Introduction

Ron Arnold, who founded the anti-environmental lobby he euphemistically calls the "wise use movement," denied any association with these extremists, claiming, "It has nothing to do with what I envision as part of the Wise Use movement." [3]

However, research reveals that Arnold's denial rings false. In fact, two years after the Oklahoma City bombing, extremism is alive and well in the anti-environmental lobby.

About Western States Center

With the political changes resulting from the last two election cycles, the anti-environmental lobby has become an increasingly mainstream force. In public the lobby has moderated its rhetoric and masked its efforts to weaken environmental laws with calm talk of balancing environmental protection with economic needs. [4] This briefing paper was prepared to alert news agencies and the public to the continuing and disturbing problem of extremism within the anti-environmental lobby that belies this moderate profile.

What is the anti-environmental lobby?

The main strategy followed by today's anti-environmental lobby was first articulated by Ron Arnold in a series of articles published by Logging Management magazine in 1979-80. Arnold suggested combining resource industry dollars with the community organizing tactics used by environmental and public interest groups to build a pro-industry citizens' front capable of destroying the environmental movement. "Citizen activist groups, allied to the forest industry," he wrote, "are vital to our future survival. They can speak for us in the public interest where we ourselves cannot. They are not limited by liability, contract law or ethical codes... industry must come to support citizen activist groups, providing funds, materials, transportation, and most of all, hard facts." [5] Speaking to representatives of the Canadian timber company MacMillan Bloedelsome years later, Arnold made his point more bluntly: "Give them [the pro-industry groups] the money. You stop defending yourselves, let them do it, and you get the hell out of the way. Because citizen's groups have credibility and industries don't." [6]

Arnold's 1988 Multiple Use Strategy Conference is widely regarded as the founding event of the anti-environmental lobby. On the heels of the conference, Arnold's group published a manifesto, The Wise Use Agenda, which includes an index of over two hundred organizations that attended or supported the conference and "mandated" the publication of the agenda. [7] The index includes various resource corporations and associations, including Boise-Cascade, Du Pont, Exxon, Georgia Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, Nevada Cattlemen's Association, Washington Contract Loggers Association, and Western Forest Industries Association. The index also lists activist groups, such as the National Center for Constitutional Studies, which seeks to institute biblical law in the United States, and the American Freedom Coalition, a Unification Church front group in which Arnold was deeply involved. [8]

The focus of The Wise Use Agenda was a 25-point program that included: [9]

• Harvesting all remaining old growth trees in the National Forests. Immediate development of petroleum resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• Opening Wilderness, National Parks and all other public lands to mining and energy production.
• Amending the Endangered Species Act to exclude "non-adaptive species such as the California Condor."
• Granting "wise use" groups "standing to sue on behalf of industries threatened or harmed by environmentalists."

Following the 1988 conference, various activists followed Arnold's model and used corporate financing to mobilize employees in the timber and mining industries behind an agenda of environmental deregulation. Exploiting the credible threat of job loss, the emerging anti-environmental lobby cleverly blamed the environmental movement for layoffs and plant closures. However, "wise use" organizers never addressed corporate down-sizing, mechanization and the export of mill jobs, issues the movements` sponsors wished to avoid. The result was the seemingly spontaneous appearance of so-called "wise use" groups across the West. Over the years, the lobby has expanded in size and depth, building national associations and cultivating a locally based network of groups and individuals committed to its goals. [11]

County Supremacy Extremists

Following revelations of the ties between county supremacy activists and right-wing extremists in 1995, Arnold told the press, "There are no lawyers in the Wise Use organizations like Pacific Legal Foundation... who do anything but shake their heads at these guys." [13]

Contrary to this assertion, Arnold, his associates Mark Pollot and Wayne Hage, and other anti-environmental leaders are deeply involved with the leading county movement group, the National Federal Lands Conference. All have served as directors or official advisors to the group.(According to NFLC literature, Arnold is still an advisor.) Arnold`s claim that the county supremacy extremists were shunned by "wise use" legal experts is also false. In 1993 the Seattle-based Northwest Legal Foundation published a defense of the pseudo-legal ordinance strategy pursued by the National Federal Lands Conference in the NFLC's own newsletter. Moreover, according to Northwest Legal Foundation literature from this period, Ron Arnold was a member of the Foundation's advisory board at the time. [14]

