Al Gore & His Legacy Of Hypocrisy....
As the lid is being blown of Al Gore's "climate change"
front companies that have been given massive handouts
from the Obama Stimulus Spending bill, and as the veil
is lifted on Gore's connections to the Chicago Climate
Exchange, a little background on the Gore family and
the hypocrisy of "The Green King Of The World" may be
in order...
Gore Family Ties
findarticles.com
The connections between the late industrialist and Soviet agent Armand Hammer and the Gore family run long and deep -- and they continue to haunt Al Gore Jr.
Why should anyone care, at this late date, about Vice President Al Gore's relationship with philanthropist-industrialist Armand Hammer, a wealthy, globe-trotting dabbler in diplomacy who died eight years ago? Well, of course, there is the small matter that Hammer was a top-shelf Soviet agent, but he might not have mentioned that to Gore.
And there's more. "Al Gore's relationship to the late Armand Hammer and Occidental Petroleum is important for many reasons" according to Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity and author of The Buying of the President 2000.
Lewis tells Insight: "There is no U.S. company that Gore is closer to, financially or socially, than Occidental, one of the most controversial in America.
Love Canal
It was Occidental, via Hooker Chemical, that brought us Love Canal in the 1970s. The configuration of the vice president, Al `Earth in the Balance' Gore, with an oil company is more than a little surprising"
Does this mean that Gore's highly touted environmentalism is tainted with oil? Actually oil, coal and zinc, but the biggest taint was Hammer himself. It's a matter about which the vice president is more than a little sensitive.
The experience of Bob Zelnick, a veteran ABC News correspondent, might be instructive to anyone delving into the links. Zelnick was warned off from reporting the Hammer-Gore connection when he commenced writing his book, Gore, A Political Life. Zelnick was told in no uncertain terms by Gore staffers that the vice president would "personally resent" intrusions by the reporter into his family affairs and that Gore was "extremely sensitive" about the Hammer connection. But the reporter pursued his subject despite resistance by the Gore camp. Then, with the book nearing completion, he was told by ABC that unless he dropped the project his newscasting contract would not be renewed.
Such an ultimatum is extraordinarily rare; usually, media employers are pleased when one of their own becomes an author -- as a result they benefit by association. Instead, Zelnick not only was warned off but was fired when he refused to cave.
The reason for ABC's action, Zelnick was told in a memo from his boss, David Westin, was that the network could be "held up to ridicule that our reporting is influenced by views you/we have formed about the individual covered." This was a smoke screen that could be dispersed quicker than you could say "Sam Donaldson," Zelnick decided, knowing that ABC's Donaldson had written and commented extensively about individuals he covered. Believing that the real reason was ideological, Zelnick left ABC for academe.
After all that fuss, Zelnick presented a passable account of the Gore-Hammer relationship but gave credit for the material mainly to Edward Jay Epstein's Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer. The connections revealed by Epstein include Hammer's cultivation of Albert Gore Sr., a fiddle-playing hill-country tobacco farmer of grand ambition who rose to become an influential U.S. senator from Tennessee.
The elder Gore made many a mark upon the American landscape in the course of his career; he was a kingpin in the establishment of the mighty Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, effort to socialize electrical power and a sponsor of the $50 billion National Highway Defense Act of 1956, the largest public-works project ever undertaken. He initially acquired substantial wealth as Hammer's partner in the cattle business.
Zelnick notes that, while receiving prize Angus stock from Hammer on the one hand, Gore Sr. at the same time auctioned off portions of his herd -- reportedly at outrageously high prices -- to lobbyists and others who wanted his attention. Sometimes, according to local accounts, purchasers didn't even bother to pick up the livestock they had bought. The author quotes former Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter, a staunch Gore ally: "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"
According to scholars who have reviewed Gore Sr.'s archived letters at the University of Tennessee, the senator did many favors for Hammer over the years, intervening when U.S. policies conflicted with Hammer's international wheeler-dealing. "Through the 1950s and well into the following decade, Hammer counted on Gore as his principal link to the Democratic congressional leadership, and to defend his economic interests" writes Zelnick.
