Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Gore's oily family friends, Bush's profitable Harvard connections and other stories you're not likely to read about.
Jan 21, 2000 | Vice President Al Gore delivered a scathing speech back on Oct. 7, 1997, at Georgetown University in Washington chiding those who "ignore the scientific warnings [about global warming] and continue stubbornly on our current course." How will our children and grandchildren ever forgive us, Gore asked, if we do not act in the face of overwhelming evidence that burning more oil and coal is changing the earth's climate?
On that very same day, thanks to recommendations Gore made as part of his crusade to "reinvent government," the Department of Energy announced that Occidental Petroleum was buying the Elk Hills reserve in California, 47,000 acres of oil-rich, publicly owned land that had been off-limits to commercial development since 1912. President Nixon had tried to open up Elk Hills to private interests in 1973, after the first oil shock. President Reagan tried three separate times to do the same. Each time, Congress blocked the sale. But Al Gore, with President Clinton's help, succeeded.
The purchase of Elk Hills tripled Occidental Petroleum's domestic oil reserves overnight. It also enriched Occidental's stockholders, including Gore's father, Al Gore Sr. The elder Gore owned more than $500,000 worth of Occidental stock at the time of the Elk Hills purchase in 1997. When he died the following year, his son became the executor of his estate and, according to the vice president's federal income disclosure forms, the estate continued, as of May 1999, to hold the Occidental stock.
The close relationship Gore and his father have enjoyed with Occidental Petroleum is detailed in "The Buying of the President 2000," a new book by Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity. Lewis is the founder and executive director of the center, a nonpartisan watchdog group of journalists in Washington whose scoops include the Lincoln Bedroom fund-raising scandal. A former investigative reporter with "60 Minutes" and ABC News, Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1990. In two previous books, "The Buying of the President" (1996) and "The Buying of the Congress," and nearly 40 reports, the center's journalists have relentlessly illuminated one of the most important political stories in the United States today: what politicians appear to do in return for their biggest funders. For any American who doesn't want to be a chump this election year, "The Buying of the President 2000" is an essential read. It also has the promise of making life miserable for every leading presidential candidate -- if the nation's political journalists take the trouble to read the book.
"The Buying of the President 2000" reports that Occidental gave $50,000 after one of Gore's fund-raising calls from his White House office. "Indeed," according to the book, "since Gore became part of the Democratic ticket in the summer of 1992, Occidental has given more than $470,000 in soft money to various Democratic committees and causes." And Gore himself has received $35,550 in Occidental campaign contributions during that same period, the center estimates.
And there's much, much more: Lewis' fascinating dissection of the more than 50-year relationship between Gore's family and Occidental Petroleum begins when the elder Gore was serving in the House of Representatives. Occidental was then run by Armand Hammer, once described as "the godfather of American corporate corruption" and a master of double-dealing who laundered funds and placed spies in the United States for Moscow to protect his vast oil and gas holdings in the Soviet Union. Hammer buddied up to Gore Sr. by putting him on the payroll of his New Jersey cattle ranch in the 1940s. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wanted to prosecute Hammer, but backed off for fear of Hammer's friends in Congress, including Gore, who ascended to the Senate in 1952. Before long, charges "The Buying of the President 2000," the advantages of being friends with Hammer were inevitably passed on to Gore Jr.
