The probe has led to PR headaches and new internal rules at Bonner & Associates, which sent out the letters, as well as at a consulting shop and a coal industry coalition caught up in the scandal.

Bonner & Associates got a temporary reprieve last week after Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who chairs the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, abruptly canceled a scheduled hearing on the faked letters following a rules dispute. But the hearing has been rescheduled for Oct. 29.

Markey is investigating why three members of Congress received more than a dozen letters opposing climate change legislation that forged the identities of seniors advocates and civil rights leaders, and why the lawmakers weren't notified until weeks after lobbyists discovered the fraud. The Sierra Club has also asked the Justice Department to investigate.

Reform-minded lawmakers have sought twice to require disclosure of grassroots lobbying activities, without success.

In the witness chair will be Bonner & Associates founder and CEO Jack Bonner, who has blamed the deception on "a rogue temporary employee" who has since been fired, and Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. The ACCCE had retained its longtime consulting firm, the Hawthorn Group, to lobby against climate change legislation that the House went on to approve in June. The Hawthorn Group in turn subcontracted letter-writing work to Bonner & Associates.

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For the last year, Massey has been using Qorvis Communications for public affairs advice on issues such as climate change legislation which its been fighting, and some advertising help focused on its image in West Virginia. But since the disaster at its Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 earlier this month, Qorvis has swung into crisis communications mode.

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