-Caveat Lector-
Wall Street Journal
ON THE RESERVATION
El Dorado at Last: The Casino Boom-- Did Clinton cronies cash in on Indian
gambling?
BY MICAH MORRISON
Wednesday, July 18, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT
Gambling sponsored by Indian tribes has exploded from bingo games in the
late 1970s to full-fledged casinos owned by 196 legally designated "gaming
tribes" and generating $10 billion in revenues last year--with
approximately 175 more groups petitioning for tribal recognition and casino
rights. Gaming, often viewed as an economic self-sufficiency program for
exploited Native Americans, is now shadowed by controversy and, critics
charge, mounting scandal.
In the last weeks of the Clinton administration, two top officials of the
Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs made controversial decisions
rejecting staff recommendations and issuing three valuable tribal
designations. Both then returned to private practice in Indian law, taking
high-paying jobs in firms handling gambling issues. The two officials also
issued rulings in three Connecticut tribal cases that have prompted a
lawsuit by the state attorney general designed to stop further casino
development.
Under current law, little-known groups--some with only the thinnest of
genealogical or historical links to American Indian identity--can qualify
for recognition as a federal tribe and open a casino. Indian gaming has
become so controversial that late last year Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.) and
Rep. Chris Shays (R., Conn.) wrote President Clinton asking for a
moratorium on new tribal recognitions. Mr. Clinton ignored the request.
Rep. Wolf now is calling for "a sweeping investigation" of the BIA. With
state legislatures and local communities also sounding alarms, it's time to
take a closer look at the new El Dorados.
Champions of Indian gaming say it brings wealth and power to tribes mired
in poverty and attendant miseries. Revenues from casino gambling are
leveling the playing field with the white man after centuries of
mistreatment, its advocates say. Opponents say that only a tiny portion of
the Native American community actually benefits from the casino bounty and
that gambling is an insidious evil--destroying lives, attracting loan
sharking and money laundering, drugs and organized crime. Critics charge
that many of the Indians seeking to open casinos do not qualify as tribes,
and may, in fact, not even be Indians. Groups of dubious Indian descent,
critics say, often act as front-men for powerful non-Indian investors
hoping to reap gambling riches.
The Indian casino boom was born in 1987, with the Supreme Court's ruling in
California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians. Concerned by the possible
infiltration of organized crime, California had attempted to restrict bingo
and card games on the Cabazon Indian reservation. But the court affirmed
the right of Indian tribes to conduct gambling operations on reservations,
free of state regulation. "The State's interest in preventing the
infiltration of the tribal bingo enterprises by organized crime does not
justify state regulation," it ruled. "State regulation would impermissibly
infringe on tribal government."
Congress responded by passing the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Any
"recognized" Indian tribe complying with the provisions of the act could
open gambling enterprises. An "Indian tribe" was defined as any "tribe,
band, nation, or other organized group or community of Indians" that would
be "recognized as eligible" by the Secretary of the Interior and
"possessing powers of self-government." The casino gold rush was on.
What this currently entails is evident in the controversy over Clinton
administration decisions by then-BIA director Kevin Gover and deputy
director Michael Anderson. The decisions were documented in a Boston Globe
exposé in March, but not widely reported elsewhere. On his last day in
office, Mr. Gover rejected staff findings and granted federal recognition
to the Chinook Indians of Washington state. Mr. Gover "personally rewrote
the staff's findings," the Globe's Sean Murphy reported, "inserting his own
conclusions to affirm the tribe's authenticity while editing out years of
work by government historians, anthropologists, and genealogists."
Mr. Gover stepped aside on Jan. 3 and named Mr. Anderson acting director.
Mr. Anderson then recognized the Duwamish of Seattle as a tribe, reversing
an earlier Interior Department finding. On President Clinton's last day in
office, Mr. Anderson recognized the Nipmuc of Massachusetts as a tribe,
rejecting the findings of Interior Department historians, according to the
Globe.
Earlier this month, the Nipmuc signed a casino development deal with Lakes
Gaming, a Minnesota-based corporation that manages a casino in Louisiana
and has other Indian casino development agreements in Michigan and
California. The deal calls for Lake's continued support in recognition
battles and development of a casino in return for 35% of net income for
seven years.
Mr. Gover, a member of the Pawnee Tribe, is now an attorney with the
Washington law and lobbying firm Steptoe & Johnson, where he is building an
Indian gaming practice. After leaving the administration, Mr. Anderson, a
member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, joined the law firm of Monteau,
Peebles and Crowell, specialists in Indian gambling issues.
Mr. Anderson declined to comment on details concerning the Duwamish and
Nipmuc cases, but noted that both are under review by the Bush
administration, and said that in the Nipmuc case he had denied one branch
of the tribe federal recognition. In the Chinook case, Mr. Gover says, "I
disagreed with the staff findings, but the decision was mine to make."
While there may have been an appearance of impropriety in the last-minute
decisions, Mr. Gover added, "these applications had been hanging around for
years and were past due."
