Media Nation

I’ll be on New England Cable News’ “NewsNight” today at 7 p.m., talking about Glenn Marshall’s meltdown and the fate of the Middleborough casino with host Jim Braude.

Here’s your morning roundup of casino-related developments:

• Marshall is out as chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, with members refusing even to give him the 30-day grace period he had requested (Cape Cod Times).
• Marshall’s legal woes continue (Cape Cod Times).
• His false claims of war heroism will be reported to the FBI (The Day of New London, Conn.).
• More questions about how tribal funds were spent (Cape Cod Today).
• Officials of neighboring towns ask the Patrick administration to move slowly on the casino (Boston Globe).
• But Gov. Patrick blows the biggest decision of his tenure, reportedly deciding to endorse casino gambling (WBZ-TV). Perhaps this is just a pre-Labor Day trial balloon?
• Hal Brown spins like crazy (Casino-friend.com).

Obviously the Middleborough casino will never be built. The big-money players will move on once they realize that this will be tied up in the courts for years. Dissident tribal members are already suing in federal court. Middleborough casino opponents vow to keep fighting. The Jack Abramoff connection must be explored more deeply. In that context, New Bedford’s going to start looking better and better.

But casino gambling will be bad news anywhere, and I hope Patrick comes to his senses before making this official.

Update: This is hilarious. WBZ Radio (AM 1030) reports that Patrick’s office is denying that the governor has made up his mind, but WBZ-TV (Channel 4) is standing by its story.

Boston Magazine has posted on its Web site a profile of disgraced former Mashpee Wampanoag leader Glenn Marshall, slated to appear in the September issue.

Tough timing — the article went to press before last week’s implosion. But writer Geoffrey Gagnon does have more on Marshall’s ties to Jack Abramoff, the former Washington lobbyist now in prison for his corrupt dealings. Gagnon writes:

Marshall doesn’t apologize for the fact that some of his efforts involved questionable characters, chief among them the notorious Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, with whom the tribe signed on in 2003….

Never major political donors before then, the Mashpee and their lobbyists started giving generously to select congressmen. Following Abramoff’s lead, they donated at least $20,000 to California Congressman Richard Pombo, who had taken over the committee charged with managing tribal issues. They also secured some face time with North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, who, in his capacity as vice chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, pressed the Interior Department in the fall of 2003 to finally rule on the long-delayed status of the Mashpees’ application.

Abramoff is now serving time in federal prison for bilking other tribes and corrupting public officials. (The Mashpee were never implicated in any wrongdoing.) And though Abramoff himself became political kryptonite for the lawmakers and organizations he did business with, a couple of his lieutenants, Kevin Ring and Michael Smith, still work with the Mashpee.

Fortunately for Ring and Smith, they get a good character reference — from, uh, Marshall. “Kevin and Michael are very bright young men,” he tells Gagnon. “If they had done anything wrong, they would have been indicted — they wouldn’t be working for us. These are good guys.”

Of course, Ring’s and Smith’s reputations shouldn’t be smeared just because of their former association with Abramoff. But the Abramoff connection is something that needs to be thoroughly investigated before anyone breaks ground on a casino in Middleborough.

Middleborough Selectman Adam Bond and others who think the casino is still on track should take a look at today’s Cape Cod Times. K.C. Myers reports that long-simmering anger over the way disgraced tribal leader Glenn Marshall has managed the Mashpee Wampanoags’ finances and cast out those who disagree with him is about to explode at a special meeting tomorrow night.

Marshall’s dealings with “wealthy investors” to bring a casino to Middleborough are also the subject of a federal lawsuit brought by dissident Wampanoags. That suit was almost certainly given new life because of what’s happened over the past week.

In the Boston Globe, Christine Wallgren reports that officials from 17 surrounding communities and two regional planning agencies will meet tomorrow with Gov. Deval Patrick’s economic-development czar, Dan O’Connell, to ask that Patrick make no decision on casino gambling until the issue has been thoroughly studied. From the context, I’d say they want it studied to death. Good.