Another source familiar with Hammer, Neil Lyndon, a former personal assistant who helped compile the last in a string of authorized and, critics say, largely fictive biographies or autobiographies of Hammer, says the younger Gore and Hammer engaged in a "profound and prolonged involvement" as social and political cronies. Lyndon credits Gore Sr. with arranging the meeting that propelled puny Occidental Petroleum from a tiny holding with two wells into a major player.
"As [a member] of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gore [Sr.] used his influence on the U.S. ambassador in Libya to arrange a meeting between Hammer and King Idris," then ruler of Libya. Lyndon says Hammer bribed the old king and a few ministers with slightly more than $5 million and gained a concession that ultimately would yield $7.5 billion per year in oil revenues. "Al Gore Sr. was at Hammer's side on the day he paraded King Idris up a red carpet laid on the desert to open the new field"
It was on advice from Sen. Gore that President Kennedy appointed Hammer as an economic emissary of the Commerce Department and sent him to the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Italy, Libya, India, Japan and the Soviet Union. This was going on even as Hammer devoted no small amount of energy to his clandestine role as a Soviet agent, shuffling money back and forth between Russia and the United States.
Was the U.S. intelligence community asleep at the wheel? Actually, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had been observing Hammer's operations since the 1920s and was well-aware of his role as a Soviet agent, but Hoover also was aware of the political realities. During the Franklin Roosevelt administration, when Hoover was gathering power and building the FBI into a first-class investigative agency, Hammer was all but invulnerable due to close ties as a White House regular and benefactor of Eleanor Roosevelt. Later, Gore Sr. chaired the Senate committee overseeing FBI activities. Through Gore and other top Washington connections, Hammer continued to checkmate Hoover.
"Hammer was involved in any number of dubious dealings all over the world" Lewis tells Insight. "He was personally close to both Al Jr. and his father, who was paid $500,000 by Occidental upon losing his Senate seat." In fact, as president of Occidental's Island Creek coal division and a member of Occidental's board of directors, Gore Sr.'s salary was reported as $750,000 per year back in the days when three-quarters of a million dollars was real money. Island Creek was at the time the third-largest coal producer in the United States.
Once free of Hammer's payroll, Lyndon tore a fairly large chunk out of the hand that had fed him, terming his former boss "one of the [last] century's most sinister figures" as well as "the godfather of American corruption" who "bribed and suborned elected representatives at all levels of American life, from city assemblymen and mayors to presidents." Lyndon said in an article in London's Sunday Review that Hammer liked to claim he had Gore Sr. "in my back pocket" patting his wallet with a chuckle.
During the time he worked for Hammer, authorized biographer Lyndon says, Gore Jr. often dined with his father's patron in the company of Occidental's "lobbyists and fixers who, on Hammer's behest, hosed tens of millions of dollars in bribes and favors into the political world." As for Gore's orchestration of VIP treatment for Hammer during the Bush inauguration, Lyndon asks: "Why did Gore Jr. allow himself to be so closely embroiled in a compromising connection with such an unalloyed crook? He had little choice. He inherited from his father the mantle of being Hammer's principal boy in Washington. Gore's father effectively delivered his son into Armand Hammer's back pocket."
That would be an example of the more forthright ways that Hammer did business with politicians. He also apparently was quite comfortable with covert dealings. In 1972, one of his operatives provided $54,000 in laundered $100 bills to Nixon fund-raiser Maurice Stans, a maneuver that resulted in Hammer's conviction on three counts of making illegal campaign contributions. President Bush pardoned him in 1989 for that lapse in covering his tracks.
Earlier, Gore Jr. engineered Hammer into a section reserved for senators at Ronald Reagan's 1981 inauguration. Reagan had been warned that Hammer was a Soviet agent and ignored Hammer's attempts to greet him. And Reagan became one of the few presidents who evaded Hammer's inroads, though he couldn't totally ignore the philanthropist's contributions to causes such as Nancy Reagan's White House redecoration fund. He did not grant Hammer's persistent pleas for a pardon for the Watergate Era misdemeanor convictions, and he didn't appoint Hammer to any prestigious boards or committees. But Reagan did provide some cagey recognition in a note allowing that he valued Hammer's "insights on our policy toward the Soviet Union."
