Wampum

Another pair of Abramoff angels gets his-n-hers wings. Details at the SacBee.

Posted by EBW at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Trevor L. Blackann entered a plea yesterday to making a false statement on his 2003 tax returns by failing to report as income about $4,100 in illegal gifts that he received from Jack Abramoff. Blackann was a legislative assistant in the House and Senate for Missouri Sen. Christopher S. "Kit" Bond and Rep. Roy Blunt, both Republicans.

Blackann admitted receiving gifts from three lobbyists in 2003, including a free trip to attend the first game of the 2003 World Series. That trip included airline travel to and from New York City, transportation around the city in a chauffeured sport utility vehicle, a ticket to the game, a souvenir baseball jersey, admission to and entertainment at a gentlemen's club following the game and free meals and drinks.

Here's the plea.

Posted by EBW at 06:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Abramoff is ancient history, unless you're a 'skin, in which case Jack's shadow is still doing the rounds between K Street and Interior. So what could transition look like?

For a start, the Nixon, Haldeman, Erlichman model, which is the gold standard, the high-water mark for the Federal-Tribal relationship. Translated into Transition-Speak, coordinating Federal Indian policy stays "close" to the TT, not farmed out to some discrete hire/fires tagged for staffers for the eventual assistant secretary.

In the longer term, the transition could position FI policy as transitioning from Interior, where trees and bears and rocks live, to State, where Other Peoples live.

Next, the TT could spend some quality time with Eloise Cobell. There's a lot folks who haven't followed this for the past decade don't know, and recycled Clinton (Bill) people weren't particularly more clued in than the Bush/Cheney lot of political appointees.

Then there's the MMS. A wicked rich vein of corruption reaching many interesting places, almost all of which were protected by the DOJ in the Sansonetti and Wooldridge comedy of manors and revolving doors.

The TT could staff up the Hill policy desks with someone who owns the PL280 repeal task and get someone serious, Rob Williams comes to mind, to work on unraveling the Rehnquist nightmare that's created rape tourism in Indian Country.

And finally, there's Ross. A man in need of a vacation. Come to think of it Chad could do with one too. Club Fed or not, that's a never mind. But vacated. Gone. In TT speak that's a Special Trustee designated _now_, and the AUSA for the Eastern District of Oklahoma briefed that time on target (the CNO) is expected.

Posted by EBW at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MB got email asking about Steve Silver and Jack Abramoff this morning, so here's what she wrote on February 14th, 2006 ... More questions than answers.

Many people are not all that familiar with the Office of Public Records Lobby Filing Disclosure Program. Essentially, anyone who wants to lobby any US government agency or office, including Congress or the Executive, has to register and then file semi-annual reports. For the recovering archaeologist like me, it is a treasure trove of information on some of the sleaziest creatures on earth: Lobbyists.

The database is a fairly powerful tool, once you get used to it. You can sort by registrant, client, lobbyist, issue code, lobbied agency, date, etc. In the past, I've generally used the one of the first three, but today, I branched out, sorting the data by issue code, IND, for Indian Affairs. It's important to note that there is in fact a separate issue code for gaming (GAM), which includes tribal gaming.

The vast majority of clients under this code for any given year are Indian tribes. But as I scanned the entries for 2002, I came across one that stood out: The "registrant" was Robertson Monagle and Eastaugh; the client, Greenberg Traurig (actually, misspelled "Trauig".) Robertson Monagle's headquarters were located in Anchorage, though the lobbyist named on the account, Steven Silver's offices were in Arlington, Virgina. A new sort brought up all the filings for Greenberg Traurig by Silver, just a handful, beginning with a registration in May, 2002. A quick check by client indicated that Greenberg had only hired their own lobbyists six times in the past eight years (when records became available online) all, with the exception of Silver, for tribal gaming issues.

The reason this registration (Page 1, Page 2) was so intriguing was information provided on the second page, under "Lobbying Issues". Silver indicated by the codes, "ENG", "IND", "NAT" and "ENV", that his lobbying issues were Energy, Indian Affairs, Natural Resources and Environment. In fact, on the next line indicating current and anticipated specific lobbying issues, Silver elaborated, "All issues relating to Indian Policy" and "Exploration for Oil and Gas".

None of Greenberg Traurig's tribal clients at the time had extensive holdings in oil and gas; they were gaming tribes, mostly from the Deep South or West Coast. Even more intriguing was that most of Silver's other clients (outside of a few municipalities in Alaska) had significant timber, oil & gas and/or mining interests, including Louisiana Pacific and BP America. Ironically, the primary lobbyist for BP America in 2002 was National Environmental Strategies, Steve Griles' former firm. In fact, BP was such a loyal client for Griles, it was one of his first he signed up when he left the Interior Department and formed Lundquist, Nethercutt and Griles in early 2004.

Silver only remained Greenberg Traurig's lobbyist for a few months. In Silver's only filing with actual lobbying activity, he claimed this lobbying on Indian Policy and oil and gas exploration was before the House and Senate solely on "ENG" (energy) issues (Page 1, Page 2.) Indian Trust Land leases would fall under "ENG"; tribal gaming would not.

Thereafter, Silver claimed no lobbying activities for Greenberg, and filed a "termination with no activity" in mid-year 2003. In May, 2004, Silver filed "registrant amendment', switching lobbying issue codes a simple GAM (gaming), and claiming work on a internet gaming bill. Greenberg terminated the contract in 2005, after the bill died in the Senate Banking Committee.

An unleashing of the Googling Monkeys brought up very little in regards to Steven Silver. A search on Opensecrets.org indicated a significant Republican donor, with $28,000 handed out since 2000. Robertson Monagle doesn't even have a website in either Anchorage or Arlington.

So why in mid-2002 did Greenberg Traurig, now firmly under the control of Jack Abramoff, hire a no-name natural resources lawyer-lobbyist to work on Indian policy and oil and gas exploration before Congress?

Update: I've been following up on some hunches, and I'm fairly sure one in particular will pan out: The connection between Greenberg Traurig and Steven Silver? Former Don Young (R-AK) staffer and lead counsel on the House Resources' committee (not to mention Team Abramoff heavy hitter) Duane Gibson.

Update2: : Another Alaska connection? Steven Griles former and present partner, Alaska native (no, not Native) Andrew Lundquist. As mentioned previously, Lundquist served as Executive Director of Cheney's Energy Task Force from Feb. 1, 2001, to Sept. 30, 2001, then remained as Cheney's Director of Energy Policy from Oct. 1, 2001, until the end of March, 2002.

Posted by EBW at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tribes are not. The language of the Victims Rights Act is clear:

‘‘(e) DEFINITIONS.—For the purposes of this chapter, the term ‘crime victim’ means a person directly and proximately harmed as a result of the commission of a Federal offense."

Posted by EBW at 08:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Susie Madrake (of Suburban Guerrilla was kind enough to send a pointer to the UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, PROPOSED COMMITTEE REPORT of JUNE 11, 2008, 35 pages of high minded investigative righteousness that mentions Indians twice on pages 5, 6 and 11, and once more on page 26, the MMS, or oil, gas, coal and uranium not at all, the IGRA or Indian Gaming not at all, Chad Smith or the BIA not at all, and so on.

The Democrats unwillingness to lift the veil and go beyond deference to the "Senator from Indian Country" is why the efforts of the Congressional Black Caucus should interest, not simply alarm, Indians working towards reform, whether of tribal governments long captured by corporations and long abandoned by distant agency, or of basic economic means to improve the well-being of Indians.

Posted by EBW at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The CQ coverage is here.

Obviously, no one in Waxman's staff reads wampum, or has the smarts or the stamina to go after the issues, so they're just doing a round of, as Dan Burton correctly observes, pin the tail on the elephant.

Dan Burton , R-Ind., accused the committee’s chairman, Henry A. Waxman , D‑Calif., of trying to cause collateral damage and harm perceptions of both President Bush and presumed GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

"Henry's on a mission," said Burton, a former chairman of that committee. "If the White House is bloodied up enough, they think that it will hurt McCain. They want to smack the White House again and again until it starts reflecting on Mr. McCain."

There was a reason Jack was present in a lot of places. Money. A lot of it.

Posted by EBW at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Susie picked up detail on Koch Industries and "The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound". Here's our priors:

1. The foxes in the MMS henhouse..., June 27, 2007
2. Blogger Ethics Pannel needed, June 10, 2006
3. Carbon tears, May 19, 2006 (with a nice bit on the windfarms off the Belgian and Dutch coasts -- I get to look at the latter every time I fly into AMS).
4. Koch's Brand of Bozos, May 16, 2006
5. Was Jack Abramoff really an "insider"?, April 18, 2006

One of the great things about this cycle is knowing in advance how many of the Abramoff fish are not going to be fried by either Obama or McCain, and how eager Dems are to look the other way when it comes to Interior, Indians, and Energy.

Posted by EBW at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Steven Maviglio at the CMR is reporting (or posting or whatever) that Doolittle will announce that he will not seek re-election.

I'm wicked amused that Ted Gaines is messaging that environmentalists are to blame for last summer's Tahoe fires. Remember, its a 10+ red district, and even though Gaines' argument is wrong, it is likely to stick unless Charlie Brown knows his way around fine fuels and load and selective cut and bug kill and all the rest of the forestry management loopholes the corporate-to-peckerwood loggers have written into the Bush-era Dept. of Ag's Forestry management plans.

CA-04 enters the Doolittle Death Watch, July 24, 2007

CA-04 heats up in another dimension, June 28, 2007

Posted by EBW at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'll have more to say later, but I just caught this on Google News:

Abramoff Figure Spared Prison

By MATT APUZZO - 8 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Republican environmental activist who arranged lobbyist Jack Abramoff's entree into the Interior Department was sentenced Friday to two months in a halfway house and four years probation.

Italia Federici, who pleaded guilty in June to tax evasion and obstructing a Senate investigation, was spared prison only because she has become a key witness in the Justice Department's ongoing corruption investigation.

Federici has admitted acting as a link between Abramoff and J. Steven Griles, the former deputy Interior Department secretary who for five years was her boyfriend. Griles provided Abramoff with advice and internal agency information, sometimes directly and sometimes through Federici.

Federici was way more involved than this sentence indicates, so she better have some serious goods on a big fish. Norton, Sansonetti, Barbour? I'll have to think about this one.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm reading through Kevin Gambrell's testimony in the Cobell trial, and it's really fascinating. I've argued for years that the lessees are terrified that Congress and/or the Courts will turn to them in order to determine how much money should have ended up in Trust coffers, as it will show they underpaid their leases for years, just as they did on federal non-Indian land. But Gambrell offers up a third way to help in the accounting, which could be particularly helpful in those cases where the original documents just happened to be destroyed by the US Government. From the transcript: (Q's are Cobell attorneys, A's are from Gambrell.)

Q. When you discussed, in response to the judge's question, how the unitization works, was allocation an important issue?

A. Allocation is extremely critical in unit allocation. It is the essence of getting payment correctly to individual Indian owners, tribes, states, federal programs, and private landowners. Without it, you cannot allocate monies properly.

Q. Could you explain how the allocation process works?

A. Allocation process goes all the way back to the lease instrument. In order to get money correctly to an individual, you have to understand every aspect of the lease instrument in terms of: Is it unitized, does it commingle, what is the size of the property, what type of production comes off that property; to, when it goes through the system, is it a correct royalty rate, is it going to the correct owners, is there probate backing up those owners? And when you do that, you have to look at source documents, and you have to do third party verification.

Q. What do you mean, first of all, by source documents?

A. Well, for example, if you look at an allocation to an individual Indian, in order to get to that allocation, I have to go all the way back to the unit agreement. And I have to look at an exhibit called Exhibit B within the unit agreement, that talks about the complete breakdown of every ownership type within that unit, because I may have 30 percent owned by federal, 20 percent by Navajo Tribal, 30 percent by Navajo allotted, and maybe 20 percent by private landowner. I have to go all the way back to that document as a primary source to get to the payment to the individual Indian. And then I have to go to the royalty rate, and then I have to go to the probates and look at probates, gift deeds, living wills, et cetera, in order to get to the complete payment out to the allottee.

1 Q. That sounds like a cumbersome process. Is it?

A. It's very complex. If you were to look at this type of system in a private landowner's case, oil and gas industry hires land people, they pay them very well, in the $200,000 range, to go back and do this title research to find out who gets paid, how much they get paid, how do you allocate, et cetera. It also requires, in the private sector, a legal
opinion from an attorney that's certified, that says that the title in the allocations are certified correct, and the division of interest will pay out correctly. It requires an extensive amount of work. It requires very high level land people and attorneys to do this type of work.

Q. Is that what you did at the FIMO office when you were running the FIMO office?

A. Repeat that.

Q. Is that what you did at the FIMO office when you were running the FIMO office?

A. Yes, that was part of what I did, and my staff did.

Q. Do you have any knowledge as to whether or not this was done by MMS or anyone else outside of the FIMO office with regard to individual Indian mineral or oil and gas lands?

A. No, I'm not. We were in a unique position. We had every agency within our office, so we looked at everything from the lease agreement itself, the BLM-approved communitization

A. We brought it to the attention of MMS many times, and asked that MMS make corrections on the reports, in which case often they did.

Q. If you didn't rely on the MMS database, what did you rely on?

A. We relied on our own internal databases that we developed with companies, and we relied on companies' reports directly going to us.

Q. So is it correct, then, that you relied on third party information?

A. We relied on third party and primary source data.

Q. Are third party documents important to determining accuracy with regard to mineral and oil and gas leases?

A. Absolutely.

THE COURT: Would you call that a leading question?

MR. GINGOLD: I apologize, Your Honor.

BY MR. GINGOLD:

Q. Why would you need to rely on third party data?

A. We rely on third party databases because we don't always trust what an operator tells us. We have companies that produce oil. They tell us one thing on their inventory and what they sold; and then we go to a transporter, and we find that the information is different, that they picked up more oil than the4 company reported. And so we do rely on run tickets from trucking transportation companies, and gas pipeline companies that transport gas, to verify production.

Q. What is a run ticket?

A. Run ticket?

Q. Yeah, what is it?

MR. KIRSCHMAN: Your Honor, objection. Outside the scope of this case. This is asset management. This is talking about what private companies do. This is not about a historical accounting.

THE COURT: Well --

MR. GINGOLD: Your Honor, may I?

THE COURT: No, we touched on this yesterday. I don't want to overdo this. I mean, you're right that this is, going forward, an asset management more than it is historical accounting, but frankly, it helps for me to kind of fill in the picture of what is known and what is not known, and what can be verified and what can't be verified. So a reasonable amount of this, I'm going to allow. Go ahead.

MR. KIRSCHMAN: Thank you, Your Honor.

BY MR. GINGOLD:
Q. What is a run ticket, Mr. Gambrell?

A. A run ticket is a statement that is often signed by a transporter and an operator when oil leaves a tank. What they do is, they measure the oil in the tank when it's full, and then it fills up the truck, and then they measure the tank when the truck is filled. And between the full measurement before the truck filled up and the truck measurement after the truck fills up is the quantity of oil that leaves the lease.

Q. And how is that related to the income produced from oil and gas or mineral leases?

A. Anything to do with income depends on the volumes that are sold off the lease. You cannot determine the monies going to individual Indians if you do not know what was sold.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The plaintiffs (Indians) pulled out their big guns yesterday Tuesday, and the testimony was stunning. Indianz.com (the only media resource I know of which is truly covering this landmark trial), has the story. First up was DoI field solicitor Robert McCarthy:

An Interior Department attorney who has been locked out of his office at the Bureau of Indian Affairs accused the agency on Tuesday of failing to account for millions of dollars in trust funds.

After a stint in Oklahoma, field solicitor Robert McCarthy went to work for the BIA in Palm Springs, California, over three years ago. He said he quickly learned that the agency didn't have a way to track more than $30 million in annual lease payments owed to members of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

"The agency had a very poor system of record-keeping and was grossly mismanaging the leases ... and was generally not enforcing the leases," testified McCarthy, one of the witnesses for the plaintiffs in the Cobell trust fund lawsuit.

Enforcement was so lax that it was impossible to tell whether Agua Caliente landowners received the right amount of money for the use of their land and whether they received it on time, McCarthy said. The BIA essentially relied on the word of developers, private parties and outsiders.

"I saw files that were years in default," McCarthy said of leases that weren't enforced.

Even when a payment was made, the BIA didn't always pass it on to the beneficiary, McCarthy testified. In one case, the BIA kept a trust payment of $130,000 in a "special deposit account" for over 25 years because the agency didn't know whose money it was.

...

Despite the apparent mismanagement, the BIA made money off of Agua Caliente landowners. "In virtually every case for virtually every type of administrative action," the agency charged a fee for its services, McCarthy said.

For example, a fee of 1 percent was applied to every single land sale, McCarthy said. In Palm Springs -- where real estate is big business -- this amounted to payments to the BIA that were as high as $60,000, according to one document entered into evidence.

But federal regulations limit fees for land sales to $22.50, McCarthy said. The regulations also cap fees for leases at $500, though that apparently wasn't followed in Palm Springs.

"Those fees are charged in Palm Springs on every lease," McCarthy told the court.

...

The situation prompted McCarthy to warn his superiors in the Solicitor's Office, the Inspector General and eventually Jim Cason -- the associate deputy secretary at DOI who was in charge of the BIA at the time -- about the problems in Palm Springs. "I was kicked out of my office after I made my disclosures," McCarthy told Judge James Robertson, who wondered why the solicitor was working from home -- with pay -- rather than at the BIA office.

"Everyone stopped talking to me," McCarthy added. "I was shunned."

And when McCarthy informed his superiors that he was going to testify in the Cobell trial, he was told he was going to be fired for allegedly disclosing confidential trust data to the media. The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility group is defending McCarthy, who has filed appeals over his employment status.

...

After his direct testimony, McCarthy was treated in a hostile manner by Robert Kirschman, a DOJ attorney. Kirschman attempted to show that McCarthy tried to take sole credit for identifying the proper owner of the $130,000 trust payment, mischaracterized the way in which Agua Caliente leases are tracked and gave inaccurate information in the memo to Cason.

McCarthy appeared to withstand the scrutiny and Kirschman cut off his cross-examination after seeming to stumble on a question about fees. Kirschman also tried to make an issue out of a memo that he said McCarthy failed to provide to the court.

Next up for the Cobell plaintiffs was Albuquerque Bureau of Indian Affairs employee Mona Infield, whose responsibilities cover data recovery efforts:

Infield, a member of the Citizen Potawataomi Nation of Oklahoma, gave succinct but detailed testimony about trust accounting practices dating back to the 1980s. She spoke of outdated systems, missing computer records and a lack of enforcement.

"They were relying on an honor system to pay the royalties," she said of government agencies.

Infield concluded her testimony yesterday afternoon after DOJ attorneys declined to ask questions.

Up today is Kevin Gambrell, the former director of the Federal Indian Minerals Office in Farmington, New Mexico from 1996 to 2003. Gambrell testified before Congress regarding mismanagement of trust accounts, and was fired from his job for purportedly "destroying records." Gambrell maintains the documents were merely copies of originals properly recorded and stored by MMS.

PBS' Now recorded an interview with Gambrell in 2006. For a preview of what Gambrell might have to say today, read the transcript.

Correction: Gannett has also been following the story. In fact, Solicitor McCarthy faces dismissal for disclosing the extent of the mismanagement to Gannett earlier this year.

Update: I misread the original article in Indianz, and thus was a day off in my reporting. McCarthy and Infield testified on Tuesday, and Gambrell yesterday. I'm currently reading through the transcript.

In addition, Indianz.com is reporting both parties have rested their cases and have until Dec. 30th for closing arguments.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

John Doolittle, nine-term incumbent and Abramoff prosecution target raised $50,000 in 3Q07, his primary opponent Maj. Eric Egland (R-Freeper), doing his first run at doors, raised $80,000, and Charlie Brown got a very respectable $212,000 for his second run at the 04 doors.

Remember, its a 10+ red district.

Posted by EBW at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

What are the odds that one dollar in five contributed to the Florida Republican Party during the past quarter came from the Palm Beach Kennel Club, Mardi Gras Gaming, and the Jacksonville and Hollywood dog tracks?

Marco Rubio, Republican from West Miami, and Speaker of the the Florida House, is leading the Republican House Caucus on the issue of gaming in Florida. Indian gaming in Florida. He's wicked opposed to it.

Now recalculate your odds. Did they change?

Posted by EBW at 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Top of the e-fold at Indianz.com:

Interior attorney to testify at upcoming Cobell trial
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Filed Under: Cobell

Robert McCarthy, a field solicitor for the Interior Department, will testify at the upcoming Cobell historical accounting trial.

McCarthy is listed as a witness for the Cobell plaintiffs. He is expected to provide information about the mismanagement of Indian trust accounts in southern California.

The department is trying to fire McCarthy, saying he allegedly released confidential trust data to the media. A final decision is being made by Solicitor David Bernhardt.

The Cobell trial will focus on the historical accounting of the trust. It starts October 10 at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.

I assume that Bernhardt is arguing that if McCarthy had issues with trust management, he should have gone to the Department of Justice and not the media. Anyone else find that suggestion downright laughable?

Posted by MB Williams at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Indianz.com has the full report, and I'll only pull out some of the juicier tidbits for now (not wanting to steal their thunder and all):

Court: Navajo Nation owed money for bungled lease
Friday, September 14, 2007
Filed Under: Law | Trust

The Interior Department breached its trust to the Navajo Nation and must pay damages for mishandling a coal mining lease, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.

In a unanimous decision, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals said the "undisputed facts" prove Interior breached its fiduciary duties to the largest tribe in the country. Swayed by a lobbyist, the Reagan administration approved a coal mining lease for a less than a "reasonable" royalty rate, the three-judge panel concluded.

...

"Accordingly, this court holds that the nation has a cognizable money-mandating claim against the United States for the alleged breaches of trust and that the government breached its trust duties," Judge Arthur J. Gajarsa, a Reagan nominee, wrote in the 39-page ruling.

Barring further appeals, the Court of Federal Claims will now determine the damages the government must pay for mishandling the lease. The tribe claims it lost out on at least $600 million in royalties for one of the most valuable coal deposits in the U.S.

The case is very complicated, and has already gone through a litany of decisions, some of which were very unfavorable to the Navajo; thus it will most likely be appealed to the SCOTUS. However, any victory for Indians in US courts is good, and this is a big one.

More from Indianz.com:

The Federal Circuit also said the government violated its "common law trust duties of care, candor, and loyalty" by approving a lease with a royalty rate that was more favorable to Peabody Coal than to the Navajo Nation. Peabody is the world's largest coal company and has been mining the reservation for decades.

When the Bureau of Indian Affairs recommended the tribe receive a 20 percent royalty rate on its coal, Peabody hired a lobbyist who was a "a former aide and friend" to then-Interior Secretary Don Hodel, the court said. After a meeting that was kept secret from the tribe, Hodel told the BIA to stand down from the higher rate and to urge the tribe to negotiate with Peabody.

"Facing severe economic pressure," the court said, the tribe was forced to agree to a lease with a 12.5 percent royalty rate. The difference cost the tribe at least $600 million in royalties, according to the lawsuit.

Although the actions at issue took place more than 20 years ago, they remain fresh in the minds of many Navajo leaders, who feel betrayed by their trustee. Their feelings worsened when Hodel's previously unknown dealings with the lobbyist came to light through the course of the lawsuit.

It's important to note, as I have time and time again, that many of the characters who ran the Reagan Interior Department, including specific departments which cover royalties and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, returned to Washington to work for the currently Bush Administration. Among them, Gale Norton, Tom Sansonetti, and J. Steven Griles, who, according to Indianz.com, was directly involved in the royalty fiasco (guess Abramoff wasn't the first lobbyist who had undue influence over Griles.) The former three have now left the Administration, but there are others who were involved who still hold positions of immense power at Interior, including direct oversight of the Trust responsibility.

The second official was Ross Swimmer, who currently serves as Special Trustee for American Indians and is responsible for ensuring the government meets its trust obligations. He approved the lease with the lower royalty rate without studying the effect it would have on the tribe.

Swimmer was also deposed for the case but failed to recall doing so when asked about it during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and during a federal court trial for the Cobell trust fund case. He also told Native reporter Jodi Rave that he couldn't remember whether he was deposed.

This ruling comes less than a month before the grandmother of all Indian Trust cases, Cobell v. Kempthorne, goes back to trial. It is not the precedent the Bush Administration wanted, of that, I'm quite sure.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Hill (via Indianz.com)

Former Sen. Campbell pays law firm $20,000
By Mike Soraghan
July 24, 2007

Former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) paid his law firm more than $20,000 after his ex-chief of staff Ginnie Kontnik pleaded guilty in connection with a kickback investigation.

According to campaign finance records, Campbell paid $21,257 on May 11 to Patton Boggs, the firm he retained after the Department of Justice began investigating allegations that Kontnik overpaid a Campbell staffer and demanded $2,000 back for herself.

Campbell's payment came out of unspent campaign funds. He'd already paid more than $150,000 to the firm.

Indianz added a line not in the original article: "Campbell retired in March 2004."

For those who need a bit of reminding of the events of late winter, 2004, at the time, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO) was the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. During the last week of February, the Washington Post did its big expose on Jack Abramoff and his tribal clients. Abramoff was a long-term foe of John McCain, viewed by many as having been, with friend Grover Norquist, behind the dirty anti-McCain campaign in the 2000 South Carolina GOP primary. McCain is nothing if not a man of vengance: On Thursday, February 26, Senator John McCain, member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee (but not, yet, the Chairman), announced that he would hold hearings on Abramoff and his cronies. That evening, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, checked himself into a Washington hospital with chest pains. Turned out to be heartburn. But it didn't stop him from deciding, only a month after his splashy kickoff to his re-election campaign, to retire from the Senate due to "health concerns." It also didn't stop Campbell from picking up a very lucrative gig with the big lobbying firm, Holland and Knight.

Campbell's connections to indicted and soon-to-be sentenced CREA executive director Italia Federici are very clear, though seldom discussed. Campbell was on the board of her other GOP project in Colorado, promoting private funding of the Arts. I've always suspected his was one of the two names redacted as attendees for a party for Gale Norton in an email between Federici and Abramoff in March, 2001, a party Abramoff also attended.

Campbell still may need his high paid Patton Boggs attorneys, so he better make sure his balance is current.

Posted by MB Williams at 09:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago, when the Agura fire put South Lake Tahoe at risk, I mentioned to MB that Charlie Brown's CM should be prepared for a snap election, not just a leasurely stroll up to an uncontested 06/08 primary and a run against an electoral corpse in 11/08, in a 10+ margin red district.

Mike Holmes just announced an exploratory committee for another run. He lost a primary challenge against John Doolittle in the last cycle by a 1 to 2 margin. He positioned himself as the "ethically sound Republican" in yesterday's presser in Sacramento.

Eric Egland hasn't announced, but he'd be an idiot to pass up the chance that there will be a snap election and Doolittle's name won't be on the primary ballot. He's not a "political newcomer", but he is a talking head who hasn't (yet) done doors.

The day Doolittle is indicted, Charlie Brown will need CA-04 money, CDP money, netroots money, DTRIP money, Indian money, Democratic primary national campaign(s) monies, and DNC money, because (a) its 10+ red, and (b) it will fall before the rest of the calendar, and (c) if Maj. Egland (R-Freeper) beats the councilman from a town of 12,500 that lives on Gold Rush ephemera and the last Denny's before chains-manditory on I-80 in the Republican primary, it will be a referendum on the Iraq War, and (d) if not (c), then it will be a referendum on "clean" Republicans vs " clean" Democrats,

With Bush polling at 25%, losing a race that only has a 10+ red margin, for whatever reason, before the '08 cycle's general calendar, would really sting. It would be like losing the Hackett race again.

