Thursday, Sep 4, 2008
J. Steven Griles, the No. 2 man in Bush's Interior Department, has spent a lifetime undermining the federal government on behalf of Energy Inc.
Dec 11, 2003 | It's part of the lore at the federal Office of Surface Mining (OSM) -- a unit of the Department of the Interior that regulates the mining industry -- that J. Steven Griles once said that he "wanted to turn the lights out" at the agency. Griles, who today is deputy secretary of the interior, served as the No. 2 man at the Office of Surface Mining under President Reagan, and his comment was music to industry ears: Mining companies had been gunning for the office ever since it came into being in 1977.
In press reports over the years, Griles has neither confirmed nor denied the comment. But the record speaks for itself. As OSM's deputy director, Griles slashed staffing by one-third and dramatically reduced the number of federal inspectors at mine sites.
Ancient history? Fast-forward to 2003: Griles, now in an even more senior position at Interior, is being investigated by the department's inspector general for allegedly violating an ethics agreement. That investigation offers a fresh opportunity to look at Griles' 20-plus-year career as an industry-friendly political appointee and high-powered industry lobbyist. That career appears to have had one primary focus: get government out of the regulation business -- and when you can't do that, get mining executives into government regulation.
When the oil, coal and gas industries poured millions of dollars into George W. Bush's presidential campaign, J. Steven Griles was exactly what they were paying for. He's a perfect embodiment of the Bush administration's "never met an energy company we didn't like" stance -- and its revolving-door connection between an industry eager to slip free of government rules and a government eager to betray the public good. But then it's no surprise someone like Griles would receive a warm embrace from the Bush team; after all, it is packed to the brim with energy-industry insiders -- from National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to Vice President Dick Cheney to President Bush himself.
Griles formally recused himself "from becoming involved in official matters dealing with [his] former employers and clients" when he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate for Interior's No. 2 post on July 12, 2001. Previously, the deputy secretary had lobbied for Shell, Texaco, Chevron, Arch Coal, Pittston Coal, the National Mining Association and the Edison Electric Institute, to name just a few of Griles' former clients. In April 2003, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., requested that the DOI inspector general investigate whether Griles violated his ethics agreement when several questionable meetings were reported in the press.
Kristen Sykes, Interior Department watchdog at the environmental organization Friends of the Earth, obtained Griles' appointment calendar by filing Freedom of Information Act requests. Sykes says the deputy secretary met on several occasions with the National Mining Association while the industry group was lobbying the administration to relax restrictions on mountaintop removal mining operations. Griles' appointment calendar also indicates that he met with the Edison Electric Institute to discuss administration plans to roll back clean-air enforcement actions against aging coal-fired power plants.
Sykes says that a particularly revealing meeting took place on April 15, 2002, a dinner at the house of Marc Himmelstein. A business partner of Griles', Himmelstein bought Griles' lobbying firm when Griles joined the Bush administration. Himmelstein folded the firm into his own lobbying outfit, National Environmental Strategies, of which Griles was a principal partner. Currently, Griles is receiving $284,000 annually from National Environmental Strategies over four years as payment for his old client base.
Among the small group of people in attendance at the Himmelstein dinner were Kathleen Clark, director of the Bureau of Land Management, who herself is the subject of an ethics investigation by the DOI's inspector general for alleged conflicts of interest; and Jeffrey Jarrett, director of the Office of Surface Mining, a former coal company executive who was the subject of a criminal probe for obstructing an OSM investigation while he was at the agency in the early 1990s.
But the inquiry into whether Deputy Secretary Griles met with former clients and associates is only the tip of the iceberg. Griles is a key player in efforts by industry and anti-regulation ideologues to strip away regulatory and enforcement powers from the federal government, according to current and former DOI officials closely familiar with the deputy's career.
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