Over the course of the Bush administration, the Department of the Interior (DOI) has been hit with troubling — and repeated — reports of politically inappropriate activity at the agency. The litany of concerns prompted Earl Devaney, the department’s inspector general (IG), to claim that “short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior.” In one controversial 2002 episode, political appointee Anne Klee helped negotiate the proposed purchase of mineral rights — estimated by the Minerals Management Service to be worth $68 million — from the powerful Collier family, which at one time owned 1.25 million acres of Florida land. According to IG Devaney, department officials including Klee were in constant conflict with career agency staff members and provided “incomplete” information in order to arrange a tentative sale price of $120 million, plus up to $350 million in tax breaks for the sellers; the deal eventually fell apart. In 2004, Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles was cleared of ethics violation charges, but in 2007, he pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the U.S. Senate about his connections with infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff, to whom he provided “advice and intervention on issues within DOI,” according to prosecutors; Griles was sentenced to ten months in prison. A second official from the department received two years probation and a fine for failing to report gifts from Abramoff while working as an overseer for the Northern Marina Islands, which retained Abramoff as a lobbyist. Also in 2007, the deputy assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Julie MacDonald, admitted to leaking internal documents — in violation of federal regulations — about endangered species to pro-industry groups, including the Chevron Corporation and the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation.