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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (65790)	2/8/2000 2:55:00 PM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 67261

Environment & Climate News February 2000 Contents Feds protected ecoterrorists, report says -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Gretchen Randall -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A House Resource Committee task force assigned three years ago to investigate eco-terrorist activity at a timber site in Oregon has issued an interim report that paints a disturbing picture of aiding and abetting by top Clinton-Gore administration officials. The Task Force's investigation was launched after an e-mail from Agriculture Department employee Thelma Strong to Tom R. King was made public. "I'm told that Leon Panetta [then chief of staff to President Clinton] directed the FS [Forest Service] not to remove protestors from the Warner Creek sale," wrote Strong on August 6, 1996. Strong's e-mail refers to a timber sale underway at Warner Creek, Oregon. A band of eco-terrorists had encamped on the site, barricading themselves there illegally from September 1995 to July 1996 in an effort to stop the sale. On July 9, 1996, the Forest Service and local law enforcement officials were about to move to expel the eco-terrorists when word was received from top Clinton-Gore administration officials to "back off." Dan Glickman, Secretary of Agriculture, told then-Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas he needed to check with "people above his pay grade" about how to handle the situation, according to contemporaneous notes made by Thomas. The next conversation between Glickman and Thomas was a permanent stand-down order. According to the Task Force's investigation, " . . . several interviewees have alleged that political pressure from within the Clinton-Gore administration was used to protect the protestors, prolonging the occupation and endangering both government property and law enforcement personnel." ". . . the organization behind the protest was in contact with Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) within the White House during the protest, airing their complaints and threatening political consequences if the White House failed to act." ". . . the suspicion of illegal leaks to the protesters was corroborated by telephone notes of a senior Justice Department official [Peter Coppelman], which were obtained under subpoena, noting that a senior CEQ official [Dinah Bear] was suspected of being the source of the law enforcement information leaked to the protestors." Elena Kagen, associate White House counsel, was aware of the information leaks because she had discussed them with Dinah Bear, who was accused of making them. According to the Task Force report, though, neither Kagen nor any other representative of the Clinton-Gore administration initiated an investigation, despite their legal duty to report criminal wrongdoing. Moreover, the Forest Service was never informed about the leaks. Kagan has since been nominated by President Clinton to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Warner Creek timber sale was initiated in 1991, when an arson fire burned 9,000 acres on the site. The sale, intended to salvage usable timber from the trees that had died as a result of the fire, would also have cleared dead and decaying trees to reduce the risk of insect infestation and forest fires. Reducing the number of dead trees was thought to be a positive solution for the forest as well as for animals, campers, and hikers in the area. Eco-terrorists began protesting against the salvage logging in June 1995, and even blamed loggers for the arson fire. (There is no evidence that loggers were responsible.) In September of that year, the protests became illegal as the eco-terrorists blocked the road and camped at the site. According to the Forest Service, they also erected barricades, dug trenches, washed out roadways, and left human waste--efforts that polluted the waterways downstream. They made "booby-traps" of trenches and sharpened metal spikes to damage vehicles or people and chained themselves to buried structures. At least one protester was heavily armed.(cont) heartland.org