[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 131 (Tuesday, July 27, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5081-S5084]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to strongly 
oppose the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning.
  I want to focus my remarks now on the misleading and false statements 
that Tracy Stone-Manning has made to the Senate and how they just don't 
align with the facts.
  On her committee questionnaire, which is a sworn affidavit that every 
nominee fills out, the committee clearly asks: Have you ever been 
investigated?
  Tracy Stone-Manning said she had not.
  On the same document, she also stated that she testified for a grand 
jury about an alleged tree spiking. Well, these statements are not 
true, and Ms. Stone-Manning knows it.
  Tree spiking involves hammering a metal spike, like this one, into 
the trunk of a tree. Ecoterrorists use spikes like this. This is 
something they do to prevent loggers from harvesting trees. If a saw 
blade hits that spike, it destroys the saw, and metal shrapnel flies in 
every direction. The results can be catastrophic.
  The trees in the Clearwater National Forest were spiked in 1989. 
Individuals were found guilty of this crime, and a local sawmill was 
damaged as a result of the spikes. Some of the trees standing today are 
still spiked and can still do damage to loggers and firefighters. These 
are serious dangers and damages that can occur to people still today.
  If there is a forest fire in the Clearwater National Forest, a smoke 
jumper may need to cut down trees to slow the spread of the fire. If 
that person hits a spike with a chain saw, it could kill or maim the 
firefighter. Worse still, Tracy Stone-Manning knew who the 
ecoterrorists were, and she could have turned them in at the start.
  In 1989, she edited, typed, and sent this vile, threatening letter to 
the men and women of the U.S. Forest Service. She did it on behalf of 
the tree spikers. The letter included lines like:

       You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could 
     get hurt.

  She went on:

       I would be more than willing to pay you a dollar for the 
     sale, but you would have to find me first, and that could be 
     your WORST nightmare.

  Tracy Stone-Manning has said since the incident that she mailed this 
disturbing, threatening letter to warn people of the danger of the 
spiked trees. But she didn't go to the authorities. No, she did not. 
She did not go to the police. No, not at all. She took extraordinary 
steps to ensure that she and the tree spikers would never get caught.
  If she had gone to the police, the Forest Service would have been 
much better able to identify the spiked trees. Instead, she covered up 
for the criminals for years. All the while, these trees remain spiked 
and remain incredibly dangerous.
  Ms. Stone-Manning told our committee that she was never investigated. 
Well, that was a lie. Following the tree spiking in 1989, she was 
subpoenaed by investigators to provide hair samples, fingerprints, 
writing samples, and other physical evidence.
  These are criminal investigators. Press articles at the time confirm 
this fact, as do the court documents obtained by the Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee. This is further verified by the letter that our 
committee received by the lead criminal investigator for the U.S. 
Forest Service, Mr. Michael Merkley. We received this letter after she 
had testified in front of the Senate committee a few months ago.
  He wrote:

       . . . the grand jury issued subpoenas for hair samples, 
     handwriting exemplars, and fingerprints. These subpoenas were 
     served on persons suspected of having knowledge of the 
     incident, including Ms. Tracy Stone-Manning.

  But don't take his word for it. Let's listen to the words of Tracy 
Stone-Manning herself. In a 1990 article about law enforcement's 
investigation at the University of Montana, she complained about how 
the investigation made her feel.
  She said:

       It was degrading. It changed my awareness of the power of 
     the government.

  Through this entire period, she did not tell the truth to the 
investigators. Remember, she knew who spiked the trees. She sent a 
threatening letter to them. She never went to the police, and she never 
identified the ecoterrorists. She also didn't cooperate.
  The lead investigator says in his letter that the committee has 
received since the time she testified to the committee a few months 
ago--he said:

       Through this initial investigation in 1989, Ms. Stone-
     Manning was extremely difficult to work with; in fact she was 
     the nastiest of suspects. . . . she was vulgar, antagonistic, 
     and extremely anti-government.

  He goes on to say she refused to comply with the investigation until 
she learned she would be arrested if she did not.
  But the investigation of Tracy Stone-Manning did not end in 1989 with 
the subpoenas. In December of 1992, after years of her covering up for 
the ecoterrorists, she was identified as the one who sent the 
threatening letter. A woman connected with the group came forward and 
gave her name to investigators.
  Mr. Merkley writes, again, in this letter we received since Stone-
Manning

[[Page S5082]]

has testified in her committee hearing in the Senate--he writes:

       [A]s a result of Ms. Lilburn's testimony, the grand jury 
     sent Tracy Stone-Manning a target letter, which meant she was 
     going to be indicted on criminal charges for her active 
     participation in planning these crimes.

