Washington – A former Colorado political aide to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, appearing before an often hostile Senate committee Thursday, denied there was any connection between the nearly $500,000 that Indian tribes gave her organization and access she arranged for the tribes to officials who regulate their casinos.
Italia Federici, who now runs a Washington-based Republican environmental organization, told the panel that she set up meetings between top Interior Department officials and lobbyist Jack Abramoff out of friendship, not because of the money he directed to her group from his Indian lobbying clients.
“I was responding to Jack at the time as a friend,” Federici told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. “Jack was a friend. I didn’t know he was doing the things he was doing.”
Abramoff, a former top Washington lobbyist, is under federal investigation on suspicion of bilking his tribal clients out of $82 million, an accusation his attorney has denied.
Skeptical senators questioned Federici’s story, with committee vice chairman Byron Dorgan calling it a “fairy tale.”
“I’m from a small town, but I can spot a big lie,” said Dorgan, D-N.D. “You were working for Mr. Abramoff and you got money from Indian tribes to do it.”
Chairman John McCain threatened at one point to have Federici held in contempt of Congress because he felt she wasn’t answering his questions. He called her attempts to explain her interactions with Abramoff “bizarre.”
“I’m sure there will be more about this three-cornered relationship between you, the Department of Interior and Jack Abramoff,” said McCain, R-Ariz.
But McCain reiterated that his investigation has uncovered no wrongdoing by Norton.
Federici said she has been told her organization is not a target of the federal criminal probe of Abramoff.
Federici is president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, which evolved from a group Federici and Norton founded with tax activist Grover Norquist in 1997 to push for Republican environmental goals.
CREA has fought stricter global-warming rules and pushed for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The committee reviewed e-mails in which Federici’s requests for money intermingle with Abramoff’s requests for access to Norton and her top deputy, Steve Griles.
Abramoff told casino-tribe leaders in one e-mail that CREA was “Norton’s main group outside Interior” and signed up his clients as members of CREA’s board of trustees for a $50,000 donation. It was one of a number of payments to CREA by Abramoff’s tribal clients.
After an unnamed tribal chief contributed, Federici sent a May 2001 e-mail to Abramoff asking, “Is there something I can do to say thank you for his support for CREA – besides the time with Secretary Norton?”
According to the e-mails, when Federici’s requests for free meals at Abramoff’s restaurant troubled his managers, he told them: “Unfortunately, she is critical to me. What would it cost us?”
At the hearing, Federici said she was not surprised to receive the support of Indian tribes because she’d had “a very close relationship with Ben Nighthorse Campbell,” the former senator from Colorado and once the only American Indian in the Senate.
Kate Dando, a spokeswoman for Campbell, said he did attend a fundraiser for CREA, but she added that the former senator did not have a “close relationship” with Federici.
Federici had previously told staffers that McCain’s pursuit of her was a “witch hunt,” and at Thursday’s hearing, she said it was motivated by her political work against a McCain-backed environmental bill.
“Maybe we should quit dancing around this,” Federici said. “A lot of the money that was raised during this time period funded an effort to defeat Sen. McCain’s legislation.”
Thursday’s hearing was devoted exclusively to Federici, who missed a previous hearing in late October. McCain at the time accused her of ducking a subpoena and dispatched federal marshals to find her, without success.
Federici said she never got the subpoena and that she missed the previous hearing because of a scheduling conflict.
Staff writer Mike Soraghan can be reached at 202-662-8730 or msoraghan@denverpost.com.
