-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
March 19, 2000
THE VICE PRESIDENT
Gore Family's Ties to Oil Company
Magnate Reap Big Rewards, and a Few
Problems
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
CARTHAGE, Tenn. -- On the third
page of Vice President Al Gore's
most recent financial disclosure report,
after routine listings for his salary and the
value of his house in Washington and his
small farm here, is an unlikely entry --
$20,000 for leasing land for zinc mining.
Behind the yearly lease payment, which
has earned Mr. Gore about $450,000
since 1974, is the story of a sweetheart
land deal from long ago, and the ties
between the vice president and his family
and Armand Hammer and his oil
company, Occidental Petroleum.
While the origins of that relationship lie in
these rolling hills of middle Tennessee
and date back half a century, it has
continued to bring both benefits and
scrutiny for Mr. Gore as he has moved
through Congress to the White House
and finally toward his party's presidential
nomination.
For instance, Occidental gave $50,000
to the Democratic Party for the 1996
campaign after a telephone solicitation by
Mr. Gore from his White House office
and another $100,000 after its chief
executive, Ray Irani, spent two nights in
the Lincoln Bedroom in 1996.
More recently, Occidental stock in the
estate of Mr. Gore's father has made the
vice president a target for environmental
groups. They have demonstrated at
about 30 Gore rallies, opposing the oil
company's plans to drill on land in Colombia that Indians contend is
theirs.
The broad outlines of the Gore-Hammer-Occidental connection have
been reported at various points in the vice president's career, with bits
and pieces of it published in books and articles over the years. Mr.
Gore's father, Albert Gore Sr., even described the ties in a memorandum
for the Clinton campaign when aides were checking his son's background
before picking him as the running mate in 1992.
Now, as the pasts and legacies of both Mr. Gore and Gov. George W.
Bush of Texas come under scrutiny in a new presidential campaign, the
relationship of the Gore family with Mr. Hammer is once again drawing
attention.
Essentially, Mr. Hammer sold the farmland to the elder Mr. Gore, then
Mr. Gore turned around and sold it to his son, who was then a
newspaper reporter in Nashville.
On Tuesday, Mr. Gore said in Nashville that there had been nothing
improper about his family's relationship with Occidental and that the
company's mineral lease on the farmland had been the result of a free
market negotiation.
Officials with Mr. Gore's campaign and his White House office do not
dispute the basic elements of the land deal. They also said that there had
been nothing wrong with the transaction or with Mr. Gore's subsequent
dealings with Occidental and Mr. Hammer, who died in 1990.
The aides said the roots of the deal and the relationship were in the
friendship between Mr. Gore's father, who died in 1998, and Mr.
Hammer.
The elder Mr. Gore was a member of the House and Mr. Hammer was a
wealthy businessman when they met in the 1940's at a livestock auction
near the Gore family farm here, about 50 miles east of Nashville.
Eventually the two men entered into a partnership raising and selling
cattle, but that was only the start of a connection that lasted until Mr.
Hammer's death.
Over the years, Mr. Hammer would become a legendary tycoon,
courting politicians and leaders worldwide and operating many
businesses.
His close ties with the Soviet Union, where he had run a family company
for nine years as a young man, and his freewheeling ethics brought him
brushes with the law. In 1976, he was convicted of illegally contributing
$54,000 to President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 campaign, though he
was later pardoned. Along the way, Mr. Hammer helped make the elder
Mr. Gore a wealthy man, and the politician became one of the oilman's
most valued allies in Washington. When J. Edgar Hoover, the director of
the F.B.I., wanted to prosecute Mr. Hammer on suspicion of being an
agent of the Soviet Union in the early 1960's, Mr. Gore Sr. defended him
on the Senate floor. Mr. Hammer was not charged.
Letters in the elder Mr. Gore's papers, which are in an archive at Middle
Tennessee State University, show that he provided many other favors to
Mr. Hammer.
For instance, he intervened with the Defense Department when Mr.
Hammer's son, Julian, was having trouble getting a security clearance
because of legal problems, and he persuaded the F.B.I. to let an agent
testify on behalf of Mr. Hammer's company in a civil trial, according to
the letters.
In 1965, Mr. Gore Sr. helped obtain visas to Libya for Mr. Hammer, his
wife and two business associates when Occidental was trying to open oil
fields in that country, according to a letter. The Libyan oil concession
transformed Occidental into a major player in the oil market.
Mr. Hammer repaid the favors in many ways, large and small. He sent
expensive Christmas gifts to Mr. Gore Sr. and his wife, Pauline,
according to the letters. After Mr. Gore was defeated in his 1970 Senate
re-election bid, Mr. Hammer appointed him chairman of an Occidental
subsidiary and put him on the parent company's board of directors. One
of Mr. Hammer's biographers, Edward Jay Epstein, wrote that Mr. Gore
had never been rich until he went to work for Mr. Hammer.
Another fruit of the friendship was the zinc-mining lease. Mr. Gore Sr.
had leased some of his farmland to Occidental for mining after zinc was
discovered in the area in the 1960's. In 1972, Occidental bought a
nearby farm, plus its mineral rights, for $160,000 at Mr. Hammer's
insistence. Mr. Gore Sr. said he had suggested that Occidental buy the
land.
