Turning up on the heat on ICANN, the chairman of the House Commerce Committee is trying to determine whether the White House illegally helped to raise money for the fledgling domain name organization.
In a letter sent Thursday, Representative Thomas Bliley (R-Virginia) requested details on any and all White House fundraising activity on behalf of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
"I would like to learn more about the details behind any fundraising Mr. Kalil [senior director to the White House National Economic Council] -- or any other employee within the Executive Office of the President -- performed on ICANN's behalf," Bliley wrote in a letter to Charles Ruff, counsel to the president.
Bliley said he wants to determine whether collaboration between ICANN and the White House violated federal law. And while there might not yet be a smoking gun, the Commerce Committee does have fishy internal ICANN email messages.
The letter was Bliley's most recent effort questioning ICANN, its leaders, and its activities. Last week, he accused interim chairwoman Esther Dyson of highly inappropriate communications with the Department of Justice.
On Wednesday, Dyson refuted suggestions that ICANN leaned on the Justice Department to put antitrust heat on Network Solutions.
In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations 22 July, ICANN interim president and CEO Mike Roberts said the organization was approximately US$800,000 in debt.
Bliley said two email messages, turned over by ICANN to his committee and directly quoted in his letter, raised significant questions.
A 15 June message from ICANN chief counsel Joe Sims to Dyson detailed a telling conversation with Kalil, Bliley said.
"According to Mr. Sims, when he, Ms. Dyson and Mr. Kalil met, 'he [Mr. Kalil] promised to do what he could to encourage private donations on the scale necessary to make it clear that we are not going to be financially starved for the foreseeable future,'" Bliley wrote, quoting the first email.
A second email showed ICANN's Roberts responding to Kalil about news of White House help. "Tom -- pleased to hear about your offer to help Esther and Joe," the quoted email said.
Representatives from ICANN were not available for comment Thursday.
