The Bush administration's point person for telecommunications policy allowed wireless phone company lobbyists to help pay for a private reception at her home, and then 10 days later urged a policy change that benefited their industry, according to documents and interviews.
Assistant Commerce Secretary Nancy Victory said she regards the lobbyists as personal friends, and cleared the arrangement in advance with her department's ethics office. She did not report the October 2001 party as a gift on her government ethics disclosure form.
"My friends paid for this party out of their personal money," Victory said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Victory added she believed it was "ridiculous" to draw a connection between the party and her letter 10 days later to the Federal Communications Commission urging an immediate end to a decade-old restriction on wireless spectrum.
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Victory serves as administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and is the administration's policy representative before the independent Federal Communications Commission.
The party Oct. 14, 2001 was paid for by six hosts, including lobbyists for three companies with a stake in wireless communications and an attorney from Victory's old law firm where her husband is a partner specializing in communications law.
Corporate representatives from the telecommunications industry were among the dozens of party guests, according to Victory.
A copy of the party's invitation, obtained by AP, clearly names at the top lobbyists Brian Fontes of Cingular Wireless, Priscilla Hill-Ardoin of SBC Telecommunications and Rich Barth of wireless phone manufacturer Motorola.
It said the hosts "invite you and your guest to a reception in honor of Nancy Victory," and urged attendees to RSVP to a number or e-mail address at Victory's old law firm.
Ten days after the catered reception at Victory's million-dollar home in Great Falls, Va., she asked the FCC to immediately repeal restrictions that Cingular, SBC and other major cellular companies had long complained about.
The FCC voted two weeks later to phase out the limits on how much of the spectrum individual carriers could own in a geographic area. The agency had put the limits in place in the early 1990s to promote competition.
