Dec. 29, 2005
 
E-mails Show Abramoff Followed Doolittle’s Casino Case
 
By David Whitney
Sacramento Bee
 
Sacramento, CA (SHNS) -- E-mails uncovered by a Senate committee show superlobbyist Jack Abramoff had a keen interest in Rep. John Doolittle's unsuccessful effort to block approval of the United Auburn Indian Community's Thunder Valley casino in Placer County, Calif.
 
Abramoff, whom Doolittle described as a close friend, had a tribal client thousands of miles away in Louisiana that could have benefited from the precedent if Doolittle and other critics succeeded in persuading the U.S. Department of Interior to stop Thunder Valley in 2002.
 
It's unclear whether the e-mails sparked the Justice Department's reported interest in Doolittle, R-Roseville, Calif., as its corruption investigation digs deeper into Abramoff's connections on Capitol Hill.
 
But nothing in the e-mails and other documents uncovered by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee's probe of the scandal proves Doolittle and Abramoff were working together on the tribal cases.
 
Doolittle's office, moreover, denied the congressman coordinated efforts with Abramoff on the United Auburn casino, which ultimately opened in 2003. Doolittle spokeswoman Laura Blackann said the congressman arranged meetings between the Interior Department and local government officials but said he did not attend.
 
Abramoff was watching the United Auburn case closely because the Interior Department ruling on it could become a damaging precedent for his clients, the Louisiana Coushattas, who were trying to torpedo a Louisiana casino proposed by the Jena Band of Choctaws.
 
In both the Jena and United Auburn matters, the Interior Department was being asked to take non-Indian land into trust -- essentially accepting title to lands on the tribes' behalf -- so that they would qualify for a casino under an exception to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
 
The United Auburn matter came to a head midway through the 2001-2002 election cycle in which Abramoff and his tribal clients contributed about $30,000 to Doolittle's campaign committees and just months before the congressman's wife, Julie Doolittle, was hired in August 2002 to do fund-raising and event planning for an Abramoff foundation.
 
But those working on behalf of the United Auburn tribe said Doolittle did not fully flex his political muscle with the Bush administration to try to kill the casino -- another sign that Doolittle was not necessarily advancing Abramoff's interests.
 
"We would rather that he had done nothing, obviously," Howard Dickstein, the Auburn tribe's attorney, said of Doolittle. "But what he did was ineffectual."
 
Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, http://www.shns.com