Word: knightings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Knight moved next to the Commerce Department, where he escorted Molten officials for a briefing by trade officials on Mexican environmental-cleanup opportunities the same year. In July 1996, Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor called Pemex's director general to plug the company and its bid for toxic-waste work in Mexico. Pemex has indicated a strong interest in the project but has yet to announce a decision...
Congressional investigators are also looking into swings in Molten's stock prices and the timing of Knight's own stock sales--and whether they are tied to favorable action by the government that he helped facilitate. Separately, Molten's shareholders have filed five class-action lawsuits alleging, among other things, that the company misrepresented the commercial viability of its waste-processing technology to investors and that several of its officers and directors cashed in their shares a year ago at artificially inflated prices, using insider information...
Molten's story intrigues investigators because it also seems to hint at a larger pattern. Records show that Knight lobbied Grumbly in Lockheed Martin's fight to hold on to its $40 million-a-year fee to manage an Oak Ridge, Tenn., research facility. Lockheed got an extra five years of work in two Energy Department awards that coincided with big D.N.C. donations--$15,000 given 13 days before a two-year extension in 1995, and $125,000 within weeks of the 1996 decision to add three years more to the contract. A Lockheed spokesman denied any link...
...Knight declined to be interviewed for this article but issued a statement. "Even in this intensely political environment," Knight said, "I am confident that any fair-minded and objective examination of my work will demonstrate that I have always acted in accordance with the highest ethical standards." Knight also said he had "never talked to the Vice President about any federal contract on behalf of any client" and that he never "helped arrange a government contract or grant in exchange for political contributions...
...Vice President's residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory. The letter arrived on desks all around Washington amid stories about the Democratic Party's intense scouring for cash in the 1996 campaign; it struck even hardened Washingtonians as audacious. The signature on the letter? Peter Knight...