WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Susan M. Collins has found out that the federal reversal that led to the listing of Atlantic salmon as an endangered species was a maneuver by the Department of the Interior to stave off a lawsuit by environmental groups.

Collins, who subpoenaed and obtained e-mail traffic regarding the listing from the agency and posted it to her Web site earlier this month, has been against federal efforts to list the Atlantic salmon and had been working with the Clinton administration to come up with a conservation plan.

Abruptly, last fall, the salmon was listed, and talk about a mutually agreed upon plan to conserve the salmon breeding areas was terminated, leaving environmentalists smiling and state officials – along with Collins – befuddled.

As it turns out, the agency had decided that listing the salmon was easier than coming up with a compromise with the state, and reversed course, said Felicia Knight, Collins’ spokeswoman.

Maine officials had tried and failed to obtain documents pertinent to the case through a Freedom of Information Act request and through the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, which is handling the legal action. Knight said that there was no logical exemption to protect the documents from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, often called FOIA. An appeal is now in the federal circuit court in Boston, state officials said.

“They were totally FOIA-able,” Knight said. “They should have been released. We aggressively went after those documents, got the documents and posted them to the Web site. That was the responsible thing to do.”

The documents were collected from the Interior Department, which is crafting the endangered species listing, through Collins’ subcommittee – the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. That panel has broad jurisdiction to explore the operation of the federal government as part of the Senate Government Reform Committee.

A story in The Hill, one of two independent congressional newspapers, explored what it considered an unusual release of subpoenaed documents that it described in its lead paragraph as “secret.” Knight said they were not protected under an FOIA exemption, and contained no classified materials, so Collins did not regard them as protected communications.

Interior Solicitor John Leshy, however, told Collins, in his waning days in the post during the Clinton administration, that her disclosure could “chill the free flow of candid discussions” within agencies and “reduce the quality of executive branch decision-making,” according to The Hill.

In Augusta, the governor was pleased with Collins’ decision to post the documents.

“These are documents that should have been in public view, and thanks to Senator Collins, they are,” said John Ripley, spokesperson for Gov. Angus S. King.

He said the state is not concerned with legal ramifications, because the federal agencies involved “haven’t been very concerned with fair play.”

“We place a lot of trust in Senator Collins,” Ripley said. “She thought she was doing the right thing, and the governor supports her.”

After being posted for a period of time, allowing open access to the state – and others, the documents were removed from the Web site, according to the webmaster in Collins’ Senate office.

Knight said that Collins had intended to have them published in the Congressional Record, where explanatory materials often accompany legislative actions and statements by members of Congress. “We heard from the Congressional Record clerk that it would be expensive to have them published and it would be cheaper to do it on the Web site, so we did,” Knight said.

“What we have is an outgoing Clinton appointee who was caught in a lie,” Knight said. “That lie was that they [based] their decision on scientific grounds, when they really did so on political grounds.” Under the Endangered Species Act, only scientific grounds should serve as the basis for a listing.

Last year, the state had entered into an agreement with the Department of Interior to preserve Maine’s Atlantic salmon stocks by coming up with a management plan, and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt came to the state to sign the agreement.

The threat of the environmental lawsuits forced a reversal.

“The state’s position is that the federal government should have to justify listing the Atlantic salmon as an endangered species,” said Ripley. “They say it’s based on science, but they can’t prove it.”

The salmon was put on the endangered species list on Nov. 13, 2000. The area affected will be the lower Kennebec River north to the U.S.-Canada border. Other affected rivers include the Dennys, East Machias, Machias, Pleasant, Narraguagus, Ducktrap and Sheepscot, and Cove Brook.

Collins sees the listing as a threat to the Down East economy, because the scope of an endangered species listing places severe restrictions on rivers in that area and on ancillary industries, such as blueberry producers and forest products industries, because of their operations adjacent to spawning areas.

Ripley said the blueberry farmers might be the most affected since they “drain water from these rivers” and the endangered species listing will “tighten how much drainage they can do.”

Whether Collins crossed a political line in serving state interests may become a matter of controversy. The Hill, quoting a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University, said that the action would put the White House “on guard” against requests for similar information in the future.

“The biggest consequence is that, in the future, the White House won’t trust her,” said GU’s Susan Low Bloch.

However, since the story was reported, a new administration occupies the White House, one that Collins feels may be more amenable to understanding the state’s interests in development of a management plan for the salmon rather than an endangered species listing.

The listing is not easy to affect, and scientific research generally is required showing that a species should not be on the list. Meanwhile, the state is aiming to use the courts to overturn the listing because it is not in keeping with the requirements of the law.

Had the Clinton administration remained in office, it might have been more difficult for the state case to advance, but with a change in administration, the role of making those decisions will fall first to the solicitor whom Bush places at Interior, and perhaps later to whether the Justice Department pursues the case up the judicial ladder if it is appealed.

Sarah Ovaska of States News contributed to this report.