Washington, DC -- Julie MacDonald, the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, resigned yesterday. Mcdonald was most recently in the headlines for sending copies of confidential Interior Department memoranda to her children and personal friends. More seriously, she also got in trouble in March when Interior Department Inspector General, Honorable Earl E. Devaney, reported that MacDonald had released non-public, internal government documents to oil industry and property rights groups and manipulated scientific findings to favor Bush policy goals and assist land developers.
Her case is merely the latest example of the serious corruption that appears to be common among senior officials at the agency. The former Deputy Secretary of Interior, Stephen Griles, recently pleaded guilty to crimes that made him the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted to date in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal. That same probe is creeping ever closer to former Interior Secretary turned energy industry lobbyist, Gale Norton. The Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy -- co-founded by Norton and Italia Federici, Griles' former girlfriend -- has also come under serious scrutiny for illegally lobbying on behalf of Abramoff's clients while Norton was at Interior.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne appears to be cleaning house, but at the same time continues with the very policies that the now-discredited and corrupted crew that preceded him set in motion. Interior announced this week that it would proceed with off-shore oil leasing in environmentally sensitive areas in the Gulf of Mexico, off Alaska, in areas closed after the Exxon Valdez disaster, and off the coast of Virginia. The Virginia areas are legally off limits currently, but Kempthorne seems determined to invite the legislature of Virginia to puts its beaches, and those of neighboring Maryland and New Jersey, at risk.