Posted by EBW at 10:49 PM | Permalink

via the Native American Times

As my car left the red clay hills which make up the Mississippi Choctaw reservation this past Saturday, a collective sigh of aiali (justice) and relief overtook me. It was the same feeling that was plainly visible in the expressions of many of the Mississippi Choctaw people who I had spent the last two days with. The reign of Phillip Martin and his administration composed of numerous non-Indians had ended. In its place was change and renewal. A break from the lobbyists in Washington D.C. was talked about. More jobs for Choctaw community members were expected.

To understand the effect one individual could play on the larger Choctaw Nation, most people have only to think about where the Choctaw Nation extends. The majority one talks with may remark about the Choctaw Nation being located solely in Oklahoma, while some others offer up Oklahoma and Mississippi. Very few talk of the communities outside of these areas. Of course, the communities outside of these areas don't currently own and operate gaming facilities, the seeming prerequisite for publicity these days in Indian Country.

So the question becomes who is the Choctaw Nation? The Choctaw Nation is comprised of those descendants of the Choctaw people who were dispersed following the signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830 and some previous migrations. These current communities cover 6 states and are comprised of eleven bands with varying degrees of interconnectedness.

The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians are located in southwestern Alabama near the Mississippi state line. This reservation based community of approximately 3,600 tribal citizens has remained on lands held by their ancestors since the Choctaw treaties extending from 1803 to 1830. The main reservation lands are surrounded by ten smaller communities which compromise the homes of 93% of the tribal population. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians are located in 8 communities and one additional uninhabited community (Ocean Springs) spread out across the state of Mississippi. These communities including Bok Chito, Standing Pine, Conehetta, Crystal Ridge, Bok Homa, Red Water, Pearl River and Tucker are home to over 9,000 Mississippi Choctaw Citizens. The West Tennessee Choctaw live on 172 acres of reservation land in Eastern Tennessee and are enrolled citizens of the Mississippi Choctaw. This community formed in the middle part of last century as Choctaw families moved to the area in search of employment. The Bayou Lacombe Choctaw are located not far from the Mississippi State line near Lacombe, Louisiana. This particular group was heavily studied by anthropologist David Bushnell in 1910 and again by other academics in 1953. A group of approximately 100-300 tightly knit descendants of these Choctaws studied still remains in the marginal and previously isolated lands of this Southeastern Louisiana community. South of this community lies a Choctaw related community which was devastated by the recent Hurricanes. The United Houma Nation with a population of 17,000, has continued their lives in the southern bayous of Louisiana for many generations. To the northwest, the town of Clifton, Louisiana is home to approximately 500 Choctaw Indians who are known for their basket making skills. A little further north, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indiansmake their home near Trout, Louisiana. Their population stands at around 250. On the far western side of Louisiana, near the town of Zwolle, is the Choctaw-Apache of Ebarb community. These people of mixed Choctaw, Apache and Spanish descent number nearly 2,000. Occupying 10 counties in the Southeastern Oklahoma, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma with a population approaching 200,000 is by far the largest contingent of Choctaw in the United States. Within their midst are also communities of Choctaw Freedmen who stood side by side with one another throughout the tribe's history. In California, due to relocation programs aimed at Choctaws in Oklahoma, the Okla Chahta Clan of California was formed to bring together these families which number over 20,000 individuals. Other related communities to the Choctaw include the Coushatta of Louisiana, Alabama-Coushatta of Texas and Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma.

As one can see, the Choctaw Nation, is much more diverse than what many imagine. And this diversity has caused decades of cultural sharing as well as infighting. Battles over issues of blood quantum, federal recognition, cultural & language retention, historical alliances and of course gaming, have caused lines of division not unlike those faced by communities across Indian Country. The architect of many of these divisions, Mississippi Choctaw Chief Phillip Martin watched his meteoric rise and pronouncement as an economic powerhouse crumble in recent days due to his close association with non-Indian lobbyists, politicians and anthropologists who reeked havoc on neighboring Choctaw communities by overturning federal recognition petitions and postponing land in to trust applications.

So last Friday, on the day he conceded victory to his challenger Beasley Denson, we watched the opening rounds of the annual stickball tournament across the street from the tribal complex and office where he led his tribe for 7 terms. While standing there, numerous community members approached me with outstretched hands and words of greetings and thanks in our Choctaw language. Many people in the Mississippi Choctaw & MOWA Choctaw communities, as well as numerous Indian people from various tribes across the nation, had spent a great deal of time over the past few years, advocating for the rights of the Mississippi Choctaw people and exposing the fraud committed against the MOWA Choctaw community 120 miles to the southeast who were thought to be possible competition in the gaming industry. For years, the same tactics were played against the now federally recognized Jena Band of Choctaw Indians in Louisiana. Twelve years after their federal recognition, they are just now being able to take land into trust for the purposes of economically and socially growing their community.

While Jack Abramoff, J. Steven Griles and a host of others associated with Chief Phillip Martin's administration are now serving jail terms or awaiting trial, Mr. Martin has been able to use the tribe's federal immunities to ward off investigations into his role in the matter. Of course, little of this matters now as power has been rested from his hands.

And so the stickball games ended and we headed back to our hotel room for the night in preparation for day two of the Choctaw Spirit Language & Culture Seminar, which we had been invited to speak at. The theme of the conference discussed the unification of Choctaw people. As I sat down with one of the Mississippi Choctaw's current council members and we discussed a new future for our two communities, the theme seemed only too fitting.

You see, sometimes the unification power of one man's leadership is only found ... through his absence. Chata hapia hoke.

Cedric Sunray serves as Advisor to the Chief of the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians

We've no regrets at having worked hard to replace Chad Smith and his allies in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma election last month.

Posted by EBW at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The SacBee has the coverage on Doolittle's July 7th position on the Iraq War here, but for some reason fails to mention Doolittle's prior positions on the subject -- when he used the fullest measure of the "cut and run" rhetorical device. It also fails to capture the core of his "new" position -- he now measures the future of the Iraq War in some plastic unit of "months", so he's finally acquired some rudimentary concepts and may develop actual numeracy -- on par with my four year old's notion of when Christmas and birthdays are, and how long from "now" till "then".

The SacBee styles him joining Lugar and Dominici, when they should be stying him, like Dominici, as a failing incumbent looking for distance from what drives his negatives, and the next most likely to join the Congressional Indicted Caucus.

Posted by EBW at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Reform challenger Beasley Denson out-polled seven-term incumbent Phillip Martin by 211 votes. The results will be certified Friday. Earlier coverage is here and here.

This leaves only Chad Smith, the incumbent executive of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, as the last remaining of an original six Jack Abramoff client/contributor tribal executives who still control Indian Gaming operations and rubber stamp legislatures.

Compare the reported process and transparency of the Mississippi Choctaw absentee ballot (below) with the slight-of-hand announcement that Chad Smith got an overwhelming inland absentee vote, and the news that some inland (Vian) Cherokee Freedmen voters who did not request absentee ballots were sent ballots late, and were turned away at the polls when they attempted to vote.

More than 100 people packed into the Tribal Council Hall as committee members convened to count the absentee ballots and recount the results from Tuesday's poll voting.

The process was slow, as ballots and affidavits were sorted, reviewed, checked for matching signatures and counted.

"We don't want any injustice. Beasley took it fair and square and that's what we're here to see," Denson supporter Nolan Mitch, 33, said as the crowd gathered.

The crowd applauded when Denson walked into the standing-room-only tribal hall.

Denson, 57, quit his job as a car salesman to take on what is likely the most intense political fight the reservation has ever seen.

Denson supporters wanted to ensure that all absentee ballots came with a request letter, indicating the voter had requested a ballot for Tuesday's runoff.

But when the counting began, a dispute broke out over whether committee chairwoman Nellie Steve should have sent absentee ballots to voters who requested them for the June 12 election but not for Tuesday's runoff.

It is worth noting that neither Congresswoman Diane Watson nor the National Congress of American Indians gave active support to Phillip Martin in the Mississippi Choctaw election last month, or this week's run-off.

Posted by EBW at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been spending much of my time buried in Administration calendars, court documents, travel schedules and lobbyist disclosures, so clearly haven't been posting much. However, I've found something that I think needs to go up right away, as the more eyes researching it, and, hopefully, bloggers flogging it, the better.

It might be easiest if you follow the path I took. I started on the Senate Lobbyist Dislosure site, looking for any clients with "Klamath" in the names. I found a few, but the one which stood out was the "Klamath Water Users Association". When I opened their disclosure forms, I found they had hired Washington Strategies on December 19, 2002, and listed Jennifer Johnson Calvert, Troy Tidwell and William Jarrell as registered lobbyists, to ostensibly work on "federal appropriations, water and natural resources."

I wasn't familiar with Troy Tidwell , but a quick Google indicated he was, as late as 2001, the senior legislative aide for Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR, Klamath Basin.)

Jennifer Calvert and William (Bill) Jarrell were familiar characters, however, having been part of "Team Abramoff" when Jack was honing his uber-lobbyist skills at Preston Gates. Even before Jack jumped ship and took much of his team and client base to Greenberg Traurig, Calvert and Jarrell bolted in December, 2000, to form Washington Strategies. Ms. Calvert's husband, Chad Calvert, had been selected as a member of the Bush-Cheney "Transition Team", probably due in part to his Wyoming roots (as mentioned previously, the team responsible for staffing Interior was headed by former Interior Solicitor, Tom Sansonetti.) Clearly, Jennifer Calvert and Bill Jarrell, a mover and shaker in his own right, as the former deputy chief of staff for Tom Delay, felt that they could gain the access to governmental officials that their clients would demand, without being in Jack's massive shadow.

Seeing that Sue Ellen Wooldridge was recently outted as Dick Cheney's mole in the Interior Department on Klamath Basin water issues, I was curious as to the relationship between the Calverts and Wooldridge. After his position on the Transition Team, Chad Calvert was named deputy director of the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs in January 2001. According to a later press release, Calvert

[A]ssisted the Secretary of the Interior and the director of Congressional Affairs in liaison activities with congressional committees and members of Congress. He coordinated departmental legislative policy with the assistant secretary for land and minerals management and the assistant secretary for Indian affairs, with their bureau directors and with the Office of Management and Budget.

Since CREW did not obtain Chad Calvert's calendar in their 2005/6 FIOA request, it's been difficult to ascertain just how involved he was on the Klamath Basin issue. However, I did notice that Sue Ellen Wooldridge had a social relationship with the Calverts: On Dec. 13th, 2002, her calendar indicated "Calvert Party". Remember, of course, that on Dec. 19th the Klamath Water Users Association hired Jennifer Calvert as their lobbyist. So did the Klamath County Economic Development Association, each forking over $40,000 per year for Washington Strategies lobbying efforts.

One thing that intrigued me on both Jennifer Calvert (now Jennifer Calvert Jarrell) and Bill Jarrell's biographies at the Washington Strategies website, was that both were founders and Board Members of Western Watch, "a national public policy organization dedicated to preserving and improving the quality of life for Western and rural Americans." Having spent so much time ferretting out the truth behind Italia Federici's Council for Republican Environmental Advocates and Abramoff's many charity front organizations, the idea of lobbyists "founding" non-profit organizations out of the kindness of their hearts leaves me less than convinced. And, in the case of the Western Watch Foundation, with good reason.

According to WWF's only filed Form 990 from Guidestar (2002), the organization raised $49,600, and spent $45,234 mostly on "conferences, conventions and meetings." They had no website, no offices separate from those of Washington Strategies, no mention of participation in any conference, convention and/or meeting; with the exception of the travel disclosure forms of three Republican members of Congress.

On June 28-30, 2002, Representatives Christopher Cannon (R-UT), Butch Otter (R-ID) and Wally Herger (R-CA) received paid travel, lodging and food to and in Las Vegas, Nevada, totaling $2,684, $2,603, and $2,518 respectively. The justifications ranged from "public lands conference" (Cannon), to "policy sessions on Education, Environment Western Issues" (Otter) to "Western Watch Foundation Policy Forum" (Herger.) On 9/23/2003, Herger again accepted paid travel, meals and lodging totalling $946 from the Western Watch Foundation, this time to Denver for a "Partnership for the West grassroots action summit" sponsored by WWF. Wally Herger's district (CA-2) is one of four which lie within the Klamath water basin, and he sits upon the Ways and Means Committee. Cannon and Otter (now governor of Idaho) were members of House Resources, which oversees water issues in the Klamath basin.

It's illegal for lobbyists to directly pay for travel expenses for Congresspersons and their staffs, so many have attempted to get around this law by forming 501(c)3 entities and using those as the funding sources. Jack Abramoff did this a number of times, in particular the now infamous Scotland Junkett. However, there are questions as to whether Abramoff's actions were in fact legal, and a number of Congressmen, including Tom Delay, are under investigation by the Public Intergrity Section of the DoJ. Since it is clear that Calvert and Jarrell formed the Western Watch Foundation solely to pay for the travel expenses of public servants, just what did they expect in return?

Posted by MB Williams at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The marriage of two former Interior Department appointees, Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles and Solicitor and Deputy Chief of Staff Sue Ellen Wooldridge made headlines last spring, as it occurred three days after Griles entered into a plea agreement with Wooldridge's most recent employer, the Department of Justice. Talking heads abound suggested that it was an attempt by Griles, who had once been Wooldridge's boss, to protect himself from further prosecution by envoking spousal privilege.

After the last volley in the Washington Post's four-part take-down of "a branch of government unto himself" Dick Cheney, I think the nuptial motivation may have been a bit misplaced. Wooldridge was clearly outted as one of the VP's moles in the Interior Department (and one should not forget, later in the Justice Department). In regards to the 2001-2 Klamath River Basin drought, the WaPo reported:

Bush and Cheney couldn't afford to anger thousands of solidly Republican farmers and ranchers during the midterm elections and beyond. The case also was rapidly becoming a test for conservatives nationwide of the administration's commitment to fixing what they saw as an imbalance between conservation and economics.

"What does the law say?" Christie, the former aide, recalled the vice president asking. "Isn't there some way around it?"

Next, Cheney called Wooldridge, who was then deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and the woman handling the Klamath situation.

Aides praise Cheney's habit of reaching down to officials who are best informed on a subject he is tackling. But the effect of his calls often leads those mid-level officials scrambling to do what they presume to be his bidding.

That's what happened when a mortified Wooldridge finally returned the vice president's call, after receiving a tart follow-up inquiry from one of his aides. Cheney, she said, "was coming from the perspective that the farmers had to be able to farm -- that was his concern. The fact that the vice president was interested meant that everyone paid attention."

Cheney made sure that attention did not wander. He had Wooldridge brief his staff weekly and, Smith said, he also called the interior secretary directly.

The WaPo pointed out in the first sentence of this segment that Wooldridge at the time was the "19th-ranking Interior Department official"; however, a mere three years later, she held the office of Solicitor, the third-ranking position., after Secretary Gale Norton, and her yet undisclosed romantic partner, Steve Griles (their relationship apparently began in February, 2003.) Wooldridge became Solicitor in June, 2004, as a Bush recess appointment, at a time when the initial revelations of Jack Abramoff's misdeeds were being reported, mostly by the Washington Post.

Senator John McCain, after the initial story broke in the post in late February, 2004, subpoenaed thousands of documents from Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff's firm, and held three hearings beginning in September, 2004. However, at no time during the 2004 hearings, despite having plenty of evidence, did McCain indicate that individuals at the DoI, DoJ or even the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy were party to the Abramoff scandal. This delay allowed the Interior Department to place one of its most compromised, politically and personally, players in the position of "gatekeeper" for DoI documents and employees, while, ostensibly, removing Wooldridge from her dangerous proximity, as Deputy Chief of Staff, to the Secretary. It is not at all surprising then, that when Griles' central role in the Abramoff affair became apparent though Senate testimony and related released documents, that Cheney's mole was moved out of DoI altogether, but into a position where she would have direct oversight into Interior affairs - as Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice, a position previously held by none other than close Cheney friend and fellow Wyomingite, Thomas Sansonetti.

Griles was one of the few people at Interior who knew of Wooldridge's long-time connection to Cheney, and marrying him essentially shut-off that line of attack by would be detractors. One now has to wonder if the huge outpouring of support for leniency (91 letters) in Griles' sentencing was orchestrated as a reward for this nuptial sacrifice.

Italia Federici, however, has not been so lucky, and, having been so thoroughly spurned, has agreed to cooperate with the investigation. Is she a threat at all to Wooldridge? Yesterday, while combing through CREW's pile of FOIA documents released by DoI, I came across this entry in Gale Norton's calendar:

Tuesday, July 10, 2001: 1:00 - 2:00 pm: Italia Federici, Wooldridge, Bettenberg, Ruff, Pfiefle.

William Bettenberg was Director of the Office of Policy Analysis, specializing in hydroelectricity, according to his July 19, 2001 testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He was also, however, Director of the Minerals Management Service during the Reagan Administration, and an expert on allowing BigEnergy to run off with billions in unpaid royalties. Eric Ruff was DoI communications director, and Mark Pfeifle, Norton's press secretary.
When I first noticed that meeting eighteen months ago, I figured it was related to CREA's ANWR campaign, as three weeks later Federici scored a meeting with DoE Secretary Spencer Abraham's CoE, joined by a Teamster's organizer and GOP PR guru, William Greener. However, Wooldridge wasn't directly involved at that time in ANWR, although she had represented Norton and the DoI on Cheney's Energy Task Force working group. And the inclusion of Bettenberg was thoroughly confusing, as he was completely wrapped up in hydroelectric at the time.

While the WaPo's article leaves out the specific timeframe regarding his first contact with Wooldridge, it clearly was in the midst of the initial 2001 crisis, which came to a head in early summer 2001,

when hundreds of farmers and their supporters used torches and crowbars to open the headgates of an irrigation canal four times in one week. Local sheriffs and police stood by, claiming lack of jurisdiction. Now National Park Service police and FBI agents guard the headwaters, but that hasn’t deterred the farmers. They are laying a pipeline that will take water from Upper Klamath Lake directly to the irrigation ditches, bypassing the headgates.

Was the July 10th meeting in response to the call placed a couple weeks earlier by Cheney? There's nothing to indicate one way or another, but clearly, Federici, who at the time was romantically involved with Steve Griles (who was nominated, but not yet confirmed as Deputy Secretary of Interior) and Wooldridge were working on some project together, a project that was important enough for Norton herself to be involved, needed the expertise of Bettelberg, and was a communications/PR issue.

If Cheney Inc. was worried about Griles, it seems clear that they would have figured a way out to silence Federici. It seems, however, that the real danger is Wooldridge, and effectively shutting down Griles' subpoenaed testimony was a nearly brilliant move. Of course, Griles thought he'd be spending three months of newly wedded-bliss in home confinement at the time. I wonder if he's rethinking the wedding now that he's looking at ten months in Club Fed.

Update: McClatchy is reporting that the House Resources Committee, chaired by Nick Rahall (D-WV) is opening hearings on the Klamath due to the WaPo's reporting:

House panel to investigate Cheney's Klamath River actions
David Whitney | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 28, 2007 07:58:29 PM

WASHINGTON — The House Natural Resources Committee announced Thursday that it will hold hearings into Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement in Klamath River water management that many think led to the die-off of more than 70,000 salmon four years ago.

"It certainly appears that this administration will stop at nothing to achieve political gain from natural resources disasters," said Rep. Nick J. Rahall, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the panel.

Three dozen House Democrats from Oregon and California asked for the hearing in a letter to Rahall after the Washington Post reported on details of Cheney's intervention.

According to the newspaper, Cheney personally contacted Sue Ellen Wooldridge -- a Northern Californian who then was Interior Secretary Gale Norton's top aide for the Klamath -- about his concerns over the Bureau of Land Management's decision to stop deliveries of irrigation water. At the time the region was emerging from a severe drought in 2001, and the BLM was enforcing a finding by scientists that water diversions to farmers would harm endangered salmon and suckerfish.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

John Doolittle's in the news again today, and not because tens of thousands of residents of the CA-04 are watching fire crews (staffing on the Agoura fire is now 2,174 -- which is a big fire crew) struggle with 60 mph overnight winds, when fire attack, containment and burn-out should be conducted, and ongoing high winds, high temps, and low humidity.

The estimate is that 800 homes and 275 commercial properties are threatened by the fire, which is burning on the edge of South Lake Tahoe and threatens South Lake Tahoe, Tahoe Valley, Gardner Mountain, Camp Richardson and the Tahoe Keys. The website for the fire is here, and the estimated loss for the almost 200 families already burned out is $141,000,000.

Nope, John Doolittle's in the news today because the DoJ is closing in on his cash cover with Jack Abramoff. The Sac Bee has a nice piece here.

What the SacBee doesn't have is the first page of Gail Norton's daybook. Guess who was first to call Secretary Gail Norton? -- Why yes, it was John Doolittle. Do you suppose he was under the impression that the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture actually reported to the Secretary of the Interior, and not the Secretary of Agriculture? Or was he calling on behalf of all the the CA-04's residents who engage in hard rock mining, or drill for oil, or irrigate with federal water? Maybe he was trying to get USGS topo maps at a discount?

I'm sure there was a good reason for a guy with Doolittle's connections to be calling the person Tom Sansonetti, on behallf of the Western States "Wise Use" faction in the Cheney transition, selected for Secretary of the Interior. He needed a recipe for s'mores and instructions on how to start a campfire.

Posted by EBW at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just posted this as a comment over at The Next Hurrah, in regards to Marcy's post yesterday on Kempthorne's secretive New Subcommittee on Royalty Revenue Management, which, according to POGO, met this week.

The subcommittee itself is just chockful of interesting folk. First, there's David Deal, who was originally picked by Kempthorne to head the subcommittee, but withdrew that idea after outcry from Senators investigating MMS. So who is Deal? From Findlaw,

"Immediately prior to joining the firm, Mr. Deal served as Assistant General Counsel & Director, Office of General Counsel, for the American Petroleum Institute in Washington, D.C., the nation's largest petroleum industry association. Mr. Deal, who has extensive experience in the federal regulatory process, had worked for the Institute since 1975. He has written and delivered testimony before Congress, analyzed legislation, managed challenges of agency regulations in federal courts, mostly the DC Circuit, and participated in regulatory negotiation. His natural resources and environmental experience includes serving as senior legal advisor on the Clean Air Act, with 10 years devoted almost exclusively to state and federal motor fuels issues.

For more than 20 years, he was the sole API lawyer on federal royalty management matters including legislation, rulemaking, litigation, and Congressional investigations. In addition, he was the sole API lawyer on OCS Lands Act, Mineral Lands Leasing Act and Coastal Zone Management Act matters. He served as a two-term member of the Secretary of the Interior's Royalty Management Advisory Committee. Most recently, for his work in the federal royalty management area, Mr. Deal was named to receive a US Department of the Interior Mineral Management Service's Corporate Leadership Award for 2002."

Then there are the two chairs Kempthorne ended up going with: Bob Kerrey and Jake Garn. I'm sure most Progressives have more than a few things to say about Kerrey, but for our purposes, one of the things he is not is an expert on Mineral Management - he spent his time in the Senate on Ag, which has oversite for the Department of Agriculture, not Interior, wherein MMS lies.

More interesting is the selection of Jake Garn, former Senator from Utah. Garn is best known for his authoring of the 1982 Garn - St Germain Depository Institutions Act, which led to the Savings and Loan meltdown later in the decade. And who was the lobbyist who wrote most of that bill? Fred Thompson.

Also on the committee is Cynthia Lummis, who most recently was one of the three finalists selected by the Wyoming GOP for consideration by the Wyoming Governor to replace Craig Thomas. Thomas was co-chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which has oversight on MMS regarding royalities from Indian Lands. (One of the other finalists was our friend, Tom Sansonetti.) Lummis was Wyoming Treasurer when former MMS director Johnnie Burton was head of the Wyoming Department of Revenue, and they'd previously served in the Wyoming Legislature together.

Of all the committee members, only Deal and Lummis have experience with Mineral Royalties (nearly all of Wyoming's revenue comes from oil, gas and mining royalties.) Clearly, while Kerrey and Garn are figureheads, this is Deal's committee, just like Kempthorne planned all along.

Boy, this gets more interesting by the minute, neh?

With all the dirt the WaPo is slinging at Cheney regarding his hands-on involvement in Interior, this is an intriguing footnote.

Update: Here's an interesting tidbit. While Koch Industries was being investigated in the late 1990s for royalties fraud, Bob Kerrey received contributions totalling $7000 from Koch.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I was busy doing family stuff most of the day, I didn't get around to reading the latest in the WaPo's War on Cheney, Leaving No Tracks, until this evening. The details on Cheney's involvement in the Klamath River case was gut-wrenching, I as was very familiar with how the government's action devastated native fishing in the region (a point the WaPo happened to leave out - I guess fishermen are fishermen, whether Indian, and thus doubly "protected" by the Interior Department due to the Trust relationship.)

While the report is fairly damning, huge details are left out, details which would send all but the most cynical and jaded into the streets in protest. No mention of Sue Ellen Woodridge's former boss and current husband's sentencing hearing today,in which the judge threw out the recommendations of both the defendant and the DoJ, and doubled the prison tmie to ten months. The article mentions that Cheney was "aided by loyalists who owe him for their careers," but makes no mention of one of the highest placed loyalists, Tom Sansonetti, head of the Bush-Cheney Transition Team for Interior, and Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the department which is supposed to have legal oversight over Interior. Sansonetti was not only from Wyoming, but he was chair of the state GOP while Cheney was in Congress, and ran for the seat when Cheney was appointed Defense Secretary under Bush I. Sansonetti was beat out on the fifth ballot by Craig Thomas, who went on to become a Wyoming Senator. Sansonetti was Thomas' first Chief of Staff, and later, campaign manager.

There's a lot more there, and I'll dive into all tomorrow, when allergies and heat exhaustion lessen, and I've a clear head.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's only been one year, eight months since the former Deputy Secretary of the Interior lied to Congressional investigators, but hey, I'll take it. From the DoJ press release:

Former Interior Deputy Secretary Steven Griles Sentenced to 10 Months in Prison for Obstructing U.S. Senate Investigation into Abramoff Corruption Scandal

WASHINGTON - James Steven Griles, the former Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI), has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for obstructing the U.S. Senate’s investigation into the corruption allegations surrounding former Washington lobbyist Jack A. Abramoff, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.

Griles, 59, of Falls Church, Va., was also ordered to pay a fine of $30,000, and serve a term of three years of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle for the District of Columbia.

On March 23, 2007, Griles pleaded guilty to a one-count criminal information charging him with obstructing U.S. Senate Proceedings. In pleading guilty, Griles admitted that he knowingly and willfully lied and concealed material information from senators and Senate investigators about the unique relationship that he had with Abramoff immediately prior to and during his tenure as DOI Deputy Secretary.

Its been a year, five months since I first predicted Griles would in fact do time for his relationship with Abramoff. The question is now, who is next? Norton? Sansonetti? Norquist? Have to put my thinking cap on to make that prediction.

