The greening of Italia Federici

The greening of Italia Federici

To buy influence at the White House, GOP operative Jack Abramoff gave
$500,000 in tribal loot to a Gale Norton pal who heads an
"environmental" nonprofit.

By Michael Scherer

Nov. 18, 2005 | Italia Federici is a minor Republican player in
Washington, the sort of dime-a-dozen functionary who can build a
career trading favors in backrooms and producing political campaigns
for moneyed interests. Her specialty is the environment. She leads a
conservative front group called the Council of Republicans for
Environmental Advocacy, or CREA, a tiny outfit, originally founded by
Interior Secretary Gale Norton, that argues it is healthy for forests
to clear-cut trees, good for the air to weaken air-quality controls,
and "environmentally responsible" to drill for oil in the Alaskan
wilderness.

For the past five years, Federici has limited her public activities
to supporting President Bush's environmental plans. She claims that
traditional environmentalists, groups like the Sierra Club and
Democrats like Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., are dishonest and deceptive.
But that is just the public face of Federici. In private, she has
played a very different role in Washington, one that has now put her
in the middle of one of the largest political ethics scandals in a
decade.

On Thursday, she appeared before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee
to explain under oath her relationship with Jack Abramoff, the
disgraced Republican lobbyist whose exploits have already led to a
handful of criminal indictments. For critics of Republican politics,
the Abramoff investigations are a gift that keeps on giving. They
reveal a world of ethical violations, illegal money transfers, perjury
and graft that flowed between some of the biggest names in Republican
politics.