http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/3/23/194456 BardTitle: Part I -- Al Gore's Skeletons: The Hammer Connection
 |
|
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
Part I -- Al Gore's Skeletons: The Hammer Connection
Reed IrvineRead the book Gore: A Political Life by: Bob Zelnick...purchase your copy in our Online Store. This begins a NewsMax.com special three-part series on Vice-President Al Gore. Reed Irvine is a media critic and Chairman of Accuracy in Media. In January 1997, Bob Zelnick, a veteran ABC News correspondent, obtained permission from ABC to write a biography of Vice President Al Gore Jr. In September, 1997, after he had spent eight months researching it, and only weeks before his contract was up for renewal, ABC News told him that if he wanted his contract renewed, he would have to give up writing the book and return the advance he had received from the publisher. Zelnick says that he was told that it was a conflict of interest for him to write a book about someone he might be covering in the presidential contest a few years down the road. Zelnick commented, "This is a standard that has never been applied by any network or any other news organization to any journalist. You should be happy when there are journalists who know enough to author a book on the subject.� Zelnick refused to comply with the ABC demand, and "Gore, A Political Life" was published by Regnery last year. He is now teaching journalism at Boston University. His book is not one that the Gore campaign will be recommending to voters. It would be out of character for the Clinton White House not to let ABC News know that it would prefer that Bob Zelnick not write a biography of Al Gore, and that is the most reasonable explanation for ABC�s sudden withdrawal of its approval of the project. The TV networks have shown that they like to do favors for the Clinton White House. Early on in the project, Zelnick says he was informed by the vice president�s office that Gore had decided against cooperating with him. Zelnick says that Gore�s office told him that he would "personally resent attempts to contact his family, particularly his aged parents.� This is understandable. The Gore family has a closet full of skeletons, and when you aspire to the presidency of the United States you don�t want a nosey reporter opening up closet doors. Zelnick has a good reputation as a reporter. During his more than two decades in the media, he covered Capitol Hill, the Middle East, Russia and the Pentagon. He won numerous journalism awards, including two American Bar Association Gavel Awards and two Emmys. Hammer Ties "Extremely Sensitive� Roy Neel, a former top Gore aide, told Zelnick that Gore was "extremely sensitive� about his father�s connection with the late Armand Hammer, the head of Occidental Petroleum, who was notorious for his close ties to the Soviet Union. When Gore Sr. was first elected to Congress in 1938, he was a poor schoolteacher. But by the time he was elected to the Senate in 1952, he had become rich enough to live in a plush hotel on Washington�s embassy row and send Al Jr. to the expensive St. Albans School in Washington. Armand Hammer had helped make Al Gore Sr. a wealthy man. Zelnick�s book and a new book just released in January, "The Buying of the President 2000" by Charles Lewis and published by his organization, the Center for Public Integrity, tell how Armand Hammer bought the services of Al Gore, Sr. and helped Al Jr. launch his political career. Hammer�s father, Julius, had linked up with Lenin in 1907 and had agreed to become part of Lenin�s underground cadre dedicated to the proletariat revolution. After Lenin seized power in Russia in 1917, Julius used his company, Allied Drug and Chemical, to ship goods to the Soviet Union, and used money from the sale of diamonds smuggled to the United States to finance the Communist Labor Party. That name was later changed to the Communist Party, USA. Lenin granted young Armand Hammer a monopoly on the manufacture of pencils in the Soviet Union. He used him to raise money in the United States through the sale of confiscated Czarist art and jewelry. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wanted to prosecute Hammer for his activities on behalf of the Soviet government, but Charles Lewis says that "Hammer had friends in Congress who, Hoover believed, would attempt to protect him from prosecution.� Hammer had bragged that he had Sen. Albert Gore Sr. "in my back pocket.� Hammer helped Gore Sr. get started raising Black Angus cattle, giving him sperm from his own prize stock. Zelnick says residents in the area where the Gore farm was located claim that Gore was able to sell his cattle at much higher prices than anyone else in the area. They say that "lobbyists and others with an interest in Gore�s work� would come to Carthage and "bid outrageously high prices for Gore�s stock.� One of them was Joe DiMaggio, who in 1958 bought ten calves from Gore "on behalf of clients whose identities he refused to disclose.� Zelnick says the prices paid cannot be documented, but newspaper records show that "many distinguished folks� came to buy the Gores' cattle. He quotes former Governor Ned McWherter, a staunch ally of Al Gore Jr., as saying, "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.� Zelnick also claims that in 1969, when Hammer bought the Hooker Chemical Co. (of Love Canal fame), he sold Gore Sr. 1,000 shares of Hooker stock for $150 a share, far less than the stock was worth. House majority leader Hale Boggs accused Hammer of having violated insider trading rules in buying Hooker, but "a Securities Exchange Commission investigation proved inconclusive.� When Gore Sr. was defeated for reelection in 1970, Hammer made him president of Occidental�s coal division, paying him $500,000 a year, which was extremely generous compensation at that time. Read the book Gore: A Political Life by: Bob Zelnick...purchase your copy in our Online Store.
E-mail a Comment to NewsMax.com Discuss this Article in NewsMax.com's Forum
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