Posted by MB Williams at 08:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at The Next Hurrah, where Marcy is doing outstanding work on the latest J. Steven Griles sentencing docs, I noted her latest post on Griles' attempt to have the sentence proposed by the Justice Department in his Plea Agreement reduced to three months in-home confinement, 500 hours community service, and a $15,000 fine. Furthermore, Griles' attorneys have even suggested where he could do that community service, in part as the "national counselor and strategic planning coordinator" for "WOW - Wonderful Outdoor World," a purportedly non-profit joint endeavor of Interior, the U.S. EPA, Army Corps of Engineers, American Recreation Coalition and Disney, Inc. Marcy linked to the Project on Government Oversite's (POGO) recent bloodhound work on the subject, and at their site I found a great piece from Dan Berman of Greenwire.

ETHICS: Griles seeks community service with motorized-recreation group

Dan Berman, Greenwire senior reporter

An organization with connections to the Interior Department, motorized recreation industry and the Walt Disney Co. is holding a position open for former Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles if he's sentenced to community service for lying to Congress in the Jack Abramoff investigation.

Griles, 59, wants three months home confinement, 500 hours of community service and a "reasonable" $15,000 fine when he is sentenced June 26. Half the community service would be with "WOW - Wonderful Outdoor World," in the position of national counselor and strategic planning coordinator. In that post, Griles would raise money, develop new public and private partnerships and conduct outreach to the government and media.

The request was part of a voluminous filing with Judge Ellen Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The package includes 91 letters supporting Griles from former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, two Reagan-era secretaries, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R), Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.), coal industry executives and a possible Senate nominee from Wyoming, among others.

"It's a small world after all," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "The idea that Steve Griles would consider this community service suggests the line in his mind of corporate service and community service doesn't exist."

I'm planning to do a little more research into this, particularly what role other lawmakers have had in the formation of WOW. In the meantime, I truly hope not to find Steve camped out anywhere near us.

Posted by MB Williams at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Robert Kennedy, Jr. has an article in this month's Vanity Fair on my favorite subject, corruptionand cronyism in the Executive Departments. Here's the teaser:

Texas Chainsaw Management

Spinning the revolving door between government and business as never before, the White House has handed more than 100 top environmental posts to representatives of polluting industries. The author provides a biographical sampler -- and describes a devastating rollback of three decades of progress.

In Kennedy's analysis, he lists a "dirty dozen", his assertion of the twelve worst top Administration officials. Not surprisinly, he lists some of my favorites from Interior and Justice: Steve Griles, Gale Norton, Bill Myers, Lynn Scarlett, Rebecca Watson and Tom Sansonetti. However, he left out the man I consider to be the most dangerous official most people have never heard of: James Cason, Associate Deputy Secretary of the Interior. The position never existed prior to 2001, and Cason, despite being the number 3 man at Interior for the last six years, was never confirmed by the Senate.

I've been planning on writing up Cason for some time now. In light of Johnnie Burton's "retirement", I guess I'll get down to it today.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gonzales won't testify about ...
Steven Griles posts (1/06 - 3/07)
Griles, Federici and Abramoff
The Impending Griles Indictment: Cheney's Energy Tzar dumps Griles
The impending Griles indictment: It's bigger than you think
Yay! The CREA bug bites another Abramoff-phile...
You really want political change in the US?
The recent Abramoff "leaks" and why we should care...
Why provenance matters
McCain, Abramoff and the Indian Trust Fund: The short of it all.
Still on hiatus, but a reminder...
The enemy beneath...
CREA's roots in the former Texas Governor's Office?
Was Jack Abramoff really an "insider"?
A new batch of pigs at the trough...
Answers to "Questions for the Abramoff-obsessed"
"But I barely knew her..."
McCain did have ties to CREA
Fun with typesetting....
Who is Julie Finley?
CREA takes down its website...
A documented history of a Republican front group, part 1
Demand unredacted copies!
Scanlon's jilted fiance key to Abramoff's unraveling
One big happy cesspool...
Left in the drafts ...
Ding dong, the witch is dead!
The missing link?
Things heat up for Griles; Cummings doesn't do her homework
More on CREA
More on J. Steven Griles
Technorati Watch: Day 2
Forget about the little fish...

Update:
Tancredo's CREA friends from a previously unpublished draft

Posted by EBW at 08:20 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Acting Associate Attorney General of the Department of Justice, William Mercer, testified before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee today when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to appear and answer questions relating to a proposal on Tribal Trust "reform"; specifically, a letter with his name on it, offering a $7 billion dollar "settlement" for all claims, past, current and future, from both individuals and tribes, as well as monies to deal with "fractionation" as well as updated computer systems.

A little background on William Mercer. He is acting (not yet confirmed) Associate General for DoJ, the number three man. He has also, since 2001, held the position of U.S. Attorney for the state of Montana, recommended for the position by former Senator Conrad Burns. He has never testified before the Committee on this subject.

A key issue in all this - just what, if anything, is the US government's liability in the mismanagement of the trusts?

To summarize, Chairman Dorgan, addressing William Mercer, brought up the fact that AG Gonzales, when testifying before another Congressional committee, suggested that the trust claims could total over $200 billion dollars. To which Mercer responded (transcribed from webcast:)

Mercer @ 2:10: A couple of points I'd like to make on the statement. I believe that that text was about the allegations that had been set forth in claims as part of the tribal trust litigation. And going to the question that you posed, Mr. Chairman, We've already seen the dismissal of a claim for a hundred billion dollars as part of that ongoing litigation. So we certainly believe that that is... that that figure represents claims that were set forth by the parties...We've already, as I said, prevailed in one of those cases and we believe that the ultimate value is much, much, much less than what the stated claims were by the tribes themselves.

At least on two other occasion, Mercer brings up the $100 billion claim dismissal, as justification as to either no liability on behalf of the US government, or very limited liability.

Enter the new Senator for Montana, Jon Tester (who seems to be quite familiar with his fellow Montanan, even calling him by his first name.)

Tester @ 2:31: It was either you or Bill Mercer, I can't remember which, and either of you can (inaudible)...talked about a claim dismissal of 100 billion dollars... Which one of you...was that you, Bill?

Mercer: Yes

Tester: When was that dismissed and by whom?

Mercer: I don't have a date. I can certainly get one.

Tester: A ballpark figure? Spring of whenever? Month?

Mercer: Evidently, in the past couple of years...

Tester: In the past couple of years.

Mercer: Obviously, it must have postdated...Well, anyway, past couple of years.

Tester: Well, if we could get a date on that...And who dismissed it?

Mercer: I don't know...We'll get that to you too.

Tester: Okay, great. Thank you very much.

As we mentioned in a previous post, Senator Tester did a fine job in his debut in a Tribal Trust hearing venue; now we only hope that his fresh perspective is able to move the Committee past its tradition of bending and scraping to the entities, particularly the extraction industries, which have exploited Indian Country for their own profit for over a century.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

1. Professor Bainbridge's Frivolous Disparate Impact Case by Dwight Meredith on April 27, 2005

2. Grave Injustice by EBW on April 27, 2005

3. Three sheets to the windby EBW on March 16, 2005

4. Why Not Raymond Burr? -- Thomas Griffith Edition by Dwight Meredith on March 14, 2005

5. Why Not Raymond Burr? -- William Myers Edition by Dwight Meredith on March 13, 2005

6. A Judicial Nominee Didn't Practice Law (enuf) With A License by EBW on March 11, 2005
   

Posted by EBW at 02:22 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Acting Associate Attoney General of United States and United States Attorney for Montana (recommended by Conrad Burns and appointed by George W. Bush, and not fired by AG Gonzales for ... "the standard narrative") Williams Mercer just said that Individual and Tribal Trust is not suitable for the courts.

We're off-grid in the Mojave, watching the Senate Indian Affairs Oversight Hearing on Indian Trust Fund Litigation via the net.

Summary: Sen. Dorgan (D-ND), Sen. Tester (D-MT), and Sen. Thomas (R-WY) held the first post-November oversight hearing on the Indian Trust Fund Litigation. The hearing was delayed by 90 minutes due to the vote on the floor on H.R. 1591, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill. The first panel was composed of former member of the House of Representatives and Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, Acting Associate Attoney General of United States and United States Attorney for Montana Williams Mercer, and John Bickerman of Bickerman Resolution. The second panel was composed of Eloise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the Individual Indian Trust Litigation, John Echohawk, Executive Director, Native American Rights Fund, and William Martin, Vice-Chair, Inter-Tribal Monitoring Association on Indian Trust Funds.

Kempthorne answered the zeroth question. He is just as bad as Norton and the honeymoon is dead.

On the actual issues before the Committee, the so-called Kempthorne-Gonzales letter (which neither of them possess sufficient clue to have actually written, so its actual authorship is unknown), Kempthorne was fundamentally non-responsive.

Mercer continued this theme, and expanded it to argue that the Cobell litigants were responsible for the eleven years of complex litigation, and some delicious one-liners, such as an issue is not suitable for the courts, and the litigants have no choice but to accept (any) legislative outcome. When asked directly, Mercer refused to answer if there was a trust liability.

Both pushed the $7bn figure as fair and adequate, for Individual Trust, and Tribal Trust claims, all of them, now and forever.

Bickerman's contribution was that there was clear trust liability, and an estimation that the Individual Indian Trust liablity, for mismanagement of monies received by the Department of the Interior as trustee, was on the order of $7bn to $9bn.

In follow-up by either Dorgan or Tester to Mercer, if the Individual claim liability runs to $7bn to $9bn, then the Tribal claim liability must necessarily run to ... zero. [Or $2bn owed by Tribes to the DoI if you're comically inclined, ebw].

The second panel was factual and calm. Cobell presented the case, not as a simple, yet incomprehensible accounting snafu, but as one that impoverishes real people. She brought with her a man who's land has produced oil for his father since the 1910s, but for which no royalty has been paid since 1940. I'll add more to this when the morning zoo has settled, on Cobell's, Echohawk's, and Martin's testimony.

Jon Tester has handled this first pass of arms very well. Non-confrontational, kinda dorky, but he asked some of the right questions, and he'll ask more, on the record, via follow-up correspondence.

For those not familiar with the distinction between individual and tribal trust fund mismanagement, I offer the following analogy. The Administration is pushing a "settlement" of a class-action brought by some individuals for tobacco-injury related claims, but only if it "settles" all past, present, and future claims by all individuals, and also prevents any past, present, or future state claims for compensation for medical care provided for tobacco product injury and addiction education, and ends restrictions on tobacco product advertising to children.

Posted by EBW at 09:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Three of the US Attorneys fired were from states with very large federal and Indian trust land holdings, leased out to oil, gas, and mineral extraction companies. All three had relatively good relationships with the local tribes, especially David Iglesias of Arizona New Mexico [thanks to anonymouse in comments]. So what's the connection with yesterday's Committee on Resources hearing?

March 29, 2007
Ex-Auditor Says He Was Told to Be Lax on Oil Fees
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, March 28 - A former top auditor at the Interior Department accused senior officials on Wednesday of prohibiting him and other investigators from recovering hundreds of millions of dollars in underpayments from oil and gas companies that drill on federal land and in federal waters.

"There's hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars out there, and I don't think we should be scared of the oil companies," said Bobby L. Maxwell, a former senior auditor who, as a private citizen, sued the Kerr-McGee Corporation, claiming it intentionally cheated the government of royalties for oil and gas it produced in the Gulf of Mexico.

In February, a federal jury in Denver agreed with Mr. Maxwell and ruled that Kerr-McGee had underpaid the government by $7.5 million. Under a law intended to encourage whistle-blowers, the company could be liable for more than $30 million, and Mr. Maxwell would be entitled to keep as much as 30 percent of that.

"There were statements made: 'Don't bother the oil companies,'" Mr. Maxwell told the House Natural Resources Committee, which is investigating allegations of mismanagement in the royalty program run by the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department.

"The M.M.S. is the proverbial ostrich that has its head in the sand, that sees nothing, knows nothing, but says that no royalties are due," Mr. Maxwell continued.

Another former auditor, from New Mexico, Kevin Gambrell, told lawmakers that he had been repeatedly blocked from trying to recover payments for oil and gas production that were owed to Indian tribes.

You may or may not be familiar with a relatively obscure, purported non-partisan organization named the Fair Access to Energy Coalition (FAIR). While lengthy, I have included all the text from their "About Our Cause" page, as it truly cuts right to the heart of the matter on what they're all about:

Americans rely on energy corridors to transport natural gas, electricity and oil throughout our nation and some of our national energy transportation infrastructure crosses Native American tribal lands. Energy rights of way are available from private landowners, state and federal governments on reasonable terms, but there is no requirement that they be available from tribes. We need a reliable process for ensuring access and negotiating rights of way in order to ensure the reliable and cost-effective delivery of energy to millions of Americans.

Currently, tribal negotiations are governed by the 1948 General Right of Way Act, which under a disputed interpretation by the Department of the Interior, does not provide for an equitable means to renegotiate lease renewals or to determine value for new rights of way with the tribes. This has resulted in tribes demanding inflated compensation, unreasonable terms, or even transfer of infrastructure ownership to them.

Through Section 1813 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, recently passed by Congress, FAIR has called for a study of these issues to be conducted by the Departments of Interior and Energy. Our goal is to develop a fair and reasonable process for determining rights-of-way costs on Native American lands. There are a number of reasons why the study to be prepared under this legislation will be significant:

* Domestic transportation infrastructure for energy sources is vital to national security.

* Higher supply costs translate directly into higher prices for the retail customer. Increased costs for supply and transportation are ultimately paid by the consumer. Costly transportation increases mean higher energy bills for seniors, low-income families, small businesses - everyone.

* Energy rights-of-way are major income sources to many tribes. If energy companies are forced to reroute their existing pipelines off tribal lands, the negative economic impact to tribes and consumers could be extensive.

* Tribal demands are excessive. For example, in an area where land sells for $500 to $2000 per acre, one tribe is asking the equivalent of $75,000 per acre for a 20-year right-of-way extension on a pipeline that has been in the ground since the 1950s. This compensation equates to 35-70 times more than the average American family would receive. It is not FAIR to force consumers in other states to pay higher energy bills to cover these ridiculous costs.

* Equitable right-of-way settlements are a simple matter of FAIRness. Energy companies have a documented history of FAIR and respectful dealings with Native American tribes. They are not asking for special treatment, only for a way to ensure mutually beneficial relationships that allow them to continue serving their customers at reasonable prices.

Their cause boils down to this: When tribes were weak and most land held "in trust" by the federal government, energy companies were given carte blanche to build pipelines and hang transmission lines, paying ridiculously low amounts for such access. Now that tribes are regaining strength and demanding their sovereignty as guarenteed under their treaties with the US government (outranking even the US Constitution), they are reassessing this previous relationship with BigEnergy. BigEnergy, with this Administration and much of the Congress in its pocket, wants to revoke that sovereignty, and ensure its access as it does on US federal land, by having the Interior Department in its pocket.

These concerns by BigEnergy are further aggravated by current issues before Congress, in particular Indian trust litigation (hearing today) and yesterday's Resources Committee hearing, described above. Should it be officially uncovered that tribes were screwed out of billions in extraction and RoW royalties, tribes might not only act in a monetarily punative manner, renegotiating leases for much higher amounts, they might even outright cancel those leases with the companies who have acted in such bad faith for decades.

So why should red flags be raised over one of many pro-energy industry organizations? For one, FAIR is throwing around big bucks to get their agenda passed: In 2005, they spent $960,000 on lobbying efforts, in 2006, $941,210. And second, just who have they hired in that lobbying effort, namely for former Interior Solicitor (and failed Bush federal court appointee) Williams Myers III, former Assistant Attorneys General for the Department of Justice ((Environment and Natural Resources Division) Tom Sansonetti and Kelley Johnson, and Counsel to the AAG, Andrew Emrich. Of related concern is the identity of the political appointee who replaced Sansonetti and Johnson, who, up until last month, had Department of Justice oversite on all issues relating to such business activities on tribal land; one Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who, ironically came to her position at DoJ as Solicitor General to the Interior Department, a position in which she succeeded the aforementioned FAIR lobbyist, Bill Myers. Wooldridge resigned when her live-in partner, former Deputy Secretary of Interior, J. Steven Griles, was informed by the DoJ that he was a target of a criminal probe regarding perjury and obstruction of justice before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in November, 2005 (the month Wooldridge assumed her duties at DoJ.)

Now, I admit to sucking you all in with the first paragraph, alleging that there was some connection between the firing of at least three US Attorneys and mismanagement of royalty collection and managment on tribal and federal land; I have no proof that there was such a connection. However, the issue of trust management is so completely embedded in the corruption which has pervaded the Interior and Justice Departments under this Administration that it colors most everything those involved do, including, perhaps, threatening the Republican Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. On November 2, 2005, Steven Griles testified before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, headed by Arizona Senator John McCain on his connection to Jack Abramoff. Yet, as reported by Indianz.com, at the end of that testimony, after McCain gavelled the hearing closed, Griles interjected,

Senator, thank you, and I hope you well as you move forward in dealing with the Indian trust issue. This is so important to Interior to get that dealt with.

The statement, ironically, is only available on the hearing webcast, and is not included in the official transcript. However, Griles, having just perjured himself before the Committee, was apparently most concerned with the Indian Trust Fund, despite the fact he had resigned from the Interior Department the previous year and was then merely a lobbyist for oil, gas and mining companies.

I have much more to say about this issue, but have to take a sick cat to the vet. Eric will be updating on the Senate Indan Affairs Committee hearing on Tribal Trust Litigation, which, of course, is at the heart of all this as well.

(And no, I'm not really "out of retirement" - just can't let issues on which I reported so long to go neglected by the blogosphere.)

Posted by MB Williams at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm taking bets on how long it will take the Main Stream Bloggers to attribute this to ... something other than Indians, or attribute the presence of Norquist, McCain, Abramoff, Ridenour, Federici, Griles, Norton, and Shell, Exxon, Mobile, Peabody, National Mining Assn, Arch Coal, Duke Energy, and the RNC to ... benign interest in exotic and impoverished rural peoples.

From Acee Agayo's Indianz.com

Gonzales won't testify about trust fund settlement
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

The Bush administration won't be sending embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Senate hearing on Indian trust fund litigation tomorrow.

Gonzales, who previously told Congress that the trust lawsuits were worth more than $200 billion, continues to face questions about his credibility as the federal prosecutor scandal simmers in Washington. His support on Capitol Hill has slowly eroded over the past month.

But the Department of Justice official who will testify is also under fire for his role in the firings of several U.S. Attorneys. William M. Mercer, the acting associate attorney general, is slated to present the administration's $7 billion trust proposal to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee tomorrow.

As a top political appointee, Mercer repeatedly comes up in over 3,000 pages of e-mails and documents that have been made public. His involvement has put his nomination as the number three at DOJ on hold pending as Congress looks into the prosecutor firings.

It also highlights the dual roles Mercer plays. He has been serving as U.S. Attorney in Montana since April 2001 and has been holding his job in Washington for almost two years, shuffling to and from the state that is home to seven reservations.

Despite his high-ranking position, Mercer hasn't been directly involved in the Cobell case or any of the tribal trust fund cases. However, he sits on DOJ's Native American Issues subcommittee and at one point was asked to consider running the panel by Kyle Sampson, a former Gonzales aide who resigned as the U.S. Attorney scandal unfolded.

The absence of Gonzales stands in contrast to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who will make his first appearance before the Senate committee since taking over the Interior Department last May. It was Gonzales and Kempthorne who made the $7 billion offer earlier this month.

Also slated to testify is Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the case who is a member of the Blackfeet Nation from Montana. John Echohawk, the executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, the non-profit that serves as co-counsel in the case, and Bill Martin, the vice chairman of the Inter-Tribal Monitoring Association, are on the witness list.

Cobell and the plaintiffs have already rejected the $7 billion proposal as a bad faith offer. They have pointed to Gonzales' testimony in March 2005, in which he said the tribal lawsuits along were worth more than $200 billion.

Martin, who serves as vice president of the Tlingit and Haida Tribes of Alaska, has criticized the administration as well for tying tribal issues to the Cobell case, which only affects money held in trust for individual Indians.

The committee will also hear from John Bickerman, who was appointed by Congress as a mediator between the plaintiffs and the Bush administration. He has suggested a settlement of the case of upwards of $10 billion.

The hearing takes place at 9:30am tomorrow in Room 485 of the Russell Senate Office Building. The committee is urging people to watch the proceeding online due to a high number of expected attendees.

Posted by EBW at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

[I'm posting this as I suspect it'll be ignored by most blogs (as it has to do with Indians)]

Rick Green of the Hartford Courant is one of the few in the MSM to start putting pieces together regarding influence peddling and the federal recognition at Interior. Here's the meat of the matter:

In 2005, Bush's Interior Department reversed its own 2004 finding granting federal recognition to the Schaghticokes, making it illegal for them to open a casino. This development came after intense public pressure organized by influential Kent residents, Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and the state's congressional delegation.

In January of 2005, a representative from the Republican lobbying firm of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, working with this coalition, said that he could "get to Kissinger via a friend," in an e-mail obtained by the Schaghticokes.

There's no proof that anyone got to the Nobel Prize winner, who lives on a mountaintop in Kent. But the Schaghticokes' federal court challenge to its loss of recognition could be about to turn explosive. The tribe now has a shot at reviving its case.

The Schaghticokes, one of two tribal factions, are backed by Subway Restaurants founder Fred DeLuca. Both want a casino development in Bridgeport. Kent residents have feared that a federal reservation would bring gambling to their town.

Schaghticoke supporters say that the tribe has as much evidence documenting its historic survival as our two federal tribes, who operate Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos. Opponents argue that the Schaghticokes faded away generations ago.

In an unusual decision last week, U.S. District Judge Peter Dorsey ruled that the Schaghticokes may gather more evidence, including testimony from federal officials and Barbour Griffith.

"The evidence produced by STN raises some questions about whether there was improper political influence during the federal acknowledgement process here," Dorsey said.

Indianz.com also has lots more on the Schaghticoke in its archives.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I have a video file (the webcast found here at Senate Indian Affairs.) I only need the last three minutes. Can anyone help me convert those last three minutes to YouTube?

Thank you in advance. I've been trying, and failing miserably.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

03/23/07 - Former Interior Deputy Secretary Pleads Guilty to Obstructing U.S. Senate Investigation into Abramoff Corruption Scandal

* Criminal Information
* Plea Agreement
* Statement of Facts

So, has anyone in our government or media raised the question as to why it took John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee (at least from January, 2005, though previously still the lead Senator on the Abramoff investigation for the ten months prior) from March, 2004, when he first received emails and other documents implicating Steve Griles, until late October, 2005 - a full eighteen months, until Senate investigators even "informally" questioned him? And where was the DoJ all this time? They were only able to get Griles on perjury and obstruction of justice due to his lying to Senate Indian Affairs, eighteen months after alleged criminal discovery?

Perhaps we should be looking at the firing and hiring of Department of Justice attorneys in the Public Integrity division - as from 2001 until last week, there have been five new chiefs, and numerous "acting" chiefs (some for as long as a year, as in the most recent case.) (Note: Public Integrity oversees the Abramoff case.)

Note that Grover Norquist, also heavily implicated in the Abramoff emails, has yet to be interviewed, three years later, by anyone from from the Senate Indian Affairs office. I assume the same could be said for the DoJ.

So before returning to my regularly scheduled retirement activities (shuffleboard, bingo, book writing) I just want to nudge all those "the attorney purge is all about voter fraud, yadda, yadda" theorists (cough, JMM, cough) - they might want to be sure to aware of this:

9-85.210 Violations of Campaign Financing Laws, Federal Patronage Laws, and Corruption of the Electional Process -- Consultation Requirement

Consultation with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division is required in all federal criminal matters that focus on violations of federal or state campaign financing laws, federal patronage crimes, and corruption of the election process. These offenses include, but are not limited to, offenses described in: 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 to 242, 592 to 611; 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973i(c), 1973i(e), and 1973gg-10; 2 U.S.C. §§ 431 to 455; and prosecutive theories that focus on election fraud or campaign fund raising violations using 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1343, and 1346; 18 U.S.C. § 1952; 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956 and 1957.

With regard to federal campaign financing matters arising under 2 U.S.C. §§ 431-455, United States Attorneys shall consult with the Public Integrity Section before any inquiry or preliminary investigation is requested or conducted. United States Attorneys shall also consult with the Public Integrity Section before instituting grand jury proceedings, filing an information, or seeking an indictment charging a campaign financing crime.

With regard to all other election crime matters (other than those described in USAM 9-85.200 (Federally Protected Activities)), namely, alleged election fraud or patronage offenses, United States Attorneys shall consult with the Public Integrity Section before an investigation beyond a preliminary inquiry is requested or conducted. In this connection, the Department views any voter interviews in the preelection and balloting periods -- other than interviews of a complainant and any witnesses he or she may identify -- as beyond a preliminary investigation. Thus, the Public Integrity Section should be consulted before such interviews.

Finally, as with campaign financing matters, United States Attorneys also shall consult with the Public Integrity Section before instituting grand jury proceedings, filing an information, or seeking an indictment charging an election fraud or patronage offense.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

(Note: All posts are copyrighted, to be used in my upcoming book on the subject - yes, I do have a plan for my "retirement".)

Forget about the little fish... (1/26/2006)
More on J. Steven Griles (1/30/2006)
Is the story even viable in the Lefty blogosphere? (2/1/2006)
Interior official was to join Abramoff as lobbyist... (2/1/2006)
More of the puzzle pieces fall into place... (2/3/2006)
More on CREA (2/5/2006)
Things heat up for Griles; Cummings doesn't do her homework (2/8/2006)
The missing link? (2/10/06)
More questions than answers (2/14/2006)
Ding dong, the witch is dead! (3/10/2006)
Griles Indictment Watch (3/10/2006)
Left in the drafts ... (3/11/2006)
One big happy cesspool... (3/22/2006)
CREA Connections (3/29/2006)
A documented history of a Republican front group, part 1 (4/4/2006)
CREA takes down its website... (4/5/2006)
Reframing the Abramoff scandal(s) (4/5/2006)
Answers to "Questions for the Abramoff-obsessed" (4/5/2006)
Even the Bush Interior Department leaks...(4/11/2006)
A new batch of pigs at the trough... (4/13/2006)
The WaPo starts to finally pick up the scent... (5/8/2006)
The recent Abramoff "leaks" and why we should care... (10/13/2006)
Circle them wagons... (10/24/2006)
Griles will look oh so good....in an orange jumpsuit (1/11/2007)
The impending Griles indictment: It's bigger than you think (1/12/2007)
Interior Department Org Chart, 2001-2002 (1/15/2007)
Griles update (3/15/2007)
Sampson participated in politically-motivated firings before... (3/13/2007)
So here's the summary of the Slonaker affair... (3/13/2006)

There, a gift for you Johnny-come-latelies. And now, back to shuffleboard and bingo for me.

Alright, here are the associated CREA (Federici) and McCain and sundry other Interior-related posts.

Scanlon's jilted fiance key to Abramoff's unraveling
Demand unredacted copies!
Who is Julie Finley?
Fun with typesetting....
McCain did have ties to CREA
"But I barely knew her..."
A front group here...a front group there...
Idle speculation
Putting the exposure of the Abramoff scandal in a larger context
Extortion, lies and (C-span) videotape...
More on the newly leaked Abramoff emails
Cassandra wrote...
A slip of the marker
Why provenance matters
A small issue of campaign ethics?

And a clarification: No, I did not mean the MSM, but blogs, particularly BigBoxers, who, now there's an indictment, pretend to own the story. Bah.

Posted by MB Williams at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Out of retirement for just this once (and besides, it's raining here in the desert today.)

