Interior Department: You've got mail

WASHINGTON - Let's suppose an energy company decided it would send e-mails to almost 60,000 employees of the Interior Department appealing to them to disclose data and other information useful to the energy company. To facilitate the process, the energy company set up a confidential phone tipline to receive the information.

If this were true, the hue and cry over it never would end. At the very least, there would be congressional hearings into the despicable scheme. But in truth, this really did happen; only the perpetrators were an environmental organization seeking to intimidate Interior Department employees.

The Campaign to Protect America's Lands e-mailed federal workers seeking to enlist them in a plan to discredit the Bush administration. The e-mail says, "I am appealing directly to you, as an employee of the Interior Department, for assistance in understanding the operations and activities of the department that are detrimental to America's public lands, parks, refuges or wilderness areas."

The rationale for trying to turn federal employees against the administration seems to be that CPAL thinks President Bush will lose re-election and push through various favors to private enterprise in his final days of office. If this has a familiar ring to it, it's probably because Bill Clinton was accused of doing the same thing at the end of his two terms; only then the environmental community applauded his executive orders and proclamations.

In 1996, Clinton used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate the Grand Staircase-

Escalante National Monument in Utah. The fight over that designation still is going on. Lawyers for an association of Utah counties have asked a federal judge to abolish the monument. The contention is that Clinton misused the act to designate wilderness areas, a power rightfully belonging to Congress.

The point is that the CPAL e-mail blast is just pure politics. Environmental groups liked it when Clinton used executive orders and proclamations to further their agenda. They now fear Bush using the same methods. Bush, more so than Clinton, has tried to balance environmental concerns with the nation's pressing energy needs and growth of the economy. Farmers and ranchers recognize the need for domestic energy development and local and state input into public lands decisions.

The Campaign to Protect Public Lands receives major funding from the Rockefeller Family Fund. The late Nelson Rockefeller was involved in its creation. Rockefeller served the nation as vice president and was governor of New York. In 1953, he headed a presidential advisory committee that recommended sweeping changes to federal departments. If he were alive today, Rocke-

feller surely wouldn't approve of CPAL using money obtained from the Rockefeller Family Fund to harass federal employees.

A spokesman for the Interior Department defends the administration's record of land management and environmental stewardship. One example given is the restoration of more than 700,000 acres of prairie grasslands and uplands through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a division of Interior.

Interior Department employees do not need to report to Big Environmental-Brother to do their jobs well.Stewart Truelsen

Truelsen is director of broadcast services for American Farm Bureau Federation.

Source: http://www.grandforks.com/mld/agweek/news/opinion/8301461.htm