It would seem that Reagan was well-aware that he was thanking the fox for advice on protecting the hen-house. Sources tell Insight that, in the 1980s, then-president Reagan asked international journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave about Hammer at a dinner in Los Angeles. "Reagan had just read Arnaud's book, The Spike, containing descriptions of the different types of Soviet agents" according to one of the sources familiar with the story. "Arnaud described Hammer as a Soviet agent of influence. Reagan said, `I've known that, but I wanted to get it from somebody who really knows.'"
Over the years, Hammer's family and corporations gained influence by contributing to the max to Gore Jr.'s campaigns, and the pair appeared together in several national and international events, such as the gathering of Physicians Against Nuclear War in Moscow in 1987. From the time Gore became a vice-presidential candidate, Occidental has given more than $470,000 to various Democratic committees and causes, according to Lewis in The Buying of the President 2000. Ray Irani, current Occidental chief executive officer, dropped $100,000 in soft money into Democratic coffers in 1996 alone. Critics suggest that his generosity may have been prompted by, or at least encouraged during, a White House visit a few days earlier that included an "overnight" in the Lincoln Bedroom.
During the 25 years that Gore Jr. has leased the right to mine zinc on his property along the Caney Fork River outside Carthage, Tenn., he has earned more than $450,000. The land and mineral rights were acquired by Gore Sr. from Hammer under terms described as "highly favorable." The lease payment of $227 per acre was quite a bit higher than the established Occidental rate of $30 an acre in that area. Occidental never actually mined the property but paid Gore $190,000 altogether before selling the lease, which since has changed hands several times, shifting around the right to pay Gore.
Gore maintains that there is nothing improper about the family's relationship with Occidental or the negotiated sale of mineral rights. As for current Occidental stock held by the family, Gore says it is an estate holding consisting of his late father's assets over which he exercises no control. "According to his will, that [Occidental stock] was put into a trust fund to benefit my mother for the remainder of her life, and I was named executor of his will" Gore said during a rare press conference in Tennessee.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that Gore, an heir, has considerable interest in Occidental's success. And there is at least the appearance of conflict. Has there been a quid pro quo? "Most Americans don't know that Occidental tripled its domestic oil reserves overnight because of a historic reinventing-government decision announced by Vice President Gore," Lewis tells Insight. "Oil companies have been lusting after the Elk Hills land in California for 70 years, but it was not until Bill Clinton and Al Gore that it was opened up, with Occidental the high bidder."
Gore has taken some heat for the Elk Hills sale, which boosted the value of Occidental stock by 10 percent. That 47,000-acre deal, tripling the size of Occidental's petroleum reserves in the United States, is said to be the largest sale of U.S. assets ever. The land had been held as an oil reserve for the U.S. Navy since 1912. The environmental review for the sale was conducted by ICF Kaiser, on whose board sits noted wheeler-dealer Tony Coelho, now Gore's campaign manager.
No evidence of impropriety in the conduct of the sale has emerged, and Occidental is said to have paid $4 billion, about twice what Congress thought would be harvested from the sale.
"I am not suggesting that Al Gore is closer to oil companies than George Bush" Lewis insists, "but I do think the vice president should have to answer questions. `What did he know and when did he know it?' regarding the intricacies of various concessions made to Occidental since 1993. Why hasn't he released his appointment calendars and phone-log records, as Texas Gov. George W. Bush has done? Why doesn't the Energy Department release the bidding information surrounding the Elk Hills decision? There is no excuse that they haven't."
Lewis' CPI, a group of investigative reporters, has had a Freedom of Information Act request on the Elk Hills deal pending for months. The core elements of the request recently were denied and are on appeal.
Among more recent interactions with Clinton-Gore, Occidental lobbied vigorously for a $1.6 billion military-aid package to Colombia that had administration backing. Occidental operates Colombia's second-largest oil field in a country plagued by guerrilla warfare and narcoterrorism. The company also has been in conflict with the U'wa Indians, a tribe whose official lands in Colombia border a major drilling site that Occidental believes could yield 1.5 billion barrels of oil.