You all probably know by now of the horrific assault on justice, also known as the J. Steven Griles sweetheart plea agreement.

So let's talk about who approved the deal, and, well, is there any chance there's a link to the burgeoning US Attorney scandal?

Well, according to the AP, the judge in the case was U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle. Ms. Segal Huvelle was a 1999 appointee to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Hence, one would assume the prosecutors on the case to be from the US Attorney's office in the District of Columbia. The newly appointed (September 2006) USA is one Jeffrey A. Taylor. Mr. Taylor previously worked as a close advisor to AG Alberto Gonzales, as well as an aide to Senator Orrin Hatch (hey, just like Kyle Sampson.)

Taylor was obviously a political appointment, at a time that more and more former Bush Administration official corruption cases were coming home to roost. Coincidence?

Update1: More on Taylor's close relationship to Gonzales:

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has appointed U.S. Attorney Leura G. Canary of the Middle District of Alabama; U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein of the District of Maryland; and U.S. Attorney Amul R. Thapar of the Eastern District of Kentucky to serve three-year terms on his 2007 Attorney General's Advisory Committee of United States Attorneys. He has also appointed Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to serve as an ex officio member. The Committee provides advice and counsel to the Attorney General.

(Note: Not to be bitter curmudgeonly or anything, but I'm already noticing as people start to "discover" Griles for the first time, that my extensive research on the cretin is overwhelmingly ignored. Well, I guess anyone is welcome to reinvent the wheel over and over again... But then, perhaps only the white viewpoint on this really matters.)

Posted by MB Williams at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The scope of the Griles, Federici and Abramoff scheme was not limited to a few casinos. It included defrauding the Federal Minerals Management Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and of course, Tribal Governments.

For reasons that either pass understanding, or are patently obvious, the media and its non-tribal alternatives construe Abramoff et alia as a morality play in which Indian Gaming alone occupies the central stage.

Similarly, the political control of US Attorneys, manifested in the Gonzales Eight, is construed as partisan voting rights, overlooking the peculiarity that six of the eight fired US Attorneys had significant MMS and Tribal lease prosecution responsibilities.

Griles was the big fish. He's not required to cooperate with the continuing, now gutted, federal investigation of the Abramoff network.

They won.

Posted by EBW at 10:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In July, 2002, Special Trustee for American Indians Tom Slonaker (a Clinton appointee held over by Bush) testified before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee (chaired then by Sen. Inouye) that the Interior Department's handling of the Individual Indian trusts was pretty much as fucked fouled up as it had ever been, despite a federal court order that a "full accounting" take place. Slonaker had submitted his proposed testimony to his Interior superiors, namely Dep. Sec. J. Steven Griles and Gale Norton, who summarily demanded that he change most of it. Two Justice Department attorneys as well as Kyle Sampson, White House advisor to the President, also called Slonaker and demanded he change his testimony.

Slonaker did not submit his statement, but testified in person, saying that an accounting as Norton et al. were proposing would not meet the Court's requirement. After he appeared before SIAC, Slonaker was fired. Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in TAP, asserted at the time Sampson was involved, "Slonaker claims he was forced out, and sources close to the case say Griles and White House counsel Kyle Sampson barred Slonaker from telling the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that the Interior Department was unable to live up to its trust responsibility because documents had been destroyed."

Pete Dominici was at that SIAC hearing, as was Orin Hatch, for whom Sampson was a top aide before being placed at the White House. Sampson used twork for Parr, Waddoups, Brown, Gee & Loveless, many of whose clients are leasors of federal and Indian land, thus potentially affected by Slonaker's testimony, i.e., if the government doesn't have the docs for a complete accounting, then they need to get that info from the lessors.

I know it's complicated, but I've argued for years that Interior and DoJ were in collusion to try and subvert the Court's order on a full accounting, as it could cost the government and/or the resource extraction industries many billions (Gonzales testified recently that it could be upwards of $200 billion - that was just before he and Kempthorne offered a paltry $7 billion to settle all the cases.)

Posted by MB Williams at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is what got Slonaker fired by Griles and Sampson.

* * * * * * *

The Chairman [Sen. Inouye]. May I proceed by asking the Special Trustee questions? In the most recent report of the Court Monitor for the District Court in which the Cobell-Norton litigation is pending, the text of several memoranda that you have transmitted to Mr. Edwards was printed. In your memo of April 30, 2002, you stated:

"I do not believe an accounting as that term is generally understood in the established trust scholarship acceptable to either the beneficiaries or the Special Trustee can be constructed. Short of a settlement, the best that might be able to be accomplished is the identification of the gaps of information. With that, the Department could perhaps seek some instruction from the judge on how to proceed. I remain concerned, however, that I have not heard anyone in the Department define the characteristics of an accounting to include anything more than the funds actually collected by the Department. That of course is inadequate."

And in your memo of May 22, 2002, you stated:

"It is evident that the long term record of the Department's administration of the Indian trust accounts is incomplete to
some degree. In addition, during the past year, the Special Master has been able to breach the Department's electronic systems that house the trust data, thereby demonstrating that the data may not be accurate. Because it is the duty of the Trustee to know all the facts about the administration of the trusts, these flaws cause me to doubt the ability of the Department to show either itself or the beneficiaries in sufficient detail the nature and amount of the trust property and its administration."

Mr. Slonaker, in your official capacity and from what you know of the gaps in information, do you believe that a complete historical accounting of the Individual Indian Money accounts can be achieved?

Mr. Slonaker. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Campbell. No; not completely. It may be possible to reconstruct a good many accounts completely. Even identifying the assets and the flow of income from the assets, which by the way is something that's incumbent upon the trustee to do.

I believe that the Office of Historical Trust Accounting, however, can go quite a way toward identifying what the gaps are in the information. As the trustee, it's crucial that every effort be made by the trustee to make certain that we have exhausted every means to identify the assets and the incomes that belong to the beneficiaries, and bring that accounting right up to date.

The Chairman. You spoke of obstacles. In your view, what are the obstacles, legal or practical, that would be presented if the Congress were to pursue a path of settlement of claims?

Mr. Slonaker. The obstacles to the actual accounting itself I think are fairly well known in terms of their type. There are records that we believe are probably either destroyed or lost. There is, as the GAO panel already has indicated, there are situations where the accounting was not done properly, we believe, in the initial instance. So there are obstacles to getting a full and complete accounting.

What those obstacles are, which you termed as a gap, have to be further determined. They can only be estimated at this point in time.

The Chairman. Everyone seems to speak of missing or destroyed documents. Could you tell us as to when these
documents began to be missing or when the Government learned that they were destroyed?

Mr. Slonaker. I cannot, sir. We only have, at least I only have anecdotal evidence of missing documents at this point. I think that's the point of the historical trust accounting report in part, and that is that these gaps have to be
identified as to what point they started and where those gaps are and what the nature of the gap is.

The Chairman. So there is no proof or data to tell us when the gaps began to come into existence?

Mr. Slonaker. Not that I'm aware of, sir.

The Chairman. So these gaps or obstacles are such that settlement would be extremely difficult?

Mr. Slonaker. I think my response to that, Mr. Chairman, has to be that the Trustee needs to do everything in his power to establish what the liability of the Trustee may be. The size of the gaps, the nature of the gaps has yet to be discovered. Whether that lends itself to identifying a figure which in turn might lend itself to some sort of a settlement is not clear to me.

* * * * * * *

So what was so awful about Slonaker's testimony? 1) He admitted there were "gaps" due to missing or destroyed documents, and thus, 2) the Court might have to provide other means of acquiring the information needed to provide a full, court-ordered accounting of the Individual Accounts. Some analysts for the Cobell plaintiffs had suggested obtaining that information from the leasors, a not-unreasonable idea. However, as we recently learned regarding other federal land leases, opening the lessors books can prove enlightening, namely to how many billions the US government has been defrauded by the likes of BigOil, BigTimber and BigCoal.

Update: Indianz.com editor Acee Agoyo kindly offered corrections to my post via email. As he was at the aforementioned hearing, he assued me that neither Senators Hatch nor Domenici attended. In fact, despite being on the SIAC, Hatch seldom attended hearings - he obviously had better things to do.

Also, neither Griles nor Norton told Slonaker what to say - they let DoJ and Sampson do that. But they certainly fired his tush after he testified as to the grand fiasco tribal trust reform had become.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:40 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Which US Senator currently taking heat for the US Attorney fiasco participated in the SIAC hearings, after which, Special Trustee Tom Slonaker was fired by Steve Griles (with extra special input from White House special advisor to the President, Kyle Sampson)?

And a second cherry: Name another Senator on SIAC at the time of Slonaker's testimony who had a professional connection to Kyle Sampson, as in, Sampson was a former top aide.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

From Indianz.com 2002 reporting on the Slonaker firing:

Slonaker appeared before the committee -- with the department's support, he stated -- and gave a less than glowing assessment of the accounting plan. He suggested that his views contradicted the government's position on more than 20 lawsuits citing trust asset mismanagement.

"I think Justice may take a pretty strict view of what can help or harm their case," he said.

Slonaker last week could not recall the names of the attorneys who took part in the the tele-conference call, which he said occurred around 6:30 p.m. on July 24. Harper, in the subpoenas, identified the group as Kelly Johnson and Jeffrey Clark of the Department of Justice and Kyle Sampson of the White House.

"If you're calling about Kelly and Jeff asking Tom Slonaker not to testify," said Dana Perino, a DOJ spokesperson, "they did not."

Due to the ongoing Cobell class action, which affects individual Indian beneficiaries, and several related tribal cases, government sources said it wasn't unusual that both the DOJ and the White House were concerned about Slonaker's testimony. They said DOJ attorneys often consult the White House on litigation.

Johnson and Clark are mid-level Bush appointees to the environmental and natural resources division, which used to represent Norton in the Cobell case before she fired them last fall. The division, however, has been assigned to the tribal cases U.S. District Judge Lamberth has agreed to hear.

Sampson is a former aide to conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Previously employed by the Salt Lake City firm of Parr, Waddoups, Brown, Gee & Loveless, he advises Bush on a number of matters, including political appointees and environmental-related litigation.

"All day he sits in the Oval Office and makes the tough decisions," Sampson told The Deseret News on July 17. "You know they're the tough ones or they wouldn't make it to the Oval Office."

A second White House lawyer also participated in the conference call but the person's identity has not be ascertained. Slonaker said a member of the Interior's legislative staff took part as well.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I knew I ran across Kyle Sampson's name in my Cobell v. Norton (now Kempthorne) research. A year ago, I posted this, on the promotion of one of Sampson's partners in crime:

While at the DoJ, Johnson apparently was up to her knees in the DoI tribal trust fund fiasco:

Although Norton won't testify in court, she may be forced to answer to Congress. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee and the House Resources Committee are considering opening their own investigations into Slonaker's ouster.

In addition to Norton, attorneys for Indian account holders want to depose Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles and Indian Trust Transition Director Ross Swimmer. Three government attorneys -- Kyle Sampson of the White House and Kelly Johnson and Jeffrey Clark of the Department of Justice -- have been subpoenaed.

Johnson, along with Clark and Sampson, participated via teleconference in the interrogation and subsequent firing of special trustee for American Indians, Tom Slonaker. Slonaker testified before the Senate that Norton's handling of Trust fund matters was the rosy picture she and her cronies were painting.

I was always intrigued that someone from the White House was directly involved in Slonaker's termination. It made it clear to me that the White House was much, much more concerned about the outcome of the Indian Trust case than the disinterested facade it put forth.

I guess it's time for me to get back on the case.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

ABC runs a two-pager by a political reporter. Maureen Dowd does a drive-bye, forgetting that there actually is a factual record. That's a banner year for Peltier copy in the MSM.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt will be released on March 27 and then remain on parole for five years, after 24 years of incarceration for participation in the Red Army Faction, also known as the Bader-Meinhoff Gang¹. The Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart [senior district court] held the statutory parole hearing at the conclusion of the minimum 24 year sentence and concluded:

"The court sees no indication that the defendant poses any further danger. The parole ruling is justifiable in terms of public safety."

In addition to participating in operations that engaged or attempted to engage German conservative politicians, politically active corporate executives, and collaterally, ten police officers, she participated in an attack team that engaged the transport vehicle of the commander of the NATO Central Army Group with an RPG-7 in September 1981.

Like Mohnhaupt, Eva Sybille Haule's minimum period in detention expires this year. She was convicted of participating in operations that attempted to engage a NATO school (currently the NATO Geographic Officers Course and related senior staff courses) with a car bomb and engaged an armaments CEO. She too will be eligible for parole.

Nathalie Menigon, Jean-Marc Rouillan, and Georges Cipriani, former members of Action Directe, have served 20 years for operations that targeted the CEO of Renault and the head of sales of the French Ministry of Defense.

I don't think it matters which theory of the case one subscribes to, good Special Agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, bad Bob Robideau and Darelle Butler (acquitted, self-defense) and bad Leonard Peltier, or the reverse. The 1977 War, and it was a Dirty War, between the FBI and many others acting in a conspiracy of crime under the color of colonial oppression, and the (pre-faction) AIM and many others also acting in a conspiracy of crime under the color of indigenous resistance, has been over for nearly three decades. Over 100 people died in and out of custody during those years, and Indians die every year in custody. Even New Hampshire under Howard Dean had a statistically demonstrable over-incarceration rate for Abenakis.

The point is, its over. Unlike Geffen, I was not shocked when Bill Clinton declined to grant clemency to a political prisoner that politics has long ago passed. More problematic is the Individual Indian Trust issue, and the conduct in question didn't begin after the December 2000 coup d'état. It began early on Bill Clinton's watch.

¹ Ulrike Meinhoff died by hanging while in custody in Stuttgart-Stammheim on 9 May 1976. Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe died of gun shot wounds on 18 October 1977, and Irmgard Möller survivied four stab wounds inflicted the same day, all while in custody in Stuttgart-Stammheim. All are officially "suicides" or "attempted suicide".

Posted by EBW at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've already had two friends and a journalist email me links to the latest Griles/Wooldridge news, e.g., they bought a condo together, along with a ConocoPhillips lobbyist, and failed to disclose their relationship, and expensive gifts, to the DoJ and Interior for quite some time. The important thing, however, is that even when they did, Gonzales, Norton and others took no action.

Here are some links.

Legal Times
Houston Chronicle
Mercury News

I'm really swamped, with the Koufaxes and a proposal I've been asked to put together. I'll get back to my favorite obsession as soon as I can.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This shouldn't leave much doubt that the underpayment of lessor royalties, and the attempts by Interior and Congressional officials and staff to cover it all up, is part and parcel of Cobell v. Norton (now Kempthorne.) From the NYTimes:

Kerr-McGee Is Found Liable in Lawsuit Over Oil Royalties
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - A federal jury in Denver agreed Tuesday with a former top auditor for the Interior Department that the Kerr-McGee Corporation had cheated the government out of millions of dollars in royalties on oil it produced in publicly owned coastal waters.

The decision, reached by the jury after deliberations of about four hours, is a vindication for the auditor, Bobby L. Maxwell. He became a whistle-blower and sued Kerr-McGee as a private citizen after top officials at the Interior Department ordered him to drop his audit findings.

It is also a potentially big embarrassment for the Interior Department, which dismissed Mr. Maxwell in a "reorganization" and which had insisted that his case against Kerr-McGee had no merit.

The Minerals Management Service, an Interior Department agency that collects more than $10 billion a year in royalties on oil and gas pumped on federal territory, is now the subject of numerous investigations by Congress, as well as its own inspector general, over its enforcement of royalty rules.

As a brief reminder, Judge Lamberth ordered a full, historic accounting in late 1999. Since that time, two Administrations and a whole slew of Congressmen, most dependent on extraction industry largess to fund their campaigns, have done everything they can to prohibit such an accounting, as it would clearly require industry to open their books.

Will the new Congress address this matter? Do they have the political will to stand up to ExxonMobil and Arch Coal?

Addendum: The above news broke in the same cycle that Indian Country Today featured a story on how powerful Republican Congressmen, including Chris Shays and Frank Wolf, threatened to pressure Bush to fire Norton if she did not rescind the recognition of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When the going gets tough, Republicans drop even their bestest friends like a lump of burning coal:

Lobbying Firm Cuts Ties to Name Partner Under Investigation in Abramoff Probe
Jason McLure
Legal Times
January 18, 2007 Lobbying firm Lundquist, Nethercutt & Griles has severed ties with former Department of the Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles.

Griles has been targeted in the Justice Department's ongoing corruption probe stemming from the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff.

Griles, who had been a name partner at the firm, was a lobbyist for coal and energy interests both before and after his tenure at the Interior Department from 2001 to 2005. During Griles' stint at Interior, which oversees lucrative drilling and mining licenses on millions of acres of federal land, his ties to industry were the subject of a number of internal investigations.

Lundquist, Nethercutt & Griles did not respond to detailed questions about Griles' departure, including whether Griles was forced out by his partners and whether the firm would be renaming itself. Instead, the firm provided a statement saying Griles resigned as a partner effective Jan. 10. That same day, a number of news outlets reported Griles had been informed he was a target of federal prosecutors. A lawyer for Griles declined to comment on his departure.

Remember Andrew Lundquist? Lundquist served as executive director of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force (the National Energy Policy Development Group) from February 1, 2001, to September 30, 2001, then stayed on as Cheney's director of energy policy from October 1, 2001, to March 26, 2002, during which time he worked with Congress as it drafted the energy legislation, including the highly controversial plan to drill in ANWR.

Lundquist, an Alaskan native, worked on the Hill for both Senators Murkowski and Stevens prior to joining the task force, including as majority staff director of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

And Nethercutt? From LNG's now defunct (but Google-cached) website:

George Nethercutt brings a wealth of public and private experience to Lundquist, Nethercutt & Griles, having served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2005. Nethercutt's historic 1994 victory unseated then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley, the first defeat of a sitting Speaker since 1860. Nethercutt represented Washington's 5th Congressional District until choosing to run for the U.S. Senate in 2004. While in the House, Nethercutt served on the prestigious House Committee on Appropriations and the House Science Committee. Prior to his election to Congress, Nethercutt was a practicing attorney in Washington state, specializing in estate planning, probate and adoption law. He previously served as staff counsel, and then chief of staff, to U.S. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, working on such issues as agriculture, fisheries, timber and mining.

Also on the staff of LNG is Howard Useem, who manages the lobbying firm's energy practice. Prior to joining Lundquist's first lobbying firm (with Joe Allbaugh, the former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief and ex-Bush campaign manager) in 2003, Mr. Useem had served for 24 years as the senior professional staff member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

I spent much of yesterday re-reading the SIAC September 2005 report on Federici and Griles' part in the Abramoff scandal. I found this part of the conclusion rather interesting, in light of the Griles current legal predicament:

From the evidence discussed above, it appears that some of the Tribes were induced into paying CREA because Abramoff told them, among other things, that those payments would get them favorable treatment at Interior. The evidence also suggests that Federici may have led Abramoff into believing that she had pull at Interior and that she would use it in exchange for, or because of, contributions by Abramoff's Tribal clients to CREA. Unfortunately, the extent to which Federici actually sought to influence Interior on pending matters affecting Abramoff's clients remains unclear. Also unclear is what, if anything, Griles (who Abramoff believed was Federici's contact at Interior) might have done on behalf of Abramoff's clients at Interior and (if Griles did anything) what his motives for doing so might have been.

Against that backdrop, the Committee is concerned about the veracity of Federici's testimony on several important areas, discussed above. Additional inquiry into those areas by the appropriate authorities appears warranted.

But no mention of Steven Griles as a potential target of inquiry "by the appropriate authorities", one would assume being the Department of Justice. Federici has been MIA from the Washington political scene since her November 2005 testimony. She, and CREA, carried much, much greater clout in Republican circles than any of the recent news reports or Senate testimory indicates, which I'll go into greater detail in an upcoming diary. However, should she turn, and become a witness for the DoJ, Griles would not be alone in fearing Pandora's box of Republican slime and corruption she could open, dating back over a decade. Griles former energy industry flogging partners could be in much deeper trouble than mere "guilt by association".

Posted by MB Williams at 07:19 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This may come in handy as a reference soon:

Click on the image for a larger chart.

I only included the most visible employees, most of which were political appointments. I'll add a brief biography for this cast of characters soon.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:32 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

With Steve Grile's indictment pending, I refreshing my CREA knowledge, and ran across this February 2002 email from CREA executive director and former Griles "special friend", Italia Federici to Eric Ruff, former comminications director for Interior (now Press Secretary for the Pentagon.) In it, Federici writes,

I was also told that the Conservative Action Team (CAT) members have been asked to sign a letter to Gale and the President slamming DOI for the California and Louisiana situations. I was told they have congressional 50 signatures. I tried to verify this. I called Tom Tancredo (friend of Gale and mine and member of CATs) to ask him what he knew. He is in Turkey until Sunday night.

I did a quick bit of fact-checking on Federici's story, and Tancredo was in fact in Turkey at that time.

[Accidently left in draft, published on April 3rd, 2007, with the original draft date. ebw]

Posted by MB Williams at 01:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[Posted this over at the Orange site, hoping to inform a larger pool of readers than we have here at our mere consonant-level blog.]

Two days ago, LeftWingNut posted a diary which informed dKos readers that former Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles had received target letter from the Justice Department, indicating he might be soon indicted for lying about his relationship with the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff (see WaPo1, WaPo2, or NYTimes for details.) I was rather surprised to see the diary slide off the page with only a few comments, as this may be the first breach of the dam in the biggest corruption scandal Washington has seen in many years.

As I mentioned, Steve Griles was Deputy Secretary of Interior. But what does that actually mean. Below is the heirarchy of the department (source: Wikipedia):

Griles was the number two man at Interior below Secretary Gale Norton. The position is generally referred to as the "Chief Operating Officer" of the department. As such, Griles had oversite of most day-to-day activities of the department responsible for one-fifth of the land in the U.S., much of which is leased out to mining, oil and gas, livestock, and forestry industries every year. The appointment of Griles in 2001 was viewed by most environmentalists as the fox watching the henhouse; until joining Interior, Griles was an industry lobbyist, whose clients included the National Mining Association, Sunoco, Chevron, Edison Electric Institute and Arch Coal. Griles was not a novice at Interior, however; like his boss, Gale Norton, Griles had served at Interior in the Reagan Administration, under the tutelage of the infamous James G. Watt.

Griles, like Norton, was placed in Interior in order to facilitate new Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Plan. Both came out of the "Wise Use" movement, and sought to remove almost all restrictions on the 500 million acres of federal land governed by Interior. Of the documents still being withheld from FOIA requests of the Cheney Energy Plan development process are dozens a number from Griles' and Norton's offices.

However, Griles' legal problems are not, overtly at least, related to his central duties at Interior, e.g., the oversite of federal land leases and reform of the Indian Trust Fund. Instead, he will most likely be indicted for lying to Congress, specifically the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, about his relationship with Jack Abramoff. Griles' connection with Abramoff appears to have been facilitated by Italia Federici, a former campaign aide to Gale Norton who assumed control of Norton's non-profit, CREA (Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, previously known as the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates), which she purportedly founded in Colorado in 1997 with friend Grover Norquist. (In 2000, Federici's Washington home address was listed as the same as Norquist's.)

Last year, I posted a diary on the connection between Abramoff, Interior and the Indian Trust Fund case, which Kos kindly front-paged. Since that time, I've learned much, much more about Griles, Federici, Norquist, CREA et al., and how in the grand scheme of scandals, Abramoff is merely a footnote. (If you have a huge chunk of time, you can read all about it here, at Wampum.)

I was expecting for months now that Griles was high on the indictment list, and was thrilled to hear about the target letter earlier this week. However, my joy turned to apprehension yesterday as I ran across new information. First, was the inclusion in the WaPo story that Sue Ellen Wooldridge, assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources at the Justice Department since 2005 had turned in her resignation this week. I knew Wooldridge had moved from Interior, where she had been Norton's Deputy Chief of Staff and Interior Department solicitor. What I didn't know was that Wooldridge, a California native, and Griles were romantically involved. From the WaPo:

With the prospect of Griles's indictment, a senior Justice Department official -- who Interior employees said has been dating Griles -- tendered her resignation this week.

Steve Griles left the Interior Department in early 2004. Woolridge was appointed as solicitor, chief lawyer for the department, in June, 2004 (a Bush recess appointment.) Woolridge was nominated for the Justice Department in June, 2005, at the same time Griles came under scrutiny in the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings for his role in the growing Abramoff scandal. The same time that the case was being forwarded to the Justice Department, where the Assistant Attorney General (Environment and Natural Resources Division) might have significant oversite duties (or at a minimum, significant insite into where the case was going.)

The second piece of information which rained on my parade I found at Indianz.com's blog, In the Hoop. The post, dated January 7th, featured this screenshot from the Senate Indian Affairs Committee:

As one can see, according to staff at SIAC, the Democrats never took control of the Senate on January 4th (either that, or they had inside information on Sen. Joe Lieberman's joining the Republican caucus (officially, that is.)) But while In the Hoop's coverage was somewhat humorous (we Indians have a rather twisted sense of humor when it comes to federal goings-on), my apprehension grew when I visited the SIAC website and found this:

Griles is purportedly being indicted in regards to statements he made before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings in the fall of 2005. The transcripts and video of those hearings are housed at the SIAC website, and are now unavailable to the public (excluding Abramoff-philes like me who have already downloaded all the docs.)

Then, I remembered a certain event from earlier this week; an event that was linked to the Abramoff scandal, not specifically to Griles, probably because the WaPo hadn't yet reported the target letter. Remember this?

White House, Secret Service signed deal to keep visitor logs from public Agreement, made during Abramoff scandal, kept under wraps until court arguments. By Pete Yost ASSOCIATED PRESS Saturday, January 06, 2007

WASHINGTON — The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.

The Bush administration didn't reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until recently. The White House is using it to deal with a problem on a separate front, a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

In a federal appeals court filing three weeks ago, the administration's lawyers used the memo in a legal argument aimed at overturning the judge's ruling. The Washington Post is suing for access to the Secret Service logs.

The five-page document, dated May 17, declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records. Therefore, it states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

So why is the WaPo seeking access to Cheney's visitor logs now? Why is Sue Ellen Wooldridge being formally investigated by the grand jury? (And why did the WaPo's John Heilprin include that important detail in his story, while his colleague Susan Schmidt did not?) Who's responsible for the apparent coup d'etat of Republicans on the SIAC? How is this all related to the scandals at Mineral Management Services and the Indian Trust case, particularly now that the Native American Rights Fund has filed a new lawsuit (for Tribal, versus Individual trust accounts), a lawsuit which could once again force industry lessors to open their books to account for billions in missing royalties?

Are all of these just mere coincidences, or is the lid about to blow?

For the first time in many months, I now have more questions than answers regarding Griles, Norton, CREA and Abramoff (and where they all intersect.) I'd love to hear from other Abramoff-philes and Cheney Energy Plan experts - what do you think is going on?

Posted by MB Williams at 02:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

When I was over catching up at Indianz.com this morning, I noticed a recent entry (1/5/07) at In the Hoop, the site's blog. ItH had a screen shot of the official website of the Senate Indain Affairs Committee, which until the new Democratic Congress was innaugurated on Janary 4th, was chaired by Senator John McCain (R-AZ). I've reproduced that image below:

Clearly, while Democrats took power in all other House and Senate committees, SIAC witnessed a coup.

