DOE official promises probe into alleged conflict

Friday, Aug. 3, 2001 | 9:33 a.m.

The inspector general of the Department of Energy today promised Nevada Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign a full, fair and unbiased investigation into an alleged conflict of interest involving the DOE and a Chicago-based law firm.

Inspector General Gregory Friedman said he may go further into other areas of the project.

"The law firm should have developed a 'Chinese Wall' between the DOE and the nuclear industry," Friedman said.

On Wednesday, Reid and Ensign sent a letter to Friedman asking for a "prompt" investigation of Winston & Strawn. The senators say the law firm simultaneously represented the DOE and the nation's nuclear industry.

The DOE hired Winston & Strawn for $16.5 million in September 1999 to complete legal work related to licensing issues involving Yucca Mountain while the law firm lobbied for the nuclear industry, according to the senators' letter.

The law firm represented the Nuclear Energy Institute -- the nuclear power trade group -- from 1996 until terminating its lobbying duties on July 11, congressional records show.

"This is patently unfair to allow this to happen," Reid said today. "All we want is a fair fight."

The DOE has spent $7 billion over a 20-year period studying Yucca Mountain, a volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Yucca is the only site proposed to store 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste.

"We believe the conflict is so egregious that it merits the immediate termination of this tainted contract," Reid and Ensign said. "At a minimum we want an immediate suspension of the contract while our concerns are evaluated and addressed."

Winston & Strawn has begun an internal examination into the charges, the law firm's chairman, James Thompson, a former Illinois governor, told the Sun. He denied the senators' allegations.

"We're currently looking at every document we have regarding this, just to double-check," Thompson said Monday. "We don't want to embarrass the Department of Energy or the administration. But as of now, we are convinced that there is not a conflict of interest."

Phone calls to Thompson's office in Chicago on Thursday were not returned.

In a separate letter Wednesday Gov. Kenny Guinn asked Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to order the DOE to suspend the Yucca Mountain project because work done by Winston & Strawn for former site contractor TRW Environmental Safety Systems, Inc. posed a conflict of interest.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., asked Friedman last year to expand an investigation into alleged bias involving the repository to include Winston & Strawn. Friedman denied the request. A rival law firm has sued Winston & Strawn over the contract with DOE. The lawsuit is pending.

Berkley asked the inspector general to broaden an investigation launched last year after the Sun obtained a copy of a two-page, anonymous memo attached to a draft scientific report to Congress. The memo suggested that the report could be used to help the nuclear industry sell the viability of a repository to Congress, despite rising costs. Friedman concluded that there was no bias.