Nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, the Senate should emphatically oppose the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Nation's Bureau of Land Management.

It is hard to believe, but she has colluded with ecoterrorists, plain and simple. She stonewalled a criminal investigation for years. She lied to the Senate, and she still holds radically dangerous views; and yet she is still the nominee of the President of the United States for this very important post. It is outrageous.

Let's begin with her ties to ecoterrorists. We worry about terrorism in this world and in this country. By her own admission in her court testimony, when she was in graduate school, she collaborated with ecoterrorists who had hammered hundreds of metal spikes into trees in a national forest. It was in Idaho.

Tree spiking involves hammering a metal rod, like this one, into a tree trunk. This can do serious damage. They put about 500 pounds of these in tree trunks in a national forest. If a logger or firefighter cuts this rod--you say, Why would a firefighter be there? They have chainsaws and they work to clear areas to try to fight fires, or a logger taking down trees--the saw will shatter, shrapnel will fly in every direction, and the user of that saw could become terribly injured or even killed. If a sawblade comes across a spike like this in a sawmill, the saw can explode. The results could be catastrophic to both life and limb.

Well, ecoterrorists who spike trees absolutely know what they are doing. It is always premeditated. Even the Washington Post has labeled tree spiking as one of the most vicious tactics of the ecoterrorists. That is what we are dealing with President Biden's nominee to be the Director of Bureau of Land Management.

You say: What is her connection to this horrible, horrible practice?

Well, she has admitted that she edited, typed, and then anonymously sent a threat letter to the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of known tree spikers. She and her Democrat defenders have claimed this letter was a warning so no one would get hurt. That is false.

Here are just a few quotes from the letter she typed and she mailed to the U.S. Forest Service:

You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could get hurt.

And:

I would be more than willing to pay you a dollar for the sale, but you would have to find me first and that could be your WORST nightmare.

Think about these lines. Think about what it must be like if you had received such a letter. She mailed this threatening letter to the target of the tree spiking--and that was the U.S. Forest Service-- because she didn't want any trees in that area to be harvested.

She and her circle of friends were investigated for their involvement with this ecoterrorist network and the attack. She was subpoenaed. She had to give hair samples, palm sample, handwriting, fingerprint samples to investigators.

All this time, she knew who the tree spikers were. She could have gone to the authorities to identify them, but she refused, didn't cooperate with investigators. The lead investigator on the case wrote a letter to Chairman Manchin and to me after she had testified in the Senate to the Energy Committee, and he referred to her as the ``nastiest of the suspects.''

He also said she not only had knowledge of the plan to spike the trees with spikes like this, she was one of the planners. She was a ringleader. The lead investigator in the criminal case wrote:

It became clear that Ms. Stone-Manning was an active member of the original group that planned the spiking of the Post Office timber sale.

Now, he wasn't the only one who said she knew about it in advance. In an interview recently, within the last couple of months, with the E&E News, one of the convicted tree spikers, one of those who went to jail for doing this, he also confirmed that Tracy Stone-Manning, the President's nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management, to be in charge of the national forests--that Tracy Stone-Manning knew of the plan to spike the trees well in advance. This was premeditated.

So who have we heard from?

We heard from the criminal who is in jail--went to jail. We heard from the cop who prosecuted the case. Both the cop and the criminal agree that she was involved and she knew about the plan to spike the trees.

According to the investigator's letter, Ms. Stone-Manning's lack of cooperation would set back the investigation for years. From 1990 until the end of 1992, the case went cold. Remember, she knew who spiked the trees. She was protecting the ecoterrorists' identities the entire time.

Eventually, Ms. Stone-Manning was identified, and she received an investigation target letter to let her know she was being targeted as part of the investigation. The lead investigator said she only agreed to testify after she was caught and after her lawyer negotiated an immunity deal to testify.

Her defenders have said she helped put the bad guys away. In fact, President Biden's nominee is one of the bad guys. She helped plan the tree spiking. She covered up the terrorist activity for years. She did not cooperate with the authorities, and she only testified after she was caught and received immunity.

After all of this, she lied to the Committee about the incident. On a sworn affidavit in her Committee questionnaire, she said she was not the target of any investigation. We know that is a lie. We know she received a letter that she was a target of the investigation.

