December

Salon.com
Dec. 11, 2003
Shafted
By Phillip Babich

J. Steven Griles, the No. 2 man in Bush's Interior Department, has spent a lifetime undermining the federal government on behalf of Energy Inc.

Kristen Sykes, Interior Department watchdog at the environmental organization Friends of the Earth, obtained Griles' appointment calendar by filing Freedom of Information Act requests. Sykes says the deputy secretary met on several occasions with the National Mining Association while the industry group was lobbying the administration to relax restrictions on mountaintop removal mining operations. Griles' appointment calendar also indicates that he met with the Edison Electric Institute to discuss administration plans to roll back clean-air enforcement actions against aging coal-fired power plants.

Sykes says that a particularly revealing meeting took place on April 15, 2002, a dinner at the house of Marc Himmelstein. A business partner of Griles', Himmelstein bought Griles' lobbying firm when Griles joined the Bush administration. Himmelstein folded the firm into his own lobbying outfit, National Environmental Strategies, of which Griles was a principal partner. Currently, Griles is receiving $284,000 annually from National Environmental Strategies over four years as payment for his old client base.

"We'd like to see Griles removed from office," says Kristen Sykes of Friends of the Earth. "He's represented special interests, not the public's interest, and he's doing what's best for his corporate buddies, not what's best for the American people."