The cause for concern is that the NFLC has a broad extremist agenda and endorses the militia movement, promotes openly anti-Semitic leaders, and declares the 14th Amendment a fraud. [15] As early as 1993 the NFLC's assertion of county powers over federal lands began to attract militia and other far-right activists who believe county government to be the highest authority in the land. [16] For instance, a July, 1993 NFLC seminar in Jordan, Mont. featured Martin "Red" Beckman, a tax protester, and notorious anti-Semite. [17]

Just last spring, National Federal Lands Conference executive director Ruth Kaiser peddled the group's wares at Arnold's 1996 leadership conference. [18] Arnold's 1995 denial of association with the county supremacy was false, and he has not severed the ties in the intervening two years.

Extremism As A Public Relations Problem

As a result of the Moon scandal, a number of anti-environmental lobby groups publicly distanced themselves from Arnold. The phrase "wise use" movement, coined by Arnold, fell out of favor and was replaced by "multiple use" and "property rights." Such posturing did not fundamentally alter Arnold's role as an acknowledged leadership of the anti-environmentalists. [23]

Dangerous Liaisons

• After giving testimony before her county commission at a public hearing, Washington state environmentalist Ellen Gray was confronted by a man who shook a hangman's noose in her face and said, "This is a message for you." Immediately afterwards another man approached and told Gray, "We have a militia of 10,000 and if we can't beat you at the ballot box we'll beat you with a bullet." He left when Gray asked him his name. [24] The man with the noose was later identified as Daryl Lord. Shortly after the incident, Lord was made president of the Snohomish County Property Rights Association, the local anti-environmental lobby group.

• In response to a temporary injunction against resource extraction on several Idaho National Forests in March 1995, Samuel Sherwood of Idaho's US Militia Association rallied miners and loggers against what he called the "green gestapo" of environmental groups and government agencies. Sherwood predicted "blood in the streets," and called upon the residents of Challis, Idaho to "get a semiautomatic assault rifle and a revolver and a uniform," and join up with his militia. [25]

• An October 1994 campaign against a proposal to join Washington's North Cascades National Park with a park across the Canadian border declared that the Park was a pretext for the New World Order to subvert U.S. sovereignty. The campaign featured a barnstorming tour by national anti-environmental leader Charles Cushman, who proudly goes by the nickname "rent-a-riot." [26] Another key figure in the campaign, Don Kehoe, argued that international bankers were using the United Nations to advance the park scheme. [27] In February of 1995, Kehoe appeared with Militia of Montana leaders John Trochmann and Bob Fletcher at a public meeting in Maltby, Wash. [28]

• Washington State is home to a number of county secession efforts born of anti-environmental, so-called "property rights" activism. David Darby and his followers are attempting to form a new county in an area outside Vancouver. They hope to escape environmental regulations and federal income taxes, and to abolish "federal citizenship." Darby is former head of the Clark County militia. [29]

• Various newspapers, including the Oregon Observer, Idaho Observer, Citizen's News of Sequim, Wash., and the Courier of Hatch, NM cater to both the militia movement and the anti-environmental fringe. A January, 1996 headline from the Courier reads, "Militia Is Final & Lawful Deterrent Against Tyranny." [30]

• In February 1995, at a meeting of the anti-environmental lobby group People for the West!, a farm association representative asserted that Forest Service agents have no greater police powers than average citizens. He suggested that citizens confiscate the firearms of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management personnel who attempt to make arrests. [31]

Continuing Ties to Extremists

Post-Oklahoma City Militia Advocacy:

Three months after the Oklahoma City bombing, anti-environmental leader Mark Pollot told the Los Angeles Daily Journal that he supports the concept of militias and that the Constitution allows for such groups. [32] Pollot directs a division of Ron Arnold's Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise called Stewards of the Range, and sits on the advisory board of the militia-promoting National Federal Lands Conference. A former staffer at Ed Meese's Justice Department, Pollot is perhaps best-known for drafting model deregulatory(so-called "takings") legislation that has passed in approximately one dozen states over the last several years.

