May 30, 2006, 12:38PM

Former Lobbyist Testifies Against Official

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — A former congressional aide and lobbyist described Tuesday how he obtained insider information, advice and assistance from Bush administration procurement chief David Safavian to advance two projects for Republican influence-peddlar Jack Abramoff, who then took the official on a lavish golf trip to Scotland.

The aide, Neil Volz, who was a partner of Abramoff's at the time, also outlined how the Abramoff team received assistance from several Republican congressmen including, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, and Rep. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio.

Within weeks after this assistance, Safavian, Ney and two of Ney's staff members accompanied Abramoff, Volz and other Abramoff associates on a golfing trip to the famed St. Andrews course in Scotland and then to London. Volz said the bills for $500-a-night hotel rooms, $100 rounds of drinks, $400 rounds of golf, dinners and travel on a private Gulfstream jet were paid by Abramoff and his staff and he never saw Safavian pay for any expenses.

Safavian's lawyer has said he paid Abramoff $3,100 to cover his hotel and golf fees, but prosecutor Nathaniel Edmunds used Volz' descriptions of the costs to suggest the trip was more expensive.

The Abramoff team sent Ney partially filled out financial disclosure forms for him to file with Congress that falsely understated the cost of the trip at $3,200, said Volz, who was once Ney's chief of staff.

"I thought that number passed the smell test," Volz said, explaining that he hoped that reporters searching public records for travel abuses would pass right over it without asking questions.

Volz is the government's star witness in the trial of Safavian on charges of lying to investigators about his assistance to Abramoff while he was chief of staff to the administrator of the General Services Administration, the agency that oversees property owned by the federal government. The prosecution turned his testimony into a tutorial on how a lobbyist like Volz, who has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for some of this behavior, gathers information, rewards officials who help out and tries to operate in secrecy.

Safavian, who has denied any impropriety in his relations with ex-partner Abramoff, later became the federal government's top procurement official at the Office of Management and Budget before he was indicted.

Volz added flesh and blood details to a series of e-mails the government had introduced earlier showing contact between Abramoff's team and Safavian in the summer of 2002, before several of those involved, including Safavian and Ney, took an expensive weeklong golfing trip to Scotland that Abramoff organized.

Volz testified that the Abramoff team referred to Safavian as a "champion" because he could get inside information on policy developments that was not otherwise available to lobbyists.

He described how Safavian advised Abramoff and his partners to get information on the best way to secretly attach a rider to a bill nearing passage in Congress that would order the GSA to sell the so-called White Oak property in Silver Spring, Md., to a school that Abramoff had established.

Volz also described how Safavian advised him on getting letters from key congressmen to the GSA to alter a proposal to redevelop the Old Post Office here in a way that would give one of Abramoff's clients, the Chitimancha Indian tribe, an advantage over other bidders. Abramoff and the tribe wanted to develop the property as a luxury hotel, which would be near restaurants that Abramoff owned on Pennsylvania Ave.

"We were trying to rig the rules so our client would have the best chance" of winning the redevelopment project, Volz testified.

Describing help they requested from Capito's office on the White Oak project, Volz said they wanted to keep her role secret.

"She was up for re-election and this potentially could have put her in harm's way on the campaign trail ... because this project doesn't have anything to do with her district," Volz explained.

Ney is under criminal investigation in the Abramoff probe. Ralph Reed, who is seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in Georgia, did some work for the lobbyist. Abramoff entered guilty pleas early this year in Washington, D.C., and Florida.

Lawmakers refute Volz testimony

By Roxana Tiron
May 31, 2006

Hours after a former aide to Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) testified in court that a few House GOP lawmakers worked with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff on a government leasing arrangement, the legislators issued strong denials of the allegations.

Former Ney staffer Neil Volz took the stand yesterday as the government's key witness in its case against David Safavian, a former General Services Administration (GSA) official.

A five-count grand-jury indictment alleges that Safavian concealed from investigators his assistance to Abramoff, who wanted to acquire part of a government center in Silver Spring, Md., to build a school and to lease a downtown Washington landmark, the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue, for his Indian-tribe clients to build a hotel.

Safavian is fighting those charges as the first defendant to face a jury in the influence-peddling scandal surrounding Abramoff.

In his testimony, Volz, who worked with Abramoff after leaving Congress, detailed how the lobbying team received assistance from several Republican lawmakers, including Reps. Ney, Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Don Young (Alaska) and Steven LaTourette (Ohio).

None of the lawmakers has been accused of any wrongdoing, but rather their link to the Safavian case is meant to show how Safavian was giving Abramoff tips on how to use members of Congress to navigate the GSA bureaucracy, according to federal prosecutors.

But Capito said she never knew anything about the White Oak property in Silver Spring that Abramoff was trying to use for a Jewish school. She said that her former chief of staff, Mark Johnson, a close friend of Volz's at the time, called the congressional-affairs office of the GSA to ask about the status of the Silver Spring property. When he got back to Volz with the information that a congressional letter was needed to check on the status of the property, Volz dropped the issue, according to Capito's office.

"I vaguely remember a call from Neil, who was a friend of mine, asking if I could check the status of a project for him," Johnson told The Hill. "It seemed like a routine call. GSA requested a letter and then Neil did not send any draft language for a letter and nothing ever came of it."

He stressed, however, that the issue never rose to the congresswoman's level. "She was never aware of it," he added.

"Representative Capito had absolutely no knowledge of the phone call that purportedly took place between her former chief of staff and Mr. Volz, " said her spokesman Jordan Stoick. "She was not aware of any contact with GSA, nor has she ever consented to her name being used in any way to assist in obtaining information from GSA on this matter."

On the first day of the trial, the prosecution said that even though Capito's name was used in several e-mails between Safavian and Abramoff her name was used by Safavian to pry information from his colleagues on the properties.

Meanwhile, Ney spokesman Brian Walsh said that no piece of evidence shows that Ney took any action on the White Oak property. "The congressman does not recall any conversation about the White Oak issue," and, even in the event that he did, "the fact is that is he did not take any steps" in the legislative process.

Within weeks after the alleged assistance, Safavian, Ney and two Ney staff members accompanied Abramoff, Volz and other Abramoff associates on a golfing trip to the famed St. Andrews course in Scotland.

"There has been quid pro quo alleged, and there has been no quo," Walsh added. "The congressman took no official action on this."

Deborah Setliff, communications director for LaTourette, said, "The congressman is the former chairman of the Transportation Committee's Public Buildings Subcommittee. About four years ago, Chairman LaTourette and Chairman Young signed a letter to the GSA encouraging hub-zone business participation in the redevelopment of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C. Hub-zone businesses, a type of disadvantaged small business, are routinely included in large GSA projects. The congressman supported small, disadvantaged businesses then and still does today, and the policy is good regardless of who is pushing it. He has never supported turning the Old Post Office building into a hotel and supports legislation making it a women's history museum."

Young's office said it had no comment because it was not aware of Volz's testimony.