FBI Probes Stevens’s EarmarkThe FBI is investigating whether Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) used a $1.6 million congressional appropriation to help an Alaska marine center purchase property from a business partner of the senator’s son, said sources familiar with the probe. That investigation comes amid a widening federal grand-jury probe into Stevens’s connections to an energy services company. The FBI and the Interior Department’s inspector general are also jointly examining a series of budgetary earmarks endorsed by Stevens in recent years for the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, said sources familiar with the probe who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity. Investigators are particularly interested in how those earmarks may have helped the marine center buy land from Trevor McCabe, a former Stevens aide who was also a business partner of Stevens’s son, Ben, according to sources and news reports. Ted Stevens has wielded enormous clout as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, which he chaired for six years, regularly steering hundreds of millions of dollars a year in earmarks for his home state. |
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