Anti-Semitism:

On January 20, 1996 the anti-environmental lobby group National Federal Lands Conference sponsored a Second Annual Constitutional Forum in Ogden, Utah. Militia of Montana leader John Trochmann was among the nearly 500 people in attendance. Among the featured speakers was Eustace Mullins. Mullins is known for his viciously anti-Semitic views, such as those expressed in his book, The Secret Holocaust, which alleges a holocaust of Christians at the hands of Jews: "there had been no holocausts of Jewish victims during World War II, nor worthier any photographs of burned Jewish bodies. Nor to worry - the Jews simply appropriated the photographs of the bodies of their German victims, which are exhibited today in gruesome 'museums' in Germany as exhibits of dead Jews." [33] At the Ogden conference, Mullins asserted that Federal Reserve notes are "black magic, that is Satanism," that Franklin Roosevelt represented the Stalinist wing of the Communist Party, and that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution (which abolished slavery, provided equal protection under the law for ex-slaves and established voting rights, respectively) were passed under martial law and are therefore invalid. [34] At the event, the National Federal Lands Conference promoted a presentation by John Trochmann scheduled for the following day. The NFLC remains a fixture at anti-environmental lobby events, including Ron Arnold's annual "Wise Use Leadership Conference," and is the group most responsible for the efforts by dozens of counties to assume control over federal lands within their boundaries. [35]

Posse Comitatus:

Another featured speaker at the Second Annual Constitutional Forum (see above) was Eugene Schroder. Schroder is a longtime leader of extremist movements. Once associated with the Posse Comitatus (Latin for "power of the county"), a violent racist group active in the 1980s, Schroder has trained his followers in the art of bomb-making. [36] More recently, he has been propagating his theory that Franklin Roosevelt overthrew the Constitution in 1933 and that the country has existed under martial law ever since. [37]

The Green Gestapo:

In February 1996, the National Coalition for Public Lands and Natural Resources/People for the West! announced that Ernest "Bud" Woods had become its field representative for Idaho, Oregon and Washington. [38] Woods is known to Idahoans as the publisher of The Idaho Outback, an outdoors newspaper strongly supportive of militias. In its spring 1995 issue, Woods defended Samuel Sherwood of the Idaho-based US Militia Association for his work to "educate the legislators, county commissioners, sheriffs and the general public about the militia and the benefits it can offer to state and local governments." This, after Sherwood had been quoted by the Associated Press as telling a crowd of supporters, "Go up and look legislators in the face, because some day you may have to blow it off." [39] Sherwood also recruited miners and timber workers to his militia group, calling upon them to resist the "green gestapo" of environmental groups and federal agencies. [40] People for the West! is funded almost entirely by major mining companies. [41]

John Birch Society:

Michael S. Coffman, a featured speaker at Ron Arnold's 1996 anti-environmental lobby leadership conference, was on tour with the John Birch Society speakers bureau from March 17 to April 11, 1997. His topics include "the role of the United Nations... in policing and usurping private property for an omnipotent global elite." Coffman is author of Saviors of the Earth: The Politics and Religion of the Environmental Movement. [42] The John Birch Society is a well-known extremist group that proffers an elaborate global communist conspiracy involving President Eisenhower and other dignitaries. [43]

the Satanic Green New World Order:

Anti-environmental lobby leaders Ron Arnold and Henry Lamb were among the six speakers at a "Celebration of Sovereignty" conference held in Seattle, Wash. on October 12, 1996. Some 200 people attended the event, which focused on the alleged loss of US sovereignty to a global conspiracy. Gary Kah, founder of conference sponsor Hope for the World Ministries, denounced environmentalism and the United Nations as instruments of a Satanic New World Order. Samantha Smith, author of Goddess Earth: Exposing the Pagan Agenda of the Environmental Movement pointed to the name of a government agency as proof that environmentalism is Satanic. Montana's National Appropriate Technology Assistance Service is "Satan spelled backwards!," declared Smith. [44] Ron Arnold argued that the US government is stealing private property through environmental regulation. Henry Lamb, who heads the deceptively-titled Environmental Conservation Organization, compared environmentalist calls for ecologically and economically sustainable communities to the forced relocation of Russians under Stalin. [45]

