Nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, in 1989, Tracy Stone-Manning rented a typewriter to draft and then send a letter threatening those who might choose to harvest trees. The letter stated that the trees in question had been sabotaged with hundreds of pounds of spikes. She closed the letter with: ``You bastards go in there anyway,'' meaning notwithstanding her threat, ``and a lot of people could get hurt.''

She and her cohorts thus used the threat of physical violence to achieve a political goal. This is the definition of terrorism.

In 1993, multiple associates of Ms. Stone-Manning were convicted of tree spiking by a Federal jury. Though she signed and swore that the information provided to the committee was ``to the best of [her] knowledge and belief, current, accurate, and complete,'' Ms. Stone- Manning told the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that she had never been investigated.

This was, in fact, not true. It was widely reported that in 1990, Ms. Stone-Manning was required to give hair samples, a full set of fingerprints, and writing samples. This was already a year after she had conspired with her circle of friends, members of the radical environmentalist group Earth First!. She was still not cooperating with the authorities.

Now, how do we know that she was, in fact, a target of the investigation and not simply a bystander? Well, we know that based on a letter from Michael Merkley, a retired special agent criminal investigator for the Forest Service. He writes the following:

[The witness] described how Ms. Stone-Manning typed and mailed the letter to the Forest Service. She also recounted a conversation she had overheard wherein Ms. Stone-Manning along with other co-conspirators planned the tree spiking and discussed whether to use ceramic or metal spikes in the trees.

As a result of [the witness's] testimony, the grand jury sent Ms. Stone-Manning a ``target letter'' which meant she was going to be indicted on criminal charges for her active participation in planning these crimes. She hired an attorney who negotiated a deal with an Assistant United States Attorney to gain immunity in exchange for her testimony against the other defendants.

Ms. Stone-Manning did not gain immunity simply for being a good person or a model citizen. No, she traded her knowledge after withholding it for years. This is verified by her own admission in the May 21, 1993, edition of the Missoulian, reading:

Stone-Manning said she could have been charged with conspiracy . . . were it not for the agreement she reached with the U.S. attorney.

Furthermore, she received a target letter, meaning she knew very well that she had been under investigation.

This is a direct contradiction of a sworn statement that she made to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on which I serve, so she deliberately misled U.S. Senators. Unfortunately, Ms. Stone-Manning has been able to deceive a lot of people. Even a White House official acknowledged that this was a ``massive vetting failure.''

So what exactly did this tree spiking involve? Well, it involved spikes like these, spikes made of steel that, when placed into a tree, can cause widespread damage to those harvesting the trees, those milling the trees They have maimed many and wounded many others as a result of radical environmentalists taking this tactic to try to stop the harvesting of timber on Federal lands.

Now, regardless of how you may feel about timber-harvesting policy on Federal lands, I think all Americans of good faith and conscience can agree that it is not a good idea to use terrorism to advance your goals and that it is not a good idea to use threats of physical violence and present people with a real, foreseeable, and, in fact, foreseen and intended risk that they will be harmed or could even die as a result of the 500 pounds of these tree spikes that they placed in the trees in question.

So, yes, the White House admitted that this was a vetting failure, and a vetting failure it was. It was either a vetting failure or no one at the administration cared when Tracy Stone-Manning tweeted out only months ago an article written by her husband, an article that itself states: ``There's a rude and satisfying justice in burning down the house of someone who builds in the forest.''

When she tweeted out this story, apparently with her approval, she called it a clarion call--her words, not mine--seeming almost to celebrate their misfortune, to revel in the misery and loss of those who had just had their homes destroyed, oftentimes as a result of chronic mismanagement on Federal lands in allowing fuel to build up and remain untreated.

There are plenty of homes in forests in Utah. I presume that there are plenty of homes elsewhere--that there are plenty of homes in Arizona, in Montana, in California, in Colorado, in Nevada, in West Virginia, and elsewhere. So I would ask the question: How can we entrust the responsibility to protect the homes of those Americans who live on or near a forest from forest fire to an individual who actively advocated only months ago for their demise and who, apparently, celebrated their demise?

Lastly and, perhaps, most heinously, revelations have also come out regarding research that she conducted for her thesis. In 1992, Tracy Stone-Manning published her graduate student thesis at the University of Montana, entitled ``Into the Heart of the Beast: A Case for Environmental Advertising,'' which espoused several radical views on population and grazing.

In this thesis, she published a photo of a child with the caption-- this photo with this caption right here. It has a picture of a young child, a toddler. ``Can you find the environmental hazard in this photo?'' She then indicated that the child--this baby--was the environmental hazard.

She then elaborates:

Americans believe that overpopulation is only a problem somewhere else in the world. But it's a problem here too. . . . We breed more than any other industrialized nation. At the same time, we suck up one-third of the world's energy. . . . When we overpopulate, the earth notices it more. Stop at two. It could be the best thing you do for the planet. . . . Do the truly smart thing. Stop at one or two kids.

This is a fringe belief. It is a dangerous belief. Not only is it factually flawed, but it is morally repugnant. As a father of three, I am repulsed, ashamed, and saddened. As much as anything, as the resident of a State, two-thirds of which is owned by the Federal Government and 40 percent of which is under the direct management and control of the Bureau of Land Management, the entity that she has been nominated to head, I am mortified that she is going to be in charge of all of that land, because this is how she views human beings.

We should all accept the fact that human beings are assets; they are blessings. They are not liabilities. Children are beautiful gifts from Heaven above, not environmental hazards.

I have consistently voiced outrage at China's one-child policy, and we are here today, voting on a nominee who calls for a similar action-- telling parents in the most condescending tone imaginable: ``Stop at one or two kids.'' According to Ms. Stone-Manning, we are simply breeding too much.

So now we must ask ourselves: Will this body advance the nomination of a person who played a central role in endangering the lives of foresters and sawmillers, who engaged in acts of reckless and deliberately harmful environmental terrorism in using 500 pounds of tree spikes, who attempted to deceive Members of the U.S. Senate about these same violent actions, who has advocated for homes to be left to burn in the wilderness, indicating that she would celebrate when that happened, and who has called children an environmental hazard?

The Director of the Bureau of Land Management, the position that Ms. Stone-Manning has been nominated to fill, has immense discretionary power. This isn't simply a matter that is concerning for symbolic reasons. It is that, too, but far more than that. If confirmed to this position, she is going to have immense discretionary power.

Could we rest knowing that she was at the helm of the Bureau of Land Management, making decisions about grazing, wildfire response, wildfire prevention, suppression, and rehabilitation and everything else that the Bureau of Land Management is charged with? I could not. I cannot and I will not. So I urge my colleagues to reject her nomination.

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