Lobbyist, Fed Lawyer Share Vacation Home

A vacation home purchased by former Assistant Attorney General Sue Ellen Wooldridge, former Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles and ConocoPhillips Vice President Donald R. Duncan in Kiawah Island, S.C., Monday, Feb. 12, 2007 (AP Photo/Alice Keeney) (Alice Keeney - AP)

WASHINGTON -- Nine months before agreeing to let ConocoPhillips delay a half-billion-dollar pollution cleanup, the government's top environmental prosecutor bought a $1 million vacation home with the company's top lobbyist.

Also in on the Kiawah Island, S.C., house deal was former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, the highest-ranking Bush administration official targeted for criminal prosecution in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe.

Just before resigning last month, Assistant Attorney General Sue Ellen Wooldridge signed two proposed consent decrees with ConocoPhillips: one giving the company as much as two to three more years to install $525 million in pollution controls at nine refineries and the other dealing with a Superfund toxic waste cleanup.

Last April, Wooldridge, ConocoPhillips Vice President Donald R. Duncan and Griles had gone together on a $980,000 home in a gated community at Kiawah Island. Records from the Charleston County Auditor's office obtained by The Associated Press list Duncan as a 50 percent owner of the home and Wooldridge and Griles as 25 percent owners.

The deed is filed under Duncan's name, but the mailing address for the South Carolina property _ tucked among pines, palmettos, a pool, golf course and tennis club several hundred yards from the beach _ is Griles' home in Virginia. He and Wooldridge jointly own a condo there.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Wednesday night it will open an inquiry and request documents into the real estate transaction and consent agreements.

"There appears to be a breakdown of ethics at the Justice Department, said the committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. "Senior Justice Department officials should not be handling cases that affect their close friends and investment partners."

ConocoPhillips said in a statement Wednesday night that Duncan had no involvement in negotiating the consent agreements.

"We object to the suggestion that the real estate transaction involving Don Duncan, which was cleared in advance by the ethics office of the Department of Justice, had any impact whatsoever on the consent decrees entered into by ConocoPhillips or the recent SEC filing amending ConocoPhillips code of ethics," company officials said. "Any savings resulting from these delays are expected to be offset by the cost of additional and stricter controls agreed to in the amended agreement."

Griles, now an oil and gas lobbyist, began dating Wooldridge while he was her boss at Interior. He was the department's No. 2 official from July 2001 to January 2005, behind only former Secretary Gale Norton. He and Duncan, a ConocoPhillips vice president who runs the company's Washington office, both served on President Bush's presidential transition team, Griles for the Interior Department, Duncan for the Energy Department.

Duncan has played a major role in getting the Bush administration's backing for a proposed $25 billion natural gas pipeline reaching from Alaska to Midwest markets.

Wooldridge and Griles have known each other at least since the first year of the Bush administration in 2001, when Wooldridge became deputy chief of staff and counselor to then-Secretary Norton. Bush used a recess appointment to make Wooldridge the department's solicitor _ its top lawyer _ in June 2004.