Gore must shudder at the mention of the U'wa claim that the site is on their ancestral lands and that oil is "the blood of Mother Earth" The U'wa generated a good deal of publicity for their cause in 1995 when they threatened mass suicide if drilling plans went ahead. All 5,000 of them would step off a 1,400-foot cliff, they said. The Colombian government has been fairly assertive in protecting Occidental's multibillion-dollar operation and will receive 25 percent of any profits resulting from the major find that is expected there.
In the days when Hammer was around, reporter James Cook asserts, Marxist guerrillas simply were bought off. "Hammer gave them $3 million to protect" Occidental's pipeline in Colombia. Today, the firm also pays the Colombian military to maintain a base near the site.
A number of environmentalist groups have been on Gore's case about the U'wa deal. They recently placed an advertisement in the West Coast edition of the New York Times asking: "Who is Al Gore? Environmental champion or petroleum politician?" Protesters are beginning to write to Gore "as the purported environmental candidate" and ask that he exert pressure on Occidental to stop its work in U'wa territory.
Another Gore-Occidental connection, mentioned by Lewis early in our talks, is found in the Love Canal toxic-waste tragedy. Gore, who claimed to have unearthed the scandal, hasn't been overly forthcoming about ownership of Hooker Chemical Co., the firm that paid millions of dollars in fines for polluting Love Canal. Hooker was a subsidiary of Occidental, purchased by Hammer in 1969. At that time, insider Gore Sr. took advantage of a stock offer, well below market value, and scarfed up thousands of shares of Hooker at $150 per.
Al Gore Jr. is of course heir to all of this, and if he ever again holds a realpress conference, say critics, he just might be asked about it.
What's In A Name?
wnd.com
In her Feb. 15 column, Jeanette Walls reveals the vice president usually gives only his middle initial -- A -- when asked about his middle name. When pressed upon by a fifth grader recently, Gore asked the kid to give his full name.
In other words, the vice president won't even give a straight, direct answer to the question: "What's your name?"
Does this remind you of any recent presidents?
On his tax return, Gore lists his middle name as Albert. I always thought that was his first name. According to the Wall Street Journal, his birth certificate lists the middle name as simply the initial "A."
Very strange. Why the hypersensitivity?
A source told Walls that his parents gave him the initial as a middle name because they wanted their friend and benefactor, Armand Hammer, to believe their child was named for him. An official spokesman for the vice president questioned the veracity of the report.
With good reason the campaign wants to divert attention from the Hammer-Gore connection.
Hammer used to boast that he had Sen. Al Gore Sr. "in his back pocket." As I have reported here before, Hammer set up Gore Sr. in business before he ventured into politics, stayed close to him throughout his political career and hired him after he left office.
"Throughout the whole of his life, Al Gore Sr. and his family depended on pay-outs, kickbacks and subventions from Hammer," wrote Neil Lyndon, who worked for Hammer. "Like his father before him, Al Gore Jr.'s political career was lavishly sponsored by Hammer from the moment it began until Hammer died, only two years before Gore Clinton in the 1992 race for the White House."
Who was Hammer? He was a personal friend of V.I. Lenin. He was known as Lenin's "path" to America's financial resources. He was the first of a long line of Western businessmen to participate in KGB-controlled joint ventures in the Soviet Union. He was the son of Julius Hammer, a founder of the Socialist Labor Party and later the Communist party USA and who served time in Sing Sing for performing illegal abortions. Armand Hammer was called the "Capitalist Prince" by the KGB. He dutifully served the Soviets for seven decades and became the first -- and only -- "American capitalist" to be awarded the Order of Lenin.
According to Edward J. Epstein's "Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer," Lenin told Stalin about this so-called "industrialist": "This is a small path leading to the American 'business' world, and this path should be made use of in every way."
In other words, Hammer was a part-time spy, part-time money-launderer, part-time "industrialist" -- but a full-time traitor to the United States of America.