Helen's Helicopters:

Anti-environmental hero Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-ID) has become, in the words of one Idaho newspaper, a "poster child" for the militia movement. [46] Idaho militia leader Samuel Sherwood claims that he put two thousand volunteers into Chenoweth's 1994 Congressional bid, and the Militia of Montana sells a video tape of a Chenoweth speech. This support stems, in part, from the congresswoman's indulgence of militia claims that federal agents are monitoring the populace with mysterious "black helicopters," and her support for legislation requiring federal agents to receive the permission of local police before operating in their jurisdictions. [47] In July, 1993 Chenoweth spoke at Ron Arnold's anti-environmental lobby leadership conference in Reno, Nev., where she told her audience, "We are in a spiritual war of a proportion we have not seen before... A war between those who believe that God put us on this earth and those who believe that God is nature." [48] In January 1996 Chenoweth addressed an anti-environmental convention held in Portland, Ore. [49]

Conclusion

Even as the anti-environmental lobby moderates its rhetoric in Washington, DC, its leaders are sowing seeds of division, distrust and hate across the West. The post-Oklahoma City spotlight on extremism elicited denials from anti-environmental lobby founder Ron Arnold, but it did not change the fact of his and other leaders' involvement with extremists. This involvement demonstrates the lengths to which anti-environmental leaders are willing to go in order to attack environmental protections and the public servants charged to guarantee them.

The West has real economic and environmental problems that require real solutions. The extremism of the anti-environmental lobby feeds the polarization that stands in the way of productive discourse. Solutions will emerge from the commitment of Westerners to environmental protection and economic prosperity, and not one at the price of the other.

Sidebar Quotes

If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used. -James Watt [B]

We're going to destroy them, like they're trying to destroy you! -Ron Arnold [C]

Environmentalism is a new paganism that worships trees and sacrifices people. -Ron Arnold [D]

There is a greater chance of being struck by an errant lavender blue asteroid than there is of dying from most EPA regulated pollutants! Which brings us back to the militia... protect us from the monster we have allowed our federal government to become. Long live the Militia! -Jim Faulkner, National Federal Lands Conference [E]

Notes

1. Katherine Long, "His goal: Destroy environmentalism; Man and group prefer that people exploit the Earth," Seattle Times, 2 December 1991, p. A1.
2. David Helvarg, The War Against the Greens (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books), 1994, p. 358.
3. Arnold made the comment to a meeting of the New Mexico Wool Growers Association. Jon Krakauer, "Brown Fellas", Outside Magazine, December 1991, p. 70.
4. Jon Krakauer, "Brown Fellas", Outside Magazine, December 1991, p. 70.
5. Jim Faulkner, "Why There Is a Need for the Militia In America," in Federal Lands Update, the newsletter of the National Federal Lands Conference, October 1994.

