Neo, startling story of the Gore family.
Article.." The Buying of the President"
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"The Buying of the President 2000" tells about a suspicious land deal between Armand Hammer and Gore Sr. that appears to have been a way of putting Gore Jr. on the Hammer payroll.
In January 1997, Bob Zelnick, a veteran ABC News correspondent, obtained permission from ABC to write a biography of Vice President Al Gore Jr.
In September, 1997, after he had spent eight months researching it, and only weeks before his contract was up for renewal, ABC News told him that if he wanted his contract renewed, he would have to give up writing the book and return the advance he had received from the publisher.
Zelnick says that he was told that it was a conflict of interest for him to write a book about someone he might be covering in the presidential contest a few years down the road. Zelnick commented, "This is a standard that has never been applied by any network or any other news organization to any journalist. You should be happy when there are journalists who know enough to author a book on the subject.?
Zelnick refused to comply with the ABC demand, and "Gore, A Political Life" was published by Regnery last year. He is now teaching journalism at Boston University. His book is not one that the Gore campaign will be recommending to voters.
It would be out of character for the Clinton White House not to let ABC News know that it would prefer that Bob Zelnick not write a biography of Al Gore, and that is the most reasonable explanation for ABC?s sudden withdrawal of its approval of the project. The TV networks have shown that they like to do favors for the Clinton White House.
Early on in the project, Zelnick says he was informed by the vice president?s office that Gore had decided against cooperating with him.
Zelnick says that Gore?s office told him that he would "personally resent attempts to contact his family, particularly his aged parents.? This is understandable.
The Gore family has a closet full of skeletons, and when you aspire to the presidency of the United States you don?t want a nosey reporter opening up closet doors.
Zelnick has a good reputation as a reporter. During his more than two decades in the media, he covered Capitol Hill, the Middle East, Russia and the Pentagon. He won numerous journalism awards, including two American Bar Association Gavel Awards and two Emmys.
Hammer Ties "Extremely Sensitive? Roy Neel, a former top Gore aide, told Zelnick that Gore was "extremely sensitive? about his father?s connection with the late Armand Hammer, the head of Occidental Petroleum, who was notorious for his close ties to the Soviet Union.
When Gore Sr. was first elected to Congress in 1938, he was a poor schoolteacher. But by the time he was elected to the Senate in 1952, he had become rich enough to live in a plush hotel on Washington?s embassy row and send Al Jr. to the expensive St. Albans School in Washington.
Armand Hammer had helped make Al Gore Sr. a wealthy man. Zelnick's book and a new book just released in January, "The Buying of the President 2000" by Charles Lewis and published by his organization, the Center for Public Integrity, tell how Armand Hammer bought the services of Al Gore, Sr. and helped Al Jr. launch his political career.
Hammer's father, Julius, had linked up with Lenin in 1907 and had agreed to become part of Lenin's underground cadre dedicated to the proletariat revolution. After Lenin seized power in Russia in 1917, Julius used his company, Allied Drug and Chemical, to ship goods to the Soviet Union, and used money from the sale of diamonds smuggled to the United States to finance the Communist Labor Party. That name was later changed to the Communist Party, USA.
Lenin granted young Armand Hammer a monopoly on the manufacture of pencils in the Soviet Union. He used him to raise money in the United States through the sale of confiscated Czarist art and jewelry.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wanted to prosecute Hammer for his activities on behalf of the Soviet government, but Charles Lewis says that "Hammer had friends in Congress who, Hoover believed, would attempt to protect him from prosecution. Hammer had bragged that he had Sen. Albert Gore Sr. "in my back pocket.
Hammer helped Gore Sr. get started raising Black Angus cattle, giving him sperm from his own prize stock.
Zelnick says residents in the area where the Gore farm was located claim that Gore was able to sell his cattle at much higher prices than anyone else in the area.
They say that "lobbyists and others with an interest in Gore's work would come to Carthage and "bid outrageously high prices for Gore?s stock. One of them was Joe DiMaggio, who in 1958 bought ten calves from Gore "on behalf of clients whose identities he refused to disclose.
Zelnick says the prices paid cannot be documented, but newspaper records show that "many distinguished folks came to buy the Gores' cattle. He quotes former Governor Ned McWherter, a staunch ally of Al Gore Jr., as saying, "I"ve sold some Angus in my time too, but I never got the kind of prices for my cattle that the Gores got for theirs.
