Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [68]
Griles is a native of Virginia, but his interest in hydrocarbons is as big as the American West. While working for Reagan interior secretary James Watt, he endeared himself to the minerals-extraction industry by backing the giveaway of eighty-two thousand acres of federal oil-shale leases at the cut-rate price of $2.50 an acre. (“A fire sale with no fire,” observed the late congressman Mo Udall.) Coal companies loved Griles laid-back attitude toward enforcement at OSM. Oil companies were charmed by his zeal for offshore drilling. He was so enthusiastic about drilling off the California coast that he bullied the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service into rewriting a report that warned of dire environmental consequences if drilling were permitted. Angry members of the state’s congressional delegation, led by Leon Panetta and Mel Levine, raised so much hell the drilling program was put on hold.
Panetta, who became Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, turned up the unsanitized version of the Fish and Wildlife report Griles had forced the agency to rewrite. Levine found the Griles memo bullying the Fish and Wildlife folks. “Steve Griles might as well have been speaking for industry as he was for the Department of the Interior,” Levine said as he waved the memo in front of reporters’ noses. “The positions were indistinguishable,” said Panetta. Griles’ memo was the “smoking gun of an industry whitewash.” He may have mixed his metaphors, but he got the facts right. Threats of lawsuits and bad press followed. It was too much for George Bush I to manage so soon after taking office. Poppy Bush “went wobbly,” as Margaret Thatcher once said she feared he might in the Persian Gulf. He backed away from Reagan’s big drilling program, and for thirteen years the California coast was clear. Griles’ attempt to hide the environmental costs of drilling for oil stopped Reagan’s plan to turn the California coast into the kind of offshore oil field that gives the Texas coast its special, ah, charm.
Griles drill-at-all-costs memo was both an embarrassment and additional proof that he was industry’s sweetheart. His résumé was so hot that when he left United to open up his own K Street lobbying firm, coal, oil, and gas companies beat a path to his door. By the time the Supreme Court declared George Bush winner of the 2000 presidential election, Steve Griles was the perfect industry candidate to manage mineral rights on public land.
Newsweek’s Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff followed Griles to the American Petroleum Institute’s Washington headquarters nine days before Bush and Cheney took the oath of office. Griles, still a lobbyist, was working with the Bush transition team to both sell and shape the new administration’s program. At the Petroleum Palace on L Street, the tone of the meeting was “OK, what do you guys want? You’re going to have the ear of this White House.” The gathering quickly became a feeding frenzy. Oil and gas execs and lobbyists anticipated a feast that would include looser rules for drilling on federal land, more exploration for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, and lower royalty payments for offshore mineral rights. The party got so crazy, the guy from the wildcatter’s association began to shout about repealing the Endangered Species Act.
It was a prelude to the industry socials in Dick Cheney’s office four months later, where the same greenhouse gang would rewrite the nation’s energy policy. While industry insiders at the Petroleum Institute ran down their wish lists in January, the president of National Environmental Strategies took notes. NES is a lobbying firm that represents oil, coal, and energy companies. Its president and principal owner was Steve Griles. By the time Vice President Cheney’s National Energy Policy was released to the public, Griles was the