1. Keith Schneider, "Bomb Echoes Extremists' Tactics," New York Times, 26 April 1995, p. A14; Melody Peterson, "Dueling over the land: In rural West, local officials want `home rule,'" Boston Globe, 4 June 1995.
2. Melody Peterson, "Dueling over the land: In rural West, local officials want `home rule,'" Boston Globe, 4 June 1995.
3. James Ridgeway, "Where the Buffalo Roam: The Wise Use Movement Plays on Every Western Fear," Village Voice, 11 July 1995, p. 16.
4. See for instance, Citizens for a Sound Economy memo, "How To Discuss Environmental Issues & Change: Public opinion research finding and recommendations developed by Citizens for a Sound Economy," undated, discovered 1996.
5. Ron Arnold, "Defeating Environmentalism", Logging Management Magazine, April 1980, pp. 40-41.
6. Claude Emery, Share Groups in British Columbia. (Canada: Library of Parliament Research Branch, 10 December 1991), p. 12.
7. Alan Gottlieb, Ed., "The Wise Use Agenda: The Citizen's Policy Guide to Environmental Resource Issues." (Bellevue, WA: The Free Enterprise Press, 1989). The Free Enterprise Press is a division of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
8. David Postman, "Skousen under fire as he spreads ideology," Anchorage Daily News, 25 January 1987; Robert Gottlieb and Peter Wiley,"America's Saints: The Rise of Mormon Power." (Toronto: General Publishing Company, 1984), p. 91; American Freedom Coalition corporate filings; George Frost, "Development council taps conservative alliance for ANWR fight," Anchorage Daily News, 1 March 1989; Mark Hume, "Resource-use conference had links to Moonie cult," Vancouver Sun, 8 July 1989, p. A6.
9. Alan Gottlieb, Ed., "The Wise Use Agenda: The Citizen's Policy Guide to Environmental Resource Issues." (Bellevue, WA: The Free Enterprise Press, 1989), pp. 5-18.
10. Katherine Long, "His goal: Destroy environmentalism; Man and group prefer that people exploit the Earth," Seattle Times, 2 December 1991, p. A1.
11. Tarso Ramos, "Wise Use in the West: The Case of the Northwest Timber Industry," in Echeverria & Eby, eds., Let the People Judge: Wise Use and the Property Rights Movement (Washington, DC: Island Press), 1995.
12. "Idaho court strikes down `Wise Use' law," Walla Walla, WA Union Bulletin from AP reports, 19 March 1996.
13. James Ridgeway, "Where the Buffalo Roam: The Wise Use Movement Plays on Every Western Fear," Village Voice, 11 July 1995, p. 16.
14. Jeanette Burrage, "The County Movement: A Review by the Northwest Legal Foundation, a Public Interest Law Firm," in Federal Lands Update, the newsletter of the National Federal Lands Conference, November 1993. At the time, Burrage was executive director of the Northwest Legal Foundation and Ron Arnold was on its advisory board.
15. Dan Smoot, "The Fraudulent Fourteenth Amendment," in Federal Lands Update, the newsletter of the National Federal Lands Conference, July 1994; Jim Faulkner, "Why There Is a Need for the Militia In America," in Federal Lands Update, October 1994. Notes, Second Annual Constitutional Forum, 20 January 1996. The conference featured several anti-Semitic leaders (see below).
16. Tarso Ramos, "Violence Finds New Bedfellows: The Wise Use Radicals," Western States Center News, fall 1995.
17. In his book, The Church Deceived, Beckman justifies the Holocaust: "They talk about the terrible holocaust of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Was that not a judgment upon people who believe Satan is their god?... The true and almighty God used the evil Nazi government to perform judgment upon the evil Anti-Christ religion of those who had crucified the Christ." Martin Red Beckman, The Church Deceived (Billings, MT: Common Sense Press), 1984, p. 42.
18. Notes from "1996 Wise Use Leadership Conference," May 1996.
19. American Freedom Coalition corporate filings; George Frost, "Development council taps conservative alliance for ANWR fight," Anchorage Daily News, 1 March 1989. The article begins, "Alaska's Resource Development Council is enlisting support from a new breed of New Right activist for its push to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration."
20. During the same period, Arnold served on the speaker's bureau of another Moon group, the Confederation of Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas or CAUSA. Mark Hume, "Resource-use conference had links to Moonie cult," Vancouver Sun, 8 July 1989, p. A6.