Zelnick also claims that in 1969, when Hammer bought the Hooker Chemical Co. (of Love Canal fame), he sold Gore Sr. 1,000 shares of Hooker stock for $150 a share, far less than the stock was worth. House majority leader Hale Boggs accused Hammer of having violated insider trading rules in buying Hooker, but "a Securities Exchange Commission investigation proved inconclusive.
When Gore Sr. was defeated for reelection in 1970, Hammer made him president of Occidental's coal division, paying him $500,000 a year, which was extremely generous compensation at that time.
After Gore Sr. informed Hammer that zinc ore had been discovered near the Gore farm in Smith County, Tenn., Occidental Minerals Corp., a subsidiary of Hammer's Occidental Petroleum, bought 80 acres in 1972 for $160,000, double the only other offer.
A year after he bought the acreage, Hammer sold the land and the mineral rights to Gore Sr. and his wife for the same price he paid for it, but he also paid them $20,000, ostensibly to cover royalties for the coming year even though no zinc had as yet been mined. The same day, the Gores transferred the property to their son and their daughter for $140,000.
Lewis says, "Perhaps even more astounding than Hammer's decision to sell the land and pay royalties is that Occidental never actually mined the land. In 1985, Gore began leasing the land to Union Zinc, Inc., a competitor of Occidental Minerals Corp. Gore still receives $20,000 a year in royalties.
In all, the Hammer-engineered sweetheart deal has put hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits in Gore's pocket. Gore refers to this land as his "farm, supporting the false claim that he is a farmer.
Zelnick says that Hammer helped finance Gore Jr.?s runs for the House and Senate, met frequently for lunch or dinner with Gore during Hammer's visits to Washington, and put his private jet at the disposal of the Gores. This relationship continued throughout the 1980s.
He discloses that Hammer was involved in Gore's 1988 quest for the presidency. He called Senator Paul Simon of Illinois who was also seeking the Democratic nomination. Hammer told Simon that if he would drop out of the race and endorse Gore, he could have his choice of cabinet positions.
Repaying The Debt
What did Gore do for Hammer and Occidental in return? Zelnick reports, "Hammer was Gore's guest at the 1981 Reagan inauguration and used the Tennessee senator to obtain a favored place at the 1989 inauguration of George Bush.
With the election of Clinton and Gore, things changed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Occidental sought to develop Russian oil and gained access to important Russian officials through the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's trade missions.
Occidental chairman Ray Irani accompanied Brown on a trade mission to Russia in March and April of 1994. Occidental gave $161,014 to the Democratic Party in the 1993-94 election cycle, including a $25,000 contribution on March 29, 1994, a day when Irani was in Russia with Brown. In the fall, he was one of 130 guests at Clinton?s second official state dinner for Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
David R. Martin, president of Occidental Oil & Gas Corporation, accompanied Brown on the trade mission to the Middle East in January, 1994.
Today, Occidental is lobbying the administration for permission to return to oil fields it once managed in Libya. However, Libya must be dropped from the State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism, United States economic sanctions on the regime of Moammar Gadhafi have to be dropped, and diplomatic relations restored. The upcoming trial of two Libyans for their role in the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing case is another hurdle this pro-Libya policy must overcome.
It is believed that the Clinton-Gore administration, in order to facilitate the resumption of diplomatic relations with Libya, has agreed not to charge Gadhafi in the case.
With the help of the administration, Occidental has also tripled its U.S. oil reserves. The Energy Department in October 1997 sold the 47,000-acre Elk Hills oil reserve in California to Occidental. This had been held in reserve since 1912.
Both Nixon and Reagan had tried to open it up to development, but were blocked by Congress. Vice President Gore, despite his reputation as an environmentalist, recommended that the president give oil companies access to this land. Although the Energy Department was supposed to review the environmental impact of the sale, it did not do so.
It turned the job over to a private company whose board of directors included Tony Coelho, who is now the general chairman of Gore's presidential campaign.
The acquisition of this land tripled Occidental's domestic oil reserves. Al Gore Sr. owned over half a million dollars of Occidental stock. He died in 1998, and Al Jr. became the executor of his estate.
If he played any role in the decision to sell the land to Occidental, he could be accused of feathering his own nest. Occidental is said to have been the highest bidder, but if the handling of the environmental impact statement was irregular, who is to say the bidding was not flawed as well?
According to "The Buying of the President 2000," Occidental "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 reelection 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 White House office.
"Since Gore got the vice presidential nomination in 1992, Occidental has given more than $470,000 in soft money to various Democratic committees and causes. The book also reports that Occidental provided $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee two days after its chairman, Ray Irani, slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. |
