Winston & Strawn still in Nevada’s cross hairs

Mary Manning and Benjamin Grove

Monday, Dec. 3, 2001 | 9:42 a.m.

Nevada's congressional delegation may push for criminal charges against the law firm that last week quit work on the Energy Department's Yucca Mountain project.

Conflict-of-interest allegations prompted Winston & Strawn last week to end the firm's relationship with the department, the firm said. It withdrew from its $16.5 million contract, but admitted no wrongdoing.

The threat of criminal charges came from a separate federal investigation into whether someone at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission leaked a confidential document to Winston & Strawn, which may have leaked it to the DOE.

"I believe what they've done is illegal," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Saturday. "I believe they may have committed crimes."

Reid said the Nevada delegation will examine every avenue possible, including criminal charges and congressional hearings, against Winston & Strawn. Reid spoke after a hearing on a Clark County study of waste transportation to Yucca.

The NRC's office of inspector general is investigating the alleged leak. In the meantime, NRC Chairman Richard Meserve on Friday said he would release the confidential document to Nevada officials in the interest of fairness.

The document is a game plan for the NRC to follow as it considers whether to license Yucca as a waste repository. The plan was drafted in July 2000, but is obsolete, Meserve said.

The NRC is writing a new Yucca review plan, Meserve said. Its rules require the process be done behind closed doors so that the results can be released to everyone at once.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the fact that Winston & Strawn may have shared the NRC guidelines with the DOE is a conflict of interest and perhaps illegal because it gave the department a sneak peek at the NRC's licensing process.

The law firm has been working with the Energy Department since 1999 to prepare a licensing application for a proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The department must obtain a license from the NRC to bury the waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

DOE officials said they do not know if the law firm's termination would delay the repository, targeted to be completed in 2010. A draft report released by the General Accounting Office said the department cannot meet that goal.

Energy officials are attempting to figure out how to find a new law firm, department spokesman Joe Davis said.

The DOE is planning to move ahead with the controversial project as planned, despite assertions from Nevada officials that the project was dealt several blows last week.

"We believe that after 20 years of study, we certainly have met the requirements for the site recommendation," Davis said.

Winston & Strawn has struggled with conflict-of-interest allegations since July, when the Sun reported that the firm had been a registered lobbyist for the Nuclear Energy Institute while representing the Energy Department.

The institute is a trade organization for nuclear energy companies, which want to send waste from nuclear plants to Yucca. Nevada officials said the DOE should not have hired a pro-nuclear law firm to perform legal work on Yuccat.

The DOE was supposed to begin hauling waste from nuclear power plants by 1998, but delays have slowed the project.

The project still has not obtained approvals from the president, Congress or the NRC -- and Nevada officials, who want to kill the project, say studies at the site are far from complete.

Winston & Strawn did not disclose its relationship with Nuclear Energy Institute, DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman revealed in a report released in November after a three-month investigation. If the firm had disclosed the relationship, the department might not have hired the firm, Friedman's report said.

But a press release from Winston & Strawn said the firm never had a conflict of interest and withdrew last week solely out of obligation to its client.

The firm had invested nearly 9,000 man-hours in Yucca at a cost of more than $1.8 million through May, according to Energy Department records obtained by the Sun through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Winston & Strawn also held a contract with DOE's former major contractor, TRW Environmental and Engineering Safety Inc., since 1992, said Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. That fact raises more questions about conflicts of interest, Loux said.

Nevada lawmakers said Yucca is reeling from several blows last week:

* The DOE losing its law firm.

* Meserve acknowledging there may have been an inappropriate leak.

* A congressional audit that said the project should be indefinitely delayed because studies are not complete enough for Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to recommend the site to President Bush this winter.

Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., plan to meet Tuesday to plot strategy for the state's next move against the nuclear waste repository.

Ensign on Saturday said revelations in recent weeks have given Nevada "tremendous ammunition we have never had before."

"If you look at Winston & Strawn's actions, they have only responded in the proper way after the light was shone on them," Ensign said, referring to media reports and public scrutiny. "The draft report by GAO is some of the most damning information we've ever seen about Yucca Mountain."

Gov. Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa both hailed the withdrawal of Winston & Strawn.

Guinn said the action "strongly supports that there was a conflict." He also called on Abraham to clearly mark all documents and reports that Winston & Strawn prepared.

"Because this material may be tainted, I believe they may be unsuitable in the Yucca Mountain decisions-making process, which includes a licensing proceeding before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," the governor said.

Del Papa said her office "feels a tremendous sense of vindication" in Winston & Strawn's withdrawal. Her office has been preparing lawsuits to challenge Yucca and delay it in court.

"From the beginning, we believed that not only is Yucca Mountain a technically unsuitable site for a high-level nuclear waste repository, but the process itself has been tainted by conflicts of interest at the highest levels," she said Friday.