EL PASO - The white knight arrived by private jet on Feb. 15, 2002, days after the Tigua Indians were forced to close a casino that had lifted
the tiny tribe from abject poverty by generating $60 million a year.

Jack Abramoff, a high-powered Republican lobbyist from Washington, made his pitch. The key to reopening the Speaking Rock Casino, he told tribal leaders, was the stealthy passage of federal legislation.

"He was real direct and very confident. He said he wasn't used to losing," recalled Carlos Hisa, the Tigua lieutenant governor. "We were desperate. We had just laid off 450 people."

The Tiguas had just lost a long legal fight with state officials, led by then-Attorney General John Cornyn, who said a "no gambling" pledge made years earlier by the Tiguas to gain tribal recognition was forever
binding.

Unknown to the tribe, Abramoff had been a behind-the-scenes force in the
drive to shut down their casino, and in derisive e-mails had called Tigua leaders "stupid folks."

But when he met their leaders, he said he could solve their problem by
slipping a few critical paragraphs into an election reform bill in Congress.

He and his associate Michael Scanlon then would launch a massive public relations campaign to counter any opposition.

"He promised by August we'd be back in business. He said it's a done deal. He said things like that are done all the time," Hisa recalled.

Though Abramoff told the Tiguas he was working for free to avoid having to
register as a paid tribal lobbyist, his special brand of Washington magic didn't come cheap.

He wanted more than $5 million, with the funds to be paid to Scanlon. Later, when the casino was up and running, the tribe was expected to retain his
lobbying and law firm of Greenberg and Traurig for $125,000 to $175,000 a month.

The Tigua leaders wanted to think it over, but before Abramoff left El Paso, a phone call caught him at the airport.

"We offered $4.2 million and he accepted," Hisa said.

Three years later, the casino remains closed. The Tiguas have nothing to show for their $4.2 million - or the hundreds of thousands more dollars
in political contributions made at Abramoff's direction.

The tribe is on an austerity budget, watching its nest egg rapidly shrink and its members move away to find jobs.

But the high-flying team of Abramoff and Scanlon has suffered an even more
dramatic drop in fortune.

A large federal task force has been examining their work as gambling consultants for Indian tribes, which brought them more than $66 million
in a three-year period.

According to published accounts, one area of interest to federal prosecutors is how tribal money funneled through Abramoff may have illegally
benefited the political operations of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and other
officials.

Amid Washington rumors of cooperating witnesses and high-level targets, a federal grand jury in Virginia is hearing testimony. Many expect it to return indictments by summer.

Two Senate committees are probing Abramoff's and Scanlon's activities, including allegations of illegal political contributions from non-profit
groups.

It's one more headache for DeLay, who has been fending off Democratic critics of his campaign finance practices and faulted for the company he
keeps, including associates charged with violating Texas law on corporate campaign donations.

Scanlon is a former press secretary to DeLay, and the majority leader once embraced Abramoff as a close friend, though he now has distanced
himself.

Spokesman Dan Allen declined to discuss DeLay's current relationship with Abramoff. Allen wouldn't say if DeLay received any benefit, directly or indirectly, from moneys derived by Abramoff and Scanlon from Indian
tribes.

Abramoff was fired last fall by Greenberg Traurig and the firm now is defending itself against suits filed by his former clients after settling
with the Tigua for an undisclosed amount. A spokesman for Abramoff's
lawyer declined to discuss his political contributions to various public figures,
or the grand jury probe.

"Any fair reading of Mr. Abramoff's career would show that his (Indian) clients benefited immensely from the hard work that he and his team did on their behalf," said the spokesman, Andrew Blum.

In November, both Abramoff and Scanlon invoked their Fifth Amendment right
against self-incrimination when they appeared before the Senate Committee on
Indian Affairs, whose chairman, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., called their Tigua dealings "nothing short of a classic shake-down
operation."

By then, it had come to light that Abramoff, beginning in 2001, had supported an anti-gambling campaign in Texas and Louisiana led by former
Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed.

That campaign, which hurt the Tigua's struggle to keep their casino
open, was funded by the Louisiana Coushatta tribe, which wanted to thwart would-be competitors to its own lucrative gaming business.

The Tiguas later learned that at Abramoff's direction, they had helped underwrite a golf trip to Scotland attended by, among others, their nemesis
Ralph Reed.

Recovered e-mails aired at the Senate hearings revealed Abramoff referred to his Indian clients as "morons, monkeys and troglodytes."

In one e-mail about the Tigua, written as their casino was going under, Abramoff wrote, "Stupid folks get wiped out." Later, when the tribe responded to his offer of help, Abramoff wrote Scanlon: "I'm on the phone with the Tigua. Fire up the jet, baby, we're going to El Paso."

Scanlon responded, "I want all their money."

In his Senate testimony, Marc Schwartz, the Tigua's lobbyist from 1998 through 2004, said Abramoff bragged about his political connections in Washington, from DeLay on up.

"He had spoken quite highly of his association with President Bush's transition team back in 2000 ... his close friendship with the
president, with (Bush adviser) Karl Rove," Schwartz said.

The most bizarre revelation of Abramoff's dealings with the Tiguas was his
suggestion that tribal officials buy life insurance on elder members and list some of his private charities as beneficiaries.

"It was certainly an extremely morbid subject," Schwartz said, telling the
panel the Tiguas rejected the proposal.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., now the committee chairman, has promised to open new hearings over Abramoff and Scanlon's activities.

But for the soon-to-be-broke Tiguas, there is no hope on the federal level and very little in Austin of legislation that would allow them to reopen their pictograph-decorated casino, which once drew packed houses with its high-dollar bingo and Texas Hold 'Em games.

Open for nearly a decade, it ran 24 hours a day and employed 1,000 people. Now it operates part-time as a nightclub and an 8-liner hall where, instead of huge jackpots, people earn points to swap for mundane merchandise like colognes, bedspreads or small televisions.

Both operations are losing money and only a skeleton work crew remains.

"It's lonely. Before, our day would go by really fast," said one casino employee who asked not to be named. "Let's face it. No one really liked
coming out here to the lower valley. Without the casino, there's no reason to come."

Another employee said many left to work at other casinos. The few jobs that
remain at Speaking Rock aren't what they used to be, she said.

"The salary, the insurance, the vacations, we don't have anything," the worker complained. "I feel really bad. Some of my family used to work here but now they are working in a casino in Ruidoso (N.M.) - but their
houses and families are still here."

Without the casino income, the tribe has cut back on everything from salaries to scholarships to health care benefits. The $15,000 annual
stipend that each of the roughly 1,300 members once received is only a fond
memory.

"In two or three years, it will be back to the way it was before we had gaming," Tribal Gov. Arturo Senclair said. "We'll be dependent on
whatever federal money we can get. I can't imagine."

However, Hisa believes the Tigua had no choice but to take a chance on Abramoff.

"It's like (Senclair) said. If your child is ill, dying, and the only person who has the cure says it will cost $4.2 million, you do what you have to do," Hisa said.

"What is Jack Abramoff going to be remembered for? This is the guy who screwed the Indians. That's his legacy."