To the Soviet Union in his day, Hammer was a figure with much in common with the contemporary spy-cum-billionaire Mochtar Riady -- doing the bidding of socialist tyrants and making a bundle in the process.
It was Al Gore Sr. who stopped the FBI from pursuing an investigation of Hammer as a Soviet agent of influence. And the cozy relationship with the family continued when Al Gore Jr. -- whatever his real name is -- was elected to the Senate in 1980. Hammer was the guest of honor in the "senators only" section during President Reagan's inauguration.
The Hammer connection continued to define Al Gore's political career. He serves as co-chairman of a Russian-U.S. commission intended to help the next generation of Armand Hammer-style "Capitalist Princes" develop contacts with businesses that are little more than foreign intelligence fronts. In 1994, the vice president established U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technical Cooperation, better known as the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission. The purpose of the commission is to help establish join ventures in space exploration, science and technology, defense conversion, environmental initiatives, public health issues, agribusiness and economic development. The Russian side of this equation is littered with shadowy figures with one foot in the intelligence community and the other in mob-related activities.
Now you see why Al Gore Jr. is the perfect candidate to continue the Bill Clinton tradition. He's been groomed for it his whole life -- from the very day he was born.
So, at the next Democratic party town hall meeting, some one should ask the simple, straightforward question -- once again -- of candidate Al Gore: "Sir, what is your full name?"
It will be fun to watch him squirm, change the subject and evade answering. And now you'll know why.
Al Gore: A Life Of Hypocrisy, Before Climate Change It Was Tobacco
realchange.org
Al Gore's Tobacco Hypocrisy
At the Democratic national convention in 1996, Gore gaving a moving speech about his only sister's painful death from lung cancer. And since then he has pushed the administration's aggressive anti-smoking campaign.
What Gore didn't mention is that he grew up on a tobacco farm, worked on it, and continued to accept checks from that farm for years after his sister died. In 1988, while running for president, he defended tobacco farmers while campaigning in Southern tobacco states (and made the quote up above: 'I've raised tobacco ... I've shredded it, spiked it,... and sold it.') He accepted contributions from tobacco companies as late as 1990.
Gore claimed that "emotional numbness" led him to defend and profit from the tobacco industry. "Sometimes, you never fully face up to things that you ought to face up to."
Gore himself smoked during college. "Peer pressure played a factor," he said, "stress in college." We should have guessed that the guy who said "Tobacco addiction ... is just as powerful of an addiction as heroin or crack addiction" was an ex-smoker.
Gore's Lifetime Association With Crooks & Frauds
Jose Cabrera, convicted cocaine smuggler
Jose "Gordito" Cabrera is serving 19 years in prison for smuggling cocaine; he was caught in January 1996 with 3 tons of Cali cartel cocaine and (maybe worse from Gore's point of view) boxes of smuggled Cuban cigars. Earlier, he pled guilty to conspiracy to bribe a witness in a drug investigation (in 1983) and to income tax evasion in connection with another drug investigation (in 1988). He served 3 and a half years in prison on the first charge, just a year on the second.
In 1995, in between these convictions and guilty pleas, Cabrera was getting his picture taken with Al Gore at a Florida campaign event, and posing with Hillary Clinton in front of the White House Christmas tree. White House visitors routinely get a background check, which should have turned up his record. When the Miami Herald broke the story of Cabrera's convictions, the Democratic National Committee returned Cabrera's $20,000 donation (made in 1995), but the Justice Department refused to release the photos of Gordito with Gore and Hillary -- found in the drug raid that yielded the coke and cigars -- until pressured by Republicans.
Howard Glicken, illegal campaign fundraiser
Howard Glicken, a long-time fundraiser for Al Gore, is awaiting sentencing on his negotiated plea bargain for illegal fund raising. He raised $2 million for Clinton-Gore and the DNC in 1996, and owns 2 Jaguars with the vanity plates "Gore1" and "Gore2."