  Her lawyer then negotiated an immunity deal. She would testify 
against the individuals who spiked the trees. And she knew she could 
have been charged.
  In an interview published in a 1983 article in ``The Missoulian,'' 
Stone-Manning said that she could have been charged with conspiracy if 
not for the immunity deal.
  Remember, she told the Senate she had never been investigated. She 
was subpoenaed for physical evidence. She was investigated. She didn't 
cooperate with investigators. She complained to the press about being 
investigated, and she covered up for the ecoterrorists for years until 
she was caught. But that wasn't her only lie. On our committee's 
questionnaire for the record, I asked her:

       Did you have personal knowledge of, participate in, or in 
     any way directly or indirectly support activities associated 
     with the spiking of trees in any forest during your lifetime?

  In any forest during your lifetime?
  She responded:

       No.

  Everyone knows that is a lie. She sent their letter. She knew who 
they were. She supported their activities. The lead investigator's 
letter makes clear she knew the plan to spike the trees in the Idaho 
forest in advance.
  He wasn't the only one--this lead criminal investigator wasn't the 
only one to say she knew so in advance. One of the convicted tree 
spikers, one of the people who went to jail in this episode, he told 
E&E News--again, since the hearing and since the letter has come out, 
just in the last couple weeks, the convicted tree spiker says: ``She 
knew about it far in advance, a couple of months before we headed 
out.''
  He continued: ``She had agreed to mail the letter well in advance.''
  To be clear, after Tracy Stone-Manning had her confirmation hearing 
here in the Senate earlier this year, two people with direct knowledge 
came forward. One was the cop--the criminal investigator who 
investigated the crime. The other was the criminal who was convicted. 
Both the cop and the criminal say she lied.
  Ms. Stone-Manning helped plan the tree spiking. She knew about it in 
advance. She sent a threatening letter to the Forest Service. She was 
investigated. She collaborated with ecoterrorists. She lied to the 
Senate.
  Lying to the U.S. Senate has consequences. In this case, her actions 
and her lies should cost her this nomination.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague, Senator 
Barrasso, for leading the effort to do what is the obvious thing to do 
on the U.S. Senate floor. Here, in a couple minutes, we are going to 
vote on one of the most extreme nominees I have ever seen to be 
nominated for anything requiring the confirmation of the U.S. Senate.
  To be honest, I can't believe we are even really having this debate. 
I can't believe that the Senate is going to put forward and vote on an 
ecoterrorist. I can't believe the President of the United States, after 
maybe not recognizing who he put forward, didn't withdraw the 
nomination. And yet here we are.
  We know this administration supports far-left groups and certainly 
has nominated some far-left nominees for Senate confirmation to 
important positions in the Federal Government. But what hasn't happened 
yet is--they have knowingly put forward a far-left nominee who has 
clearly lied to the Senate, as Senator Barrasso just showed clearly, 
who is not just a far-left extremist, she is a violent extremist.
  So, normally, you would think in America that would disqualify you 
from a position that requires Senate confirmation--a position, by the 
way, that is one of the most important positions to my State, the great 
State of Alaska.
  And yet here we are. Here we are. We are going to vote for her. And 
it looks like all my Senate Democrat colleagues are going to vote aye. 
Shocking. I hope America is watching because this is a bigger vote than 
just for the BLM Director. This is a symbol of how crazy and far left 
this administration has gone and, to be honest, how fearful some of my 
colleagues are of that.
  So I was here on the Senate floor a little over 1 month ago, and I 
called on the President to withdraw his nomination to lead the Bureau 
of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning. It was the first time in my 
Senate career I have called on a nominee to be withdrawn before they 
had gone through their vote on the Senate floor and vote out of 
committee. I have never done that before.
  Usually, the President certainly gets to put forward who he or she 
wants for positions to fill out his Cabinet and his Federal Government. 
That is normal.
  I have never done this before, but I have a reason, just like Senator 
Barrasso has been coming down on the Senate floor to talk about this, 
to actually call for this withdrawal, because we have not confronted 
someone with Tracy Stone-Manning's past, which involves being a member 
of part of an extreme, radical, violent group that performed violent 
acts in the name of getting attention, a violent group engaging in 
overt ecoterrorism.
  Her past association with ecoterrorism is so heinous that even the 
Director of BLM from the Obama-Biden administration said that her 
actions should preclude her from consideration, and her nomination 
should be withdrawn by the President.
  You would think that would have been it. The last Democrat nominee 
for that job said she wasn't qualified because of her ecoterrorism 
past. That was Mr. Bob Abbey.
  I want to talk about BLM for a minute and why I am on the floor again 
talking about this issue. This is an incredibly important and powerful 
Federal agency, particularly as it relates to my State.
  The Alaska BLM manages more surface and subsurface acres in my State 
than in any other State in the country, by far. In fact, I haven't done 
the math completely, but I believe they manage more acreage in Alaska 
than they do in the rest of the lower 48 combined. That is how 
important this is.
  Let me give you some of the numbers. This includes over 70 million 
surface acres of land and 220 million subsurface acres of land in 
Alaska. That is the land equivalent to about one-fifth of the entire 
lower 48 States. Most States can't even comprehend that size. That is 
why this is such an important nominee.
  This, of course, is a huge amount of land, and it is a huge amount of 
power over my constituents for access to land for our economy, for our 
environment, for our Native culture. It is imperative the Director of 
this Agency--and I am not going to always agree with the Director of 
this Agency--but the Director of the BLM, with so much power and so 
much control over Alaska and its future and our working families, be 
someone who is, at minimum, trustworthy, honest, fair-minded, beyond 
reproach, and certainly--certainly--not involved with an organization 
whose mission was to perpetuate violence against their fellow 
Americans.
  Is that so hard a standard?
  This nominee is none of these things. As Senator Barrasso so ably has 
presented, and as I mentioned, she was once a member of an ecoterrorist 
organization.
  Now, maybe she can go work for President Biden in some other 
position, but to get Senate-confirmed, given what she has done, and 
have U.S. Senators look the other way--it is OK. She was part of a 
group that was perpetuating acts of violence against their fellow 
Americans to get attention, and we are OK with that? U.S. Senators are 
OK with that? My goodness, this is a low bar.
  Tracy Stone-Manning was a member of Earth First!--a radical, far-left 
group who has engaged repeatedly in what is defined as ecoterrorism. 
She wasn't just a member of Earth First!; she was complicit, as Senator 
Barrasso just mentioned, putting big metal spikes, thick ones, in trees 
that were meant to either threaten to hurt or actually gravely injure 
Americans, working families who were harvesting trees in our country 
legally and who were putting trees in sawmills legally. This was a 
common technique--tree