How the vice president came to own the second farm was recounted in a
1992 article in The Washington Post and described in a statement that
the elder Mr. Gore prepared for an arbitration case involving another
mineral lease.
In the statement, Mr. Gore Sr. said Mr. Hammer told him after buying
the nearby farm that the company wanted only the mineral rights and had
no need for the land. Mr. Hammer asked Mr. Gore Sr. to buy the
property from Occidental. The elder Mr. Gore said he agreed to buy the
land for the same price of $160,000, but insisted that Occidental pay him
$20,000 a year for the mineral rights, well above the price for most
leases in the area. Mr. Hammer agreed and Occidental sold the land to
Mr. Gore Sr. in 1973.
The terms were highly favorable for the elder Mr. Gore because, with the
annual lease payment from Occidental, he would be able to recoup what
he paid for the land in just eight years.
Land records here show that a year later, 1974, the younger Mr. Gore,
then a newspaper reporter, paid his father $140,000 for the land and the
mineral lease.
The price was apparently reduced because his father had received one
year's lease payment.
Mr. Gore has owned the land, and collected the lease payments, ever
since, although there was no mining there until 1985, after Occidental
sold the mineral rights to Union Zinc. The rights have changed hands
twice since then and the current owner is Pasminco, an Australian
company.
Mr. Gore's farm is a hilly parcel of 88 acres with a single-story brick
house overlooking the Caney Fork River, about two miles east of
Carthage, his hometown. Guardhouses on roads to the front and back of
the house are the only indications that the modest home is owned by Mr.
Gore, who rarely visits.
The pastures are laced with tunnels more than 1,000 feet deep for mining
zinc, which is used primarily to prevent corrosion in steel. The mine itself,
surrounded by large piles of tailings, sits about half a mile down a gravel
road from Mr. Gore's house on a separate piece of land owned outright
by Pasminco.
The long-running mineral lease was not the only link between the younger
Mr. Gore and Mr. Hammer. While in Congress, Mr. Gore was host to
Mr. Hammer at President Ronald Reagan's 1985 inauguration and at
President George Bush's inauguration in 1989.
Former Senator Paul Simon of Illinois wrote in a 1989 book that Mr.
Hammer promised him "any cabinet spot I wanted" to withdraw from the
1988 Democratic presidential primary race and support the younger Mr.
Gore's candidacy. There was no indication that Mr. Gore knew of Mr.
Hammer's offer.
Mr. Gore's connections to Occidental resurfaced this year after the
company bought the federal government's share of a huge oil field near
Bakersfield, Calif., known as Elk Hills. The 47,000-acre tract was
acquired by the government in 1912 to ensure that the Navy had plenty
of oil reserves, but it was deemed no longer necessary.
The government had tried to sell Elk Hills since the Reagan
administration, but succeeded only two years ago as part of Mr. Gore's
initiative to streamline the bureaucracy and "reinvent government."
The Energy Department sold the property to Occidental for $3.65 billion
in cash through a competitive bidding process that drew 22 offers.
Department officials said Occidental's price was twice the next-highest
bid and double what the government had estimated. The sale was
announced in October 1997 and completed in February 1998.
Questions were raised earlier this year about the extent of Mr. Gore's
role in the sale in a book, "The Buying of the President 2000," by Charles
Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington nonprofit
organization. Energy Department officials provided some records but
declined to release the bid documents, saying they remain confidential.
Patricia Fry Godley, who oversaw the sale as an assistant secretary of
the Energy Department, said Elk Hills had been put on the block because
the Navy no longer needed its oil reserves. She said the selection had
been made under the general orders of the "reinventing government"
program, but that neither Mr. Gore nor anyone from his office had been
involved in the choice of Elk Hills or its sale.
Records show other federal agencies had concerns about the sale. The
Environmental Protection Agency complained to the Energy Department
that the E.P.A.
had insufficient information to assess the impact of the sale. The United
States Fish and Wildlife Service questioned the impact of developing the
oil field on several endangered species within the 47,000 acres.
Energy Department officials went ahead with the sale because they said
they were under pressure to meet a sale deadline imposed by Congress
and that all environmental concerns had been met before the deal was
closed.
The Elk Hills purchase sent Occidental's share price up about 10 percent
at the time, which increased the value of stock held by Mr. Gore Sr.
Since his death, the stock has remained in his estate, whose primary
beneficiary is his wife.
The vice president's most recent financial disclosure report valued the
stock at $250,000 to $500,000.
Mr. Gore is executor of the estate, but his aides say that he exercises no
control over the stock in the estate and has never owned Occidental
stock himself.
But it is the estate holding that is making him a target of environmental
groups protesting Occidental's activities in Colombia. Stephen
Kretzmann of Amazon Watch, one of the groups, said Mr. Gore met
with him and several other environmentalists last month.
Mr. Kretzmann said Mr. Gore explained that he could not interfere in a
Colombian internal issue or Occidental's practices.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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