From: http://shns.scripps.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=BABBITT-08-22-00&cat=WW Report finds evidence that Babbitt lied, but not enough for indictment By GREG GORDON McClatchy Newspapers August 22, 2000 WASHINGTON - An independent counsel's final report says she found "circumstantial evidence" that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt lied to Congress about his agency's rejection of a proposed tribal casino in Hudson, Wis., but did not find enough proof to indict him. Special prosecutor Carol Elder Bruce's 484-page report to a three-judge court, which was made public Tuesday, repeatedly challenges Babbitt's candor in 1997 congressional testimony in which he denied discussing the casino decision with a top White House official. But it says there is insufficient evidence to convince a jury that Babbitt intentionally lied and that he would have plausible defenses to perjury charges, bolstered by his reputation for sterling integrity. Her report suggests that her staff may have engaged in a more intense debate over whether to prosecute Babbitt than previously acknowledged. People familiar with the inquiry told the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune that prosecutors and FBI agents on Bruce's staff were so divided during a two- to three-week period in July 1999 over whether to pursue an indictment that she brought in an outside consultant to provide an objective view and help sort out the legal issues. Bruce's report does not confirm that chain of events, but it offers a special thanks to Gerald Lynch, a Columbia University law professor, for serving as a consultant near the end of the inquiry and bringing a "learned perspective" to the case analysis. The report provides an illuminating glimpse inside Bruce's highly secret, 18-month criminal investigation into allegations that the administration killed the casino in 1995 in return for hefty campaign donations from Minnesota and Wisconsin tribes worried about new competition. She announced her decision to end her investigation without seeking indictments in late 1999, saying she had found no evidence of a promise of agency action in exchange for campaign cash and insufficient evidence to indict Babbitt. In the report, Bruce also sharply criticizes Donald Fowler, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, for phoning deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes Jr. and Interior Department officials on behalf of the opponent tribes that had discussed donations to the DNC. Despite Fowler's "inappropriate" phone calls that "heightened the appearance of possible corruption," the report says, there was little evidence that Fowler or the White House influenced Interior's decision-making. Babbitt's chief of staff, Tom Collier, has acknowledged being the likely recipient of Fowler's call to Interior. The report said Collier, who later resigned and became a lobbyist for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux tribe, used a similar tactic in June 1996 while trying to persuade his old agency to reject a bid by tribal dissidents to nullify a Shakopee adoption ordinance. Collier arranged a meeting between Fowler and tribal officials, delivered a $20,000 tribal contribution to the DNC on the day of the meeting and then asked Fowler to contact Ickes, it said. Two weeks later, the Interior Department ruled in the tribe's favor. Although there is no evidence to prove that Fowler or Ickes took any action in that case, the report said, "a troubling pattern emerges from these facts which suggests that Fowler and Collier understood from prior experience that campaign contributions could lead Fowler to intervene with Interior via the White House." The report also found that the Interior Department sidestepped its usual criteria in rejecting the application of three impoverished Wisconsin Chippewa bands to open an off-reservation casino at the financially tottering St. Croix Meadows greyhound racetrack. Over the objections of some Bureau of Indian Affairs officials, the department's rejection letter took the position that mere local government opposition to an off-reservation casino was a basis to reject the application. The department's decisions on other applications before and after Babbitt took office "do not appear to be consistent with this policy of not imposing casinos on objecting communities," the report said. Bruce disclosed that her investigators traced even more campaign donations to Democrats from seven opposing Minnesota tribes, three Wisconsin tribes and two of their lobbyists than had been identified previously. It said that from April 29, 1995 - the day after leaders of the opposing tribes met with Fowler in Washington - through Dec. 31, 1996, the tribes and two key Twin Cities lobbyists, Patrick O'Connor and Larry Kitto, donated a total of $415,475 to the DNC, President Clinton's re-election campaign committee and other national Democratic organizations. By comparison, the report said, the same interests gave a total of $82,717 over the previous three years and four months. Attorney General Janet Reno requested the inquiry when she was unable to resolve perjury allegations stemming from Babbitt's conflicting accounts of a much-publicized meeting with Arizona lawyer Paul Eckstein, a longtime friend, on July 14, 1995, the day the Hudson decision was issued. Eckstein, who was representing the three Chippewa bands seeking the casino, told congressional investigators that he went to Babbitt's office to make a last-ditch appeal for a few more days for his clients to be heard on the application. He said Babbitt replied that Ickes had directed him to issue the decision that day. Eckstein also said that after he showed Babbitt a letter in which O'Connor had informed Ickes that the opposing tribes were longtime Democratic contributors, Babbitt remarked that "these Indians" have given the party about $500,000. Babbitt initially told Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in a letter in August 1996 that he had never discussed the Hudson matter with Ickes. But when he was questioned more than a year later by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, he revised his statement, saying that he had mentioned Ickes' name - falsely stating that the presidential aide wanted prompt action - as a polite way of ushering his old friend out of his office. Bruce's report said when Babbitt's revision reached the newspapers, the White House chief of staff at the time, Erskine Bowles, summoned him to the White House and told him "that lying to a United States senator was unacceptable and serious business." Bowles urged Babbitt to phone McCain and apologize. Bruce found that, while there were no other witnesses to the Eckstein-Babbitt conversation, there was enough corroborating evidence to suggest that Eckstein's version was accurate. However, it said, it was possible that Babbitt simply had a "mistaken recollection of the specifics of the conversation" and that the evidence was not strong enough to convince a jury that Babbitt intended to lie. While the investigations are over, the controversy is not. Under a court settlement with the losing tribes last year, the Interior Department is in the process of reconsidering the Hudson application. (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.) � 1999 Scripps Howard News Service. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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