21. Mark Hume, "Resource-use conference had links to Moonie cult," Vancouver Sun, 8 July 1989, p. A6.
22. American Freedom Coalitions corporate filings.
23. Tarso Ramos, "Wise Use in the West: The Case of the Northwest Timber Industry," in Echeverria & Eby, eds., Let the People Judge: Wise Use and the Property Rights Movement (Washington, DC: Island Press), 1995.
24. Diane Brooks, "Threats replace debate at hearing," Seattle Times, 15 November 1994, p. B1. Interview with Ellen Gray.
25. Ken Stern, "A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate" (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1996, p. 129.
26. Michelle Partridge, "N. Cascades ecosystem plan opposed," Wenatchee World, 21 March 1994; For Cushman's rent-a-riot nickname and reputation, see Jill Hamburg, "The Lone Ranger," California Magazine, November 1990.
27. Michelle Partridge, "Park conspiracy aficionados gather," Wenatchee World, 31 October 1994.
28. Notes from public meeting in Maltby, Washington, 11 February 1995.
29. Holly Gilbert Corum, "Rural revolution," The Oregonian, 9 August 1996, p. C1.
30. Sue Christy, "Militia Is Final & Lawful Deterrent Against Tyranny," Courier, 18 January 1996, p. 1.
31. Ken Stern, A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1996, p. 131.
32. Vince Bielski, "Faceoff Over Wise Use Lawyer, Investigator Symbolize Each Side," Los Angeles Daily Journal, 26 July 1995; National Federal Lands Conference brochure.
33. Eustace Mulling, The Secret Holocaust (self-published, probably in the mid-1980s), p. 23.
34. Notes, "Second Annual Constitutional Forum," 20 January 1996.
35. Mark MacAllister & Jeff Fox, "The Wise Use Movement in Utah" (Portland: Western States Center & Montana State AFL-CIO), 1994. National Federal Lands Conference executive director Ruth Kaiser participated at Arnold's most recent "Wise Use Leadership Conference" in May, 1996.
36. William Ritz, "Farm Militants Study Bomb-Making," Denver Post, 13 February 1983; Devin Burghart and Robert Crawford, Guns and Gavels: Common Law Courts, Militias & White Supremacy (Portland, OR: Coalition for Human Dignity), 1996, p. 17.
37. Devin Burghart and Robert Crawford, Guns and Gavels: Common Law Courts, Militias & White Supremacy (Portland, OR: Coalition for Human Dignity), 1996, p. 16.
38. "Idaho Outback's Bud Woods in new PFW rep," in People for the West!, the publication of the National Coalition for Public Lands and Natural Resources, February 1996, p. 22.
39. Bud Woods, "The Patriot Smear," Idaho Outback, Spring 1995, p. 1.
40. Ken Stern, A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate (New York: Simon & Schuster), 1996, p. 129.
41. David Helvarg, The War Against the Greens (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books), 1994, p. 163.
42. "The John Birch Society Speakers Bureau Presents the 1997 Spring Speaking Tour," advertisement in The New American, magazine of the John Birch Society, 17 March 1997, p. 38.
43. Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movement and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford Press), 1995, pp. 53-55.
44. The National Appropriate Technology Assistance Service was a project of the National Center for Appropriate Technology with an office in Butte, Montana. The Service closed down several years ago when the Department of Energy failed to renew its contract. Smtih's book includes a chapter entitled, "Gore's Environmental Terrorism." Samantha Smith, Goddess Earth: Exposing the Pagan Agenda of the Environmental Movement (Lafayette, LA: Huntington Home Publishers), 1994.
45. Notes, "Celebration of Sovereignty" conference, 12 October 1996.
46. The Idaho Statesman, as quoted in Sidney Blumenthal, "Her Own Private Idaho," New Yorker, 10 July 1995, p. 29.
47. Sidney Blumenthal, "Her Own Private Idaho," New Yorker, 10 July 1995, p. 27; Nancy Mathis, "Congresswoman's Views Mirror Those of Some Civilian Militias," Houston Chronicle, 7 May 1995.
48. Notes from 1993 Wise Use Leadership Conference. Chenoweth was echoing a favorite saying of Ron Arnold, that "Environmentalism is a new paganism that worships trees and sacrifices people." See, for example, Jon Krakauer, "Brown Fellas," Outside Magazine, December 1991, p. 70.
49. Notes from Western States Coalition Summit V, 4-6 January 1996.