Speaking of polluters....Can anyone top good 'ole boy Al Goron? What a goof ball. Good thing he lost!
TENNESSEE UNDERWORLD
Al Gore,
polluter?
VP repeatedly chose
politics, gain
over environment in
personal life
By Charles Thompson and Tony
Hays
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
Although Al Gore frequently
hammers George W. Bush about
Houston's air pollution being
the worst in the nation, Gore
neglects to mention that in a
recent study the Environmental
Protection Agency found
Tennessee's water pollution to
be the second-worst in the
nation. And Gore especially
avoids mentioning that he is
directly responsible for some
of that water pollution.
In fact, starkly contrasting
with his passionate speeches or
warnings in his best-selling
book, "Earth in the Balance,"
about ozone depletion and other
urgent environmental topics,
Gore has a long-standing
reputation for polluting the
environment in Tennessee.
Gore's environmental
depredations began in 1973
after he bought a farm near
Carthage, Tenn., loaded with
zinc from his father, Albert
Gore Sr., who had acquired it
from Armand Hammer, an oil
tycoon, art forger, stock
swindler and longtime friend of
several Soviet dictators. Gore
Sr. had been on Hammer's
payroll from 1950 to 1970 while
the elder Gore was also a
senator from Tennessee. After
his defeat in 1970, he became
senior vice president of
Hammer's Occidental Petroleum
Co., and headed its subsidiary,
Island Creek Coal Co.
Al Gore Jr. leased the mineral
rights back to an
Occidental-affiliated company
at $20,000 a year, which was
much higher than the going
rate. Gore now owns about $1.1
million in land near Carthage.
Over the years, toxic waste
products ended up in a
"tailings pond," from which
water flows into the adjacent
Caney Fork River, of which Gore
frequently waxes eloquently
about its pristine waters, and
then subsequently into the
larger Cumberland River. Recent
tests revealed that zinc levels
in the pond exceed EPA and
Tennessee Department of
Environment and Conservation
mandated levels. Last May,
state officials issued a notice
of violation, ordering Pasminco
Zinc Co., which currently
operates Gore's zinc
concessions, to clean up the
mess. To date, Pasminco Zinc
Co. has not cleaned up the
reported violation and the
state has taken no further
action to pursue the matter.
In 1996, during the same time
Gore was running for reelection
as vice president, claiming to
be an environmentalist, the
zinc mining operation on his
property twice failed tests
designed to protect water
quality in the Caney Fork. The
Wall Street Journal recently
commissioned two independent
laboratories to test the water
in the Caney Fork, both of
which concluded there were
large quantities of barium,
iron and zinc in the water, as
well as smaller quantities of
arsenic, chromium and lead.
Brian McGuire, executive
director of Tennessee Citizens
Action, an environmental group,
told The Tennessean newspaper
in Nashville, "Clearly, when
you spread those types of
chemicals around on a farm or
on the land, you're going to
get a lot of runoff. So it's
going to get into the water.
We're poisoning ourselves."
Tennessee residents say Gore
becomes testy when they
attempted to question him about
this pollution.
"He (Gore) gets real angry,"
Tom Gniewek, a retired chemical
engineer from Camden, Tenn.,
told The Wall Street Journal.
"Instead of answering the
question, he attacked my
motives and accused people like
me of vandalizing the earth."
After first being elected to
Congress in 1976, Gore mostly
hewed to a rigid environmental
agenda with a few notable
exceptions. For example, he
voted to exempt Tennessee's
Tellico Dam, which was believed
to be a threat to the snail
darter population, from the
Endangered Species Act.
During those early days in
Congress, Gore was assigned to
the Energy and Power
Subcommittee chaired by
Democratic Rep. John Dingell of
Michigan, an old-fashioned
populist. Gore parroted
Dingell's actions and followed
the chairman so closely that
staffers called Gore "Dingell's
clone" or "Dingell's shadow."
'Real nasty, real devious'
But all that changed in August
1981, when Gore broke ranks
with Dingell over the
construction of the Clinch
River breeder reactor, which
would be managed by the
Tennessee Valley Authority
project near Oak Ridge, Tenn.,
but owned by the federal
Department of Energy.
Environmentalists dubbed the
reactor "one of the most
notorious boondoggles of that
period." It would be fueled by
plutonium, because proponents
falsely claimed that the world
was running out of uranium.
Dingell's subcommittee prepared
a scathing report that claimed,
among other things, that
testing of the $8.2 billion
plant's components had been a
sham, that cost estimates were
greatly underestimated and that
air and water around the
reactor would be poisoned.
Veteran subcommittee
investigator Peter Stockton
supervised the preparation of
the report. Stockton was
assisted by Ernest Fitzgerald,
who had been fired as an Air
Force official by President
Richard Nixon after testifying
truthfully to the Senate in
1968-69 about huge cost
overruns on the giant C-5A
transport. (More than a decade
later, during the
administration of President
Ronald Reagan, Fitzgerald would
be reinstated in his old job.)
One of his staunchest defenders
was Gore. Another was Rep.
Robert Dornan of California, a
former Air Force pilot and
outspoken conservative
Republican. Fitzgerald had been
loaned to the subcommittee by
the Air Force, after having
been requested by Stockton,
because of Fitzgerald's
experience in ferreting out
cost overruns.
The day before the report was
scheduled to be released,
Stockton and Fitzgerald were
approached by Gore and Peter
Knight, Gore's top aide.
(Knight would later chair Bill
Clinton's and Gore's 1996
reelection campaign, including
the questionable fund-raising
tactics that later came under
congressional and U.S. Justice
Department scrutiny. In 1993,
after Gore intimates Johnny
Hayes and Craven Crowell had
been appointed to the TVA
board, Knight received a no-bid
consulting contract from TVA
that paid him $680,856 over six
years.)
Stockton tells WorldNetDaily
that Gore ordered him to turn
over the report and all back-up
documents. Stockton says he
refused, telling Gore, "I can't
do that, Al, you're on the
other side now." Gore then went
to Dingell, who told Stockton
to give the reports to Gore.
The next day, U.S. Department
of Energy and TVA officials
supporting the breeder reactor
showed up with 10 tall stacks
of documents supposedly
refuting all of the
subcommittee's criticisms about
the project. Actually, when
Stockton and Fitzgerald were
able to examine these
documents, they found that few
of them had any bearing on the
breeder reactor. Among other
things, they included proposed
solar projects in other states.
"This was mostly crap,"
Stockton said.
Gore attacked Fitzgerald from
the podium, saying that while
he might know a lot about cost
overruns about airplanes, he
didn't know anything about
nuclear power plants. Gore said
that many of the 5,000 project
workers lived in his
congressional district. It was
obvious from the questioning of
the Energy Department
officials, said Stockton, that
they had been coached by Gore
and Knight after they had
obtained the subcommittee
material.
Sheila Hershow, then a reporter
for Federal Times newspaper,
covered the hearing and wrote a
column calling Gore "The
Populist Prince of Pork." Now a
public relations executive in
Washington, Hershow said that
years later when she was an
investigative reporter/producer
for CNN and later ABC News, she
often ran into Gore.
"He was always gracious, but he
sometimes brought up that
column I'd written about him.
He didn't seem to let it go,"
she said.
Shortly after the hearing, The
Tennessean newspaper in
Nashville began what Stockton
referred to as "a dueling
quotes" series pitting him
against Gore. The Tennessean,
which had become almost an
official organ for the Gore
family for seven decades,
ripped Stockton apart. Al
Gore's birth had been treated
as front-page news, and he had
worked at the paper between his
time in the military and his
first congressional race.
"I don't like Al," said
Stockton. "He's not one of my
favorite people. Even back then
(1981), he could be real nasty,
real devious." The year after
the hearing, TVA voted to kill
the Clinch River Breeder
Reactor.
Oily coffee and rotten eggs
Gore crossed horns again with
Tennessee and North Carolina
environmentalists over a mill
owned by International Champion
Corporation in the Great Smokey
Mountain city of Canton, N.C.
The company, which employed
2,000 people, had been
manufacturing juice cartons and
other paper products since 1908
and had been polluting the
Pigeon River.
According to author Bob Zelnick
in his book, "Gore: A Political
Life," the Pigeon River had
developed a dark brown hue.
Time magazine said the river
below Canton had been
"transmogrified into a sludgy
mess that looks like oily
coffee and smells as bad as
rotten eggs."
U.S. News & World Report
disclosed in 1988 that "fish in
the area have been found to
have nearly four times the
level of dioxin -- the active
agent in agent orange --
considered safe."
Thirty-seven miles from Canton,
the Pigeon flowed into
Tennessee. The pollution was
unabated here. In 1987, at a
time when a two-state
environmental coalition had
sprung up to try to clean up
the river, Al Gore was
beginning his first run for the
presidency. He needed North
Carolina money and support.