In two other controversial BIA cases, Mr. Gover and Mr. Anderson overruled
staff and issued rulings helping pave the way for new Indian casinos in
Connecticut, a state already staggering under the weight of the Foxwoods
and Mohegan Sun casinos, each owned by a federally recognized tribe. Each
casino generates about $1 billion in annual revenues and skirmishes with
the state over legal, social and regulatory issues. Nine other Indian
groups in Connecticut are seeking federal recognition.
In one Connecticut case, Mr. Gover reversed preliminary findings by
professional BIA historians that two Connecticut Indian groups did not
qualify as tribes. The groups, the Eastern Pequot and the Paucatuck Eastern
Pequot failed to meet two key criteria for tribal status continuous
existence as a community and continuous political governance. The Eastern
Pequot have not "demonstrated the existence of a modern community" or shown
"the existence of political authority or influence," states a BIA analysis
obtained by the Journal. The Paucatuck likewise did not meet the community
standard and have "not demonstrated the continuous existence of a political
process from 1883 to the present."
The Eastern Pequot (650 members) and the Pauckatuck Eastern Pequot (150
members) share a 220-acre state reservation in North Stonington, Conn., and
have been bitterly feuding for decades, each group claiming the other is an
imposter. According to genealogical studies commissioned by local towns
fighting casino development, neither group in fact may be descended from
the historic Pequot Nation, the basis of their tribal claims. But both
groups have powerful financial backers. The Pauckatuck have signed a
development agreement with Donald Trump. The Eastern Pequot are working
with a wealthy Connecticut golf course developer, David Rosow.
In January, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and three towns
near the Pequot reservation filed a federal lawsuit against Mr. Gover in
his official capacity as BIA head and other senior Interior Department
figures, charging that "rogue federal bureaucrats" had hijacked the tribal
acknowledgment process. Mr. Blumenthal wants the withdrawal of the Gover
ruling in the Pequot case and a review of BIA procedure. Mr. Gover calls
the suit "a classic stall tactic."
In a second Connecticut case, Mr. Anderson re-opened a tribal application
after the group had been rejected because it failed to show Indian descent.
Connecticut's 80-member Golden Hill Paugussett group was rejected for
tribal status in 1996. According to the BIA finding, the Golden Hill "did
not descend from a tribe, but from a single individual whose Indian
ancestry has not been determined."
Mr. Gover recused himself from the case because earlier in private law
practice he had represented the Golden Hill in its tribal recognition bid.
In 1999, Mr. Anderson re-opened the application, concluding that the BIA
should not have based its rejection solely on genealogical grounds.
The Golden Hill plan to build a big casino in Bridgeport. They are backed
by New York developer Thomas Wilmot. A heavy Democratic Party contributor
and Hillary Clinton fundraiser, Mr. Wilmot told a Connecticut newspaper
that he had invested $4 million in the effort to win federal recognition.
The Golden Hill case also is noted in Mr. Blumenthal's lawsuit. Last year,
the towns near the state-recognized Pequot reservation unsuccessfully
sought Mr. Gover's recusal in the Pequot cases, citing his earlier
involvement with the Golden Hill tribe and BIA rulings during his tenure
that gave increased weight to state recognition of Indian groups. The
Pequot and Golden Hill cases await final determinations.
Outraged by BIA conduct, Rep. Wolf in March called for "a sweeping
investigation" of the BIA affair, saying that many Indian groups had become
"pawns in a billion-dollar battleground" for tribal recognition. In a
letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Mr. Wolf requested "an
investigation into the pattern of conduct over the past four years at the
BIA." The General Accounting Office also is probing tribal recognition at
BIA.
The Clinton administration was very active in tapping new and prospective
Indian wealth for campaign contributions. An October 1994 memo from
Clinton-Gore campaign chief Terry McAuliffe to Deputy White House Chief of
Staff Harold Ickes lists Richard Hayward, then-chairman of Foxwood Casino's
Mashantucket Pequot Indian tribe, as one of the "top supporters of the
President," contributing "$650,000 to the DNC this year." During the
Clinton era, millions poured into Democratic Party coffers from pro-gaming
Indians and their allies.
An Indian gambling lobbyist in New Mexico during much of the 1990s, Mr.
Gover worked closely with the Clinton fundraising effort as director of
Native Americans for Clinton/Gore before being named to head the BIA. In a
June 1995 memo to White House political directors, Mr. Gover wrote that
there "is a lot of money in Indian country, and a lot of it has gone to the
DNC." He urged the White House to send operatives to a convention of the
Indian casino lobby, the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA). "Send
your top people to these meetings," he wrote. "The NIGA tribes are
political powers and must be courted."
The White House responded. During the campaign, tribal leaders went to the
White House for coffee with the president and dined with Vice President
Gore. Top DNC officials met with the NIGA. Mr. Gover pressed the Indian
agenda, much of it related to gambling. "The tribes' anger at the
Administration's failure to state plainly its opposition the gaming tax is
justified," Mr. Gover wrote White House political director Craig Smith on
Oct. 4, 1995.
