The lawmakers bid to block a Placer casino could have helped an Abramoff client in Louisiana.
By David Whitney – Bee Washington Bureau
2:15 a.m. PST
WASHINGTON - E-mails uncovered by a Senate committee show superlobbyist
Jack Abramoff had a keen interest in Rep. John Doolittle's unsuccessful
effort to block approval of the United Auburn Indian Community's
Thunder Valley casino in Placer County.
Abramoff, whom Doolittle described as a close friend, had a tribal
client thousands of miles away in Louisiana that could have benefited
from the precedent if Doolittle and other critics succeeded in
persuading the U.S. Department of Interior to stop Thunder Valley in
2002.
It's unclear whether the e-mails sparked the Justice Department's
reported interest in Doolittle, R-Roseville, as its corruption
investigation digs deeper into Abramoff's connections on Capitol Hill.
But nothing in the e-mails and other documents uncovered by the Senate
Indian Affairs Committee's probe of the scandal proves Doolittle and
Abramoff were working together on the tribal cases.
Doolittle's office, moreover, denied the congressman coordinated
efforts with Abramoff on the United Auburn casino, which ultimately
opened in 2003. Doolittle spokeswoman Laura Blackann said the
congressman arranged meetings between the Interior Department and local
government officials but said he did not attend.
Abramoff was watching the United Auburn case closely because the
Interior Department ruling on it could become a damaging precedent for
his clients, the Louisiana Coushattas, who were trying to torpedo a
Louisiana casino proposed by the Jena Band of Choctaws.
In both the Jena and United Auburn matters, the Interior Department
was being asked to take non-Indian land into trust - essentially
accepting title to lands on the tribes' behalf - so that they would
qualify for a casino under an exception to the Indian Gaming Regulatory
Act.
The United Auburn matter came to a head midway through the 2001-2002
election cycle in which Abramoff and his tribal clients contributed
about $30,000 to Doolittle's campaign committees and just months before
the congressman's wife, Julie Doolittle, was hired in August 2002 to do
fundraising and event planning for an Abramoff foundation.
But those working on behalf of the United Auburn tribe said
Doolittle did not fully flex his political muscle with the Bush
administration to try to kill the casino - another sign that Doolittle
was not necessarily advancing Abramoff's interests.
"We would rather that he had done nothing, obviously," Howard
Dickstein, the Auburn tribe's attorney, said of Doolittle. "But what he
did was ineffectual."
Still, the e-mails obtained by the Indian Affairs Committee, chaired
by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., show Abramoff was extremely interested in
what was happening with the United Auburn request.
• Italia Federici, head of the Council of Republicans for
Environmental Advocacy, which was receiving large contributions from
Abramoff clients at the time, sent a message to Interior Secretary Gale
Norton's communications director in February 2001 that Doolittle was
working with Christian Coalition Director Ralph Reed "on the California
and Louisiana situations."
"It looks like Doolittle is not giving up and that the conservatives
a(re) being mobilized," Federici wrote.
• A year later, Abramoff expressed concern in an e-mail to Federici:
The Interior Department was about to approve the land deal for the
United Auburn casino, suggesting that he saw it as a precedent that
could "screw" his clients.
"I am really worried about this," Abramoff wrote. "What can we
do?"
• A week after that, Abramoff associate Tony Rudy, former chief of
staff to Texas Rep. Tom DeLay, wrote Abramoff that Interior Deputy
Secretary Steven Griles was angry about them "bashing Norton" over the
United Auburn decision when, in fact, the Interior Department had no
other choice "because of the way Doolittle wrote the bill" restoring
Auburn's tribal status in 1994.
"He seems to be distinguishing how Norton would handle Jena (I
hope)," Rudy wrote, then added that Abramoff's team was going to have
to be "mega careful" on how they lobby the department.
"Things are too hot right now," Rudy warned Abramoff.
The 1994 bill to which Rudy referred restored the Auburn Rancheria's
tribal rights only after Doolittle had been assured the tribe wasn't
going to get into gambling. When the tribe changed its mind, Doolittle
rushed through an amendment on a year-end spending bill that would give
local governments a stronger say in how such a casino was
developed.
A 1997 Doolittle bill barring a casino near schools and churches and
requiring agreements with local governments failed in the Senate, but
became the basis for a negotiated deal between the tribe and Placer
County on the location where the Thunder Valley casino was eventually
built.
Other e-mails revealed that Abramoff and his associates were
lobbying Griles hard at the Interior Department, and in 2003 had even
offered him a job, though Griles testified that he doesn't remember it
that way.
Some at the Interior Department were suspicious that there was
unusual attention being paid to the United Auburn request.
Michael Rosetti, who was legal counsel to Norton, testified at the
committee that he smelled something fishy about the way the last-minute
questions about the United Auburn casino were drawing Griles'
attention, because Griles' duties at Interior did not include tribal
gambling.
"All of a sudden there were meetings that Steve Griles was chairing
which had as its constituent members people from the adjacent
communities in the California area. ... I thought it was odd," he said.
"I didn't know on whose behalf he had interceded precisely and on whose
behalf Mr. Griles was exercising that inquiry."
Griles, whose memory was fuzzy on just about everything, told the
committee that he met with Auburn casino critics because of an inquiry
from a congressman, although he didn't name Doolittle.
"I don't know the Auburn Rancheria," Griles testified. "Whenever I
was asked by the congressional office at Interior to meet with certain
members of Congress, I would do that. Out of that they would ask me to
meet with certain constituents."
The meeting to which Rosetti and Griles appear to be referring
occurred with Bureau of Indian Affairs officials in mid-to late January
2002, according to former Roseville Mayor Claudia Gamar-Heinlein, who
attended it along with representatives from Rocklin and Lincoln.
She doesn't recall whether Griles attended.
"We thought the meeting had gone well, that they listened to our
concerns and were going to look into some things," Gamar-Heinlein said.
"We were really surprised when a couple of days later they announced
that the department was taking (the Auburn casino site) into trust
without contacting anybody."
But Gamar-Heinlein said the only help the Auburn casino critics got
was from Doolittle, who helped arrange the meeting for the group but
did not attend or send a representative.
While the e-mails reveal that Abramoff saw a precedent for the
Coushattas if the Auburn deal was rejected, Dickstein said the fact
that Doolittle was not at the January meeting signaled that the
congressman was not going to battle the Interior Department over
it.
"We had heard rumors that (White House political strategist) Karl
Rove had been called, that Doolittle had set up a meeting with Griles -
and these e-mails confirm that in my mind for the first time," he
said.
"But it was significant to us that he did not actually attend the
meeting," he said. "We thought it was a sign that he was not going to
go to the mat over this."
Doolittle's office essentially agreed.
"The congressman recognized that the tribe had unprecedented
agreements with Placer County and the city of Lincoln that addressed
many of the concerns of his constituents," Blackann said. "As such, the
congressman was not personally involved in these meetings."
Further, Dickstein said he knows of no involvement by Reed, the
Christian Coalition or any other Abramoff-connected groups lobbying
against the United Auburn decision.
"They were just getting organized right at the time we were very far
along in getting this approved," Dickstein said. "It was as if they
were just waking up to something that was essentially a done deal."
Blackann said Doolittle never coordinated with Reed and the
Christian Coalition, as the Federici memo indicated.
"The congressman has never talked to Ralph Reed regarding Indian
gaming issues, and we are unaware of what Ms. Federici is specifically
referring to in her memo other than the congressman's long-held
opposition to the expansion of gaming in this country," Blackann
said.