Glicken owns a company that brokers deals between U.S. and Latin American companies, and is not shy to use his political connections to help his work. In 1996, Glicken showed up at a Florida fundraiser, muscled 4 South American clients into it and introduced them to President Clinton and Mack McLarty, Clinton's top adviser on Latin America. Party officials tried to keep them out, but according to the Wall Street Journal, Glicken "raised a stink", saying "I raised all this money; I can bring in anybody I want." Glicken was given a coveted seat on a Commerce Department trade mission to South America in 1994. He has been hosted by the U.S. ambassadors in Argentina and Chile, and received help from the Argentine Embassy even after he pled guilty to soliciting foreign campaign contributions.
Glicken had some rough patches in his pre-Gore career. He headed the precious-metals trading division of Capital Bank in Miami, but was forced to leave in 1983 after splitting a $90,000 commission that the bank considered a kickback with his friend, Harry Falk. The commission was for helping arrange Capital Bank financing of the sale of $900,000 in Piaget watches.
Glicken then founded his own precious-metals trading company in Miami with Falk. Falk and the 6-man company itself were indicted in 1991 for laundering drug money. Glicken was not charged, but his company agreed to pay $375,000 to settle the charges, and Glicken testified against Falk in 1995 under a grant of limited immunity.
Franklin Haney, indicted for illegal campaign contributions
This Tennessee real estate developer and longtime Gore fundraiser was trying to get the FCC to move its headquarters to a development of his called "The Portals." He was also a guest on Air Force One during 1995-6.
Haney was a generous donor. He was indicted in November 1998 for 42 counts of illegal campaign contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign between 1992 and late 1995. More strikingly, he paid a $1 million fee to Peter Knight right before he became the Clinton-Gore campaign manager. Knight also ran Gore's House and Senate offices for years and helped finance his campaigns; Time calls him "the hub of Gore's political circle." Haney claims that the million bucks was a fee for "advice" on attracting the FCC to the Portals; that must have been some damn good advice. More likely, it was a contingency fee for delivering the FCC deal, using his Gore connections.
Environmental Trendiness (and Hypocrisy)
In the past, Al Gore has made his environmental positions a big part of his message, notably in his book "Earth in the Balance", which sold well. We don't critique candidates' policy positions, but some of that may come back to haunt him by making him look extreme, trendy or hypocritical.
Gore runs the risk of being shown up as a hypocrite, the way Mike Dukakis was in 1998 after Boston Harbor's pollution problem was exposed.
One example is the Pigeon River in North Carolina and east Tennesee. The Champion International paper mill has pumped tons of chemicals and byproducts into it for years, turning it the color of cofee and adding a sulfurish smell. Gore campaigned hard against this pollution and lobbied the EPA to crack down. But in 1987, as Gore started running for president the first time, he was pressured by 2 politicians whose support he craved for the North Carolina Super Tuesday primary. Terry Sanford (then a Senator) and Jamie Clarke (North Carolina congressmen) lobbied him hard to ease up on Champion. Gore did, writing to the EPA again and now asking for a more permissive water pollution standard. Sanford and Clarke endorsed him, and Gore won the state handily.
Another example is a Gore family property that has been mined for zinc and germanium for decades. The Vice-President and his dad, the late Senator Albert Gore, Sr., obtained the land in a very favorable deal with the late Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum. Gore, Sr. was heavily supported by Hammer financially, and carried his water in the U.S. Senate.
Back in 1972, when zinc was discovered across the river from the Gore family land in Carthage, TN, Hammer sent engineers out and offered $20,000 per year for a mineral rights lease on some property owned by a church that had been willed the land. Instead, they wanted to sell and Hammer won a bidding war to buy the land for $160,000. He then sold it to Gore Jr. and Sr. for the same amount, and immediately started leasing the land back from him for the same $20,000. Lynwood Burkhalter, who in the 70s was president of the company that assumed this lease from Occidental Petroleum, called the payments "extraordinarily large."
Mining is, of course, a very messy business environmentally. The mine itself hasn't been that bad. Republicans have claimed that it's polluting the local drinking water, but according to the Wall Street Journal those problems "are actually very minor."
Al Gore And His Personal Superfund Site
However, the Journal notes that the plant in Clarksville TN, which processes the Gore minerals, is a federal Superfund site contaminated with cadmium and mercury, posing "a threat to the human food chain."
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