The attention Indianz.com placed on the website apparently had an impact, as this graphic is all that now remains of the site:

While this might seem funny on some level, with the recent indications that J. Steven Griles will soon be indicted, in part due to his testimony before SIAC in 2005, the loss of the SIAC website, and all its archives, including hearings video and transcripts, is unbelievably untimely. In fact, it seems just a tad too convenient.

Posted by MB Williams at 08:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Just in time for Cobell v. Kempthorne (was Norton, was Babbitt) to blow the lid (with help from the Democratic Congress?) off of a century of theft and corruption regarding natural resource industries royalty payments, there's a new lawsuit in town. Only this time, it's tribal accounts, versus "individual" ones:

Tribes sue feds, alleging poor trust fund management
09:49 PM PST on Thursday, January 11, 2007
Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho - Nearly a dozen Indian tribes, including the Nez Perce of Idaho, have filed suit against the federal government, asking it to account for billions of dollars held in tribal trusts.

The lawsuit is the latest legal challenge to the government's handling of American Indian trust money, which tribal representatives contend has been shoddy and inadequate.

The Native American Rights Fund, a Boulder, Colo.-based nonprofit law firm, is seeking to represent about 240 tribal governments that have trust accounts with the United States. The firm says the U.S. Department of the Interior, which manages the accounts, has failed to provide a complete accounting despite several congressional orders.

The government holds about 1,600 trust fund accounts for more than 300 tribes. Their total worth is estimated at about $3 billion.

But the real issue here is buried way down in the AP article, in coverage of the earlier and ongoing litigation over the Individual Indian Monies (IIM) trusts:

The latest lawsuit joins another claim alleging mismanagement of Indian trust funds. In that case, Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell, of Blackfoot, Mont., sued the government in 1996 over what she said was its mismanagement of hundreds of thousands of accounts held on behalf of individual Indians, containing more than $100 billion.

That suit is on hold while the Indians fight an appellate court decision to remove a federal judge from their case. The government has said it is too expensive to piece together from its records how much the Indian accounts are actually worth, and has proposed an $8 billion settlement.

The "expense" for the Bush Administration and the GOP would be overwhelmingly political, as the only way, at this juncunture, to get the most accurate accounting would be to have industry open their books. However, as we've seen in recent months in the scandal exploding at the Mineral Management Services, that would expose the decades of underpayment of royalties by the oil, gas, mining and forestry industries for their leases on Indian land. A full accounting a potential liability of tens, if not hundreds of billions in underpayments (and nonpayments) by the financial backers of mostly Republican political interests in this country. The fallout would be catyclismic.

With all the Trust-related news pouring out in the last few days, I have lots to write about. First I need to follow a few new leads...

[H/T to Indianz.com on the Tribal Trust Accounts litigation.]

Posted by MB Williams at 07:18 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Yahoo! I knew it would happen eventually! From the NYTimes:

Former Official Is Said to Be a Focus of Lobbyist Inquiry
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 -The former No. 2 official in the Interior Department has been notified by federal prosecutors that he will most likely be indicted for lying about his relationship with the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, people with knowledge of the investigation said Wednesday.

A lawyer for the former official, J. Steven Griles, said Mr. Griles was recently told by the Justice Department that he was a target of the investigation as a result of his testimony about Mr. Abramoff to a Senate committee in 2005.

"We are shocked and disappointed at this turn of events," the lawyer, Barry M. Hartman, said in a statement. "No one has suggested that Mr. Griles ever took anything of value from Mr. Abramoff or any other lobbyist, and he never did."

Mr. Abramoff, once one of the most powerful Republican lobbyists in Washington, entered prison last year after pleading guilty to conspiring to corrupt public officials.

In his November 2005 testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. Griles insisted he had done no special favors for Mr. Abramoff while he was deputy secretary of the interior in President Bush's first term. But Mr. Griles acknowledged that he had been approached about leaving the department to join Mr. Abramoff's lobbying firm. Mr. Griles did not take that job, and now works elsewhere as a corporate lobbyist.

Mr. Abramoff's internal e-mail messages show that he referred to Mr. Griles as "our guy" at the Interior Department, and repeatedly sought to bring pressure on Mr. Griles to do favors for Mr. Abramoff's Indian tribe clients. In a report last year, the Indian Affairs Committee said it could not "definitively conclude what, if anything, Griles did to assist Mr. Abramoff's clients."

For my background on J. Steven Griles, see most of the posts in Abramoff and the Injuns

So happy, I could dance! Expect there might be some dishing on the Cheney Energy Plan hijinx in some kind of plea agreement - that was the real reason Griles was tapped by Bush/Cheney. He was a mega-lobbyist for the mining/gas/oil industry.

For extra points, which top contributor to Rahm Emanuel just hired Griles firm to lobby for them?

Posted by MB Williams at 10:50 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Of course, she was working "unofficially" for them for years as Interior Sec. (H/T to Susie, whose site is currently down.)

Ex-Interior Secretary Norton to join Shell as counsel
Last Update: 4:05 PM ET Dec 27, 2006

HOUSTON (MarketWatch) -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) Wednesday said it hired Gale Norton to serve as a counsel for the oil giant.

The move comes amid rising scrutiny on Capitol Hill of Norton's former agency's dealings with the oil industry. Norton, who stepped down as interior secretary on March 31, will be based primarily out of Colorado, and will serve as general counsel for Shell's unconventional resources division, Shell said.

Shell "is currently engaged in developing and testing proprietary technology designed to enhance oil recovery from certain unconventional sources, such as oil shale and extra heavy oil," Shell spokeswoman Destin Singleton said in a statement.

I'll have more on this, I hope. I started to do research this morning, and got sucked down the lobbying disclosure site for hours (happens every time.)

Posted by MB Williams at 11:23 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There are a couple of things everyone knows. One is the Western Shoshone Land Claim, or why California got into the Civil War, or rather, what the California Volunteers did during their Civil War. The text of the Treaty of Ruby Valley is here. Click here for larger map.

Here's how Indian Country Today covered the latest "finale" of the Western Shoshone Land Claim. Recall, the fastest way to get a Treaty signed is to find an Indian with a bottle problem and make him a chief, because while candy is dandy, liquor is always quicker, neh? Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., sponsored the settlement bill at 15 cents per acre, framed with (some few) individuals, not tribal governments, touching paper to seal the steal.

Posted: July 09, 2004
by: Jerry Reynolds / Washington D.C. correspondent / Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com/?1089383970

WASHINGTON - One of the largest ongoing seizures of Indian land in modern times will move forward following President George W. Bush's signing of the Western Shoshone Distribution Bill on July 7.

Under provisions of the bill, Western Shoshone claims to 24 million acres of land in Nevada, Utah, California and Idaho, based on the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863, are officially subsumed through payment by the U.S. government. The bill will forcibly distribute approximately $145 million in funds awarded the tribe by the Indian Land Claims Commission. Most of it will go to 6,000 or so eligible tribal members, with a separate revenue stream set aside for educational purposes.

The commission acted on findings that following the Ruby Valley Treaty, which permitted non-Indian miners access to the tribal lands, a "gradual encroachment" took place that supposedly nullified the treaty. According to the government the "gradual encroachment" theory obviated any need for official cession of land by sovereign Western Shoshone governments, a sticking point to this day with foes of the funds distribution.

The commission based its original $27 million award (enacted by its successor organization, U.S. Court of Federal Claims) on land valuation in effect in 1872 - 15 cents an acre, with no interest on the loss over time.

Because acceptance of the award would create the perception that any claims to their land have been relinquished, the majority of Western Shoshone governments have steadfastly refused the money. Despite the July 7 signing, several Western Shoshone tribes and tribal members said they will continue to rely on the Ruby Valley Treaty to press their land claims.

This has never been easy for them. Another sticking point in the process of seizure has been a court ruling that the tribe could not litigate the award once its trustee, the Interior Department, accepted receipt of it.

Although tribal sovereignty is not vested in individuals but in tribes, Congress has relied on individual votes, cast in rather stage-managed proceedings, to determine that a "majority" of Western Shoshone tribal members favor distribution of funds and the resulting extinction of their land claims. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his Republican ally in the House of Representatives, fellow Nevadan James Gibbons, persuaded their colleagues to pass the embattled bill mainly on the strength of vote tallies in proceedings that had no official sanctioning process across all the Western Shoshone tribes, but concentrated on Nevada tribes.

The Ruby Valley Treaty lands are rich in resources, including gold, water and geothermal energy. Multinational mining companies are standing by to operate within the Ruby Valley lands through "privatization" bills brought forward by Gibbons. Gibbons and Reid are among Congress' leading recipients of mining company contributions.

In addition, President Bush has designated Yucca Mountain, a site within the Ruby Valley lands, as the nation's nuclear waste repository.

In a statement of dissenting views attached to the distribution bill, signed by six members of the House, the claim continues to be made that no proof has been provided of Bush administration claims that a "vast majority" of Western Shoshone favor distribution of funds.

In any case, sovereignty is vested in tribal government, not individuals. According to the bill's more vocal Western Shoshone opponents, the one former Western Shoshone tribal governmental leader who had testified in behalf of distribution did so over the opposition of a majority of his council, which passed a resolution refuting his testimony. A "Western Shoshone Claims Steering Committee," heavily relied on by Reid and Gibbons in producing a show of tribal support for distribution, has all the appearance of a shadow government, having been declared null and void by a resolution of the recognized government - all this again now part of recent historical record.

Western Shoshone governing bodies have passed at least eight resolutions against distribution: the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone in 2004, Battle Mountain Indian Colony in 2002, South Fork Band Indian Reservation in 2003, Wells Band Council Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone in 2002, Yomba Shoshone Tribe in 2003, Winnemucca Indian Colony in 2003, and Elko Band Council, which passed two in 2004.

The distribution will take place in defiance of at least these eight resolutions among the Western Shoshone. The National Congress of American Indians, the Organization of American States, and the United Nations have also weighed in against the distribution.

Western Shoshone resistance will clearly continue. "It's not over," said Mary Gibson, a tribal member. "We still exist and we still have our rights to our land. It makes me sad and angry that myths continue to cloud the truth in this country. This struggle isn't a Shoshone versus Shoshone battle, the underlying issue here is the U.S. responsibility and accountability for a treaty with the Western Shoshone Nation. As long as the people in the U.S. allow this to happen it will continue to happen."

Raymond Yowell, of the Western Shoshone National Council, described himself as "utterly disappointed. It's unbelievable that the U.S. body that makes the laws has acted in this manner. The fight is not over. A fraud is a fraud - individuals cannot sell out a nation and the bill, although a threat politically, does nothing to change our inherent rights or our treaty rights. Congress and the President were informed of all the facts that touch upon this issue. We will use the Treaty of Ruby Valley to stop Yucca Mountain and to protect our lands. Our title is still intact.

"The self-described, private group who pushed for this money are not members of any federally recognized council and have no authority to speak on behalf of our tribe or the Western Shoshone Nation. The Nevada legislators and the Bush administration have been well-advised of this fact. The way this legislation was handled makes an absolute sham of the stated government-to-government relationship and responsibility of the U.S. government."

Hugh Stevens, chairman of the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone Nation, added, "Senator Reid has made numerous public commitments regarding resolving land issues for our communities. We will be looking for him to stand by that commitment in an expeditious fashion."

However, a press officer in Reid's office, Tessa Hafen, said the senator struck no "deal" in the distribution bill that would permit tribes to retain or regain parcels of land for themselves within the Ruby Valley Treaty regions. Proposals to that effect have come from Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., in the House. Hafen said the senator has always hoped to work realistically with Western Shoshone tribes on their land claims. "It's always been part of his long-term strategy," she added, then noted that "strategy" is perhaps too strong a word for it.

He has always hoped to work with Western Shoshone tribes on land issues, she concluded. "The problem is no one has ever come to him."

Posted by EBW at 08:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Todd Wilkinson, of the New West Network, puts together an excellent article on recent Federici-related news, in particular, info from the recently released Senate Finance Committee report on Abramoff. I highly recommend it.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Jack's said today that he can name eight Senators on our side of the aisle, and he's going to take up residency at the Federal Correction Institute in Cumberland, Maryland, as early as tomorrow, a short ride from his desk at the J. Edgar Hoover building on Pennsylvania Avenue, rather than the State of Florida, and awkward commute to DC.

Here are his working venues in the Senate (most everything Interior):

1. Indian Affairs
   Byron Dorgan (ND)
   Daniel Inouye (HI)
   Kent Conrad (ND)
   Daniel Akaka (HI)
   Tim Johnson (SD)
   Maria Cantwell (WA)

   

2. Energy and Natural Resources
   Jeff Bingaman (NM)
   Daniel K. Akaka (HI)
   Byron L. Dorgan (ND)
   Ron Wyden (OR)
   Tim Johnson (SD)
   Mary L. Landrieu (LA)
   Dianne Feinstein (CA)
   Maria Cantwell (WA)
   Ken Salazar (CO)
   Robert Menendez (NJ)

3. Appropriations
   Robert Byrd (WV)
   Daniel Inoye (HI)
   Patrick Leahy (VT)
   Tom Harkin (IA)
   Barbara Mikulski (MD)
   Harry Reid (NV)
   Herb Kohl (WI)
   Patty Murray (WA)
   Byron Dorgan (ND)
   Dianne Feinsetin (CA)
   Richard Durbin (IL)
   Tim Johnson (SD)
   Mary Landrieu (LA)
   

We've excluded Environment and Public Works. While the Committee has Interior scope, its not where Jack's clients were making money, or greatly chaffed by ungreased skids.

Here are some things you can read and think about:
Eric's Things ANWR , in particular the post to the Triballaw mailing list Natives, Senators and Oil, The connection between drilling in the, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Akaka Bill by Anne Keala Kelly. Its long, but its primary material.
MB's Abramoff & the Injuns series.

We appreciate Jack, like a complex cheese. He's a straight ahead crook, and he actually understands Indian issues. And yes, we're turning Abramoff & the Injuns into a book.

Continue reading "Your Abramoff Scorecard (post 7/11)" »

Posted by EBW at 05:28 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Then we'd better deal first and foremost with this:

New Telemarketing Ploy Steers Voters on Republican Path By CHRISTOPHER DREW

An automated voice at the other end of the telephone line asks whether you believe that judges who "push homosexual marriage and create new rights like abortion and sodomy" should be controlled. If your reply is "yes," the voice lets you know that the Democratic candidate in the Senate race in Montana, Jon Tester, is not your man.

In Maryland, a similar question-and-answer sequence suggests that only the Republican Senate candidate would keep the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. In Tennessee, another paints the Democrat as wanting to give foreign terrorists "the same legal rights and privileges" as Americans.

...

But Harold E. Swift, one of the organizers of the Ohio group, said he viewed the move beyond phone banks or simple taped attack messages as a "very sophisticated approach to voter education." The goal, he said, is to "make people aware of the candidate's stand on the issues that are important to them."

Mr. Swift said his group, Common Sense Ohio, is a nonprofit advocacy organization and is financed by wealthy Republican donors. A sister organization, Common Sense 2006, has received a donation from the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee, an affiliate of the Republican Governors Association. Under federal law, the groups are not required to disclose their donors publicly or reveal how much money they have raised

While non-profit (501(c)3s do not have to currently disclose their donors, they do have to register with the IRS, and file annual reports, including total income and expenses. This is to make sure non-profits follow strict lobbying and campaign rules, which state only a certain relatively small portion of their budget can go to lobbying and other "political" activies (NB: the larger the group, the more money they can spend, as it's a percentage, not a fixed number.)

So now, using Common Sense Ohio's website, just try and find their IRS registration and annual reports. I've already tried searcing by their name, address, name of the treasurer, business address, without success. See if you have any better luck.

This is not unusual. Grover Norquist made an art of setting up "non-profit" front groups, either never filing their information, or filing under completely unconnected names, e.g., the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) filed initially under "Save Our Urban Centers". CREA went on to launder over a half-million in unreported contributions from Jack Abramoff clients, money which was used to undermine the environmental record of John Kerry.

For a short time last Spring, Congress made a few weak moves towards addressing these front groups with the the Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act (S. 2128), but was quickly shut down by the efforts of a coalition of rightwing "non-profit" advocacy groups called LobbySense (I wrote about them here at the time.) The LobbySense.com website currently provides no indication of its member organizations, but thankfully, there's Google cache.

Kerri Houston, Frontiers of Freedom
Jason Wright, Institute for Liberty
Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform
Daniel Clifton, American Shareholders Association
Richard W. Rahn, Ph.D., Center for Global Economic Growth
Larry Cirignano, CatholicVote.org
Gary Bauer, American Values
Chuck Muth, Citizen Outreach
Kay Daly, Coalition for a Fair Judiciary
Tom McClusky, Family Research Council
Paul M. Weyrich, Coalitions for America
Michael D. Ostrolenk, Liberty Coalition
Wendy Wright, Concerned Women for America
Tom Readmond, Media Freedom Project
Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum
Kenneth Boehm, National Legal and Policy Center
Andrea Lafferty, Traditional Values Coalition
George Landrith, Frontiers of Freedom
Christopher L. Carmouche, GrassTopsUSA
Ann Stone, Republicans for Choice
William Greene, RightMarch.com
Alex St. James, African-American Republican Leadership Council
Tom Schatz, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
Thomas Shields, Coalition for Marriage and Family
Dan Perrin, American Taxpayers Alliance
Italia Federici, Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy
Mary M. Martin, The Seniors Coalition
Alan Keyes, Declaration Foundation
Mike Hardiman, American Land Rights Association

This is the sordid underbelly of the rightwing "grassroots". They, like Common Sense Ohio, act with complete impunity, as no one, not even the IRS, holds them accountable: It's now two years since Italia Federici and CREA were outted for accepting, and not reporting, over a half million in contributions, and the IRS has done nothing. Grover Norquist and his ATR were getting kickbacks of $25K from Abramoff for each meeting with Bush he organized, and he's still a free man. Is it necessary to note that Norquist claimed last summer that he's spent more time in the White House (with Karl Rove) in the past few weeks than he had in the last few years? Rove understands the power and utility of these nefarious groups, and it's pretty clear that they're on the frontline of this year's GOP voter-suppression drive.

So if Speaker Pelosi and the 110th Congress actually want to change the political landscape, then they need to address, not in the first hundred days or first hundred hours, but the first hundred minutes, legislation to both hold these groups and their anti-Democratic tactics accountable, and allow sunlight to shine on their donor lists.

(NB: The original sponsor of S. 2128 was John McCain. His interest in the subject derived not from any kind of love for Democracy, but because he's been the target of attacks by a significant number of Norquist's front groups, and he had saw this as 1) his opportunity for revenge, and 2) as a pre-emptive strike in the run-up to his 2008 campaign. McCain understands the power of these groups; Al Gore and John Kerry do; perhaps even sleazy Joe Lieberman, who pushed a very harsh amendment further curtailing front-group activities, does. I hope we're at least as smart as the first and last of those four.)

Posted by MB Williams at 09:23 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I have to admit I haven't been too keen on MyDD's new "Racial Politics This Week", as it seemed rather myopic (focused almost exclusively, as is typical, on black/white issues.) And when it did branch out to include other groups, its reporting seemed, well, rather flat. Then last week, I saw this gem:

Quiet as it's been kept, Indian tribes have been pouring money into AZ Republican warchests and Republicans like Sen. Jon Kyl (R) aren't talking about it (Source: African-American Opinion via Angry Indian):

The spending is part of a nationwide increase in tribal giving. In the last 10 years, tribes have donated about $26.7 million to federal campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Yet The Tribune couldn't get any of the politicians from Arizona to talk on the record about the money they have taken from tribes. Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R) answered a few questions after being "cornered" at an event "but then said he had to leave and did not answer requests for an interview to discuss his tribal donations in detail," the paper reported.

Now, I had a problem accessing Opensecrets.org last Sunday morning, when I first read this piece, and then forgot it with the onslaught of blackface-apologists, but today, I had no problem connecting to Opensecrets, and within a minute, had these graphs in my graphics editor:

Now seriously, if you're going to talk about tribal donations, specifically from gaming tribes, e.g., those who generally have the cash to spend, let's put it in context. Over the past decade, Indian tribes have overwhelmingly given to Democrats. And what has that got them? Well, to be generous, I'd say "nada"; to be honest, most tribes have seen Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton, attack their sovereignty in order to pander to racist voters.

The point of all this, however, is that Jill Tubman's post portrayed Indian donations as favoring Republicans, as she prefaced the Indianz.com quote (mangled those it was, I fixed it) with an Indians are "pouring" money into Kyl's race. But Indianz.com didn't say that - they said Indian giving was up over the past decade; but as the charts above indicate, Democrats have overwhelmingly benefitted. Geez, even Jack Abramoff only had nine tribal clients, out of over 350 recognized tribes.

Reporting on "racial politics" is fine and dandy - just do your homework, please.

Posted by MB Williams at 05:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

He definitely must be a chatty Cathy these days:

Lawyers ask judge to delay Abramoff's surrender
Lawyers for Jack Abramoff have asked a U.S. district judge to postpone his Nov. 15 sentencing of six years in prison.
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

The imminent surrender of superlobbyist-turned-superinformant Jack Abramoff on a South Florida fraud conviction is eclipsing his role in a Washington corruption probe.

Abramoff is set to turn himself in on Nov. 15 to serve about six years in prison for lying to obtain a $60 million bank loan to buy a fleet of South Florida gambling ships.

Now, Justice Department lawyers and Abramoff's attorneys are rushing to have the once-powerful Republican insider sentenced two days later on a separate corruption conviction.

That way, they say, he can be imprisoned near Washington to continue to inform the government on dozens of lawmakers under investigation. Abramoff faces between 9 and 11 years in prison.

I wonder just how many Abramoff pals are socking their saving in overseas banks these days. Just in case.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, the White House sent out its "recommended revisions" for the Indian Trust Reform.

Then, yesterday, Interior released this juicy tidbit:

U.S. Drops Bid Over Royalties From Chevron
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
October 31, 2006

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 -The Interior Department has dropped claims that the Chevron Corporation systematically underpaid the government for natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, a decision that could allow energy companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.

The agency had ordered Chevron to pay $6 million in additional royalties but could have sought tens of millions more had it prevailed. The decision also sets a precedent that could make it easier for oil and gas companies to lower the value of what they pump each year from federal property and thus their payments to the government.

Interior officials said on Friday that they had no choice but to drop their order to Chevron because a department appeals board had ruled against auditors in a separate case.

But state governments and private landowners have challenged the company over essentially the same practices and reached settlements in which the company has paid $70 million in additional royalties.

In a written statement, the department's Minerals Management Service said it would have been useless to fight Chevron.

What we Progressives often forget, after six long botched years of the Bush residency, are those first months, before "9/11 changed everything"; the issues were not terrorism, or war, or "national security". It was corporate security, a general war on American consumers and our national resources. Bush and his cronies were bought and paid for by Big Oil/Gas/Mining/Pharma, and they now smell lame duck in the air, and want to make sure they get their money's worth while the chits can still be cashed in.

This is not chump change we're talking about. Between the MMS lost royalties and the Individual Indian Trust Accounts, hundreds of billions are at stake.

Posted by MB Williams at 05:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I couldn't find the text outside of the .pdf I linked to below, so wanted to make the text more accessible to commentary. I'm putting it up all at once, and then Eric and I can dissect it at will. Pay particularly close attention to the "stick" portions, namely sections three and four.

THE INDIAN TRUST REFORM ACT

Senate bill 1439, the Indian Trust Reform Act of 2005, would resolve the Cobell v. Kempthorne case and make reforms to the way the United States manages Indian trust funds and assets. The bill was introduced in July 2005 and Committee staffs have been meeting with representatives from the plaintiffs, the Administration, and Indian tribes to decide what changes, if any, should be made to the bill. This paper highlights several proposals that have come out of those discussions.

To gain support for a multi-billion dollar bill, it may be necessary to incorporate significant changes to the management system for Indian trust assets. As proposed, these changes would not remove the trust status of Indian lands, but would reallocate significant decision-making authority and legal responsibility from the Federal government to the Indian tribes and individuals. The proposed changes are generally described below.

The Chair and Vice-Chair of the Committee have not approved these proposed changes to S.1439, but have asked their respective staff to seek input from Indian Country before they make a decision on these proposals and how to proceed with the bill.

The highly fractionated nature of many individual Indian lands has made it difficult for the United States to manage these lands and the revenues generated from them. There are currently 128,000 individual Indian allotments and 3.6 million fractionated interests. One proposal to address this issue has been to develop aggressive mechanisms to consolidate all allotments into 10 or fewer owners for each tract of land within the next 10 years.

• All land would remain in Indian title with individual Indian or tribal owners.
• Consolidation would include voluntary and involuntary mechanisms, but large interest owners would have a first opportunity to buy out the smaller interest owners before an entire tract is put up for sale to either the tribe or a member of that tribe.
• Consolidation of tracts with 100 or more owners would be prioritized.
• Funding for the proposed consolidation mechanism would be assured by inclusion in the funding levels of the bill.

After fractionated lands are consolidated, it is proposed to convert the current management system for all individual Indian and tribal land into a new system within a 10 year timeframe. The lands would remain in trust and NOT be subject to taxation, but the individual or tribal owner of the lands would have most of the privileges and responsibilities of property management.

• The landowners would make nearly all decisions on land use within certain broad parameters.
• All revenues generated from the land would go directly to the landowners (direct pay).
• The landowners would negotiate their own long-term leases and land use agreements, without Secretarial approval.
• The BIA would provide "management" financial support and technical assistance during a transition period to assist owners in becoming efficient property owners and managers.
• The federal government would remain responsible for: preventing involuntary alienation of land; approving transfers of land title; maintaining land title records; and probating trust estates.

In addition to resolving all individual Indian claims related to the United State’s mismanagement of trust funds, lands and resources, it have been proposed to resolve all tribal claims for the same matters. Possible suggestions for addressing this issue include:

• All mismanagement claims for tribal monies, lands, and resources would be resolved and settled.
• A settlement fund would be established and each tribe would received a distribution based on a formula that would take into account the amount of land a tribe owns and the amount of revenues that were generated from that land for a specified period of time.
• All historical accounting of claims against the United States would be settled.
• Account balances for Indian trust accounts would be deemed accurate as of the date of passage of Senate bill 1439.
• The bill would NOT settle the takings claims for land or related resources, claims to establish the right to possess or the ownership of tribal land, or claims arising under Federal environmental laws.

In order to facilitate the proposed reforms, it has also been proposed that during the period of time for land consolidation and transition of the trust management system into beneficiary-managed trust there would be some limitations on the liability of the United States in regard to the management of trust resources.

After the transition period, the Federal government would remain responsible for correcting errors, but without damage claims against the government for its residual responsibilities.

Posted by MB Williams at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is just stunning...absolutely stunning::

Bush seeks dramatic changes to Cobell settlement
Tuesday, October 24, 2006

The Bush administration is proposing sweeping changes to the Cobell settlement bill that would phase out the federal government's trust management responsibilities and force consolidation of Indian lands.

Within 10 years, the Interior Department would no longer manage the 54 million acres held in trust for individual Indians and tribes. The goal is to turn the system into a "beneficiary-managed" trust for which the United States cannot be held liable for any damage claims.

First and foremost it seems this is simply a dissolution of federal liability for trust mismanagement; you know, no more than Bush's continuing war on trial lawyers, neh? Believe me, Chevron and BP know better.

