"Early in 1998, Jack Abramoff was in Imelda Marcos’s condominium in Manila, advising the former first lady of the Philippines on how to overturn a Supreme Court order that she go to prison for graft. His proposal: She should promise the country’s leaders that she would not run for election, loan half of an alleged slush fund to the ruling party and threaten a public relations campaign in which Abramoff, as her lobbyist, would “destroy” the government’s reputation.

The plot was classic Abramoff, involving the trademark elements of his Washington lobbying: a transfer of money, a promise of political support and a threat of harm to those who stood in his clients’ way. It worked in Manila, he writes in his new memoir, “Capitol Punishment.” (He notes in the book that Marcos called the plan “brilliant.”)

It’s not every day that a veteran Washington insider — one who, at the zenith of his career, was the city’s highest-paid lobbyist — writes a 300-page account of his political triumphs, serial lawbreaking and unethical conduct, all of which ended in his imprisonment for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy. Abramoff’s status as perhaps the premier modern symbol of Washington’s corruption by monied interests makes his reflections on the events surrounding his disgrace especially tantalizing.

But the curtain is pulled back only partially. When it comes to his own role, Abramoff leaves out some embarrassing details, making a reader suspect that there is still more to tell. And his sensible yet improbable prescriptions — which Abramoff says occurred to him while he was doing time at a minimum-security federal prison in Cumberland — are undercut by the pride with which he recounts his lobbying victories. We are left with an odd mixture of candid revelation, defiant celebration and score-settling, all stuck to a postscript of avowed remorse."

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In Jack Abramoff’s memoir, ‘Capitol Punishment,’ an unrepentant reformer? (The Washington Post 12/11)