That meant placating some
important people who were upset
about the charges leveled at
the paper plant.
First, Gore undercut the
coalition's efforts to get the
Environmental Protection Agency
to take action, lauding the
plant's efforts to voluntarily
clean up the river. Second, he
persuaded his close friend and
ally, Tennessee Gov. Ned
McWherter, to go along with a
deal that continued to allow
toxic wastes to course into the
river.
Environmentalists were furious,
claiming that Gore had been
used "as a political tool" by
the paper company and its
allies. Even so, Gore's
wheeling and dealing apparently
paid off, because he won both
the Tennessee and North
Carolina presidential primaries
in 1988.
'Don't you know who my nephew
is?'
Gore encountered more
environmental problems on his
Carthage farm in 1992. Both
state and federal officials
determined Gore's farm to be
the site of a large open dump
filled with pesticide
containers, aerosol can, old
tires, used filters filled with
waste oil and unrecycled cans
and bottles. A Gore spokesman
said the dump belonged to
Gore's father.
But the most outrageous example
of Gore's alleged flaunting of
environmental laws involves his
82-year-old uncle, Whit LaFon.
According to witnesses, Gore
and LaFon hatched a scheme to
turn a slender island, known as
Swallow Bluff, in the Tennessee
River into a 20-unit luxury
condo community, including a
private airstrip.
Swallow Bluff Island is the
site of an 800-year-old Native
American village site, replete
with graves and a temple mound.
According to the Tennessee
Department of Environment and
Conservation, the development
has turned into an
environmental and cultural
disaster. Thousands of tons of
topsoil from the island have
been bulldozed into the channel
nearly clogging it and numerous
Indian graves have been
desecrated. Desecration of a
grave is a crime in Tennessee.
LaFon, a retired state judge,
said he sold the island in 1999
to developers Walden
Blankenship and Larry Melton,
and has had nothing to do with
it since then. Not so,
according to Melton, who said
he and his partner knew they
would run into a bureaucratic
stone wall from state
regulators, TVA and the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers
obtaining permits to construct
the extravagant development
without the help of someone who
had enormous political clout.
Melton said he brought their
reservations about protection
from environment regulations to
LaFon, and that the retired
jurist asked them, "Don't you
know who my nephew is?" Melton
told WND that he personally met
with Gore and LaFon to discuss
that protection.
The Blankenship/Melton company
made only a token effort to
obtain a TVA permit,
withdrawing the application
before action could be taken on
it. The two developers then
refused to acknowledge both a
cease-and-desist order from the
Corps of Engineers and notices
of violation from the state,
which has assessed damages
against the company of
$234,000.
In a letter dated March 1,
2000, to Tennessee Environment
and Conservation Commissioner
Milton Hamilton, developers
Blankenship and Melton accuse
Gore and his uncle of criminal
culpability in the Swallow
Bluff Island environmental
disaster. The letter, a copy of
which WND has obtained, states
in part, "If it is true that
Vice President Al Gore and
Judge Whit LaFon are officers
of the court and have the duty
and responsibility to report a
crime to the court, then they
should be charged."
The letter continued, "Not only
did they (Gore and LaFon) know
a crime was being committed,
but they concealed it from the
public. The motive appears to
be political gain."
Gore's campaign headquarters
had no comment on the letter,
nor did LaFon, who has been
unavailable for comment since
last month when WND began
running stories about Gore
family politics in Tennessee.
For its part, the Tennessee
Valley Authority, which has
acquired a hard-line reputation
for taking swift action against
a homeowner who prunes a tree
on his property along a
shoreline claimed by TVA, is
taking no punitive action
involving the massive
destruction done to Swallow
Bluff Island. TVA also has a
reputation of being more than a
little subject to the special
interests of Al Gore.
"We're going to let the state
handle this case," a TVA
spokesman said.
The Corps of Engineers, which
also has something of a
draconian reputation for
punishing minor offenders, is
washing its hands of this
politically sensitive case.
And State regulators, who were
initially grateful for
WorldNetDaily's coverage, are
now gun shy, refusing to turn
over public records and
"no-comment"-ing everything. Of
the three jurisdictions (state,
Corps and TVA) that could
handle the matter, the state is
the least able to thwart
political interference,
something Al Gore has learned
over the years in his frequent
tussles with environmental
regulators. |
