Silent witness - campaign finance investigation of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1997 by Samuel Seidel

When the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee called Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to testify in its campaign finance hearings this October, it looked as though Republicans might have at long last found a smoking gun in the Democratic fund-raising controversy. For all of the arduous testimony the committee had sat through in the preceding months, for all of the legions of White House lawyers and Democratic campaign donors who had been paraded before the dais, no one set of circumstances reeked so thoroughly of campaign contributions buying political influence as the Babbitt case.

The committee's line of inquiry was clear enough: Had Babbitt, on behalf of a major Democratic fundraiser, denied a 1994 petition by a group of Chippewa Indian tribes to launch a gaming operation in Western Wisconsin? But what emerged from Babbitt's testimony -- and from the circumstances surrounding the committee's handling of the issue -- says as much about the politics of the hearings as about Bruce Babbitt's guilt or innocence.

At the heart of the matter was a failing dog track located in the small town of Hudson, Wisc, right on the Minnesota border. Although the land was some 100 miles from their respective reservations, three tribes of Wisconsin Chippewa Indians were seeking to acquire the facility and turn it into a gambling casino. Just 30 miles outside Minneapolis -- St. Paul, the planned casino was expected to draw patrons from all over the Twin Cities. Before they could start building, however, the Chippewa had to convince the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to take the land into a trusteeship for them, and then issue them a gaming permit as outlined under Section 20 of the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

Arguing that, because of its location, the Hudson site would prove much more profitable than the gaming facilities the tribes were currently operating on more remote tribal lands, the Chippewa convinced the regional BIA office to support their cause. On November 14, 1994, the bureau's Minneapolis office sent a memo to the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs in Washington, recommending that the tribes be granted the land in trust.

Of course, not everyone was in favor of the new casino. Allied against the petition was a group of five rival tribes that already operated gaming facilities in the region. Representing this group was lobbyist Patrick O'Connor, a former treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, and long-time fund-raiser for the party. For their part, the Chippewa hired an equally big gun, lobbyist Paul Eckstein, a former Harvard Law chum of Secretary Bruce Babbitt's. While O'Connor was busy arranging for his clients to make $230,000 worth of contributions to the DNC -- donated sometime after the ruling was made public -- Eckstein was pushing for face time with his good buddy Babbitt. On July 14, 1995, the day the decision memo was released by the BIA, Eckstein was at the Interior Department, urging officials to delay a decision on the Hudson track. He sought out his former classmate and asked for a quick meeting with the secretary. "Against [his] better judgment," Babbitt said later, he acceded. In his testimony before the Senate committee, Eckstein said he pressed the secretary for a delay in the matter, but that Babbitt demurred, confiding that he was under pressure to rule on the petition by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes. That same day, the heads of the three tribes received a letter from the deputy assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, a political appointee by the name of Michael Anderson, informing them that BIA was refusing their request.

By October 30, 1997, GOP senators were looking to draw blood. Following months of miscues and failed attacks, they finally had a ripe target -- a Cabinet secretary who had, to their minds, ordered a lower-level official to change a ruling to benefit large party donors.

In his appearance before the committee, Babbitt offered an unimpressive defense. Although insisting that "[he] did not personally make the decision to deny the Hudson application, nor did [he] participate in department deliberations relating to the application," the secretary did admit invoking Ickes' name in the matter as a way to get Eckstein out of his hair and out of his office. Babbitt recounted what transpired at his meeting with Eckstein this way: " ... I sought to terminate the meeting. I do not recall exactly what was said. On reflection, I probably said that Mr. Ickes ... wanted the department to decide the matter promptly." Babbitt's explanation, although not exactly a corroboration of Eckstein's accusation, also wasn't exactly a clear refutation; and it sounded suspiciously like the political nondenials employed so frequently in congressional testimony. Compounding the appearance of misdeeds, in the July 14, 1995-entry in the day planner of Patrick O'Connor, Senate investigators had discovered the notation: "[Discussion] re necessity to follow up with Harold Ickes ... outlining fund-raising strategies'