as related to pro-life.

James Dobson joins the chorus.

Sept 28 2005
Focus on the Family Action Chairman James C. Dobson, Ph. D., issued the following statement today regarding the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay by a Texas grand jury:

"Today's indictment of Majority Leader Tom DeLay bears all the signs of a trumped-up, political witch-hunt. The extreme left has seized this chance to take a swipe at one of America's leading advocates of family values. We have every confidence that time will prove these charges false and we look forward to the majority leader being fully vindicated.

And Concerned Women for America published a testimonial to DeLay by Paul Weyrich that makes The Hammer sound like the savior of the republic.

In March of this year, an all-star lineup of the Religious Right convened in Washington, DC, to gird themselves for battle at a Vision America conference dedicated to "The War on Christians and the Values Voter." Vision America is headed by DeLay's longtime brother in Christ, Rick Scarborough, whose organization boasts an official stamp of approval from James Kennedy, James Dobson, and Tim LaHaye, to name only a few.  

The "Christian leaders" who convened in Washington to circle their political wagons for Jesus included Senator John Cornyn, Gary Bauer, Alan Keyes, Paul Weyrich (Free Congress Foundation), William Greene (RightMarch.com), Phyllis Schlafly (Eagle Forum), Mat Staver (Liberty Counsel), Janice Crouse (Concerned Women For America), Bill Donohue (Catholic League), Mike Johnson (Alliance Defense Fund), broadcaster Janet Parshall, Janet Folger (Faith2Action), Ron Luce (Teen Mania), Lou Sheldon (Traditional Values Coalition), Peter Sprigg (Family Research Council), Bob Knight (Concerned Women for America), Rebecca Hagelin (Heritage Foundation), Laurence White (Texas Restoration Project) and Rod Parsley (Ohio Restoration Project).

St. Thomas DeLay, Martyr, was, of course, an honored speaker:

"We are after all a society that abides abortion on demand, that has killed millions of innocent children, that degrades the institution of marriage and often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition. Seen from this perspective, of course there is a war on Christianity."

The crowd roared.  And when DeLay finished speaking, Rick Scarborough reminded the assembled faithful that "God always does his best work right after a crucifixion."

[Photo: The Spoof.com]

When contacted by an investigator from Ms. Magazine in connection with Paradise Lost: Greed, Sex Slavery, Forced Abortions and Right-Wing Moralists, a comprehensive article on the Marianas sweatshop abuses published last April, DeLay spokesman Michael Connolly said, "He stands by the things he has said in the past, and he stands by the votes he's made that pertain to the islands."

And the whole world knows what Tom DeLay's votes have done to thousands of women on Saipan.

"Did you just hear something?"

"I haven't heard a sound."

"Shhhh!!!!"