Griles deserves leniency, ex-Interior officials say

Former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton is urging a federal judge in Washington to show leniency in sentencing her former top deputy, but leaders of Indian and environmental organizations want J. Steven Griles to be given a stiff sentence for his crimes.

Once described by GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff as “our guy” at the Interior Department, Griles pleaded guilty in March to lying to Senate investigators as they looked into the scandal surrounding Abramoff. Abramoff pleaded guilty last year to a scheme of fraud and tax evasion.

Griles, Norton’s chief deputy from 2001 to 2005, admitted that he lied when he told Senate investigators and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 2005 that Abramoff had no special access to his office. Abramoff had “instant and continued access to Griles” upon meeting him and forcefully sought assistance from the Interior Department for the tribes he represented, according to court documents.

Griles also admitted to not fully disclosing his romantic relationship with Italia Federici, a Republican environmental lobbyist who worked for Abramoff and introduced him to Griles.

Griles, 59, a former coal mining executive who lives in Virginia, could get up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is to be sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle.

Norton said in a letter on his behalf: “I sincerely hope the court will take Steve’s dedicated and distinguished career of public service into account in considering his case.” Giles served two stints in the Interior Department, the first during the Reagan administration.

Norton said Griles had made “personal sacrifices” and pursued “the idealistic path” when he returned to government rather than reaping financial rewards as a lobbyist.

She also praised his efforts on complicated environmental issues and problems with a huge government trust fund. The trust fund is the subject of litigation alleging that Indians have been cheated of billions of dollars in gas, oil and timber royalties on their land.

Several other former Interior Department officials, Republican Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter of Idaho and Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) are among 90 other people who have submitted letters on Griles’ behalf.

Native American and environmental organizations have taken sharp exception to the assertion that Griles should be given a break.

“There is an ominous parallel between questionable comments he made in our litigation and the false statements he has acknowledged making about his relationship” with Abramoff, wrote Elouise Cobell, who heads the Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund in Montana. The judge in that case, she noted, said Griles’ statements exhibited “an alarming lack of candor.”

Cobell also said Griles “did little to speed resolution of our lawsuit and the installation of much-needed reforms to the trust program ... one of the biggest problems that is facing Indian country.... It is time for government officials to be held accountable.”

The federal prosecutors in Griles’ case, Armando O. Bonilla and Kartik K. Raman, recommended that Griles be given the minimum term under sentencing guidelines -- 10 months -- and said they would permit him to serve half of the sentence at a halfway house.

But his defense attorneys, Barry M. Hartman and Brian W. Stolarz, say that is too harsh for his misdeeds compared with the misdeeds of others in the Abramoff affair.

They argue that he should not have to serve any jail time. They say Griles should instead be permitted to do community service for a program run by the American Recreation Coalition, a recreation-industry organization that Griles worked with while he was at the Interior Department.

The prosecutors countered that “a sentence of incarceration will send a message to all would-be congressional witnesses that they are expected to testify fully and completely, or face serious punitive consequences.”

Their brief stated that “Griles’ lies and withholding of material information perverted the congressional investigation into the alleged access and influence Abramoff had” at Interior while Griles was the second-highest-ranking official in the department.

In his efforts to help Abramoff, the prosecutors said, Griles went so far as to review a seating chart at a dinner party held by Federici, so that Abramoff could introduce clients to ranking Interior Department officials. The seating arrangements called for Abramoff to be at the same table as Norton and William G. Myers, who was then the top lawyer at Interior.

Myers was later nominated for a federal judgeship, but he withdrew after opposition by environmental and Indian groups and questions about whether Myers was truthful when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had never met Abramoff.

(Federici pleaded guilty this month to tax evasion and obstructing the Senate investigation into the Abramoff scandal. She agreed to cooperate in the ongoing probe and is to be sentenced in November.)

Among those opposing a light sentence for Griles is Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, who said in a letter to Huvelle that it would be wrong for Griles to receive the minimum sentence, particularly because his plea agreement did not require him to cooperate in the ongoing Abramoff investigation or any other possible criminal investigations.

Earl E. Devaney, Interior’s inspector general, has publicly decried what he says is a lack of ethics at the top of the department, but he has not weighed in on the sentencing.

However, he did say on the day Griles pleaded guilty that he was “proud of the willingness of the many current and former department employees who told the truth about this top Interior official, sometimes at great risk to their own careers.”

henry.weinstein@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Richard B. Schmitt in Washington contributed to this report.