Official Finds Laws May Have Been Broken in Federal Investigation of Timber Theft

Following its own nine-month inquiry, the Agriculture Department’s inspector general has determined that laws may have been broken in connection with a high-profile timber theft investigation in Oregon and Northern California, a spokeswoman said.

The inspector general turned the matter over to the U.S. attorney’s office in Oregon on March 15 “for prosecutorial decisions because we found potential violations,” said spokeswoman Nancy Bartel. She would not identify the potential targets or say whether any of the possible violations were of a criminal or civil nature.

Charles Stuckey, first assistant U.S. attorney in Oregon, acknowledged receiving the Agriculture report this week but declined to comment on it.

The case involves assertions by members of a now-defunct Forest Service timber theft task force that agency officials obstructed inquiries by Forest Service agents into allegations that the Weyerhaeuser Co. illegally harvested millions of dollars of federal timber. The matter referred to the U.S. attorney’s office apparently focuses on Forest Service personnel, not on the company.

The internal controversy, involving a dozen timber sales in the Northwest between 1991 and 1994, became public knowledge last week when two advocacy groups representing some former members of the task force released a report about the case, which was code-named Rodeo. Although the report by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Government Accountability Project did not cite Weyerhaeuser by name, both groups said that the company was the primary subject of the inquiry.

No charges have ever been filed against Weyerhaeuser and the company denies the groups’ allegations. A spokesman said that Weyerhaeuser opened its own internal inquiry this week.

“We operate this company in a legal and ethical manner at all times,” spokesman Frank Mendizabal said Friday. “But, if there’s anything here, we want to know about it too.”

In a statement provided to the The Times on Friday, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility asserted that Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas was briefed twice by agents investigating the case, which focused on the Weyerhaeuser operations in southern Oregon, before Thomas dissolved the timber theft task force last April.

“The chief knew in detail the scope of the Rodeo investigation,” said Jeff DeBonis, the group’s executive director.

Efforts to obtain a response from Thomas on Friday were unsuccessful. But he said last year that he was disbanding the timber theft unit, which was established in 1991 to focus on complex white-collar theft cases in the Northwest, as part of a program to improve efforts to counter timber theft nationwide.

Earlier this week, Thomas issued a directive to all Forest Service employees stating that the Forest Service “is committed to fighting timber theft” and “continues to aggressively investigate timber theft nationwide.”

Manuel Martinez, head of law enforcement for the Forest Service, said that allegations of obstruction of the Rodeo inquiry had been referred to the inspector general of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, because it involved possible wrongdoing by agency personnel. He would neither confirm nor deny assertions by the two advocacy groups that the Forest Service last month revived its own inquiry into the theft allegations.

Martinez rejected the contention by the groups that the Rodeo case had gathered dust for 10 months. He said that it had been promptly turned over to Agriculture’s inspector general. Bartel said that the office had opened its inquiry July 4.

Martinez also disputed the report’s assertion that the agency had scaled back its efforts to combat white-collar timber theft.

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In the memo to Forest Service employees, Thomas provided statistics that he said showed Forest Service timber theft investigations resulting in more than 200 convictions and fines, restitution and civil recovery of more than $800,000 between 1993 and 1995. He said that the number of major inquiries had more than doubled between 1993 and 1995.

Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, said that the statistics demonstrated that the agency was combating the theft of firewood and Christmas trees but had failed to stem the kind of multimillion-dollar commercial cases that the task force handled.

The Rodeo investigation was one of three inquiries underway when the task force was disbanded in April 1995. The other two were referred to the Justice Department.

The Rodeo inquiry, which was begun in 1990 and taken up by the task force in 1991, included allegations that Weyerhaeuser had illegally cut thousands of healthy green trees in a so-called salvage timber sale that restricted the company to clearing only dead and diseased timber and had, in other instances, understated the amount of timber it had harvested, according to the two advocacy groups.

In addition, the groups said that the Forest Service approved the harvesting of green timber after the fact and, on another occasion, erroneously recalculated the formula used to determine how much money Weyerhaeuser owed the government, benefiting the company by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the later case, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said that, “once alerted to this investigation by Forest Service managers, Weyerhaeuser came forward, indicating that it owed the government” about $250,000.

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Mendizabal disputed this account. He said that Weyerhaeuser “discovered that we had been under-billed and we pointed out the discrepancy to the Forest Service and made good on the difference.” He said that the figure was “in the neighborhood of $200,000.”

Mendizabal said that, on another sale in southern Oregon in the early 1990s, Weyerhaeuser was notified by a Forest Service manager about an impending investigation. He said that the company, in turn, informed timber investigators of the tip.

He added that, on that sale, Weyerhaeuser loggers cut some trees for safety, access or other permitted reasons but failed to obtain Forest Service approval as required. He said that the company subsequently informed agency officials of its actions and paid for the additional timber. Two years later, he said, the Forest Service assessed the company a penalty that doubled the cost.

In another instance, he said, Weyerhaeuser inadvertently removed a small number of trees that were intended to be left standing and then paid double the price for them.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is an association of state and federal land management and environmental employees. The Government Accountability Project is a public-interest law firm that represents government whistle-blowers. The groups represent six former members of the timber theft task force who filed whistle-blower complaints against the Forest Service.