Here is the briefing paper on S.1439.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

USN&WR adds to growing speculation:

Abramoff Probe Hopes to Nab Another Congressman
By Paul Bedard
Posted 10/23/06

The FBI and Justice Department appear to be expanding their probe into the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal in hopes of nabbing another member of Congress and aides, according to sources involved in the case.

I know others, such as the downright dogged Dengre at DailyKos and Josh Marshall and the TPMuckrakers (sounds like a new band), have looked in detail at tAbramoff's CNMI (Marianas Islands)/Congressional connections, but we all know that here in Wampumland, we perservate on Abramoff and us Injuns.

So, should Jack nab someone due to his tribal gaming clients, who would I consider on the short list?

Of course, there are the usual suspects, such as Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) and Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), both of whom have used their considerable clout on SIAC and the House Resources Committee, respectively, to assist Abramoff's wealthy tribal clients, while ignoring the needs of their own local, often destitute, tribes.

But a few who are at considerable risk, but often forgotten are:

Rep. Deborah Pryce
Rep. JD Hayworth
Rep. Charles Taylor
Rep. Dennis Hastert

Those are off the top of my head. Of course, there are current and former Administration officials too, who may soon fall to Abramoff's whistleblowing. These include (but are not limited to):

Sec. Gale Norton
Dep. Sec. Steven Griles
Amb. Julie Finley
Solicitor Bill Myers
Ass. Sec. Lynn Scarlett
Ass. Sec. Neil McCaleb
Ass. Sec. Bennett Raley

Abramoff: The gift that just keeps on giving.

Posted by MB Williams at 02:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The LA Times takes on the most recent impasse in the ten-year-old Indian Trust Fund case.

Yawn.

Not even a mention that perhaps Indian Trust accounts are perhaps not so dissimilar to other federal land accounts, you know, the ones which have been screwed out of billions in royalties by oil, gas and mining interests.

Yes, lots of poignant quotes from Indianz on the Rez, which, I suppose is meant to make up for another miserable excuse for investigative reporting.

Posted by MB Williams at 02:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From Susie:

Jack Abramoff "has become such a chatty rat that probe insiders say he's been given a desk to work at in the FBI," according to Washington Whispers. "We're told he spends up to four hours a day detailing his shady business to agents eager to nail more congressmen in the scandal. And when cooperative witnesses spend that much time inside, they get a desk. As a result of his help in the ever expanding investigation, we hear that the Feds hope to keep him in a nearby prison after he's sentenced on his conspiracy admission."

She and I agree completely that the current Weldon flap is due completely to Jack's loose lips. It's all part and parcel of the secret war within the Republicans, where each and every one is trying to figure out who to throw under the bus next, in order to save their own neck. Ha!

Posted by MB Williams at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

You think he's "joking"?

McCain: "I'd just commit suicide" if Democrats take control of Senate
by O. Kay Henderson

Arizona Senator and probable 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain jokingly says he would "commit suicide" if Democrats take control of the U.S. Senate in this November's election.

McCain is in Iowa today (Wednesday), campaigning with GOP Congressmen Steve King and Tom Latham as well as Republican congressional candidate Jeff Lamberti. McCain spoke at a mid-day news conference in Des Moines, where McCain was asked what his reaction would be to a Democratic take-over of the Senate.

If Dems take the Senate, Senator Dorgan will most likely chair Senate Indian Affairs, and all McCain's misdeeds regarding the Abramoff files are at risk of exposure. Granted, probably every member of SIAC has some potential Abramoff liability, but the risk-benefit analysis for Dorgan will determine if he throws McCain under the bus, or, in this case, whether he allows McCain to jump.

Funny, I bet there are more than a few Republicans over whose heads McCain has held those Abramoff emails (with the thick black redacting marker in the other hand, of course.) Perhaps they're already scouting out sources of hemlock for their colleague.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past few weeks, there have been a plethora of Abramoff goodies - first, the House Committee on Government Reform released a scathing, scathing report on over 400 contacts Abramoff and his crew at Greenberg-Traurig had with Bush Administration officials.  Then, last Friday, current White House, and former Rove and Abramoff "executive assistant" Susan Ralston resigned, apparently in response to the aforementioned report documenting contacts between Ralston and Abramoff while she was "assisting" Rove.

Today, came a report from the Senate Finance Committee that various Abramoff/Norquist related groups, including former Interior Secretary Gale Norton's pet project, the Council for Republicans for Environmental Advocacy and Amy Ridenour's National Center for Public Policy Research were, well, front groups.  Egads, say it isn't true!

A bit lost in all this was a certain aside - Congressman Richard Pombo (CA-Sell-off-Yellowstone) was sideswiped by a clandestine report that he was listed on Abramoff's 1996 billing records regarding Marinas Island business (the US protectorate were clients of Abramoff's.)

So, while we've all been gleefully cheering the "exposure" of Republican misbehaviors, I think we've overlooked the significance of these events.

First off, Republicans, whether on House Government Reform or any committee, hold all the cards; there is no reason for them to allow damaging reports to be released, Henry Waxman as ranking member not withstanding.  The ONLY reason the report on Abramoff was released was because House Republicans, namely chairman Tom Davis, allowed it to be released.

But key in the report's release is not what was exposed, but that which was not:  The name of every Abramoff contact with a current member of Congress was redacted with a thick black marker.  This was not the first time such a tactic was utilized; John McCain, as chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee (SIAC) and the first to have access to the Abramoff documents, redacted all names of his peers from documents released during the SIAC hearings (Sept. 2004 - Nov. 2005) on the Abramoff scandal.

Why would St. John McCain the Maverick lower himself to such insidious behavior?  Join me in the time-machine back to late February, 2004, when Susan Schmidt's groundbreaking piece on Abramoff first appeared.  At that point, however, Schmidt was focused on the compelling story that Abramoff had taken advantage of the poor, naive tribes who hired him as their lobbyist; he took their gaming money and then called them mean names behind their backs.

Within a few days of the publication of the story, McCain, a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, was in front of media cameras demanding a full-fledged hearing into the  allegations surrounding Abramoff and his partners.  The day following McCain's press conference, SIAC chairman, Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO), checked himself into a Washington hospital, complaining of "chest pains", which turned out to be indigestion.  However, it did not stop the Chairman, who had a month earlier kicked off his re-election campaign with quite a splash, from suddenly announcing his retirement due to "health concerns" (Nota bene: Campbell now, in excellent health, is a well-paid lobbyist in Washington.)  John McCain pushed forward with his call for hearings, subpoenaing Greenberg-Traurig, which quickly complied, forwarding thousands of emails, billing records and other documents.

A mere few weeks after McCain took possession of the Abramoff emails, he arranged a meeting between one of his most trusted advisors and Karl Rove:  The objective?  To "heal" the wounds from the 2000 Republican primary, particularly South Carolina (in which, ironically, Abramoff and friend Norquist actively took a hand.)  The meeting was so "successful" that less than a month later, McCain joined Bush on the campaign trail, and subsequently became the "annointed" heir to the Bush throne.

In return, McCain sat on the Abramoff emails, and pushed off the hearings scheduled for June until late September.  Even then, the hearings focuced exclusively on how mean Abramoff was to his tribal clients.  No mention of Ralph Reed or Grover Norquist, nothing of the dozens of implicated House and Senate members, or, most importantly, of Bush's own Administration officials, such as Interior Dep. Sec. Steve Griles or Solicitor General William Myers.  McCain actively suppressed information which, if released in a timely manner, could have influenced the November 2004 Presidential election.

The SIAC hearings which followed looked more like a McCain witchhunt than any serious approach to justice.  Long-time arch-enemy Grover Norquist, while threatened with a subpeona, never appeared (oops, no subpeona issued) and most Abramoff cronies merely took the Fifth.  Steven Griles pleaded the Sargent Schultz defend, and Italia Federici (after apparently being sought by federal marshalls,) tried a similar ploy.  Abramoff accomplice and serial launderer Amy Ridenour got off with a simple, "I'm so, so sorry, St. John" deferential defense, and came out relatively unscathed.

McCain, despite cries of foul from SIAC ranking member (and potentially Abramoff-tainted) Byron Dorgan, deep sixed any future hearings, and passed the documents (redactions and all?) to Gonzales and Justice.  So far, almost a year later, no charges have ensued.

So why should Democrats eye the current developments, particularly the House Committee on Government Reform report with deep suspicion?  Why should we not leap in glee when Charles Grassley verbally approves a Senate committee critique on Norquist and his front groups?

Nothing occurs in a vacuum.  For two and a half years, Republicans have successfully impeded real Abramoff hearings - any and all Republicans who have fallen due to their connections to Jack have done so through alternative means - the damning emails and billing records of Greenberg-Traurig have brought down not a single Administration or Congressional official, and only Abramoff and a few of his colleagues - most, ironically, remain free.

So why have House Republicans deemded this information, at this time, to be so important to be released just a month before a watershed election?  How is it that Chairman Tom Davis has thrown his own party leader, his President, under the Abramoff bus?  Why do they risk rank and file Democrats demanding, at the top of our lungs, for unredacted documents.

The fact is, they understand that the narrative surrounding Abramoff is much too complicated, for the media, for average Americans, to muddle through.  While we should be questioning the provenance behind every new email and billing record leaked, instead we feast on the news like nectar from the gods.

I'm the parent of preteens, and as such, have read all in the Harry Potter series.  In the beginning of the most recent tome, the British Prime Minister is visited by the Minister of Magic, who informs him that a host of recent catastrophes in the Muggle world are due to events in the world of Wizards - what appear as mere bad luck - failed bridges, unseasonal hurrincanes, etc. are due to intra-wizard warfare, which ironically is beyond the perception of most non-magic folk.

There is a similar intra-party battle brewing within the Republican Party.  We have been conditioned to believe such a split would develop on a philosophical level, between social conservatives, libertarians and economic supply-siders.  But this is so much more basic in nature, as it is warfare based upon the central tenet of power uber alles; McCain thought he wielded the ultimate power of extortion, and suddenly House Republicans are attempting some form of mitigation via a controlled pre-emptive response.  This is also a win for House Republicans on two seperate fronts, as it promotes a facades of their  "independence" from Bush during a nasty campaign season, and, perhaps more importantly, subverts future Democratic efforts to "rehash" the terrain in a post-Democratic House takeover world (and thus appear overtly partisan) after Republicans have so "openly" dissed their party's leader.  Thus, all the Abramoff goodies which could and should come out, sans redactor's marker, of course, will reside under the shadow of "partisan politics", an area in which few are willing to tread.

So, as far as I, a long-term Abramoff<strike>-phile<strike> -ologist am concerned, the Republicans still lead, with a score of about 10,000 to perhaps, well, 12 (I'm being generous.)  So if we truly want to know the real depth of the scandal, every single Progressive (Democrat, Green or Indie) should be calling Democratic Senators and Congressmen and demanding UNREDACTED documents.  

The joy of the Abramoff scandal is it's a gift that keeps on giving.  We should be sure, however, that the recipents of such gifts are us, not our enemy's enemy (who may not in fact be our friend.)

BTW, all of this can be found, in great depth, going back at least a year, at Wampum.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this week, various news organizations ran with yet another Abramoff-related tidbit; this time, the ax fell on Richard Pombo (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Resources. From the Stockon Record:

Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, says he never worked with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in his 14 years in Congress, but billing records suggest at least two interactions between the two in 1996.

...

Abramoff's billing records show he and Pombo talked - it is unclear whether the meeting was face-to-face or by phone - on Sept. 10 and Nov. 21, 1996. The topic was the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S.-controlled archipelago in the Pacific.

Former Pombo staffer William Dennis Stephens, who worked with Abramoff at the time, had at least 11 other contacts with either Pombo or his staff, the records show.

Now, I've known for ages that Pombo knew Jack, and vice versa, so the news that there were billing records was not surprising. Besides, the House Committee on Government Reform released a bi-partisan report last week, which included Abramoff's billing records, so why is this even considered newsworthy? Abramoff met with lots of Congressmen - he was a lobbyist, after all.

But about those billing records. See, I went back to the House Committee on Government Reform report and, lo and behold, found no billing records prior to 2000 among those released with the report. Abramoff's contacts with Pombo apparently occured in 1996, when Pombo was merely a junior member of the Committee. Besides, as I pointed out previously, the House Reform report had all mention of current members of Congress redacted, leaving only the 400+ contacts between Executive Branch officials as "evidence".

So whence did these unredacted billing records arise? According to the Record:

Copies of the records have been circulating for months, but none linked Pombo directly with Abramoff. The Record obtained this set of records late last week.

Obviously, the unredacted records are being used as a weapon, but by whom, and for what reason? Inquiring minds want to know. Or at least I do.

Addendum: I've thought about this a bit more since I posted. As I've said before, there is obviously some intra-party struggle going on in the GOP. Last week's release of the Reform report was clearly a slap at the White House. So if someone wanted to slap back, but not land a mortal blow, the release of ten-year old billing records which could be fairly easily disputed (Pombo's staff claims one purported meeting would have occured over Thanksgiving break, but Pombo was back in this district) would be such slap. I'm positive that more recent records show many, many more meetings, and when Pombo was in a position of power (Chairman) to actually do something. But it was meant merely to be a warning shot, though it's still not clear, by whom. The White House? Or perhaps someone who has used these documents to his advantage over the last 2.5 years, and was planning on their continued efficacy for at least through the 2008 pre-primary period.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Earth to the lefty blogosphere - not all Republican scandals lead to Hastert. In fact, some are so much freaking larger than Foley-gate (or Page-gate, or whatever the current moniker,) that Hastert looks like a blooming Hobbit compared with, you know, some giant mastedon-elephant-with-spikes-on-his-tusks-and-all. You know, like that.

Sue Ralston, should she sing like a canary, will bring down way, WAY, more people than some Hastert flack ever, ever, EVER could. Not only was she Rove's executive assistant, she was Abramoff's. Remember him? The keys to K-Street and all. Not just some silly flack who could pin-the-tail-on-the-latest-closet-R. We're talking dozens of Senators, Congressmen, Cabinet Secretaries - geez, Bush's most inner circle.

The problem seems to be, the issues are too complex for some liberals, and their short attention spans, to grasp. Oh, and it gets messy, as we have to deal with those sticky issues relating to, you know, "people of color", in this case, us Injuns. Yes, Indian Affairs are rather complicated, but spend a few days catching up at SIAC or Indianz.com might help you out. But the prize is that you get to potentially subvert the 2008 presidential candidacy of John McCain, who just happens to be Chairman of SIAC.

Might this Scott Palmer dude have some significance in the whole sordid Foley-Hastert affair? Sure. Is there any indication Foley-gate is tied up with subverting potentially hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars owed to the US government and FRITs? Not a chance.

Orange and apples. Or perhaps even oranges and raisins, the latter being this Palmer chum. Geez, when are purportedly lefties ever going to develop some perspective...or get a clue.

[Left in drafts and published on April 3rd, 2007. ebw]

Posted by MB Williams at 01:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As some long-term Wampum readers may know, I'm an archaeologist by training (hence this blog's title, as my specialty is gender and shell, including the production of wampumpeag.) And as an archaeologist, it's tremendously difficult for me to shake off the golden rule of scientific digging: Provenance matters.

As I've ranted and raved now for at least a year, the documents in the Abramoff case which have been released by Congressional committees beginning in late September, 2004, have been in the possession of Committee chairmen, in particular, Senator John McCain, since March, 2004, when Greenberg Traurig was subpeonaed and cooperated fully. So why is it that so many of these documents are only now being released to the public and the press? (Though, to be clear, some have been previously leaked to the media, including many of the latest dump, over a year ago.)

If we look at the pattern of document release by McCain during the Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearings, from September, 2004 until November, 2005, a clear narrative develops. The first release, six weeks before the highly contested 2004 election, set up Abramoff and his cronies and racist, arrogant, and immensely greedy hucksters, who ripped off their poor, naive tribal clients of millions, and bought huge beach houses with the proceeds. No mention of the intricate connections between Abramoff and nearly every facet of the Republican money and power machine in Washington; no mention even of Abramoff's close ties with the Council for Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, the National Center for Public Policy Research, and, stunningly, members of the Interior Department, including the Deputy Secretary, Solicitor General and a slew of Assistant Secretaries and department counsels. The documents released were essentially personal in nature: Abramoff was a bad man. Period.

It wasn't until the following summer (2005) that SIAC hearing document dumps indicated that the story moved well beyond the flaws of a handful of lobbyists. The narrative became much more salacious, drawing in a number of longer term McCain nemeses, including those central to his 2000 "swiftboating", such as Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed. In addition, those known for their vocal opposition to McCain's work on global warming, such as Amy Ridenour and Italia Federici, were put in the hot seat in the SIAC hearings of 2005. McCain threatened to subpeona Norquist's own 501(c)3, Americans for Tax Freedom, a recipient of tribal cash through Abramoff. The key word here, however is threatened; though it was clear Norquist was up to his neck in the Abramoff scandal, McCain huffed and puffed, but never used his ace, neither subpeonaing AFT's records, or calling Norquist to testify. Same goes for Reed.

By the apparent end of the SIAC hearings last fall, less than a thousand documents, out of over 10,000, were released by McCain. Within those documents, the names of all McCain's Congressional peers were redacted.

So what are we to make of the latest dump of documents by the House Committee on Government Reform, ostensibly by Democrats, led by ranking member, Henry Waxman, though Chairman Tom Davis had no problem piling on in the official Committee press release, though with an amazingly apt double entendre:

Government Reform Releases Report on Jack Abramoff's White House Lobbying Davis: "The silence speaks volumes..."

Washington, D.C., Sep 29 -

The House Government Reform Committee today released a bipartisan investigative report on the nature and extent of the lobbying of White House officials by Jack Abramoff and his associates. As part of its six month investigation, the Committee obtained more than 14,000 pages of billing records and e-mail communications from Abramoff and his associates at Greenberg Traurig L.L.P. related to instances of lobbying White House officials.

Of course, the silence of the committee report does speak volumes, particularly on the part Congressional members and their staffs played in the near decade-long free-for-all. However, the very next paragraph of the press release indicates the true target of the investigation:

The review offered a detailed glimpse into a sordid subculture of fraud and attempted influence peddling. The Committee was primarily concerned with two questions: To what extent were executive branch officials influenced by Abramoff's elaborate schemes? And, in view of Abramoff's admitted crimes, what reforms would better protect the integrity and increase the transparency of government processes and decisions?

Once again, just as in the documents released by SIAC and McCain, the redactor's pen was used widely, eradicating all evidence of participation by current members of Congress - former Majority Leader Tom Delay didn't get off so easy, part of the cost of his taking his peer's contributions, knowing he'd be resigning, I suspect.

But the unanswered questions address motive here: Not on the part of Abramoff or any of his cronies, but House leadership. Democrats can't say "boo" without Republican permission, and they certainly couldn't conduct hearings, let alone release a report, which exposed the filthy underbelly of the Republican K-Street Project. So what motivated Congressional Republicans to toss dozens of Bush Administration officials on the Abramoff pyre, particularly when it seems their own electoral fate is tied with that of their party's figurehead? Sue Ralston's connection between Abramoff and Rove has been public knowledge for years; why is she suddenly being made the fall-guy, er, gal?

So what would appear to be a Democratic victory is potentially nothing more than Congressional Ds being used as pawns in intra-party (Republican, that is) war-games. Or is the plot even more twisted, so as to look like there's strife between the Administration and Congress, allowing House Republicans to distance themselves from Bush ("See, see, we have no problem slapping Bush around. Now please re-elect us." Are the faction involved playing out some pre-2008 primary kabuki?

I don't think any of us yet know the answer. But for sure, it has nothing to do with Democratic success as Congressional watchdogs. Provenance matters. And the Democratic power substrate in Congress is as firm as dry sand.

It's not about us, it's not about Abramoff. So just who is it all about?

Posted by MB Williams at 10:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've published one of MB's unfinished drafts that mentions Sue Ralston, and here are links to two earlier posts:

1. Left in the drafts ..., March 11th, 2006
   
2. A small issue of campaign ethics?, October 1st, 2006
   
3. A slip of the pen marker, October 1st, 2006
   

Enjoy!

Posted by EBW at 09:54 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As I continue my slog through the Abramoff documents this morning, yet another glaring concern, though one which somehow got past the redactors.

Why was Shawn Vasell meeting with Department of Energy, House Judicial and Cheney staff? Although it was billed to Choctaw, a quick glance at their lobbying filings for 2001 indicate they were not cleared to lobby on DoE on energy issues (tribal lands are Interior's jurisdiction.) In fact, none of Vasell's clients were registered to lobby DoE.

Prior to joining Abramoff at Preston Gates (and later, Greenberg Traurig), Vasell was a senior legislative aide to Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI). In 2001, Abraham was nominated by Bush to be Energy Secretary. In late 2001, Vasell ostensibly left Greenberg Traurig to work as Senator Conrad Burn's state director, a job he left a year later to return (full-time) to Greenberg Traurig.

Perhaps the redactors mistook the initials S.R. for Susan Ralston, and so let the meeting escape their black markers. I'm still on the hunt for a House Judiciary Committee aide with the initials S.R. Any help is welcome.

Update: C. Hutto is F. Chase Hutto, III.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

So, it's 11:30 on a Saturday night, and I've just sat down with a glass of wine, ready to spend the rest of the evening with the newly released Abramoff emails. Well, let me tell you right off that some things never change. And I don't mean regarding Abramoff and his buddies.

The redactors were hard at work, and, as with the Senate Indian Affairs Committee emails, the black markers almost uniformly sought out the names of Senators and Representatives. For example, just a few pages into the first set:

I theorize that those who identities were redacted were Senators - the "S" is a bit of a giveaway, neh?

I'll keep reading through, but understand that we will never get the entire story until Congressmen, Democrat or Republican, release unredacted documents.

Posted by MB Williams at 02:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Since Lambert asked, and Susie always tells me I need to do a better job of simplifying the story for non-Indians, here's my best shot at a short-and-sweet synopsis.

How Republicans benefit from a Congressional settlement of Cobell v. Kempthorne (v. Norton, v. Babbit), aka, the Indian Trust Fund case and why Democrats should care.

Cobell v. Kempthorne (most recently known as Cobell v. Norton) is the ten-year old class-action lawsuit by various Individual Indian Trust Account (IITA) holders against the Department of Interior and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the subordinate organization which administers the accounts. Monies in the accounts derive from royalties paid by oil, gas, mining, forestry, ranching, farming and other industries or individuals who lease land owned by "individual" Indians (versus land held by entire tribes, which is to addressed in a separate lawsuit.) The lands were originally divided and distributed back in the 1880s, under the Dawes Act, and has been administered by the BIA since that time. The lawsuit seeks a full accounting of all IITAs, and proper compensation for monies missing and interest not paid due to mismanagement and/or graft. The money Indian trust holders seek is their own - this is not a lawsuit for "reparations" for breaking of treaties or the US policy of acculturation or genocide. This is capitalism pure and simple - the Indians leased the land, via the US government, to corporations and individuals, and the Indians want payment for those leases.

The problem lies in the accounting - the BIA and Interior never considered accounting for the royalties a top priority (probably figured all the Indians were going to die soon enough anyway,) and so tens of thousands of receipts and other accounting paperwork were lost, in floods, fires and general record storage (I've seen photos of records being stored in dilapitated wood buildings, but can't locate them at the moment.) However, Judge Royce Lamberth, who oversaw the case until being removed, by petition of the US government just a few months ago, ruled that a full accounting must take place before a settlement could be reached. If government records are not available, then the next step would be to subpoena industry accounts of royalties paid. This, I believe, is what the leasees fear the most, as it will most likely show that potentially a $100 billion in royalties were under paid (or even never paid at all.) This was the number IITA researchers, who compared amounts paid to to total profits reported in corporate annual reports, arrived at a number of years ago. It is similar to the outcome Friends of the Earth and the New York Times reporters discovered when investigating federal land royalty underpayments last spring.

For the first few years of the lawsuit, particularly under the Clinton Administration and Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Interior was able to mere delay and obfuscate. However, as Judge Lamberth became more irritated and ruled for an accounting, Interior, under the Bush Administration and Secretary Gale Norton moved from incompetence and petty muddying to outright contempt for the court's decisions. At one point, Lamberth even threatened Norton with jail, so outrageous was Interior's behavior. It was at this time that Interior looked to their Republican allies in Congress, seeking a settlement which would prevent an accounting of the royalties, paid or unpaid, by some of the largest financial supporters of the Republican party. When Republicans took over the Senate in 2002, the potential for this endrun seemed certain, particularly with Richard Pombo and Ben Nighthorse Campbell overseeing the Congressional committees responsible for trust legislation. Everything seemed to be on-track for a quick, low-ball settlement.

Then the Abramoff scandal erupted.

In late February, 2004, the Washington Post published their first report on Abramoff and his dealings with certain gaming tribes seeking access to Congress and Interior. A few days later, Senate Indian Affairs Committee member John McCain announced he would seek hearings into the Abramoff fiasco. That night, Committee Chairman Ben Nighthorse Campbell checked himself into a Washington hospital, complaining of chest pains; turned out he had a bad case of indigestion. A week later, Campbell announced that despite kicking off his re-election campaign just a month earlier, he would not seek re-election, citing "health concerns" (NB, Campbell is currently healthy enough to work as a high-paid lobbyist in DC.) Campbell allowed McCain to oversee the Committee hearings, including the subpoena process, and McCain took over the chairmanship when Campbell retired.

In April, McCain obtained the first Abramoff documents subpoenaed from Greenberg Traurig and other sources. Some of \these documents (many still highly redacted) were not made available to the public until hearings began in the Fall of 2004. However, soon after McCain took possession of the Abramoff emails, with their potential to take down now only Abramoff and his lobbying buddies, but dozens of Congressional and Administration officials, McCain's top advisor John Weaver met with Karl Rove to purportedly "iron-out their differences", four years after the ugly 2000 primary season. The result? McCain buries any evidence that could hurt Bush's re-election effort, at least until after November, and McCain becomes Bush's heir apparent for 2008.

A month later, McCain joined Bush on the campaign trail, and had little to say when Bush cronies swiftboated his colleague and friend, Senator and Vietnam-veteran John Kerry, similarly to their actions against McCain in 2000. For his part, McCain postponed the opening of the Abramoff hearings from early summer until fall, and made sure the first, and only, hearing prior to the November election focused solely on Abramoff's "maltreatment" of his tribal clients. It was a full year, and only after significant leaking from unnamed Committee members, that McCain called Interior officials before the Committee, and even then, he softballed on all but Italia Federici, whose Council for Republicans for Environmental Advocacy had actively attacked his support of global warming legislation. Even McCain nemesis Grover Norquist, clearly indicted in Abramoff documents, was treated with kid gloves - McCain asserted that he would subpoena Norquist, but never carried out the threat, and Norquist, for nearly a year banished from the White House, found his way back into Rove's office (and good graces.)

In the meantime, Chairman McCain took the opportunity to wield his new-found power and push the case for a settlement of the Trust Fund case. Initially, Indian plantiffs were somewhat hopeful - McCain had long been a reliable supporter of many Indian issues, and so many figured he would at least be better than average on a fair resolution of the mess. McCain quickly disabused Indians of that hope, as he literally pulled a settlement figure out of his, ahem, a figure of $8 billion. The minimum amount Indians had determined to be equitable was $27 billion, and even that was well below the realistic figure, well above $100 billion.

Why $8 billion? My personal opinion is that McCain determined that amount to be below an imaginary "tipping point", where American taxpayers, and voters, would demand accountability from the corporate leasees, particularly in light of the recent hullabaloo over underpaid Gulf of Mexico lease royalties totalling over $10 billion. McCain could couch the $8 billion as essentially "reparations", and possibly get it passed under the radar; a higher number, and Congresscritters might begin to take notice of an otherwise ignored Indian issue, and demand an accounting, the very last thing Big Energy wants.

