Gore's "Environmentalism" is a Perfect Cover for his "Teapot Dome" Oil Deals
Al Gore's Old and Deep Family and Financial Ties to Occidental Petoleum
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
September 26, 2000
It seemed it ought to be a natural for Al Gore when a group of U'Wa people from Colombia showed up at his Manchester, NH
campaign headquarters last year. What they wanted was his support to pressure Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) into stopping
their project to drill for oil on land belonging to the U'Wa people. The project, which reportedly would supply only enough oil
to fuel the US for three months, would move 5,000 U'Wa people and, according to U'Wa spokespersons, would forever
destroy their traditional homeland, the Colombian cloudforest.
Only, Gore didn't sympathize with them. He had them arrested instead, even though they threatened mass suicide if driven from
their ancestral homes. That was when I first learned that Al Gore has some very old and deep family and financial ties to
Occidental Petroleum.
A column in today's NewsMax, Radio Talk Show host Michael Savage brings up still another Al Gore oil connections in a
column entitled "Gore's Elk Hills/Occidental Oil Scandal: Bigger Than Teapot Dome."
Teapot Dome took place in the early 1920s in the Warren Harding administration. Harding, a Republican, had been convinced
by his Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, to sign an executive order giving the Department of Interior authority over
certain Navy oil reserves in the West. Those reserves were Teapot Dome, in Wyoming, and Elk Hills in California.
In 1922, Fall leased the entire Teapot Dome Reserve for twenty years to his friend, Harry F. Sinclair, head of the Sinclair Oil
Coporation with no competitive bidding. It was later proved that Fall had accepted a bribe for the transfer of naval oil reserves
to privates interests and he was sent to prison. In fact, Teapot Dome became the legacy for Warren Harding's administration.
In an eerie re-enactment of Teapot Dome, Al Gore, endorsed the sale of the OTHER Naval Oil Reserve, at Elk Hills which is
located near Bakersfield, California. President Clinton proposed sale of the Navy's Petroleum Reserve in 1995 saying the oil
field was no longer needed for emergency fuelling of America's ships.
Savage notes:
"The DOE (Energy Department) received a total of 22 bona fide offers but decided to sell this "crown jewel" of
oil and gas fields to Occidental Petroleum Corp."
…" 'We view this asset as becoming the crown jewel of our domestic operations,' said Occidental Oil and Gas
C.E.O. David Hentschel.
"Couching this questionable attack on our National Security in conservative jargon, Patricia Godley, DOE's
Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, claimed the sale was part of Al Gore's efforts to ' the size of government'
and 'return inherently non-federal functions to the private sector.' The largest federal divestiture was also said to
help 'pay off the national debt.'"
This statement came from the very same Clinton-Gore administration which declared 1.7 million acres in Utah, consisting of the
largest supply of environmentally friendly coal needed for the production of electricity in coal-fired generation plants, a
"monument" that could not be mined - EVER!
However, there seems to be an incredibly cozy relationship between Al Gore and Occidental Petroleum, according to Charles
Lewis from the Center of Public Integrity and author of The Buying of the President 2000
(http://www.public-i.org/story_01_011100.htm) He wrote about that relationship noting:
"(Washington, Jan. 11) On Sept. 7, 1995, Vice President Albert Gore Jr., stood on the White House lawn and
talked in sweeping terms about ending the era of big government. He touted a list of recommendations formulated
by the National Performance Review, an initiative Gore directed that he claimed streamlined the federal
bureaucracy, cut unnecessary waste and helped make the government "work better and cost less." Gore said that
his report, delivered to President Clinton that day, would continue the drive to "reinvent government."
"Gore did not mention that his recommendations to the president included a plan to give oil companies access to
thousands of acres of oil-rich, publicly owned land that the U.S. Navy has held as emergency reserves since
1912. Ever since the federal government earmarked the reserves for military emergencies, the oil industry had
tried and failed to pry them away from the Navy.
