Failing To Execute
Alexander Cockburn
February 18, 1999
In the final stretch of the impeachment trial, when the White House was eager to remind liberals that, bottom line, Bill Clinton was their guy, came a couple of headline-grabbing environmental initiatives. First, on Feb. 3, Mike Dombeck, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, used the occasion of a speech at the University of Montana to announce that President Clinton was issuing an executive order banning all new mining claims along the Rocky Mountain Front. The Front is a 100-mile stretch of terrain from Helena, Mont., north and west to the Canadian border.
To the casual eye, the executive order advertised by Dombeck looked like big news, heartening to greens. The terrain in question is one of the most important wildlife areas in the country, providing particularly important habitat to the grizzly. It has even been called the American Serengeti.
Dombeck's order got a clamorous reception from environmental reporters and editorial writers who lost no time in declaring that this was evidence of a whole new, nature-friendly outlook at the Forest Service, previously regarded as being the servant of U.S. timber and mining companies.
Then, on Feb. 11, on the very eve of the impeachment vote, Dombeck unleashed a second initiative. He said that Clinton was signing another executive order that would place a moratorium on the construction of any new logging roads in virgin stretches of the national forests. cont
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