Probe of alleged BIA conflict sought

Don Thompson

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004 | 9:05 a.m.

SACRAMENTO -- A Virginia congressman on Monday asked the Justice and Interior departments and Congress' General Accounting Office to investigate what he called "shocking" alleged conflicts of interest by the Sacramento-based regional office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"The unseemliness of the entire process is contemptible," Republican U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf wrote in letters to President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Interior's inspector general and the GAO's comptroller general urging a halt to any further tribal recognitions by the BIA until the probe's completion.

Wolf called it "a potential scandal" that officials of the Interior Department's regional BIA office opened the membership roll of the Ione Band of Miwok Indians and authorized a new leadership election when they stood to gain personally from those decisions, as outlined in a story by the Associated Press released over the weekend and published in Monday's Washington Post.

The then-acting regional director who approved the election was added to the tribal roll along with 68 relatives, including an uncle and a niece who also work for the BIA. A different BIA official who oversaw the election had three relatives added to the tribe.

The tribe's new leadership has been given $1.9 million from the state's Tribal Revenue Sharing Trust Fund, and is pushing hard to build a $100 million, 2,000-slot machine casino in Plymouth, in one of California's fast-growing wine regions, a casino that could bring in an estimated $185 million a year.

Wolf's Appropriations subcommittee oversees the budgets of the Justice Department and FBI, which he said should investigate the apparent conflicts.

"I will be raising this in the hearing when the Bureau comes before us, I'll be raising this when the attorney general comes in front of us," Wolf said. "We're not going to let this go."

Wolf's letters to Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller also refer to a Sunday Washington Post story on the $45 million that four new gambling tribes paid for lobbying over three years.

Justice, Interior and FBI spokesmen said they hadn't seen Wolf's letters and couldn't immediately comment. "Frank Wolf is a well-respected member. We would look forward to working with him," said Interior spokesman Dan DuBray.

Wolf is only the most recent congressman to raise questions about the BIA.

Four congressmen asked the Interior secretary, inspector general and BIA officials to probe the involvement of regional officials two years ago.

Regional officials' actions created "a perception that certain federal employees of the BIA's Pacific Regional Office may have engineered a coup d'etat against the traditional leadership of this particular Band of Indians," wrote Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia.