Issue Paper from the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise April 5, 1994 GORE-GATE UPDATE: an Abuse of Power Vice President Al Gore convinced ABC News Nightline's Ted Koppel to unwittingly use an environmentalist attack strategy against the Wise Use Movement on national television last week. The Wise Use Movement is a loose confederation of more than 1,000 organizations that defend property rights, jobs and communities from oppressive environmental demands. The Nightline program probed Wise Use leader Ron Arnold, Executive Vice President of the Bellevue, Washington- based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, as well as scientist Dr. Fred Singer of the Washington, D.C.-based Science and Environmental Policy Project. Gore's actions in soliciting this investigation by ABC News have raised serious civil rights questions about the government's power to conduct such vendettas against private citizens. Koppel opened the February 24, 1994 edition of Nightline with a stunning revelation: Vice President Al Gore had personally urged him to investigate connections between the Wise Use Movement and such elements as Lyndon LaRouche and the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Gore's office, said Koppel, sent him a stack of documents. Koppel agreed to do the story, but notified Gore he would tell viewers exactly where the story had come from, a highly unusual move. Neither Koppel nor ABC News Nightline producer Jay Weiss knew that Al Gore's documents were actually taken from an elaborate 292-page "Report on the Wise Use Movement: Strategic Analysis and Fifty-State Review" sponsored by the Wilderness Society, written by media political strategy firm MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider (Nightline flashed their letterhead as one of the documents from Gore's office, revealing Gore's source) and paid for by foundations in the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA), a multi-billion-dollar consortium that funds environmental groups. Forbes magazine called it "The Search and Destroy Strategy Guide" (July 19, 1993). ABC News was unaware of this strategy guide because Gore did not provide it. The Search and Destroy Strategy Guide, containing personal dossiers on leaders of the Wise Use Movement, warned environmental groups that their doomsday message has less public appeal than the positive Wise Use message, echoing an earlier report by EGA-member W. Alton Jones Foundation of Charlottesville, Virginia. The Search and Destroy Strategy Guide advised environmentalists to "Attack Wise Use," "Drive Wedges Between Wise Use Groups," "Tar Wise Use Leaders" and "Focus public attention on ties between Wise Use and extremists." Vice President Gore, Koppel told his viewers, was particularly concerned about Dr. Fred Singer of the Washington, D.C.-based Science and Environmental Policy Project, well known for debunking the ozone depletion and global warming scares. Laws have been passed against important industrial chemicals because computer models predict them to deplete ozone or cause global warming. Dr. Singer points out flaws in computer models, noting that realistic risk assessments rather than computerized guesswork or emotional scare tactics are needed for sound public policy. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund told Koppel he was so worried about the Wise Use Movement because, "If they can get the public to believe that ozone wasn't worth acting on, that they were led in the wrong direction by scientists, then there's no reason for the public to believe anything about any environmental issue." When asked by Nightline, Dr. Singer openly acknowledged having accepting free office space and science conference travel expenses in the past from the Unification Church, as well as funding from large industries. "Every environmental organization I know of gets funding from Exxon, Shell, Arco, Dow Chemical, and so on," said Singer. "If it doesn't taint their science, it doesn't taint my science." A new twist to the intrigue was added when it was discovered that Jay Weiss was not the original producer assigned to Gore's smear story. Several of those interviewed on the Nightline show said a woman named Tara Sonnersheim was the original producer. The Washington Post reported that she was appointed to a position in the Clinton administration in February 1994. This raises the question whether Sonnersheim got the appointment as a reward for placing the smear story on the ABC News agenda. Ted Koppel said that Vice President Gore was also deeply concerned about Wise Use activist Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise in Bellevue, Washington, and urged Koppel to look into his "Moonie ties." Arnold had once served on a local board of the American Freedom Coalition, said Koppel, "a political organization, which, in the past, has received substantial funding from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon." Arnold's Center had not received Moonie money, however, and neither Singer nor Arnold are followers of Moon or his church. Koppel evidently felt used by Gore, saying, "In fairness, though, you should know that Fred Singer taught environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, that he was the deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Nixon Administration, and from 1987 to 1989 was chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Transportation. You can see where this is going. If you agree with Fred Singer's views on the environment, you point to his more impressive credentials. If you don't, it's Fred Singer and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon." Koppel noted that Dr. Singer's predictions about the low atmospheric impact of the Kuwait oil fires was accurate and the environmentalists' forecast of doom, as voiced by scientist Carl Sagan, was wrong. Ironically, key environmentalists including "Limits to Growth" author Donella Meadows and Marion Clawson of Resources for the Future have accepted money from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's World Media Conference. Al Gore himself accepted money from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's American Leadership Conference to address an invited audience just before he ran for the Vice Presidency. "If Moonie money doesn't taint Al Gore, it doesn't taint anybody," said Ron Arnold. Koppel, seeming to wash his hands of Gore's smear tactics, concluded, "The measure of good science is neither the politics of the scientist nor the people with whom the scientist associates. It is the immersion of hypotheses into the acid of truth. That's the hard way to do it, but it's the only way that works." The same is true of Wise Use activists, says the Center's Ron Arnold. "The measure of good activists is neither their politics nor the people with whom they associate, but the truth of what they say. They environmentalists can't shoot our message, so they shoot the messenger. The Vice President of the United States has no right to call out the media on me or any other American--who does he think he is, J. Edgar Hoover? Gore's arrogance proves that eco- fascism is here already. I can take whatever Gore dishes out--and I appreciate Ted Koppel's integrity in blunting Gore's naked aggression--but nobody is safe as long as Gore has power to provoke smears of private citizens. Not every reporter is as honest as Ted Koppel." Mountain States Legal Foundation, a non-profit public interest law firm based in Denver, Colorado, has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Vice President Gore's office, according to William Perry Pendley, president and chief legal officer. The request is part of a probe to determine the extent of civil rights violations committed by the Vice President. The FOIA request also went to George Frampton, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, who was the president of the Wilderness Society at the time it commissioned the Search and Destroy Strategy Guide from MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider. Federal Civil Rights laws forbid government agents from entering into conspiracies with private citizens to harm the civil rights of other private citizens.