A senior House Republican could file a contempt of Congress charge against Obama administration officials as part of a multiyear probe into the editing of an Interior Department report that erroneously suggested a panel of scientists had supported the agency's moratorium on deepwater drilling in the wake of the BP PLC oil spill.

Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) is keeping "every option on the table" to compel compliance with the committee's ongoing document and interview requests, spokesman Spencer Pederson said this morning.

Such a move would be the most politically volatile twist in an investigation that has resulted in subpoenas issued to both Interior and the agency's acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, seeking information on who within the administration may be responsible for editing the agency's report.

The House earlier this month voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his unwillingness to hand over documents related to the "Fast and Furious" gun-tracking program.

Hastings late last week requested interviews with five Interior officials, arguing that the department continues to flout a subpoena issued three months ago for documents that would reveal the circumstances that led to the moratorium, which he says led to thousands of lost jobs and decreased energy production in the Gulf of Mexico.

Interior has submitted a "limited number of documents," mostly concerning correspondence with peer reviewers, "but not the internal deliberations within the department or the White House that would shed light on the moratorium decision or how the drilling moratorium report was edited to mischaracterize the peer reviewers' work," Hastings said in a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

"The documents suggest the officials to be interviewed would be able to shed light on questions central to this investigation, including whether political appointees used the peer reviewers as 'cover,' as some of the peer reviewers had wondered in emails to department officials, to justify the economically devastating moratorium," Hastings wrote.

An investigation by Kendall in late 2010 concluded that late-night edits by the White House had implied that the group of independent scientists supported the proposed drilling ban -- when they in fact had not -- but that there was no clear evidence of an intent to mislead the public (Greenwire, Nov. 10, 2010). Interior corrected the error and issued a quick public apology to the scientists.

Hastings' letter gives the agency until Thursday to set up interviews next week with Steve Black, counselor to the secretary; Neal Kemkar, special assistant to Black, currently on detail to the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Walter Cruickshank, deputy director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management; Mary Katherine Ishee, senior adviser at the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement; and Kallie Hanley, senior adviser to the Office of the Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"The need for [the interviews] is heightened given the department's repeated refusal to provide documents even in the face of a duly authorized and issued congressional subpoena," Hastings wrote, noting that the request was first submitted in February.

Interior spokesman Adam Fetcher this morning said the decision to impose a moratorium on deepwater exploration was Salazar's alone, as opposed to stemming from inappropriate involvement by the White House, as Hastings argues. Fetcher called the committee's continued probe of the drilling safety report a waste of taxpayer money.

"With the full force of the federal government responding to the largest oil spill in U.S. history, Secretary Salazar recognized that the nation could neither afford the risk nor respond to a second catastrophic spill in the Gulf at the same time," he said, noting that Interior has provided nearly 2,000 pages of documents and remains willing to cooperate with the committee's "legitimate oversight interests."

"This investigation, made up of an ever-changing and unsettled set of requests from the committee, continues to spend taxpayer resources to re-litigate an issue that was resolved two years ago," he said.

IG council to probe Kendall's role

Kendall, too, may come under greater scrutiny over her role in the crafting of the Interior report that she later investigated.

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency last Friday said it would investigate a charge by Republican Sens. David Vitter (La.), Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and John Cornyn (Texas) in late May that Kendall's report "appears to not be the results of a complete and impartial investigation" (E&ENews PM, May 24).

In a letter to the senators, the council's Integrity Committee chairman, Kevin Perkins, said the agency will meet Thursday to consider the matter.

Several internal Interior documents show Kendall attended meetings related to the Interior report -- a fact, Hastings argued, that suggests she misled the committee when she told the panel in June 2010 that she was "not involved in the process of developing that report."

Kendall has defended her impartiality, saying that although she attended information-collecting sessions, she did not offer suggestions or help write the report (Greenwire, May 23).