On the eve of his Senate confirmation hearings in 1997, Mr. Gover deflected
charges by New York Times columnist William Safire that as a lobbyist for
New Mexico gambling interests he had represented a "criminal enterprise"--a
casino run by the Tesuque Pueblo Indian tribe. During the dispute over the
legality of gambling in New Mexico, a federal judge had called the Tesuque
casino a "criminal enterprise" that used money "derived from unlawful
conduct." Mr. Safire warned that as head of the BIA, Mr. Gover "will be in
a position to use federal power to encourage generous criminal gambling
enterprises to blossom on reservations across the land."
Mr. Gover says there was "no pressure at all" from the White House or its
allies during his tenure at BIA, and that he "made it a point not to know"
which tribes were contributing to the Democrats, to insulate himself from
campaign-finance controversies.
The 1996 campaign also entangled Mr. Anderson in controversy. According to
the final report of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee investigation
into the campaign-finance scandal, Mr. Anderson was a "figurehead" for a
controversial Interior Department decision denying Chippewa Indian tribes
the opportunity to build a casino in Hudson, Wis. The Interior Department
denied the Chippewa's application that Interior take land at a failing dog
track into trust for conversion into a casino; such "off-reservation" trust
acquisitions were provided for in the 1988 Indian gaming act, as a path
toward tribal economic self-sufficiency.
The Senate report concluded there was a "direct relationship" between the
White House, the Interior Department, and donations received by the
Democrats from local casino-owning tribes opposed to the competition in
Hudson. An independent counsel probe into the matter concluded that there
was not enough evidence to charge Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt with
lying to Congress about his role in the affair.
Concerned about losing market share, a group of Wisconsin tribes lined up
against the Chippewa. The opposition tribes hired a powerful Washington
lobbyist and poured over $300,000 into Democratic coffers. When their land
trust application stalled, the Chippewa hired a lawyer, Paul Eckstein. Mr.
Eckstein later testified to Congress that he went directly to Interior
Secretary Babbitt, who told him the Chippewa application would be denied.
He said Mr. Babbitt told him that "Harold Ickes had directed him to issue a
decision that day."
Mr. Eckstein testified that Mr. Babbitt said, "Do you have any idea how
much these Indians with gaming contracts have given to the Democrats? Half
a million dollars."
When then-BIA head Ada Deer unexpectedly recused herself from signing the
final letter denying the Chippewa application, the task fell to Mr.
Anderson. The Governmental Affairs Committee concluded that Mr. Anderson
was "simply a figurehead for the decision." Mr. Anderson dismisses the
Senate report as "partisan" and says the independent counsel report
concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Yet viewed in light of the new BIA misconduct allegations, the Senate and
independent counsel probes might be worth revisiting. Is there a pattern of
influence-peddling between casino interests and senior Clinton
administration figures? Were Mr. Gover and Mr. Anderson acting as
figureheads for powerful political and financial interests? Beyond the
allegations of possible corruption at the BIA, what is to be done about the
Indian casino boom? Is it a blessing or a curse?
Congress may start looking for answers. Last month, Reps. Shays and Wolf
introduced a bill to establish a commission to examine government policy
toward Native Americans and give state legislatures more power in approving
Indian gambling operations. "Nearly 80 percent of Native Americans don't
receive anything from gambling revenues," Mr. Wolf said. Most tribes
"continue to live in awful poverty, plagued by disease, infant mortality,
unemployment and a lack of educational opportunities."
The new commission may take on organized crime as well. In their letter to
President Clinton, Reps. Shays and Wolf noted that the "influence of
organized crime on Indian gambling is alarming. Tribal leaders often find
themselves forced into affiliations with members of organized crime rings.
This stems directly from the lack of federal oversight for Indian gambling
operations."
Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) also has called for reform. "This is out of
hand," he recently told the Associated Press. "This is all about casinos
now." Sen. Dodd said he would discuss tribal recognition petitions with
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D., Hawaii), the new chairman of the Indian Affairs
Committee. But he shouldn't look for much help there. When Mr. Gover got in
trouble at his 1997 confirmation as BIA head, it was Sen. Inouye who came
to his defense, declaring himself "fully satisfied" with his credentials.
The chief counsel for the Indian Affairs Committee recently told AP that
Sen. Inouye "believes the process of petitions ought to be expedited rather
than stopped."
It doesn't appear that reformers will get much help from the executive
branch either. While the GAO report into the tribal recognition process
promises to be thorough, the Justice Department punted Rep. Wolf's request
for a full investigation to the inspector general of the Interior
Department. An Interior official says the matter is "under review."
Translation: Don't hold your breath.
President Bush's new BIA head, Neal McCaleb, was sworn in on July 4. At his
confirmation hearing, Mr. McCaleb told Congress that the economic influence
of Indian casinos had been "very beneficial." He promised to be an
impartial judge of tribal recognition applications. Meanwhile, Interior
Secretary Gale Norton is keeping her distance. The mess at BIA, a Norton
aide says, "doesn't fit with our pro-active, forward-looking message."
Mr. Morrison is a senior editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal.
================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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