Solyndra

GOP sweats DOE staff on Solyndra By: Darren Samuelsohn

House Republicans probing Solyndra have privately interviewed at least seven Energy Department career officials central to different critical phases of the controversial $535 million loan guarantee, a source familiar with the investigation tells POLITICO. The highest-ranking DOE official questioned to date by the Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee aides is Jonathan Silver, the former chief operating officer of the Loan Program Office. Republicans also have met four times with Susan Richardson, the loan program office's chief counsel and author of a controversial February 2011 legal memo clearing the way for private investors to get first dibs ahead of taxpayers on $75 million if the California solar company went bankrupt. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) said he wants Richardson to testify at a hearing next Tuesday alongside another unnamed career DOE attorney who was serving at the start of the Obama administration. Other DOE staffers quizzed about Solyndra include Frances Nwachuku, the director of portfolio management in DOE's loan program office and Douglas Schultz, a former Overseas Private Investment Corporation official now at DOE working on loan origination. In a February email exchange, Nwachuku wrote to Treasury Department officials that they had a "gross misunderstanding" of how DOE planned to restructure Solyndra's loan guarantee. Republicans say that DOE’s decision to put the taxpayers behind the private investors violated the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Republicans also have interviewed two senior DOE career officials who served on the five-member Credit Committee that gave the all-important green light to Solyndra's loan guarantee application in March 2009 just two months after the same team remanded the company's application for further review at the tail end of the George W. Bush administration. The two Credit Committee members are Lach Seward, who was serving at the time as its chairman and director of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing loan program, and Owen Barwell, who served at the time as DOE's deputy chief financial officer. Seward retired earlier this year and Barwell is now DOE's acting chief financial officer. House committee staff also have spoken with another DOE official from the loan guarantee office, but sources couldn’t name the person. Stearns said Tuesday that some of the DOE officials that his staff contacted have also refused to answer questions about Solyndra. Still, the Florida Republican said he was not going to press for testimony from everyone connected to the loan guarantee as he gears up for a hearing before Thanksgiving with Energy Secretary Steven Chu. "I don't think you need to bring them all in and put them under oath," Stearns said. Given Stearns's schedule, it appears that several people central to the Solyndra loan guarantee likely won’t get a call to talk to the House investigators. They include: Steve Isakowitz — The department's former CFO had an oversight role on the loan guarantee program, which was housed in his office dating back to the George W. Bush administration. Isakowitz featured prominently in several of the internal DOE emails discussing the scramble to close Solyndra's loan guarantee by September 2009 so that President Barack Obama or Vice President Joe Biden could participate in a groundbreaking ceremony. A former comptroller at NASA, Isakowitz left the federal government in September to be executive vice president and chief technology officer for Virgin Galactic, the commercial space flight enterprise run by Richard Branson, one of several private investors in Solyndra. Matt Rogers — Chu's point person in clearing out the red tape to get more than $36 billion in stimulus funding, more than the department's annual budget, out the door. Since it was the department’s first loan guarantee, DOE emails show Rogers kept a close eye on Solyndra. He pushed in March 2009 for Obama to visit the company during a California trip but quickly realized he had gotten its Bay Area headquarters confused with Tesla’s electric car manufacturing plant near Los Angeles. Rogers left DOE in September 2010, returning to McKinsey & Co. to serve as director of its San Francisco office and head of its North American petroleum practice. Rod O’Connor — Chu's first chief of staff emailed Biden's chief of staff Ronald Klain in May 2010 with reassurances that Obama shouldn't be concerned about visiting Solyndra despite warnings from a top Silicon Valley fundraiser and clean energy venture capitalist. A former adviser to Vice President Al Gore, O'Connor's background was in event management, including running the 2000 and 2004 Democratic National conventions. He left DOE in March to become the London-based executive vice president for AEG Facilities, a sports and entertainment facility management company. Steve Spinner — An Obama fundraiser in 2008, Spinner landed a job handling loan guarantee logistics at DOE. His unusual role and possible conflicts of interest (his wife worked at a law firm that represented Solyndra) repeatedly frustrated career officials who thought he was leaning on them to speed up the process. Spinner started as a Chu adviser in April 2009, a month after the department had approved a conditional commitment for Solyndra’s loan guarantee. He left in September 2010, working until last month as a Silicon Valley-based senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Spinner raised $500,000 or more for Obama in the third quarter of 2011. Stearns said he didn't plan to invite Spinner in for testimony. "We think based upon his emails we know enough about him," he said. Missy Owens — DOE deputy chief of staff and Biden's niece. Her name is on several of the emails circulated between DOE and the White House just prior to Solyndra's loan guarantee winning its final approval in September 2009, including debates over the timing of the groundbreaking ceremony that Biden eventually participated in via video. David Frantz — The Bush administration hired Frantz in 2007 to lead the DOE loan guarantee program, tapping his 25 years of experience on international project financing. Most recently, Frantz worked at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. He's been the acting director of the loan program office since Silver resigned earlier this month. Bill Miller — A DOE veteran who handled Solyndra's loan guarantee file. Internal emails show him involved at several stages of the process, including relaying Office of Management and Budget concerns and admonishing Spinner after he requested the name of an outside attorney assigned to the case. Neile Miller — Miller was the director of DOE's budget office at the time Solyndra won the loan guarantee. Her job included one of the five seats on the Credit Committee that recommended approving the company’s application. She switched jobs at DOE after the Senate confirmed her in August 2010 to become the principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration. Lawrence Oliver — He served as DOE’s assistant general counsel for fossil energy and energy efficiency at the time of Solyndra’s loan guarantee approval, a job that gave him a seat on the Credit Committee. Oliver started at DOE in 1977 and retired in 2009. Ove Westerheim — He worked at DOE from late 2007 until February 2011 as director of its loan program project portfolio and management division. Westerheim was a member of the Credit Committee. He is now back at OPIC, where he'd worked for 13 years before joining DOE. Jay Hoffman — The director of the CFO's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation, he served as an alternate on the Credit Committee.