Holbrooke attended the dinner (where he was introduced by Fareed Zakaria, editor of NEWSWEEK International) and praised the anti-AIDS work of the two companies being honored. But Holbrooke didn't select the two winners of the award (which was named this year in his honor after he joined the State Department), according to the Holbrooke associate (who asked not to be identified because the issue didn't involve State Department business.)

And after checking with a State Department ethics officer, Holbrooke also did not personally hand out the awards—a point he noted to the crowd in his talk that night, according to the Holbrooke aide. "This award was about fighting AIDS, period," said the aide. Holbrooke did not comment directly to NEWSWEEK.

But what makes the award more problematic, according to the critics, is that the Chevron-sponsored ads come just as the oil company has been mounting a high-powered lobbying blitz to persuade the U.S. government (including the State Department where Holbrooke now works) to intervene in a legal matter of huge importance to the company. The matter involves a massive lawsuit in Ecuador where special court-hired experts have ruled the company may have to pay a whopping $27 billion in clean-up costs because of toxic wastes that were dumped in the Amazon rainforest decades ago.

A Chevron spokesman calls the charges "fraudulent." But to deal with the problem, company lobbyists this year have contacted officials at the National Security Council and the State Department over the issue.

The ads must be viewed in the broader context of what the company is trying to accomplish in Washington, according to Michael Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, a San Francisco-based environmental group that last week wrote Secretary of State Clinton complaining about the Chevron ads. "It's great that they are contributing to fighting AIDS," he says. "But at the same time they're tying to avoid responsibility in Ecuador and other places by essentially buying credibility in Washington."

There is, to be sure, no evidence that Chevron has approached Holbrooke about the Ecuador issue, and our colleague Zakaria tells us he thinks the ethics flap is "absurd." "This strikes me as the usual Washington interest-group attack, which is unfair," he says.

But at least one federal ethics expert views the matter differently. "It is a general principle that we don't want any government official to lend his position in support of a private entity," says Stephen Potts, who served as director of the Office of Government Ethics between 1990 and 2000, during the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Potts calls Holbrooke's involvement with the award "unwise," adding that his attendance at the dinner honoring the two companies was a "not a smart thing to do."

© 2009