Culture of Corruption: Inquiry on Lobbyist Abramoff Widens to Senior Officials

The New York Times


Washington - Investigators have expanded their inquiries into the activities of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff to include his efforts to pressure Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and other senior Interior Department officials on behalf of Indian tribes with gambling interests, lawyers involved in the investigations said in interviews this week.

Although Ms. Norton is not reported to be a focus of the inquiries, the lawyers said investigators from the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, the Justice Department and the inspector general of the Interior Department had raised questions about actions of her former deputy and the president of a lobbying group that Ms. Norton helped found.

The chairman of the Senate panel, John McCain, Republican of Arizona, has scheduled a hearing on the investigation for Wednesday, the last of a series looking into the lobbying activities of Mr. Abramoff and his former partner, Michael Scanlon.

Mr. Abramoff, once among the most powerful lobbyists in the capital and a close friend of Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, has been under investigation for more than a year by a federal grand jury here. Mr. Scanlon is Mr. DeLay's former press secretary in the House.

Mr. McCain has focused on whether Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Scanlon defrauded tribes that paid them more than $80 million in lobbying fees.

The House ethics committee has signaled that it intends to conduct a separate inquiry into the ties between Mr. Abramoff and Mr. DeLay, including several luxurious overseas trips that the lobbyist arranged for Mr. DeLay, who has stepped down at least temporarily as House majority leader as a result of an unrelated money-laundering indictment in Texas.

The Senate hearing on Wednesday is expected to examine Mr. Abramoff's use of a lobbying group closely associated with Ms. Norton to try to pressure Interior Department officials, including Ms. Norton and her former deputy, J. Steven Griles, to take steps that would benefit his Indian clients' gambling operations. The Interior Department is the parent of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Senate hearing will focus on Mr. Abramoff's work on behalf of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, which paid him more than $6 million in lobbying fees, much of it for a campaign to urge the Interior Department to reject a proposal by a rival Louisiana tribe, the Jena Choctaws, to open its own casino.......