She complained in the press about how degrading it was to be investigated. Then why did she tell us she was never investigated and told the press how bad it was and degrading to be investigated?

She also admitted to the press that she could have been charged with a crime if not for her immunity deal.

She also lied about her involvement in the tree spiking. I asked her directly:

Did you have personal knowledge of, participate in, or in any way directly or indirectly support activities associated with the spiking of trees in any forest during your lifetime?

And she replied ``no.''

She sent their letter. She knew the plan in advance. She knew their identities, and she refused to tell the authorities.

How is that not supporting activities associated with ecoterrorism and tree spiking?

Finally, Senate Democrats are very quick to say this tree-spiking episode was decades ago, can't be relevant anymore, in spite of the fact that it is a Federal crime--as if collusion with terrorists is just a youthful indiscretion. But she lied this year when she came to testify to the U.S. Senate. She lied to our committee and she lied to this institution.

It is clear to me that her radical views have not changed. In September of 2020, 1 year ago, she tweeted an article written by her husband that calls--because she would be in charge of areas related to the forest--retweeted an article by her husband that calls for homes in forests to be left to burn during wildfires.

Senator Sullivan talked about the fires in Alaska. We have had fires in Wyoming. We have firefighters in there protecting structures and human life.

Her husband says: Let them burn.

Her husband wrote:

There's a rude and satisfying justice in burning down the house of someone who builds in the forest.

``Rude and satisfying justice in burning down'' someone's home.

Tracy Stone-Manning isn't responsible for the views of her husband, but a year ago--not as graduate student decades ago--we are talking now, as wildfires burn across the country, she actually endorsed her husband's views on letting the houses burn. In a tweet, she called her husband's writing a ``clarion call.''

Well, clarion call, if you look it up, means a call to action.

As the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning would be in charge of firefighting operations on public lands. Yet her husband and the things she retweets say: Let it burn.

Apparently, she is comfortable leaving the houses and homes of our constituents in the Rocky Mountain West to burn because they built their homes in the forest. I have constituents who have homes in the forest. I am sure almost every Senator does. This tweet wasn't 30 years ago. This tweet was 1 year ago.

Who actually thinks her beliefs are different today?

Her views on firefighting are just the tip of the iceberg. In her graduate thesis, she actually argued that Americans need to have fewer children. You know why? Because she says children are a threat to the environment. She actually called children ``environmental hazards.''

Can you find the environmental hazard in this photo?

She told her readers to ``stop at one or two.''

She even made ads like this one to promote these ideas, the child as an environmental hazard. And she is the nominee of the President of the United States for an important position in this government.

She answered her own question by saying: Oh, yes, you can find the environmental hazard, ``that's right, it's the cute baby.''

This thesis isn't the only time she argued for human population control. In an essay in the High Country News, she said Americans were ``breeding our weapons'' in the war on the grizzly bear. She concludes that essay by saying: ``We should wage war on overpopulation.''

These are ideas you hear in communist China, not from the nominee to be the Director of the Bureau of Land Management in the United States.

Mr. President, there are many qualified Democrats who could run the Bureau of Land Management and do a fine job of it. We should reject this nomination, and the President can nominate someone else.

It is astonishing to me to see Democrats digging in to defend a proven liar, an ecoterrorist collaborator who still holds very dangerous and threatening beliefs.

Bob Abbey was the BLM Director under President Barack Obama. He said her actions ``should disqualify her'' from leading this important Agency. One Biden administration official admitted on NBC News her nomination was a ``massive vetting failure.'' So Obama's BLM Director said she should be disqualified--her actions should disqualify her--and a Biden administration official calls it a ``massive vetting failure.''

And when our Committee asked the Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, about Stone-Manning's views, her response was: ``I didn't nominate her.''

Well, no, she didn't. The President of the United States did. This is clearly not a rousing endorsement coming from fellow Democrats--the White House, former BLM Director under President Obama, and now the Secretary of Interior.

If she is confirmed, Senate Democrats will be held wholly responsible. They should consider carefully if they want their name associated with Tracy Stone-Manning. Tracy Stone-Manning should never be the Director of the Bureau of Land Management.

I strongly oppose her nomination. Every Republican--every Republican--strongly opposes her nomination, and Senate Democrats should do the same.

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