WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former No. 2 official at the U.S. Interior Department denied on Wednesday he had sought to block a casino development at the request of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, but the agency's former lawyer said the official had repeatedly tried to intervene.
"I don't recall interfering on behalf of Mr. Abramoff's clients, ever," former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and added he was not involved in gambling issues at the department.
But former Interior Department counsel Michael Rossetti said Griles showed "a very keen interest" in meetings on a proposed casino that would have competed with one owned by an Abramoff client. Abramoff is already at the center of a growing scandal that has touched former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
"I was alarmed that Mr. Griles had an inexplicable desire to participate in this issue," Rossetti said.
Griles was offered a job by Abramoff's lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig, but turned it down. He is now a partner in another lobbying firm.
Griles is the highest U.S. official to be linked to Abramoff but not the only one.
Last month, on October 5, the former chief of staff at the General Services Administration was indicted for lying and obstructing investigations into a 2002 golf outing to Scotland that included DeLay and Abramoff. Just two days later, a nominee for the Justice Department's No. 2 job withdrew his name from consideration after Senate Democrats asked about his relationship with Abramoff.
DeLay has faced questions about whether his expenses for the Scotland trip were paid by Abramoff, which would violate House rules. He stepped down from his majority leader post after facing unrelated campaign-finance charges in his home state of Texas.
Abramoff pleaded not guilty in August to charges that he defrauded lenders in a casino cruise line deal. His lobbying practices are being investigated by the Justice Department and the Indian Affairs Committee.
Leaders of the 850-member Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana told the committee that Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay spokesman, exaggerated the threat of competing casinos to bill them $32 million on top of the $125,000 monthly fee they paid to Greenberg Traurig.
"They hit the jackpot with us -- a Native American tribe with a fairly new casino, in the midst of a political transition, and naive to the underworld of governmental affairs," tribal chairman Kevin Sickey said.........
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