High corporate profits find themselves into political coffers, overwhelmingly tilted towards Republicans and their "causes", e.g. front groups like CREA. Should the Trust Fund not be settled by Congress, but by the courts, as it should be, the "true accounting" would likely remove upwards of $100 billion in profits from those leasees, and, in turn, from funding corrupt Republicans.

Last month, the Bush Administration achieved its first major court victory on the Trust Fund case - their petition to remove Judge Lamberth from the case. The Indian plaintiffs, however, are fighting the decision, though their battle looks to be up-hill. However, there is no indication that any other judge would reverse any of Lamberth's, a well-known Conservative, decisions on the case. At this point, it's just another delay. But it does provide an impetus, and opportunity, for McCain to railroad through the settlement, thereby earning the graditude, and all the campaign dollars that flow from such, to McCain and his 2008 Presidential run. In the meantime, the Bush Administration appears to waffle over the settlement, and McCain gets to add more "Mr. Independent" coup to his belt by issuing a few pugnacious press releases and writing a letter or two to Kempthorne and crew.

McCain might have lost the love of the "Christian" right over his waffling on torture; should he obtain the fealty of Big Oil, he might not even care.

(All the sources for this "synopsis" (cough, cough) can be found under the Abramoff and the Injuns container on the left sidebar.)

Posted by MB Williams at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This really is absolutely stunning, and, in light of Senate Indian Affairs Chairman John McCain's attempts to railroad through his own settlement of the larger Trust Fund case, has potentially far-reaching implications...that is, if noticed by the traditional or even "alternative" media. So far, only the Tulsa and Kansas City papers have reported the news, the latter, as a single paragraph buried under "In Surrounding States" news.

Osage Nation wins major trust fund ruling
Monday, September 25, 2006

The Osage Nation hailed victory on Friday after a federal judge ruled the tribe is owed potentially billions for the mismanagement of trust assets.

The tribe's reservation, created by an act of Congress in 1906, has been one of the top oil-producing regions in the nation. But tribal members who share ownership in mineral rights say up to $2.5 billion was squandered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In a 61-page decision released Thursday afternoon, a judge in Washington, D.C. largely agreed. Judge Emily C. Hewitt of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims said the federal government breached its fiduciary duties to the tribe and its members, known as headright owners.

"[T]he court finds that the Osage Tribe is entitled to compensation for the following breaches of defendant's fiduciary duties," Hewitt wrote, outlining five specific breaches: failure to collect royalties based on the highest offered price; failure to collect full royalties during price controls; failure to deposit trust funds promptly due to an unreasonable failure to certify a federal depositary; failure to maintain appropriate cash balances; and failure to obtain investment yields in accordance with law.

Hewitt ordered the tribe and the Department of Justice to "jointly calculate" a damage award by November 2. If they can't agree, the two parties can submit their own figures, the ruling stated.

Between Judge Hewitt's decision and Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney's testimony last week before Congress on rampant corruption and incompetence in the Bush Interior Department, it seems that McCain should putting the brakes on, not catapulting through, a questionable settlement on the ten-year old Trust Fund case, particularly one which would prevent future claims, even if new evidence arises.

Addendum: I just noticed this tidbit from Devaney's testimony as reported in the Oregon Register-Guard:

Devaney says the agency, under the Bush administration, has attempted to cover up the contracts, which the Government Accountability Office estimates could cost U.S. taxpayers $10 billion in lost royalties. Among the many questions that senators should ask Kempthorne is why those contracts shouldn't be renegotiated. If necessary, the government can use the leverage of future leases to bring any foot-dragging oil companies to the table.

$10 billion, for lost royalties on a small number of leases, signed since the mid-1990s? So why does John McCain believe that the total amount of money due individual tribal trust accountees for errors dating to the 1880s is only $8 billion, despite evidence from tribes that the minimum approaches $27 billion, but is conceivably much higher.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:51 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

At least in the local NOLA press:

Local official faulted in oil lease blunder
Mandeville resident oversees Gulf drilling

By Bill Walsh
Washington bureau

WASHINGTON -- As congressional investigators dig into one of the costliest bureaucratic blunders in U.S. history, they have turned their attention to the veteran head of the New Orleans office of the Minerals Management Service, which oversees drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Chris Oynes, a Mandeville resident with an encyclopedic knowledge of the bustling Gulf Coast oil and gas sector, is known for sporting a celebratory candy-apple-red jacket when energy firms pony up large sums at one of the lease auctions to sink wells in federal waters.

But on Capitol Hill, Oynes has been identified as one of two federal bureaucrats whose actions allowed energy companies to extract oil and gas from the Gulf without paying royalties to the taxpayers. The Government Accountability Office estimated the blunder could cost $10 billion -- or as much as $60 billion if one company, Kerr-McGee Corp., prevails in court.

Oynes signed off on hundreds of the flawed contracts and, a House subcommittee alleges, did little to correct the problem after he discovered it.

And why didn't anyone else under the magnitute of the problem?

Milo Mason, a Harvard-educated lawyer at the Department of Interior who was instrumental in overseeing development of the rules, acknowledged to the House committee that he should have caught the omission. But he also said that with the price of oil and gas well below the price thresholds at the time, few were worrying about it.

"It didn't seem like as big a deal as it is now," Mason told the committee.

...

"He failed to either correct it or adequately document the problem," Issa said. "Instead, he noted that his practice is not to write memoranda or keep a chronological file because his desk drawer is full."

It's rather ironic that many of the same excuses which were used to attempt to exculpate the Indian Trust Fund accounting fiasco are now popping up in the MMS nightmare. Will they fly when applied to mess on federal lands, versus mere Indian lands?

Posted by MB Williams at 11:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today's press release, on the heels of their recent success on Norquist/Reed White House visits:

For Immediate Release:
September 22, 2006 Contact:
Naomi Seligman Steiner / 202.408.5565

CREW SENDS FOIA TO IRS ON NEW PROJECT TO INVESTIGATE NON-PROFITS

IRS's New Political Activity Compliance Initiative Created to Investigate 501 (c)(3) Non-Profit Organizations

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Internal Revenue Service to better understand the development and implementation of its new Political Activity Compliance Initiative (PACI) project created during the 2004 election cycle to promote compliance with the prohibition against political campaign intervention by IRC 501(c)(3) organizations. CREW seeks documents related to the 132 organizations that the IRS identified for investigation by its PACI project.

I know some people on the Left take issues with CREW, as they're not completely partisan, recognizing that corruption, while more common among Republicans and their minions, is sometimes a bi-partisan issue. I'm not exactly sure which groups are being investigated by IRS, but I can only hope that some of these Norquista front groups are targets.

Posted by MB Williams at 05:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Interior Official Says She Will Not Try to Recoup Lease Money
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - A top official at the Interior Department said on Thursday that she would not try to recover $1.3 billion in royalties that the government lost as a result of flawed oil and gas leases it signed in the late 1990's.

"That would be very hard to recoup," said Johnnie M. Burton, director of the Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department, at a forum held by Platt's, an oil industry newsletter.

Ms. Burton added that she had little or no bargaining power - and did not want any - to force more than 50 companies to renegotiate offshore drilling leases that currently allow them to escape as much as $10 billion in royalty payments over the next decade.

Administration officials say that they are close to reaching agreement with Shell Oil and BP and that they have held talks with about 10 companies. But more than half of the companies that hold the flawed leases have not responded to the government's pleas.

"I don't like to say 'negotiate' because I really don't have anything to trade," Ms. Burton said. Rather, she said, the government had told the companies that "we would really appreciate it" if they changed their contracts.

BTW, Ms. Burton, whose real is Rejane Burton, is also the superior of the four auditors, one former and three current, who work for the Mineral Management Service and who, as I mentioned yesterday, are suing companies and their leases of federal land, purportedly overseen by the department, under the False Claims Act.

So who is Rejane "Johnnie" M. Burton? A bit of a bio:

Ms. Burton was appointed Director of the Minerals Management Service on March 15, 2002. Ms. Burton served as Director of the Wyoming Department of Revenue from 1995 through February, 2002. Prior to that, she was vice president of Dwights Energydata, Inc, an information company specializing in oil and gas databases. Ms. Burton was also president and founder of Hotline Energy Reports, Inc. From 1982 through 1988, Ms. Burton was a member of the Wyoming State House of Representatives. She served as director of the First Wyoming Bank in Casper from 1981 through 1984.

Ms. Burton, like the vast majority of Bush's Interior Department (.doc), from Kempthorne (and previously, Gale Norton) on down, is a mere tool of the "natural resources" rape and pillage industries, from Big Oil and Gas, to timber harvesters to cattlemen.

Administration critics not generally familiar with the ins and out of environmental and federal lands policy see 9/11 mostly in terms of foreign policy and the destruction of civil liberties. However, for those of us who see the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth as true watchdogs (and more than just rubber stamps for Democratic candidates during election years,) 9/11 represents the point when Americans, including most of the Left, forgot that Dick Cheney was inviting industry leaders and lobbyists into the While House to actually write energy policy.

Posted by MB Williams at 02:03 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There are a couple of stories in the news which I know long-term Abramoff & the Injuns readers are probably wondering why I haven't yet addressed, and I do apologise; but Eric came down with a nasty stomache flu/infection (e-coli???) a few days back, and, particularly today, lack of sleep on top of it all, I haven't been able to thoroughly synthesize all the information into one neat package.

However, in case you all have missed all the hoopla, here are the two major stories. First, the White House has finally complied with FOIA requests by the Democratic Party (among others) and released entry logs for a variety of lobbyists and other influential Republicans, Grover Norquist included. Second, auditors with Minerals Management Services, a watchdog group within the Interior Department, are utilizing the False Claims Act to force accounting of missing royalties from oil and gas leases on federal land, namely because they claim that their superiors in the Interior Department have been subverting their pursuit of such cases through traditional channels, e.g., their jobs.

Anyway, there's so much meat here, tying these and a few other recent stories together (ugh, Senator McCain, why again are you in such a hurry to "settle" the Indian Trust Fund cases, without a proper audit, of course?) Inquiring minds and all that.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This is one instance where, if you don't know what you're talking about, a better choice would be to just not say anything.

Lieberman may suck on a whole host of issues (and he truly does), but denigrating the 2003 McCain-Lieberman bill on capping and trading global warming emissions as useless, failed tripe, well, just indicates how little one actually knows about the proposed legislation, and its goal of getting Senators "on the record" as to where they stand on global warming. From the Pew Center on Global Climate Change:

Summary of The Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act (As debated in the U.S. Senate on October 30, 2003)

On October 30, 2003, Senators Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) and John McCain (R-AZ) brought a revised version of their Climate Stewardship Act of 2003 (S.139) to a vote in the United States Senate. While the measured failed by a vote of 43 to 55, the vote demonstrated growing bipartisan support for a genuine climate change policy.

The revised version of the bill would require the Administrator of the EPA to promulgate regulations to limit the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the electricity generation, transportation, industrial, and commercial economic sectors (as defined by EPA's Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks). The affected sectors accounted for approximately 85% of the overall U.S. emissions in the year 2000. The bill also would provide for the trading of emissions allowances and reductions through a National Greenhouse Gas Database which would contain an inventory of emissions and registry of reductions.

Now, a few weeks back, I decided to start taking a look at various Senate candidates positions on addressing global warming. A couple actually surprised me: Bob Casey, Jr., for instance, has a remarkably well developed pro-active position on renewable energy. However, when I surfed through Ned Lamont's website, while he made all the appropriate noises on the dangers of global warming, his proposed policy was all carrot and no, at least overt, stick:

I support an overarching plan for clean energy and energy independence: basic research, higher mileage per gallon standards, HOMER appliance and insulation standards, disincentives for high polluting and gas guzzling users and incentives for high mileage, and clean energy alternatives. Energy independence and the environment must be an integral part of every public policy decision. That means no drilling in ANWR (a very short term solution to a very long-term problem), but incentives to produce clean energy and improve efficiency.

"Disincentives"? Sorry, but the global warming crisis requires hard and fast penalties, not "disincentives". Kind of like what the Climate Stewardship Act (S.139) proposed. Again from Pew:

Any covered entity not meeting its emissions limits would be fined for each ton of GHGs over the limit at the rate of three times the market value of a ton of GHG.

National polls at the time showed a majority of Americans strongly supported the McCain-Lieberman bill:

Eighty-one percent of Americans polled said that they support the targets of the legislation, commonly known as the McCain-Lieberman legislation or the Climate Stewardship Act, which calls for large companies to reduce their emissions to year 2000 levels by 2010 and to 1990 levels by 2020. When told it has been estimated that this would increase costs to the average American household by about $15 a month, 67 percent still said they would support it. If a candidate would support the legislation, 52 percent said this would increase their likelihood of voting for him or her, while just 14 percent said that it would decrease the likelihood (no effect: 32 percent). These are some of the findings of a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll of 753 Americans nationwide conducted June 8-14 (margin of error plus or minus 3.6 percent).

McCain-Lieberman was far from perfect, and in fact was watered down considerably during debate in committee. However, as William Pizer and Raymond Kopp, fellows at the non-partisan environmental think-tank, Resources for the Future, include in their analyis of the bill:

Compared to the Kyoto Protocol, which would have required reductions of 2 billion metric tons in 2010, McCain-Lieberman is relatively modest. Compared to calls by the Bush administration for an 18% improvement in greenhouse gas intensity - or about a 350 million metric ton reduction in 2012 - McCain-Lieberman is relatively aggressive.

The Bush Administration and its associated industry-supported hit men, such as Amy Ridenour's National Center for Public Policy Research (see here, here, and here), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (see here and here) and Norton/Norquist's Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (see here) actively opposed McCain-Lieberman, both in 2003 and when reintroduced in 2005. This, more than any reason I can think of, is why it is completely foolish to attempt to use the effort against Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate race; the basis for the Lamont challenge of Lieberman is that Joe is just a tool of the Bush Administration. So why in hell would Lamont supporters emphasize an issue on which Lieberman not only broke ranks with the Administration not once, but twice? An issue near and dear to the heart of Blue, rabidly environmental Connecticut? (I lived in Connecticut for twenty years, so am somewhat familiar with the state.) And on top of everything, it only spotlights McCain's "independence" at a time when so many Democrats have spent extensive time and energy pointing out St. John's recent metamorphosis to Bush lapdog.

Lieberman's staff (and I unfortunately know some of them professionally) are beginning to recognize the power of the image of "the maverick Senator", particularly in a state where Independent voters outnumber both Ds and Rs. Lamont's campaign (real or adjunct) should not add fuel to the global warming fire, if only because it provides Lieberman with that which he desperately needs - counterweights to his support of Bush's failed NeoCon policies. Highlight your enemy's faults, not his strengths. I was always taught that was the first commandment of successful political campaigning.

Posted by MB Williams at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

10:44 AM ET - CBS News is reporting that Ney has pleaded guilty to making false statements, conspiracy to commit fraud and violating post-employment restrictions for former congressional aides.

Posted by EBW at 10:37 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

... that in the things aforesaid all your officers and ministers shall serve you, according to the laws and statutes of this realm ...

That is from the final paragraph of Petition of Right of 1628. Two decades later Charles Stuart answered with this:

I would know by what power I am called hither ... I would know by what authority, I mean lawful; there are many unlawful authorities in the world; thieves and robbers by the high-ways ... Remember, I am your King, your lawful King, and what sins you bring upon your heads, and the judgement of God upon this land. Think well upon it, I say, think well upon it, before you go further from one sin to a greater ... I have a trust committed to me by God, by old and lawful descent, I will not betray it, to answer a new unlawful authority; therefore resolve me that, and you shall hear more of me.

Charles Stuart eventually was put to death by the severing of his head from his body on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London, for refusal to submit to law higher than the will of the Sovereign.

Click on the link for the unpublished opinion of the Attorney General's Office of Legal Counsel to the effect that, while "whistle blower protection" is present in the language of the Clean Water Act, it is not applicable to employees of the United States, because it is the will of the Sovereign that it is not.

Click on this link for the then-Norton, now-Kempthorne EPA brief advocating sovereign immunity from all environmental statutes.

Finally, click on this link for the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) brief against the Bush sovereign immunity claim.

These last three come from a PEER News Release of September 4th.

Posted by EBW at 08:36 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

by Peter B. Rutledge, Associate Professor of Law, Catholic University
Original at indiantrust.com

Adverse judicial orders are a reality for every lawyer. The possible responses range from acceptance, to appeal, to downright anger in the case of orders that, in the lawyer's mind, are unduly harsh or critical. Rarely, though, does a lawyer take the extraordinary step of seeking the judge's removal from a case based on an adverse ruling.

Yet that is precisely what the U.S. government recently did, and last month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit gave the government exactly what it wanted. A unanimous panel of the D.C. Circuit ordered the removal of U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth from Cobell v. Kempthorne, the decade-long litigation over the federal government's admitted mismanagement of American Indian trust accounts.

For some, particularly the government parties and their lawyers, this decision undoubtedly is seen as a victory. In my view, it's nothing short of a tragedy. Not only is the court's July 11 removal order wrong, but it also threatens to damage the essential independence of this nation's federal judiciary. A bit of background on Cobell v. Kempthorne: In the 19th century, the United States took title to various Indian lands and thereby assumed a trustee's role for certain tribes. Ten years ago, several members of those tribes filed suit against the secretary of the interior and others. The suit alleged that the government had breached its fiduciary obligations, lost critical documents, and converted trust assets to its own use.

After an extensive trial, Lamberth found that the federal government had breached its duties, ordered it to come into compliance, and retained jurisdiction over the case, requiring the government to file quarterly reports. The 1999 decision is known as Cobell v. Babbit (this case has outlived the tenures of several secretaries of the interior). The D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed Lamberth's decision in virtually all material respects in Cobell v. Norton (2001). The ensuing five years have seen protracted litigation over implementation of the government's fiduciary responsibilities.

The events precipitating Lamberth's removal stem from a July 2005 decision. In that decision, the judge ordered the Interior Department to include a notice in all written communications to trust beneficiaries, essentially telling them that based on evidence unearthed in the case, information from the Interior Department about the trust may be unreliable. On appeal, the government both sought reversal of that order and asked the appellate court to remove Lamberth from the case. The D.C. Circuit granted both requests.

Although the court's reversal of Lamberth's decision is defensible, its removal order is not.

HARSH WORDS

Stripped to its essence, the D.C. Circuit's opinion gives two reasons for removal, neither of which withstands close scrutiny. First, the court claims that Lamberth's July 2005 decision "all but accuses current Interior officials of racism."

But Lamberth's opinion does not condemn any particular current official of the Interior Department in that way. Instead, it makes more general observations about the department's attitude, past and present, toward American Indians -- observations that are undeniably harsh (such as his use of the phrase "morally and culturally oblivious") but do not, contrary to the appellate court's suggestion, label current officials as racist.

Even if the D.C. Circuit's reading is accurate, there is something simply Orwellian about grounding the removal of a judge in part on the language of his opinion. Ordinarily, as the D.C. Circuit acknowledges, judges are removed on the basis of something they do, such as engaging in impermissible ex parte contacts. But here, Lamberth is being removed on the basis of what he said (or, more accurately, did not say) in a judicial opinion. This is remarkable.

The reality is that judges regularly fill their opinions with strong words, especially in the face of a recalcitrant litigant. The D.C. Circuit itself grants that "condemnation [of the Interior Department] in the strongest terms" is appropriate in this case. As with any speech that might be offensive, the proper remedy is to permit counterspeech, not to muffle the speaker.

A STRING OF REVERSALS

The second reason the D.C. Circuit gives for removing Lamberth is "a string of reversed district court orders." Since its opinion affirming his original findings and judgment, the D.C. Circuit has on eight occasions set aside his post-trial orders. Among other things, those orders held Interior officials in contempt, appointed a special master to oversee the case, required disconnection of portions of the department's computer system from the Internet, and required the department to formulate costly plans to fulfill its fiduciary obligations.

Although this reversal rate is troubling, the court's opinion fails to tell the full story. It was the D.C. Circuit itself that set the stage for these orders. In its 2001 opinion affirming Lamberth's judgment, the D.C. Circuit stressed that absent congressional restriction, federal courts possess the full range of legal and equitable powers "necessary to cure the [government's] legal transgressions" and analogized the case to the school-desegregation decisions. While conceding that judicial oversight of the Interior Department, like judicial oversight of segregated school districts, might seem intrusive, the court justified the intrusion on the basis of "the magnitude of government malfeasance and potential prejudice" to the Indian tribes.

With this broad license from the D.C. Circuit, one can understand why Lamberth rode herd on the Interior Department.

Even if Lamberth's orders went too far, erroneous orders do not support a judge's removal. Higher courts routinely reverse inferior court decisions. The remedy for an erroneous order is simple -- vacate it. And if the lower court is repeatedly entering orders that the reviewing court finds erroneous, the proper remedy is for the appellate court to provide more detailed instructions in its remand order.

Not only is Lamberth's removal a disproportionate remedy, it is woefully inefficient. As noted, he has spent nearly 10 years on this case. He knows the parties and the issues better than anyone else. His institutional knowledge of the dispute is something the D.C. Circuit should value, not scorn.

Reassigning the case to another judge squanders that knowledge. It saddles another overworked district judge with the responsibility to learn a long and convoluted record afresh. And it wastes judicial resources at a time when our federal trial judges, who already carry a heavy caseload, can ill afford the added burdens.

FREE TO DECIDE?

Even more important than its intemperance or its inefficiency, the D.C. Circuit's decision to remove a judge on the basis of his opinions threatens to harm judicial independence.

The case of Cobell v. Kempthorne perfectly illustrates the value of the independence of Article III judges. A federal judge, an arm of the government and himself a Republican appointee, has punished the executive branch, also an arm of the government and currently run by the same political party that appointed the judge, for its handling of assets belonging to a small group of people that the government had defeated in armed conflict. In how many other nations would such healthy self-scrutiny even be possible? In a less independent system, a judge could hardly be expected to withstand the political pressures that might incline him to defer to the sovereign and his appointing party.

The independence at the core of Article III enabled Lamberth to stand firm and insist that an incredible injustice be remedied. Removing him only encourages the executive branch to shop for a judge who it believes will be more inclined to support its view (notably, this is not the Interior Department's first attempt to secure Lamberth's removal). If it encounters another less-than-sympathetic judge, the department may dig in its heels even deeper, hoping to develop a new record of reversals and enough provocative morsels in that judge's opinions to seek his removal under the logic of the D.C. Circuit's opinion.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE JUDGE . . .

Moreover, the implications of the D.C. Circuit's decision extend far beyond this case, where the equities are relatively one-sided. Though no one doubts that the Interior Department engaged in a serious injustice, imagine a true clash of legal principles, such as an abortion dispute or the Terri Schiavo case. The D.C. Circuit's opinion gives passionate litigants an entirely new battleground -- not simply whether a judge is correct on the law, but whether the judge's language is too critical of them. Judicial opinions will be pored over for bad word choice. Judges in long-running disputes will need to develop a superhuman ability not to remember or reflect on litigants' past behavior in that very case.

Under the logic of the D.C. Circuit's opinion, litigants should not wait for a final decision in the case. If a judge has criticized a party elsewhere or has been hit with multiple reversals in favor of the party, the D.C. Circuit's opinion suggests, that party should immediately seek the judge's removal.

I certainly do not wish to suggest that the D.C. Circuit faced an easy call or to blame the government lawyers for their litigation strategy. The panel that unanimously ordered Lamberth's removal consisted of three respected judges from across the jurisprudential spectrum. The executive branch, as a party in the matter, had every right to vindicate its interests through the available procedural mechanisms, including seeking removal of a judge. Friends have told me that senior people at the Interior Department feel personally besieged by Lamberth's orders about a problem they inherited but did not create.

Yet despite the reasonable intentions of these actors, the decision has dealt an unfortunate blow to the independent judiciary so essential to our freedom. No one doubts that the Interior Department has mismanaged the American Indians' trust assets -- the D.C. Circuit described "a serious injustice that has persisted for over a century" -- or that Judge Lamberth has helped to expose the very injustice that the D.C. Circuit laments. Removing him this way sends an unfortunate message to other federal judges that the next time they uncover a "serious injustice" perpetrated by the people's government, they should beware what they do and what they say.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter B. Rutledge is an associate professor at Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law, where his teaching and research interests include international dispute resolution and criminal law.

Posted by EBW at 10:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Statement by Elouise Cobell
Lead Plaintiff, Cobell vs. Kempthorne
A class action lawsuit over mismangement of the Individual Indian Trust

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 -- It is unfortunate that the Bush Administration refuses to endorse the efforts of Senate Indian Affairs Chairman John McCain, R-Arizona, and Vice Chairman Bryon Dorgan, D-North Dakota, to reach a fair and expeditious settlement of the Cobell litigation.

Although the Administration has had more than a year to evaluate S.1489 -- a bill that would, among other things, resolve the Cobell case -- Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez at the 11th hour asked the senators not to mark-up of the bill as scheduled this morning. They based this request on the grounds that they wanted the month of August to work out issues they had with the proposed settlement act.

No one in Indian Country believes the Administration actually needs any more time to consider this resolution. Nor is there any reason to believe that the Administration is more serious now, given their record of resistance, irrespective of what they say. There is nothing new here in the Bush administration's attitude.

The government has never negotiated in good faith, notwithstanding court orders or congressional directive. And we would note that the Court of Appeals just this past month stressed the need for a prompt and fair resolution, while also noting that "Interior's deplorable record deserves condemnation in the strongest terms. Words like 'ignominious" and "incompeten[t]'...and 'malfeasance' and 'recalcitrance' are fair and well-supported by the record."

Delay is business as usual for the Interior Department. Its bureaucrats and their friends continue to make money as long as they can stall this case in court. In fact, the Interior's own Inspector General just last week released a report condemning the granting of over $100 million of accounting work associated with the Cobell case. The reason: senior officials of the Department were giving no- bid contracts to their cronies and friends. So it is no surprise they don't want a settlement that will necessarily shut down the little cottage industry they have created.

I continue to support and look to the leadership of Senator McCain. He can make the difference. If he truly wants a resolution and uses his political power to get one, he can do so. But time is running very short. He -- along with others like Senator Conrad Burns, R-Montana, and Dorgan must take the necessary steps to ensure that justice so long denied is delayed no further. This bill will need to be marked up and personally shepherded through Congress by Chairman McCain immediately after the August recess. I and our lawyers will continue to work with the Committee on Indian Affairs to accomplish this task.

Senator McCain has personally given his word to me that he will do all he can to ensure a fair bill is enacted. His staff has informed us that Senator McCain believes that what is fair is at least $8 billion. We are confident he will keep his word to the 500,000 individual Indians who are depending on him.

Posted by EBW at 04:58 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Chairman McCain dropped S.1439 A bill to provide for Indian trust asset management reform and resolution of historical accounting claims, and for other purposes, from the agenda of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee this morning. Given the number of legislative days left before recess, and the post-recess focus of the legislature in an election year, this means the bill, introduced just two weeks ago, by McCain (R-AZ) and Dorgan (D-ND) is dead.

Of course, a bill two-weeks less dead with a hundred years of accounting fraud to account for, and a decade of Administration foot-dragging and pervarication, and in which the parties differ in their estimates of damages by not just one, but two orders of magnitude, was a zombie ab initio.

The plaintiff's goal and numbers: "full accounting and approximately twenty seven billion".

The respondent's goal numbers: "no accounting and approximately low millions".

McCain and Dorgan's proposed settlement: "no accounting and eight billion".

McCain may not Chair the Committee in the next Congress. He's kept the focus on Abramoff and his lobbying firm and off of Grover Norquist and his Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy and Amy Ridenour and her National Center for Public Policy Research.

Posted by EBW at 08:50 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Statement of Elouise Cobell of Browning Mont., Lead plaintiff in Cobell vs. Kempthorne, A class-action lawsuit over the Individual Indian Trust, BROWNING, MONT., July 25, 2006.

"I have been quoted as saying that an $8 billion dollar settlement amount for the historical accounting claims of 500,000 individual Indian trust beneficiaries is "equitable.'

That is not what I said.
That is not what I believe.

What I know is that Indian people have been abused and cheated out of our trust income, and continue to be cheated, by government officials who are in an egregious breach of trust.

Nonetheless, it would be foolish to ignore political realities while our people continue to go without the basic staples of life.

That is why I and the other representative plaintiffs -- in consultation with class members -- are considering this settlement offer. We have not come to any conclusions whether to support this or not. Our deliberations are on-going."

Posted by EBW at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today

Some people in Washington, D.C., fight for Indian rights as hard as anyone has done in the past century.

I know you're laughing, faithful reader, and saying: Tell another joke. Here's the funny part - I'm not kidding.

There really are some dedicated advocates who actually look out for Native interests. Right here, in Potomac River city, amid the swamp things: sycophants, self-servers, slackers, sell-outs and scoundrels.

Observe the sibilance. A hissing sound is always a warning. In this case, it comes from the chorus of united snakes - the forked-tongued ones in the morality play of Washington policy-making.

Most folks in this town are scared off by their first warning - sssssss.

Many come to town in search of someone to surrender to. As soon as they can, they join the chorus: SSSSSSS. Sometimes they hiss so loudly, they're startled by the sound of their own voice and retreat in obsequious silence.

But here's the thing. Good people really are being taken out, one by one, dragged just below the water line.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is one of those good people. He presided over the Indian trust funds case for 10 years.

He asked Interior and Treasury department officials hard questions: What did you trustees do with the Indians' money? The united snakes did not like that - sssssss.

He was trying to make the trustees set up a system to account for the Indians' money. The united snakes hated that - sssssss.

But when the judge turned off their taxpayer funded e-mail accounts and called Interior a ''dinosaur,'' they slogged and slithered through the tar pits to the appeals court and threw a hissy fit - SSSSSSS.

The appeals court handed the judge's head to the united snakes on July 11.

The court says the judge was way harsh when he wrote that Interior was the ''morally and culturally oblivious hand-me-down of a disgracefully racist and imperialist government that should have been buried a century ago, the pathetic outpost of the indifference and anglocentrism we thought we had left behind.''

The court wrote that the judge went ''beyond historical racism and all but accuses current Interior officials of racism.''

Here's lesson one about Washington. You cannot under any circumstances call a snake a snake, a dinosaur a dinosaur or a racist a racist, or you'll be booed and hissed - sssssss. You have to sidle up to the subject, sidewinder style.

Start by praising the distinguished department as a trusted friend and, even though there were bloody hands in the distant past (yesterday), everyone wears white gloves today and, may it please the court, the only fingerprints left behind belong to the body on the floor.

The appeals court ruled that the judge used all his nine lives and instructed the district court's chief judge to find a new one for the case.

The united snakes were doing the electric slide on the streets outside Interior and hissing was heard high on the Hill above the swamp. But it seems they started to shed their skins too soon.

They hadn't read the end of the decision. The court repeated its statement of five years ago: ''the federal government has failed time and again to discharge its fiduciary duties.'' The court said this is a ''serious injustice that has persisted for over a century and that cries out for redress.''

Then the court wrote something that froze the blood of the cold-bloods: ''As the litigation proceeds, the government must remember that although it regularly prevails on appeal, our many decisions in no way change the fact that it remains in breech of its trust responsibilities.

''In its capacity as trustee and as representative of all Americans, the government has an obligation to rise above its deplorable record and help fashion an effective remedy.''

Since someone read that part to them, the united snakes started writhing around in the wet weeds, expressing their strong displeasure - sssssss.

The court also told the Indians' lawyers to play nice and stay focused, saying they ''would more ably advance their worthy cause by focusing their energies on legal issues rather than on attacking the government and its lawyers.''

This might be the time, with all due respect, for Native peoples to really focus the justice system's attention on Indian rights by bringing the case for tangible trust resources that the trustees misplaced or gave to friends or pocketed or otherwise diverted from the intended Indian beneficiaries - sssssss.

In another jurisdiction on July 18, U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier ordered Interior to stop ''restructuring'' Indian education programs in North and South Dakota before it does irreparable harm. The judge cited failure to consult with those who would be affected by the restructuring.

This would be the time for other Native peoples to file for injunctions to stop restructuring and start consulting in their areas.

The united snakes won't like that. They really resent consulting with Native people and don't mind hissing in the face of the laws and policies that require it.

Over at the Labor Department, the longstanding Division of Indian and Native American Programs was unceremoniously downgraded to a program late last year, without any of the required consultation in Indian country.

No one bothered to tell Labor's own Native Council about the demotion, even though it has a statute mandating consultation.

This would be the time for Native peoples who are affected by Labor's programs to file for injunctions to stop that department's ''restructuring.''

Major changes affecting all Native peoples are taking place across government today. Why? Because the united snakes think they are above U.S. law and Native peoples - sssssss.

One Native advocate said recently, ''We'll have our turn when the Democrats get in.'' This prompted her friend to ask, ''What if there's nothing left to come back to?''

This would be the time to do something about anything, even if it's just to make sure there's something left besides snakeskin.

It isn't all beer and skittles when (if) the Democrats get in. Who writes labor law in Indian Country? The US or the Tribal Governments? Do Unions get to blow off negociations with Tribal Governments because they own the Democratic Party?

Posted by EBW at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Cobell case is one of the more complicated issues tried in the federal system: The docket sheet has some 3,000 entries and different aspects of the case have been appealed nine times in six years. And still the substantive issues remain years away.

The litigation involves some 500,000 Indians -- and the claims against the United States could total tens of billions of dollars owed to individuals.

The July 11th ruling is here (34 pages .pdf).

I'm filing this under "Abramoff & the Injuns".

Posted by EBW at 10:36 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Just dropping in (despite continued satellite outage) to remind Abramoff-philes that most of the info in last week's Senate Indian Affairs Committee report can be found in Wampum's archive category, Abramoff and the Injuns. As an added bonus, there's a whole lot more, particularly on Italia Federici, Grover Norquist, and the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA).

During my earlier investigations, I sent numerous emails to TPMmucker's crew. I have to say after finally reading their coverage, I'm disappointed they seem to treat the information in the report as new. C'est la vie. Back to the real world.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

David H. Safavian is charged with obstructed justice and making false statements. Today is the second day of jury deliberations.

The NPR coverage of the Katrina fraud, five football tickets and a bottle of champers, failed to mention that David H. Safavian "a White House procurement official involved until last week in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts" (quoting the WaPo two weeks before his inditements), had anything to do with (a) Hurricane Katrina relief efforts or (b) procurement policy originating from the White House, or (c) that in closing agruments, Nathaniel Edmonds, representing the United States, accused Mr. Safavian of abandoning his responsibilities as a public servant to "act in Jack Abramoff's interests" and of lying repeatedly when questioned by government investigators about his August 2002 golf trip to Scotland with Abramoff, along with a few other nice people who usually bask in the media, any media, earned or paid. Here's a nice photo from NPR's carefully seperate coverage of the Safavian trial.

From left: Neil Volz, former chief of staff for Rep. Bob Ney; Ralph Reed, a former lobbyist and current candidate for lieutenant governor of Georgia; congressional staffer Paul Vinovich; Rep. Bob Ney; William Heaton, Ney's chief of staff; former Bush administration official David Safavian; Michael Williams, who worked with Abramoff at the lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig; Abramoff's son, Alex; and Jack Abramoff.

Update: Deliberations continue tomorrow.

Posted by EBW at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The blogosphere is buzzing with the news that Denny Hastert is under investigation. ABC News reports:

Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The Hastert letter is also signed by Tom DeLay, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor. Here is the Hastert letter: Link

MB tells me that there is a similar letter signed by Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio). Price's staffer Jessica Incitto was married to Todd Boulanger who worked for Team Ambraoff. The Pryce Letter is the second set on this page.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Peeling the onion from Abramoff we get to Norquist then the "non-profit" think tanks and front groups, the cloud of 501(c)(3) and 527 entities he helped create, to Exxon/Mobil, BP, Edision Electric Institute, National Petrolium Association, National Mining Association, Dow Chemical, and my personal favorite, Koch Industries.

Two months ago, when the Bangor GP mill was shut down and everyone in Maine's political classes (elected and media employed) suddenly had a hot issue -- the spin on the mill closure was the cost of energy, could the new furnace burn construction debris to lower the cost of energy? A small matter of mercury, hydrocarbons, lead paint, asbestos, dioxen and so on as ash and stack gas from a subsidized "clean" wood furnace. But was the spin the right place to start with? Was the Bangor GP mill, of all the GP mills, the one with the highest energy cost? And who is GP really?

I wrote to Chris Miller, who is so far, (a) the only candidate for Governor of any state in the Union who wants to get his state's Guard out of the Iraqmire. and (b) the only candidate for office in any state in the Union who is running on Jimmy Carter's hydrocarbon conservation platform.

Charles and David zoomed up the Forbes annual list of the world's richest people, to tie for 33rd place with an estimated net worth at $12 billion each. The previous year Forbes ranked them at 138th and 139th place, at a mere $4 billion each. They'd a wicked good year, with Koch Industries becoming the largest privately-held company in the US in 2005, when it spent $21 billion to acquire Georgia Pacific.

It wasn't the cost of energy at the Bangor GP mill vs any other GP mill with an equivalent stream of pulp in and paper out, due to the exotic new shape of the New England energy market and Maine-specific regs for "clean" or "dirty" wood-fired industrial steam. it was, it is, the game of the Reagan years. The conversion of a public company into a highly leveraged private one, followed by the breakup and sell-off.

John Baldacci and the rest of Maine's political hipsters could talk about gutting the "clean" part of the tax break that GP's Bangor mill got the last time around, to save 300 jobs, or running a spur off the Nova Scotia - to - Boston (and possibly through one of the nicer bits of Long Island Sound to the New York metro market) gas pipeline and burning tax dollars that way, again, to save 300 jobs, but the real deal was between the banks in New York that hold Koch paper, to whom unrest among the elected "leaders" of the Paper Colony is as unimportant as unrest among the befeathered and painted chiefs of New Guinea when Freeport McMoRan struck gold at the Grasberg mine. To be resolved by the Commerce Clause and State bonds ratings, and the military of the current it-starts-with-S dictator of Indonesia, repectively.

So where is the missing third? What is Bill Koch up to these days? Racing 12 meter boats, one of the more expensive of past-times, and killing a project to put 130 wind turbines (420 megawatts) in Nantucket Sound, the first offshore wind farm in US territorial waters. Oh. And moving a lot of coal around.

All three men are billionaires on paper in combustible carbon. They are wicked sensitive to marginal issues like extraction cost (fun and games at the Minerals Management Service for carbon extracted from leases of Federal and Indian land) and stack gas scrubber cost (fun and games at the EPA for allowable levels of mercury and fly ash at coal-fired electrical utilities, something of passing concern to Mainiacs and Mainers alike). These guys see the whole picture, which is why they're setting up the PR hit on Al Gore's film, An Inconvienent Truth with all the cute CO₂ is natural goodness ads, and pulling John McCain's strings, both sets, his don't investigate past Abramoff (no drill-down to concealed extraction fraud) strings at the Select Committee on Indian Affairs, and his don't message on Global Warming strings on the Commerce Committee, about which he hasn't uttered a peep since he and Joe Lieberman were shown the "climate change" door, at the end of 2004.

Meanwhile, Le Soir reports that Belwind, a Dutch company, has applied for permission to build a 130 turbine (330 megawatts) wind farm on the Bligh Bank, in Belgian territorial waters about 40 km offshore, in waters about 6 to 10 meters deep. The company behind Belwind is Econcern, which did another off-shore wind farm on Sheringham Shoal, in the UK's territorial waters. Behind Econcern is SHV Holdings, the worlds largest LPG distribution company.

Maine's tried "high tech", the pop of the speculative Internet tulip bulb ended that flight into fantesy. Maine's also flirted with "genetics", generalizing from the Mt. Desert mouse farm to ... some fiction of value. One thing we have a lot of is air-born pollutants, being down-winders of every stack from West Virginia to Michigan. The West Germans figured out how to clean up East Germany and make abatement a profitable industry. Maine has wind too. But investment in renewable energy, and investment in cleaning up the carbon energy extraction to combustion byproducts pollutant streams, and disenvestment in carbon energy, which includes nuclear when the total energy cost is included, is safer in Europe than in the United States.

The control over government by organized crime is much lower.

Posted by EBW at 09:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

[I'm archiving MB's work sent elsewhere, since otherwise I'd have to ask where I left the car keys or something equally clue-challenged. ebw]

Twice a day, as part of my developing routine of Gore-watching, I surf through Google news looking for anything new on my now favorite subject.  I was thus quite intrigued to see this small blurb emanating from TownHall.com:

CEI to Launch Ads Exposing Truth about Gore's Movie

May 16 2006 01:32 PM

By Lisa DePasquale

The Competitive Enterprise Institute will launch TV ads focusing on global warming and Al Gore's cinematic self-love, An Inconvenient Truth.  The ads will be aired at a press conference tomorrow, May 17, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.  The ads will air in a dozen cities beginning on May 18.  Gore's An Inconcenient Truth premieres in DC on May 17 and will be in select theaters nationwide next week.  Gore, narrates and stars in this vanity piece.  Who sees Gore on TV and thinks, "That kid should be in movies!"

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a Washington, DC-based think tank founded by Fred White in 1984. According to Sourcewatch, CEI calls itself "a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy institute dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government." But CEI is perhaps best known for its near rabid campaign against wider public acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, aka, global warming.

Beginning in June 1992 with its assault on the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, CEI began to focus most of its energy and cash on its anti-environmental efforts. Ironically, this was the same time period that Bill Clinton named published environmental author and Senator Al Gore as his running mate. It does make one wonder, though, that in CEI's own accounting of its history, the only Democratic politician attacked is none other than Al Gore. Neither Clinton nor Kerry's names even appear in the history.

While much of CEI's current revenues of nearly $3 million derive from an array of natural resource industries, one of its biggest supporters is David Koch, of fossil-fuel giant Koch Industries. With his multi-billion dollar personal fortune, Koch has bankrolled many of the best known "green-scam" groups which popped during the 1990s, but one in particular became his favorite. Founded on Koch donations in 1997, Grover Norquist and Gale Norton, with active input from Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott and Governor George W. Bush, put together the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates (later switched to Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy) or CREA. Norton and Koch were both hired by the Bush Campaign in 1999 as environmental policy advisors, and later, as President-elect, Bush rewarded Norton with Secretary of Interior.

Throughout its short but controversial existence (CREA was highly implicated in the Abramoff scandal, which is how I discovered it), CREA's central mission, despite purportedly being a 501(c)3, was to undermine the environmental credentials of high-profile Democrats, particularly Al Gore, and later, John Kerry. It accomplished this mostly through paid media, ads buys in major newspapers and on TV. How it paid for those high-priced ads is still a mystery, as CREA consistently claimed on its filings with the IRS that, outside of a three month period in the summer of 2000 where it raked in $121K+, including $10,000 from Koch, it claimed it had no income. The half-million dollars from Abramoff tribal clients has yet to be declared as well as any proceeds from the numerous fundraisers hosted by Julie Finley, the queen bee of Republican Washington society.

Groups like CEI, CREA, the Cato Institute (also Koch funded) and the National Center for Public Policy Research (also a laundry for Abramoff money) all began a non-stop brutal campaign, managed by Grover Norquist and Karl Rove, on VP Al Gore, a campaign aimed at cementing public doubt regarding Gore's superb environmental credentials. The effort worked so well, that Gore's own campaign advisors purportedly urged him not to focus on his green record.

And now these same green-scam groups are doing it again.

CEI's official press release from yesterday:

CEI to Launch National Global Warming Ad Campaign; Ads Countering Global Warming Alarmism to be Unveiled at May 17 News Conference

5/15/2006 11:18:00 AM

To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor

Contact: Jody Clarke of the Competitive Enterprise Institute,
202-331-2252 or jclarke@cei.org

News Advisory:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute will unveil a national global warming ad campaign at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at noon.

CEI has produced two 60-second television ads focusing on global warming alarmism and the call by some environmental groups and politicians to reduce fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions. The ads will air in more than a dozen cities around the country beginning May 18, 2006.

"The campaign to limit carbon dioxide emissions is the single most important regulatory issue today," says Marlo Lewis, a CEI senior fellow in environmental policy. "It is nothing short of an attempt to suppress energy use, which in turn would be economically devastating-all to avert an alleged catastrophe whose scientific basis is dubious."

In CEI's view, claims of looming climate disaster due to energy use are unfounded. One of the ads focuses on the extent to which the public has received only one side of the glacial melting issue. CEI's national ad campaign, produced with Washington, DC-based Next Generation Advertising, is the first to counter the flood of scare stories on global warming.

NEWS CONFERENCE: NATIONAL GLOBAL WARMING AD CAMPAIGN

WHEN: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at noon

WHERE: National Press Club (First Amendment Lounge), 529 14th Street
NW, Washington, DC

WHO: Sam Kazman, campaign script developer Marlo Lewis, CEI global warming policy expert

VISUALS: Two 60-second television spots will be shown at the news conference. Copies will be available to the media afterwards.

While I'm not surprised that CEI, being, at least ostensibly, a 501(c)3, doesn't mention Al Gore or An Inconvenient Truth in their press release, I find it intriguing that TownHall's DePasquale advertised it as such. Has DePasquale already pre-screened the two spots, or was she informed of their true content by someone in the know at CEI?

In addition, I am not a media consultant, so I don't know how much a 60 second ad in a major media market runs (times 12 markets times at least 5-7 runs for exposure), but I imagine it's more than $23,000. That's CEI's total "Issue Marketing and News Release" expenditures in 2004, according to its 990 form filed with the IRS. 2004 was also the year CEI went over budget by $10,000, leaving the organization with a surplus of $1.6 million, built up over the past twenty years (with a $2.9 million annual revenue stream.)

The fact that CEI is taking this so seriously, as well as the fact CREA, despite being under investigation by the Justice Department and IRS, has crawled out from under their Abramoff-induced rock and is once again lobbying Congress, indicates that the Energy lobby, led by Norquist, is very, very concerned about a resurgent Gore and are on the offensive.

What can be done?

All of these groups are 501(c)3s and are able to hide their donors identities due to weak enforcement by the IRS and FEC. Both governmental entities, however, will respond to hard evidence. Therefore, if any dKos readers with film capability are able to attend tomorrow's press conference in DC, we should do so. We also need to determine which stations in which markets will be playing the ads, and pressure station executives. In addition, these groups are currently deathly afraid of lobbying legislation making its way through Congress, legislation which could force them to either stop their under-the-radar lobbying, or disclose their donors (see LobbySense). But possibly the most important thing is publicly calling out these groups, reminding the public and the press of their fiendish histories and direct ties to the current culture of Republican corruption, that their goals are purely political, not educational or for the public welfare. They are corporate lackeys, willing to sell our future for a few oil and gas company bucks. They fear Al Gore because of his message, his integrity and his growing popularity, at least among the activist Left.

Posted by EBW at 09:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It's time to take a hiatus from Wampum. DG08 will be taking all of my time for the time being, and I'm not doing the Abramoff story justice anymore. Besides, as I realized last month, the real scandal was the creation as early as the mid-90s of green-scam groups by Republican leaders to undermine Gore's environmental credentials. The best way to fight those are by getting Gore re-elected.

On my way out the door, here's a reminder of Gore's approach to Indian Country:

Gore takes on all questioners in marathon session
Posted: May 10, 2000
by: Katherine Saltzstein / Indian Country Today

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - New Mexicans want a pardon for former Navajo tribal chairman Peter MacDonald, more financial support for the Indian Health Service and training for better jobs for Native Americans.

These were among the requests to Vice President Al Gore when he visited Albuquerque April 28.

Speaking at an informal "open meeting" at a middle school gymnasium, Gore asked for questions from the hand-picked group of about 200 "undecided voters" - a target of the campaign.

Gore was relaxed, casually dressed and appeared to take an interest in each speaker - from 10-year-olds to retirees.

Mary Cohoe, from the Ramah Navajo Reservation, told Gore that MacDonald had been serving in federal prison for 14 years and asked if he would support a pardon for MacDonald.

...

Gore pledged continued help to Indian people.

Nancy Mithlo, a Chiricahua Apache, who formerly taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, told Gore that too many Native American students are "channeled into jobs in the lower paying service industry rather than more meaningful jobs."

Gore said he wants to see tribes included in empowerment zones on Indian reservations to build economies. And, he'd like tribes to be part of the information superhighway - with greater access to computers.

...

After his record-setting four hours of questions, the vice president made a midnight stop at the Gathering of Nations. He apologized for arriving so late, in the midst of a late-night dance contest.

He apologized for being late? He's definitely in need of some training, but otherwise....

Posted by MB Williams at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, while doing my daily trolling of news on Al Gore, I came across this opinion piece in the Salt Lake Tribune:

Democrats will err if they pick Gore By Eric Peters

WASHINGTON -- It took three election losses as the Democratic presidential candidate to push William Jennings Bryan onto the Chataqua circuit expounding a version of fundamentalist Christianity that would make Pat Robertson seem as tame as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It took only one presidential loss - although surely the most controversial one in U.S. history - to send Al Gore onto the true believer's lecture trail spreading the doctrine of catastrophic climate change.

After taking a brief respite from politics to dabble as a college lecturer, Gore has been touring the national TV and town hall lecture circuit sharing his apocalyptic vision of our future - one that not so coincidentally resembles that in the disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow."

To be sure, he has wandered from his "the sky is falling" litany to denounce the Bush administration for its questionable pursuit of nation-building in the Middle East. But other than to drop real world matters to thwart the evil forces of future global warming, he said little about how he would stymie the here-and-now forces of global terrorism. We also know only what we can assume on how he would address such pressing domestic issues as Social Security, immigration, tax reform and health care.

Still, whatever his current disclaimers, it seems certain he currently is in training for a run at the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 - if only to derail the megastar senator from New York, the more moderate, brighter and harder-working Hillary Clinton.

(Emphasis mine)

Before I go further, just who is Eric Peters, you might ask? According to the Tribune, Peters "is a columnist for The Army Times and AOL.online." But a little Googling provides a bit more of a biography:

Eric Peters is a veteran Washington, D.C.-based automotive writer who has written extensively about new cars, the automobile industry and its products. He also enjoys writing about regulatory issues affecting cars and their owners.

Peters has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Human Events, the Free Market and numerous other publications.

A member of the Washington Automotive Press Association (WAPA) and the International Motor Press Association, he has written hundreds of new car and truck reviews during the six years he's been a staff writer at The Times.

An "automotive writer"? And where else has Peters plied his journalistic skills? How about The American Spectator and the National Review Online.

But back to Peter's most recent column:

[Gore] and a number of other old Democratic bulls, including John Kerry and Joe Biden, would like nothing better than to plant some political land mines in the path of Hillary Clinton, the clear front-runner for their party's nomination. Gore's political allies are quietly whispering to key Democrats that Mrs. Clinton can win the primaries, but can't win the general election because of her high negatives.

But many of those negatives are starting to disappear. Hillary has moderated her views substantially since her election to the Senate six years ago - or at least, the expression of those views. She has learned the art of compromise and reached out to her colleagues across the aisle - even earning their praise at times for her hard work and reasonable attitude.

Now, this is in no way yet another "bash Hillary" hit piece. I'm more concerned as to why Peters, who only two years ago, singled out Clinton for trashing in the American Spectator due to her support of tougher seatbelt laws (along with Republican John Warner, who strangely enough, was not the subject of Peter's wrath), has decided she is worthy of such glowing praise. And why does such an overt, oil-loving conservative, suddenly show such interest in Democratic primary politics anyway?

In short, she has become the antithesis of Gore, who has become increasingly bitter and partisan as he pushes his green agenda around the country. Whoever takes the oath of office in January 2009 must be, for the good of the country, a person amenable to reason - and reasonableness. Hillary may be a better alternative of the two.

Gore has shown no capacity for compromise and, indeed, is building his base only on the far left with the help of MoveOn.org and Howard "The Scream" Dean's squadrons of online zealots.

It is he, not Hillary Clinton, who is too far to the left to win the general election.

After reading Peters' April 30th column linked above, "There's no good substitute for oil and gas", I decided to dig a little deeper. That was how I came across this 2003 piece at the National Center for Public Policy Research, entitled "The Car They Want You to Drive", co-authored by none other than president of NCPPR, Amy Ridenour.

Those of you who have followed the tribal fund scam side of the Abramoff scandal may be familiar with Ms. Ridenour. Seems she unwittingly allowed her old friend, Jack Abramoff, to launder a couple million dollars in tribal client money through her organization. Of course, Senate Indians Affairs Committee Chairman John McCain found no reason at all to question Ridenour's honesty, despite the fact that Ridenour also had strong ties to other Abramoff accomplices, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, as they'd all been officers in the College Republicans together, back in the 1980s, and kept "in touch" over the years, particularly with Norquist. Over the years, Norquist has actively promoted the NCPPR, particularly their efforts to undermine government regulation of energy companies.

NCPPR, with financial backing from energy companies, took on the issue of global climate change in 1997, with V.P. David Ridenour's editorial, "Cure to Global Warming Could Be Worse Than the Disease" and the formation of the Kyoto Earth Summit Information Center to oppose US participation in the Kyoto Treaty. In 2002, funded primarily by ExxonMobile, NCPPR launched the Envirotruth website, which lists on its front page, the "Top Climate Change Myths".

From the mid-90s on, open warfare on then VP, and assumed 2000 Presidential contender Al Gore was the moving force behind NCPPR's "environmental" campaign. Ironically, they weren't alone in that regard. As I written on extensively, Norquist and Colorado AG Gale Norton, with help from Republican Congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott and Texas Governor George W. Bush, and funded by oil, gas and mining interests, formed the green-scam organization, the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates (later renamed the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy) or CREA, whose apparent sole mission was the undermining of VP Al Gore's environmental credentials. Ironically, beginning in 2001 CREA was also used to launder tribal funds from Abramoff clients, with proceeds used to promote drilling in ANWR.

Eric Peters' ties to Amy Ridenour and the NCPPR, his history of shilling for oil and gas companies and ties to rabidly conservative media outlets should be seen as fair warning that the "exploitive" arm of the Republican Party is very concerned about the possibility of Al Gore running in 2008, just as they were in the late 1990s. I'm not about to try and analyze why Peters' seems so amenable to Hillary over other potential Democratic nominees, including moderates such as Mark Warner and Evan Bayh. But I'm frankly perplexed over the animosity shown towards a man who even yesterday claimed,

"I don't really like politics anymore," Gore said. "I don't think I'm particularly good at it. I used to really enjoy it. I'm not at a s