[Mb-civic] From Teapot Dome to Gale Norton By Kelpie Wilson

[Michael Butler]

    From Teapot Dome to Gale Norton
    By Kelpie Wilson
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Sunday 19 March 2006

    The rights of the public to the nation's natural resources outweigh
private rights.
    -- Teddy Roosevelt

    Nothing dollarable is safe, however guarded.
    -- John Muir

    As the Teapot Dome scandal of Warren G. Harding's presidency was one
milestone in the history of American resource piracy, the tenure of Gale
Norton as Secretary of the Interior is surely another.

    Harding's Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, failed in his scheme to sell
off the Teapot Dome oil reserves and pocket the money. He was prosecuted and
sentenced to a year in prison. Gale Norton's timely exit on the heels of the
Abramoff scandal that implicates top Interior Department officials could
mean that she is worried, but it is not likely that she will face any
prosecution for her giveaways to industry.

    Harding, like G.W. Bush, had little regard for proper English - Harding
called for a return to "normalcy," while Bush says we should not
"misunderestimate" him. On Harding's death, the poet E. E. Cummings said:
"The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with
seven grammatical errors is dead." But just as Bush surpasses Harding as a
mangler of language, so the Bush administration far outstrips the Harding
administration in the game of looting.

    Gone are the days when corrupt officials took payments in "little black
bags," as Albert Fall received his $100,000 payment for the Teapot Dome oil
lease from Harry F. Sinclair. Fall also received a shipment from Sinclair of
"six heifers, a yearling bull, two six-months-old boars, four sows and ...
an English thoroughbred horse."

    Today our new reality is that the tycoons and the officials are actually
the same persons, or at least part of the same hive. Like insects that go
through a complex life cycle from larva to pupa tof egg-laying adult, people
like Gale Norton and her deputy secretary Stephen J. Griles will go from
lobbyist to regulator to corporate board member. At every stage of the life
cycle they have one purpose: to direct the flow of resources back to the
corporate nest.

    And so, when Norton claims she is leaving the Interior Department to set
"new goals to achieve in the private sector," you know that she will be well
supplied with hogs, heifers and whatever lucrative lawyering job she wants.

    Gale Norton's number one tool, which she used like a common thief slips
a credit card up a door jamb to spring a cheap lock, is the ideology known
as "Wise Use." The "Wise Use" doctrine is founded on anti-government
rhetoric that advocates eliminating any environmental regulations that might
restrict economic development. Because she was so well known as a "Wise Use"
ideologue, only John Ashcroft was a more controversial cabinet appointment
in Bush's first term.

    During her tenure as Secretary, Norton advanced this agenda through
regulatory rollbacks, suppression of science, preferential treatment, and
collusion with industry. For the most part, she was unable to enshrine "Wise
Use" principles in regulations, with the exception of her new National Park
Service regulations.

    Norton proceeded to revamp the Park Service regulations despite the lack
of any identified need for new rules. Now in the final phase of adoption,
the new directive drastically changes the mission of our national parks from
preservation to commercially sponsored recreation. If these rules are
adopted, park managers won't be able to prevent development that harms
wildlife and other natural features, and corporate logos will spring up like
daisies.

    These rules also require newly hired staff to take what amounts to a
loyalty oath to the policies of the current administration. A loyalty oath
may be the solution to the sticky problem of science that Norton kept
running into. When her agency biologists reported that drilling in the
Arctic Refuge would harm caribou, Norton rewrote the report before
submitting it to Congress. She also suppressed a finding by the US Fish &
Wildlife Service that new Army Corps rules for permitting development would
devastate wetlands.

    In fact, Norton created a climate of intimidation at the Interior
Department that functions almost as effectively as an unconstitutional
loyalty oath would: Last year the Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility took a survey of Fish & Wildlife Service biologists and found
that more than half of the respondents said agency officials had reversed or
withdrawn the biologists' scientific conclusions under pressure from
industry groups.

    Lying to Congress and suppressing scientific findings. How is it that
these are not prosecutable offenses?

    In 2001, Oregon potato farmers in the upper portion of the Klamath River
suffering from a prolonged drought demanded that the Interior Department
give them water dedicated to fish. Gale Norton complied, and in 2002, at
least 35,000 salmon died at the mouth of the Klamath. The Klamath runs are
now so low that the Fisheries Service is preparing to close the salmon
fishing season, ruining a $150 million dollar industry. Gale Norton is
responsible. Why can't she be indicted for ruining a precious and
irreplaceable natural resource?

    Norton's supporters, like the National Association of Manufacturers,
praise her primarily for her role in opening up the West to massive amounts
of new energy development. Interior Department staff began referring to
Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico as the "OPEC states," as the drilling
permits multiplied and flew through the bureaucracy with minimal review and
consultation with local citizens.

    Norton's own proudest accomplishment, she says, was implementing her
"four C's" program - a supposedly new approach to public involvement that
included "communication, consultation and cooperation, all in the service of
conservation."

    Unfortunately, the four C's seem only to apply to industry and not to
local people. Take for instance the town of Grand Junction, Colorado. Last
September the BLM informed the city that a few hundred acres in the town's
watershed used for drinking water supplies would be offered for oil and gas
drilling. Then in December, at the end of the public comment period, the BLM
told the town that actually several thousand acres would be leased for
drilling. The agency withheld the information because it would otherwise
"taint" the competitive bidding process. The town does not want any drilling
at all in their watershed. Why can't Gale Norton be indicted for destroying
a town's water supply?

    I can testify that the same process is happening in BLM's western forest
lands where, on orders from Gale Norton, the BLM is tossing the Northwest
Forest Plan out the window and preparing to log every last old growth forest
that they manage in Washington, Oregon and California. Many public meetings
are held, but they are all a waste of time because the communication,
consultation and cooperation are not intended for local people but only for
the timber industry.

    Under Gale Norton's leadership, the Department of Interior has become
nothing less than a big box store for the mining, timber, oil, gas, and coal
industries. As CEO, Norton has eliminated all rivals to give her corporate
customers "low, low prices every day." Meanwhile, fish and wildlife and all
the rest of us who need clean air and water underwrite the true cost.

    Bush's new nominee for Secretary of the Interior, Idaho Governor Dirk
Kempthorne, is known for his animosity toward protecting the last wild
roadless areas in Idaho. Unless something changes in Congress or the White
House, unless Gale Norton is somehow made to pay the price for her looting
of public resources, there is no doubt that he will keep the store open for
business.

    Kelpie Wilson is the t r u t h o u t environment editor. A veteran
forest protection activist and mechanical engineer, she writes from her
solar-powered cabin in the Siskiyou Mountains of southwest Oregon.