Wampum

I want to repost something I wrote on April 20th, 2006, entitled, CREA's Roots in the Former Texas Governor's Office, as I'll be updating some of the information in the next few days.
* * *
Yesterday I wrote on the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates' apparent genesis at the hands of Republican Congressional Leadership in the summer of 1998. For those who haven't been following along with my obsession with this group, CREA has been heavily implicated in the Jack Abramoff/Michael Scanlon tribal lobbying fiasco. According to emails, faxes and memos between Abramoff and CREA President Italia Federici, Abramoff's tribal client donated upwards of $500,000 between 2001 to 2003, purportedly for research on environmental issues at the behest of Gale Norton at the Department of the Interior. Apparently CREA also used the funds in several PR campaigns supporting drilling in ANWR and against pro-environment Senators such as John Kerry.

Since CREA's part in the Abramoff scandal broke early last year, the media narrative has been suprisingly muted; according to most accounts, CREA a was small and insignificant "green-scam" organization founded by Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton in 1998 and funded by oil, gas and chemical companies. When Norton became Interior Secretary, she handed the organization over to her former campaign worker, Federici, who then quickly hooked up with Abramoff and immediately shifted the focus of the organization from the environment to simply helping Abramoff's tribal clients lobby Interior Department staff in order to influence gaming policy.

The problem with this narrative is that it ignores basic facts. While Norton didn't arrive in Washington as Interior Secretary until 2001, Federici was listed as President on her FEC disclosures as early as 1997. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Grover Norquist was equally associated with the group at the time of it's "official" coming out party in 1998, as were Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich. And CREA's ability to raise money prior to meeting Abramoff was well established, as indicated by the $100K haul at their 6/15/98 fundraiser, and their one and only 527 filing, where they grossed $121K in three months during 2000.

CREA wasn't just tied to Congressional leaders. A January 2000 invitation-only reception for outgoing GOP Chair Haley Barbour was hosted by CREA on the Hill, and subsequent Chair Jim Nicholson co-hosted a party with CREA for Gale Norton in March, 2001. CREA was invited to many US government sponsored environmental conferences, as well as some international ones. Federici gave numerous talks and even had a paper published in the Ripon Society's quarterly magazine. DC's most influential Republican socialite, Julie Finley, sat on the board and hosted monthly dinner parties for the organization.

But there's a dark side to CREA as well. The group has never filed 990 forms (required by a 501(c)3) with the IRS. In July 2000, CREA's vice president, former House Reform Committee staffer-turned-CREA vice-president R. Jared Carpenter registered the organization as a 527 political advocacy group, though under the name "Renew Our Urban Centers." The three mailing addresses used over the past six years are all rented boxes at Mailboxes Etc./UPS Store locations around DC. Carpenter consistently used the address of an apartment rented under Federici's name on the filings, while he listed Federici as residing at Grover Norquist's home. Neither Carpenter nor Federici ever listed their bios on CREA's website, and Carpenter filed his disclosure with the FEC as Robert J. Carpenter, and is currently listed in the phone book simply as Robert Carpenter.

CREA never reported it's funding from Abramoff's tribes, nor any other source of income after October, 2000, yet in emails with Abramoff, Federici indicates CREA has other "regular sponsors".

CREA's actions are also cloaked in secrecy. We know that one project, a national survey on consumer attitudes regarding energy, ended up in Cheney's Energy Task Force documents. CREA also had the funds to buy full-page ads in the WaPo and USAToday promoting drilling in ANWR. The group's connections to Artic Power are evident but not fully disclosed.

While we have a small clue as to CREA's actions after the Bush Administration came into power, the period prior to that event is even more murky. This morning, I found a detail that confused me even more.

On a webpage at the University of Texas entitled, "Texas Governor George W. Bush: An Inventory of Policy Office Records at the Texas State Archives, 1982, 1989, 1993-2000," I found this reference:

Staff memoranda, January-October, 1997: John Howard: [4 folders]: [Subjects include: emission reduction and grandfathered programs; air quality; environmental cleanup programs; Southwest Travis County Water District; water planning; water rights; groundwater; vehicle emissions testing; Federal Safe Drinking Water Act; Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission; Texas Water Development Board; Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates; Environmental Protection Agency; run-off waters; water quality; New Mexico; environmental issues with Mexico; ozone; and carbon pollution]

According to his current law-firm biography, John Howard was "Governor Bush's Environment and Natural Resources Policy Director, where he crafted policy initiatives and assisted with significant environmental and energy legislation."

On March 18, 1998, Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton testified before the House Resources Committee on the National Environmental Policy Act. In her testimony, she claimed as an accomplishment her position of national chair of a "new" environmental organization, CREA. The first indication I can find of CREA's existence is Italia Federici's August 27, 1997 campaign contribution disclosure to the FEC where she lists her employer as "CREA".

What I find immensely surprising was that a brand-spanking new Republican "environmental" organization, of which I can find no mention in the media prior to 1998, produced documents which ended up in the hands of Texas Governor George W. Bush's environment and natural resources policy director sometime between January and October 1997.

Was it pure serendipity that, according to The Nation, "in 1999 Norton joined the team advising the Bush campaign on developing a conservative environmental agenda"?

As often happens these days, the media's narrative on CREA has been way off the mark. And while Norton has packed her bags and headed back to Colorado, her partner in crime, Grover Norquist, has been spending more and more time at the White House these days. And not surprisingly, Norton's nominated successor, Dirk Kempthorne, was an original Congressional sponsor of CREA, back in 1998. CREA, too, has recently raised it's head for the first time in months, signing on to the recently formed Conservative coalition of grassroots front-groups, LobbySense.

And Karl Rove has been purportedly "demoted" to do what these days? Perhaps Grover and crew can shed some light on the subject.

* * *