Parks Official Is Blamed In Snyder Tree Cutting

After joining the Park Service in 2001, Smith said, he was assigned to troubleshoot important issues, many of which came from members of Congress. "I had very broad discretion in all kinds of matters that came to the department," he said.

Smith told investigators that Mainella asked him to help Snyder after she was approached by someone at a Redskins game during the 2001-02 season, the report says. But Mainella, whom President Bush appointed in 2001, told the inspector general's office that she never intervened on Snyder's behalf and that she does not remember discussing the matter with Smith or attending a game that year, according to the report.

In an interview, Smith said investigators in their report misconstrued his statements about Mainella's role.

Smith said Mainella "was not involved about the trees." She had asked him to represent the Park Service on an earlier, separate request from Snyder in 2001 to build a ballroom on the estate he bought that year from Queen Noor, the widow of Jordan's King Hussein, for $10 million. Snyder needed Park Service approval to build the ballroom because it increased the size of the estate on an easement the agency obtained on the property in 1974. That request was approved.

The inspector general's office "got two things confused. They were two separate incidents that happened 2 1/2 years apart," Smith said.

The inspector general's report says Smith's involvement with the tree removal issue dated to 2002, when Smith called a lower-level park official to raise questions about that request.

In 2004, Kevin D. Brandt, superintendent of the C&O Canal park, negotiated a deal with Snyder allowing him to cut the trees and replace them with more than 600 native trees, such as pines.

Snyder agreed to donate an additional portion of his property to the Park Service as well as to calculate the value of his improved view. If the value of the enhanced view exceeded the value of what the Park Service gained, Snyder was to donate the difference to the federal government.

The deal outraged environmentalists and some members of Congress, who wondered whether the Park Service was in the business of selling views. After initially saying the trees were cut "by mistake," Brandt said last year that he negotiated the deal with Snyder to improve the long-term vitality of the park through the removal of nonnative species. In numerous interviews with The Post, Brandt said he never felt pressured into making the deal.

The Interior Department investigators said Brandt told them something different.

"I'm sure it influenced me," Brandt told investigators, adding that he assumed Smith was acting on behalf of Mainella, according to the report. Brandt did not respond to a request for an interview through the Park Service's public affairs office.

In the Reagan administration, Smith worked for the Department of the Interior, including as deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks. For part of the 1990s, he worked on Capitol Hill for the House subcommittee on national parks and public lands.