…"Despite the history of the naval petroleum reserves, despite the royalty revenues that the field continued to
generate, Gore recommended that the government put Elk Hills on the auction block. Clinton took Gore's advice
and approved a deal to let oil companies buy some of the reserves. The White House then pushed to have
language authorizing the sales inserted in the 1996 defense authorization bill, which Congress ultimately approved.
Oil companies bid on the field and, finally, on Oct. 6, 1997, the Energy Department announced that the
government would sell its interest in the 47,000-acre Elk Hills reserve to Occidental Petroleum Corp. for $3.65
billion. It was the largest privatization of federal property in U.S. history, one that tripled Occidental's U.S. oil
reserves overnight. During the months after the sale, Occidental tripled the amount of natural gas extracted from
the field.
"Although the Energy Department was required to assess the likely environmental consequences of the proposed
sale, it didn't. Instead it hired a private company, ICF Kaiser International, Inc., to complete the assessment. The
general chairman of Gore's presidential campaign, Tony Coelho, sat on the board of directors.
"Just hours after the announcement of the Elk Hills sale, Gore stood across town on the campus of Georgetown
University and delivered a speech to the White House Conference on Climate Change on the "terrifying prospect"
of global warming, a problem he attributed to the unchecked use of fossil fuels such as oil.
"EVEN AS OCCIDENTAL was moving forward with plans to boost oil production at Elk Hills, Gore told his
audience: "If we ignore the scientific warnings and continue stubbornly on our current course, we'd better begin to
prepare what we would like to say to our children and grandchildren, because if they encounter the terrible
consequences the scientific community is saying now come as a result of global climate disruption, and then look
back at the evidence which was clearly laid out for us in our generation, they might fairly ask, 'If you knew all that,
why didn't you do something about it?'"
"If there is one oil company that Gore might ask "our children and grandchildren" to forgive, it is Occidental
Petroleum. The company has been a steady supplier of campaign funds to Gore and to the Democratic Party,
though its relationship with Gore goes far deeper. Armand Hammer, who built Occidental Petroleum into the
behemoth it is today and who's been described as "the Godfather of American corporate corruption," liked to say
that he had Gore's father, Sen. Albert Gore, Sr., 'in my back pocket.' When the elder Gore left the Senate in
1970, Hammer gave him a $500,000-a-year job as the chairman of Island Coal Creek Co., an Occidental
subsidiary, and a seat on Occidental's board of directors. By 1992, Gore owned Occidental stock valued at
$680,000.
"FOR PART OF HIS CAREER, Albert Gore Sr., received two paychecks: one from the taxpayers and another
from Hammer. Hammer, who raised prize bulls, met the elder Gore at a Tennessee cattle auction in the 1940s. He
put Gore, who was then a member of the House, on the payroll of his New Jersey cattle business. Thus began a
cozy relationship between the two men that would last until Hammer's death in 1990."
After 1990, the cozy relationship transferred to Al Gore, Jr. Occidental, for example, loaned $100,000 to the
Presidential Inaugural Committee to help pay for the ceremony and the celebrations surrounding it. And Gore
used his connections to bring in money from Occidental for the Clinton/Gore re-election campaign. According to a
memo from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes, Occidental gave $50,000 in response to one of
Gore's "no -controlling -legal authority" telephone calls from his office in the White House. Indeed, since Gore
became part of the Democratic ticket in the summer of 1992, Occidental has given more than $470,000 in soft
money to various Democratic committees and causes.
Al Gore's father was on the Board of Occidental Petroleum, until his death, and, it is reported, the Vice President has held a
seat on the Occidental Petroleum board also.
If you were looking for a government official who is playing footsie with a large oil company, the last person most of us would
look at would be Al Gore. After all, isn't Al Gore the worst enemy the oil companies have? Doesn't he SAY that they are
gouging the people and should be stopped? And, hasn't he rushed to the rescue of the poor and downtrodden who will be
unable to heat their homes this winter due to the doubling of fuel prices? Hasn't he come to the rescue of motorists by urging
Clinton to release oil from the oil reserves, before the election, to ease the burden on the poor, even if it does turn out to be a
security blunder?
His environmentalism is a perfect cover for his private investments, isn't it? |
