Winston & Strawn withdraws from Yucca Mountain legal contract

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Nov. 30, 2001 | 3:33 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The embattled law firm that has handled legal work for the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain project severed its ties to the DOE today.

Officials with the DOE and the firm, Winston & Strawn, described the parting as a mutual decision.

The firm "decided to withdraw," according to a press release issued today by firm officials.

In a letter to the DOE from Winston & Strawn dated Thursday, firm lawyer James Neis said, "Under these circumstances, it appears that it may be in the best interest of the project if our firm does not continue to advise the department, and accordingly, we are willing to conclude our representation if you also feel that is best for the project."

The Energy Department accepted the withdrawal, department spokesman Joe Davis confirmed today. "It is with regret that I agree with you," DOE lawyer Lee Liberman Otis promptly wrote back to Winston & Strawn.

The DOE hired Winston & Strawn in 1999 for the lucrative $16.5 million job of helping DOE apply for a license to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

The firm has invested nearly 9,000 man-hours in the Yucca project at a cost of more than $1.8 million through May 31 of this year.

Davis said the DOE today is reviewing its options for hiring a new firm. It's not clear how much that search could delay the Yucca project, if at all.

"In recent weeks, the firm's representation of the DOE has been subjected to repeated criticism by opponents of the Yucca Mountain project because of its prior representation of other clients," the Winston & Strawn press release said.

"Winston & Strawn continues to believe that no legal conflict exists." The firm quit out of obligation to its client, DOE, the press release said.

The law firm has been under fire since the Las Vegas Sun first revealed in July that Winston & Strawn had represented both the DOE and the nation's leading nuclear power lobby group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, which is a vocal Yucca advocate. Nevada officials said the DOE should not have hired a pro-Yucca law firm to perform legal work on the DOE-managed Yucca project.

The firm did not disclose its relationship with NEI before or after DOE hired it in 1999, DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman revealed in a report earlier this month.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said today Winston & Strawn's withdrawal from legal work for the DOE only adds more ammunition to Nevada's fight to keep nuclear waste out of Yucca Mountain.

"If you look at Winston & Strawn's actions, they have only responded in the proper way after the light was shown on them," Ensign said referring to media reports and public scrutiny about the firm's tactics and alleged conflicts of interest due to its previous clients.

"Winston & Strawn -- they're a huge law firm and they're smart," Ensign said during a press conference at the Lloyd George Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas.

"They made some very stupid mistakes, and they're trying to cover their behinds."

Ensign said the law firm's decision to withdraw, when coupled with Thursday's "damning" General Accounting Office report, gives Nevada momentum to fight the selection of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository.

"The draft report by GAO is some of the most damning information we've ever seen about Yucca Mountain," Ensign said.

Winston & Strawn was the subject of a separate federal investigation into whether someone at the NRC leaked a confidential Yucca review plan to the firm, which in turn leaked it to its client, DOE.

Today, NRC chairman Richard Meserve released a letter dated Nov. 29 to Sen. Harry Reid, acknowledging that the July 2000 version of the Yucca review plan may have been leaked. He said he was releasing that version of the review plan to Nevada officials, so that the state would have it, too.

Meserve stressed that the NRC's Inspector General was still investigating. "Consequently, there is some continuing uncertainty regarding the nature and extent of the alleged release," Meserve said.

Meserve also said the July 2000 version was obsolete and that the up-to-date Yucca review plan is still being developed behind closed doors. The plan is an outline of how the NRC will eventually review the DOE's application to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Today's developments come on the heels of a GAO report that was leaked to the media Thursday that was skeptical of the DOE's ability to complete the Yucca project by a 2010 target date, if at all.