WASHINGTON -- Interior Secretary James Watt and the legal firm he once led are conspiring in a legal ploy designed to open a Montana federal wilderness area to oil exploration, environmentalists charged Thursday.
The Wilderness Society raised the issue of collusion between Watt and the Mountain States Legal Foundation of Denver at a Monday hearing in a suit being litigated before U.S. District Judge William Jameson in Billings, Mont.
Peter Kirby, a Society representative, said Thursday his group will prove to Jameson that the suit Mountain States filed against Watt's closing of the Bob Marshall wilderness area to oil and gas drilling is really 'a sweetheart suit' in which Watt is tacitly cooperating.
'Watt criticized (President) Carter for sweetheart lawsuits filed by environmentalists against the Interior Department,' said Kirby. 'This could be just the flip side of that. It's the first time it's been challenged in court.'
The Justice Department, meanwhile, released a July 22 letter in which the Pacific Legal Foundation of Sacramento, Calif. -- another conservative and pro-development group participating in the litigation against Interior's drilling ban -- hinted it had Watt's blessing.
'We were informed that the filing of this lawsuit was received with favor by the involved officials of the Executive Branch,' the foundation president said. His letter also reportedly complained that Justice did not try hard enough to polish Watt's image in the affair.
The legal firms contend a May 21 House Interior Committee edict directing Watt to ban petroleum exploration in the Bob Marshall wilderness is unconstitutional.
The Bob Marshall, dubbed 'the flagship of the wilderness system' by former Forest Service Director Max Peterson, is one of the few refuges remaining for the endangered grizzly bear.
Watt, as president of Mountain States, joined in a petition last year seeking petroleum exploration in such federal wildernesses. As interior secretary, he seemed ready to exercise his legal discretion to permit exploration in the 1.5-million acre Bob Marshall.
But the House panel headed by Rep. Morris Udall, D-Ariz., invoked a seldom-used provision of a 1976 law to tie Watt's hands in the matter. The panel forced Watt to formally withdraw the Bob Marshall from oil and gas exploration, triggering the suit against Watt, Udall's panel and the law.
Attorney General William French Smith said recently his agency won't defend Congress in the case, possibly forcing it to hire a law firm.
The Wilderness Society intervened to defend the committee action and the law that forced Watt to withdraw the land from oil drilling.
The 1976 law was invoked just once before by the same committee to prevent former Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus from leasing Alaskan lands.
Rep. Pat Williams, D-Mont., announced through a spokesman that he plans to ask the House Interior subpanel on oversight and investigations to probe the collusion allegations against Watt and his former firm.
Williams, a Udall committee member who introduced the resolution on the Bob Marshall exploration ban last May, also plans to call on the speaker of the house and the senate majority leader to arrange for a legal defense of the committee in the legal wrangle, said aide Randy Mills.
