Sex, Lies, and Energy Interests

The scandal over the government’s top environmental prosecutor’s purchase of a vacation home with an oil lobbyist isn’t dying down, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calling yesterday for tighter federal ethics rules.

But the story goes far beyond that one glaring conflict of interest. It’s merely one troubling aspect of a romantic relationship between the Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who headed up the Justice Department’s environmental division, and Steven Griles, the former energy lobbyist and Deputy Secretary of the Interior who’s well on his way to being indicted as part of the Jack Abramoff investigation.

It’s not your typical love story.

Griles came to the Interior Department in 2001, leaving a practice lobbying for coal, oil, and other corporate interests to help oversee the country’s resources. Unsurprisingly, ethics officials were on his case almost immediately for allegedly lobbying on the inside for his former clients. On one occasion, for example, he called over to the Environmental Protection Agency to urge that an environmental study not delay a huge coal-bed methane project planned by his former clients in Wyoming and Nevada.

So to ensure that Griles not roam too freely, an Interior official was assigned to keep an eye on him. That official: Sue Ellen Wooldridge, then the deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

After a couple of months, the two were dating.

But they didn’t tell that to anyone at the Interior Department, especially not the Inspector General, who was investigating Griles for ethics violations.

The relationship began in February, 2003, according to The Washington Post. And during that year, they gave each other “thousands of dollars in gifts and trips” — only they didn’t report them on their disclosure statements (required of federal appointees) until they filed amendments late last year as investigators were bearing down on them.

While the two kept their relationship under wraps, they did what they could to help one another.

In February of 2004, Wooldridge wrote a letter to the Inspector General siding with Griles. And the IG’s report, which finally came out in March of that year, harshly criticized Griles, but stopped short of saying he’d broken any ethics rules.

At about the same time, Wooldridge was promoted to be the Solicitor of the Interior Department. Griles recommended her for the spot, according to The Legal Times.

Even then, she continued to conceal the relationship. At her confirmation hearing before the Senate, Wooldridge was asked about any possible conflicts of interest, as she would now be overseeing all ethics matters at Interior. She said no. It was only sometime after Wooldridge became Solicitor that she finally revealed the relationship to Interior ethics officials for the first time, albeit privately.

In 2005, Griles left Interior to return to lobbying for energy interests, and Wooldridge was again promoted, this time to being the Justice Department’s top environmental prosecutor. She was again asked during her Senate confirmation hearing if there were any possible conflicts of interest for her taking the job. She “did not mention Griles,” reported Legal Times, “nor did she mention that Griles’ lobbying clients that year included the American Petroleum Institute, Consol Energy Inc., and Newmont Mining Corp.”

Given all that, it can’t be too surprising that in March of 2006, Griles and Wooldridge, who were already living in a condo together, decided to buy a $1 million vacation home with another oil lobbyist, Don Duncan, the top lobbyist for ConocoPhillips– and that months later, Wooldridge, on behalf of the government, signed a deal to let ConnoPhillips “delay a half-billion-dollar pollution cleanup,” as the AP first reported last week.

Wooldridge’s lawyer has protested that ethics officials at the Justice Department had OK’ed buying the home. The logic apparently, was something like that of Griles’ lawyer who complained to the Post, “What exactly is wrong with three close personal friends sharing a vacation/rental home?”

But thankfully for Wooldridge and Griles, they won’t have to deal with any of the government’s knotty ethical requirements anymore. Wooldridge resigned (or “decided to return to the private sector” as a Justice Department spokesman put it) three days after Griles was informed by federal prosecutors that he was a target in the Abramoff investigation.