At Cape Cod Today, Peter Kenney keeps pounding away at Marshall, and opines that he’s still calling the shots behind the scenes. Well, maybe not after tomorrow night.

The attention this morning is right where Middleborough casino supporters want it: on Glenn Marshall. After all, the tribal leader is gone now, so learning that his long list of misdeeds also includes a cocaine conviction and falsely claiming to have been a police officer (as reported by the Boston Globe, which got the only interview) doesn’t really matter.

I do enjoy the Cape Cod Times’ reference to Marshall’s protean ethnicity (“He always talked about being Portuguese,” a high-school classmate tells George Brennan). But that’s tame stuff compared to a post written recently by the “Great Gladfly,” Peter Kenney, who spoke with Amelia Bingham, an 84-year-old elder in the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe. Kenney, who says Marshall had an earlier incarnation as “a Cape Verdean activist,” wrote:

Bingham say she remembers Marshall when he was in school with her children, “He wasn’t an Indian then. He used to tease my kids and bully them because they were Wampanoags. He was a mean kid and he is a mean adult.”

Given that Marshall is no longer the issue, what’s next? In the Boston Herald, reporter Scott Van Voorhis gets at a key point that needs to be explored in the days ahead: Marshall’s role as a mere tool of the moneyed interests that are calling the shots. Van Voorhis only scratches a bit at the surface, but he’s picked the right place to scratch.

And here’s the best part: This is all tied up with Jack Abramoff, the superlobbyist now in prison, who dealt with Indian tribes on gaming matters across the country. Kenney wrote about it in January 2006, but was pretty much ignored at the time. It won’t be now. Even if the tie-in proves to be tenuous, it would behoove state officials to look very, very carefully at this.

A final observation. In reading the coverage since yesterday morning, I haven’t found one solitary reference in the mainstream media to Peter Kenney’s work. Is it really that difficult to credit a blogger? He had a good chunk of the story out there last Monday, and reporters are still working off his leads.

Yes, the media had to do their own reporting and verify everything. But it seems to me that Kenney is a crucial part of this story, and he should have gotten a mention.

Update: Good piece by David Kibbe in The Standard-Times on the political fallout.

Right now, casino supporters are insisting that Marshall’s implosion doesn’t matter, and opponents are hoping they’re wrong. I realize that predictions are cheap, but I think the casino plans are now going to crumble very quickly. We are going to learn more — much more — in the days and weeks to come.

This past Monday, Peter Kenney reported on his blog that Glenn Marshall, a leader of the Mashpee Wampanoags and the prime mover behind the proposed Middleborough casino, may have lied about his record as a war hero in the Marines — a record that purportedly included five Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. I didn’t link to it before today because I was uncomfortable with Kenney’s decision not to try to reach Marshall for comment. But now it’s all coming out — and it’s even worse than Kenney initially reported.

The Cape Cod Times today publishes a headline for the ages: “Marshall’s record includes rape, lies.” The story, by George Brennan, reports that Marshall “raped a 22-year-old visitor to the Cape in the summer of 1980, according to court records and the Times’ archive.” Marshall was sentenced to five years in state prison, but served just three months — in part because his lawyer cited his alleged war heroism and the trauma he had suffered.

Oh, yes. About that war record: Marshall has claimed several times, including in an appearance at a congressional hearing in 2004, that he fought at Khe Sahn during the Vietnam War. Brennan reports that it now turns out Marshall was a senior at Lawrence High School, in Falmouth, during Khe Sahn.

What does Marshall have to say about all this? “Repeated attempts to reach Marshall yesterday through a tribe spokesman and on his cell phone were unsuccessful,” Brennan writes. “Tribe spokesman Scott Ferson said Marshall would have not comment until today.” I can’t wait.

Question: What do you suppose the Middleborough selectmen would have done a few months ago if they knew they were negotiating with a convicted rapist who’d lied about his war record?

Question: What do you suppose Middleborough voters would have done if they knew about this before approving a casino deal with Marshall in July?

