Documents suggest congressman used clout to fight forest-fire charges A senior federal official who was fearful of incurring a congressman's wrath sent his subordinates on a mad dash earlier this year to retrieve a certified letter demanding that the lawmaker pay a $5,773 fine for starting a fire that burned 20 acres of a South Carolina national forest. Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment, said he didn't want Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., a member of the House Natural Resources subcommittee that oversees the management of the country's national parks and forests, to get the March 12 letter before he testified to the subcommittee. ''I'd just as soon have him not take a chunk of hide out of me,'' Rey said in an interview Wednesday. ``I don't think that rises to the level of a smoking gun. I think it rises to the level of a dripping water gun. Two days of justice delayed is not justice denied.'' Internal agency documents obtained by McClatchy document Brown's fierce, four-year protest of a criminal negligence citation and civil damages collection for a controlled burn he started on his property in March 2004 that spread to the adjoining Francis Marion National Forest....