It's no secret that big energy companies find lots of ways to influence the debate in Washington: they make campaign contributions, they hire high-powered lobbyists and they invest heavily in advertising campaigns to persuade the public (and capital decision makers) that they are good "corporate citizens."

So it was not exactly a surprise when full-page newspaper ads began running recently in The Washington Post and other publications touting the fact that Chevron and jeansmaker Levi Strauss had won a prestigious new award for its work fighting the AIDS crisis. (NEWSWEEK is owned by The Washington Post Company.)

MAKING ENERGY. MAKING JEANS. MAKING A DIFFERENCE, read the ads under the corporate logos of Chevron and Levi's. What was surprising, however, was the name of the big prize that the two companies had just won: the Richard C. Holbrooke Award for Business Leadership.

Yes, that is indeed the same Richard Holbrooke, veteran diplomat and Democratic foreign-policy guru, who now works at the State Department and serves as President Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

How exactly can the name of a high-ranking Obama official be featured in a corporate advertising campaign? And does that really square with President Obama's commitment to prevent his administration from being tainted by the slightest whiff of corporate lobbying (much less federal ethics rules that forbid government officials from using their office "for the endorsement of any product, service, or enterprise"?)

Those are the questions now being raised by a number of ethics watchdogs. In recent days, the use of Holbrooke's name in the ad campaign (which was paid for by Chevron, not the jeansmaker) has generated criticism from some public-interest groups, as well as a written protest to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"This is a huge conflict of interest," says Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based ethics advocacy group. "Clearly, [Holbrooke] has lent his imprimatur—as somebody in a high-level position in the government—to two corporations that have business before the government. This shows a remarkable insensitivity" to ethical concerns.

As Holbrooke—through a State Department aide—tells it, the complaints are bogus and "silly." Before joining the government, Holbrooke, besides working as the vice chairman of a giant private-equity firm, also served as the president of a nonprofit group, the Global Business Coalition, that seeks to mobilize private corporations in the fight against the global pandemics of AIDS and malaria. Chevron, a member of the coalition, last year kicked in $30 million to the cause—the most of any company—earning it the right to be honored along with Levi's at a gala Washington ceremony on June 25.