I don’t imagine Marshall’s being exposed constitutes legal grounds to undo the vote. But certainly it’s all the more reason for Gov. Deval Patrick and other state officials to stop this insanity now.

Let’s return to our narrative, shall we? This all began Saturday, when The Day of New London, Conn., published a profile of Marshall. Written by Patricia Daddona, the story included this, in the second paragraph: “The former U.S. Marine, fisherman and self-described man of ‘the woods, weeds or water’ earned five Purple Hearts and a Silver Star in three tours of duty in Vietnam.”

Daddona also quoted Adam Bond, the Middleborough selectman who has worked most closely with Marshall, as saying:

I think Glenn Marshall is what you see: there’s not a deception, it’s not a façade. He strikes me as a professional, intelligent leader. Like everyone else, he has a little bit of the politician in him. That’s not a bad thing — to put on the right suit for the right occasion.

Enter Peter Kenney. On Monday, the “Great Gadfly,” as he calls himself, blogging on Cape Cod Today, wrote that there was no record of Marshall’s ever having won a Purple Heart (never mind five of them) or a Silver Star. He seemed to have the goods, but, as I said, I hesitated because of the way Kenney ended his item: “No effort has been made yet to contact Marshall or tribal spokesman, Mr. Ferson of Boston.”

Kenney was back yesterday with another must-read story. This time, he said he made several attempts to talk with Marshall and/or Ferson, and that Ferson refused on the grounds that Kenney is not a journalist. Well, Kenney deserves huge kudos — he drove this story, and it’s doubtful that the truth about Marshall would have come out were it not for Kenney’s work. For good measure, Kenney levels an accusation that, so far, the media have not followed up on — that there is also no record of Marshall’s having served as a police officer with the MDC, as has been claimed.

Finally, what is the deal with those medals? The Day runs an odd follow-up, also written by Daddona, that includes this:

Marshall’s legal adviser and lobbyist, James Morris, supplied the information about Marshall’s medals during an in-person interview with Marshall in Boston. Morris is a lawyer with Quinn & Morris of Boston.

Marshall and Morris were with the reporter for three hours in private and Statehouse interviews. Marshall was leaving the room at the tribe’s public relations firm, The Liberty Square Group, and did not appear to be aware of Morris’ disclosure. Morris, who said Marshall is sensitive about discussing his war record, wrote the information down in the reporter’s notebook.

Marshall did not personally inform The Day of the details of his military service for the Aug. 18 story.

So it sounds like it’s still to be determined whether Marshall ever personally claimed to have earned the Purple Hearts or the Silver Star. As Brennan notes in his Times story, if he did, he could go to prison for six months.

Daddona also has another priceless quote from Adam Bond:

I don’t believe that that has any bearing on the negotiations he had with the town and the sincerity and honesty with which he dealt with us. And until I see something more, I don’t think there’s anything more I can say about it. But I’m not uncomfortable. I still trust the man.

Presumably Bond’s assessment was based solely on the news that Marshall had lied about his military record, not about the rape, which The Day doesn’t mention. But it’s been obvious from the beginning that Bond has been in way over his head.

Scott Van Voorhis reports in the Boston Herald on efforts by the Massachusetts Council of Churches, as well as civic leaders like former attorney general Scott Harshbarger and former John Hancock chief executive David D’Alessandro (who wrote this Globe op-ed recently), to prevent a casino from being built anywhere in the state.

I’d say their efforts just got a major boost.

Update: Adam Bond doesn’t care about the rape conviction, either, according to this story in The Enterprise of Brockton. Bond: “I think it is irrelevant to the issues. This is about the man. It is not about the casino.” Amazing. (Via “Gladys Kravitz,” who also posts a hilarious photo illustration.)

Afternoon update: Marshall’s out, the Boston Globe reports. “Like a lot of veterans from that era, I realize I have my own demons that I need to deal with,” he’s quoted as saying. Really.

This isn’t close to being over. If Shawn Hendricks, who’s replacing Marshall, and Adam Bond think they can just pick up and move forward on the casino, they’re mistaken.