And now:Sonja Keohane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: <http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+iib-site+113+0+w AAA+indian> July 18, 1999 Navajo Lawsuits Say Government Failed the Tribe in Royalty Deals By BARRY MEIER John W. Fritz, an Interior Department official during the Reagan Administration, has long wondered why his decision to sharply increase the coal mining fees paid to the Navajo Indians was blocked. He may now have his answer. On the eve of his 1985 ruling, the Peabody Coal Company started a high-stakes lobbying effort aimed at his boss, Donald P. Hodel, then Secretary of the Interior, papers recently filed in a Federal court in Washington show. Company lawyers even drafted a memo, issued by Hodel, that told Fritz to withhold his ruling, those records indicate.