[[Page S5083]]

spiking, as it was called--deployed by such ecoterrorist groups in the 
late 1980s and early 1990s, and it is extremely dangerous.
  Let me briefly talk about the group Tracy Stone-Manning was a member 
of. Again, we know that this administration is putting forth far-left 
nominees with affiliations with certain groups but not violent groups. 
That should be a redline that every Senator agrees with.
  Earth First! began in 1980 by disaffected environmentalists who 
thought the movement wasn't radical enough. They thought the 
environmental movement in America wasn't getting enough attention, so 
they thought, hmm, let's get more attention by perpetrating violence 
and destruction.
  The group's slogan is this: ``No Compromise in Defense of Mother 
Earth.'' In their view, ``no compromise'' meant destroying property, 
putting steel spikes in trees that could kill someone trying to harvest 
a tree, and they even celebrated and encouraged such actions. The group 
put out a manual--yes, a manual--on their ecoterrorist tactics 
detailing tree spiking and instructions on how to cause other sabotage: 
Cut down power lines. Flatten tires of vehicles for timber harvesters. 
Burn machinery. Again, these are all American citizens who were trying 
to do something legally.
  We harvest trees legally in Alaska. We have loggers who have been 
doing this for generations from hard-working American families. So many 
other States in this Senate--represented here in the Senate. I 
certainly hope a Senator from one of those States is not going to vote 
yes in a couple of minutes here on this vote.
  David Foreman was the founder of Earth First! He talked about these 
activities, and he said: ``This is where the ecoteur can have fun.'' 
That is a quote from the founder of Earth First! This is what he called 
fun.
  This is how an article in the Washington Post from this time 
described such an incident of tree spiking that severely hurt one of 
our fellow American citizens, and I am going to quote from this 
article:

       George Alexander, a third-generation mill worker, was just 
     starting his shift at the Louisiana-Pacific lumber mill in 
     Cloverdale, Calif., when the log that would alter his life 
     rolled down his conveyor belt toward a high-speed saw he was 
     working on.

  Now, we have these saws and these mills in Alaska. These saws are 
huge, the size of people. They spin at incredibly fast speeds with huge 
teeth. They are dangerous to work on normally, but when you think about 
hitting a tree going through a mill with a spike in it, you can 
imagine, it is an explosion.
  Let me continue this article:

       It was May 1987, and [George] Alexander was 23 [years old]. 
     His job was to split logs. He was nearly three feet away when 
     the log [he was working on] hit his saw and the saw [this 
     giant saw] exploded. One half of the blade stuck in the log. 
     The other half hit Alexander in the head [again, these are 
     giant saws] tearing through his safety helmet and [tearing 
     through his] face shield. His face was slashed from eye to 
     chin. His teeth were smashed and his jaw was cut in half.

  Good job, Earth First! Good job trying to kill a fellow American. 
This is what Earth First! did.
  I was up on the Yukon River over the Fourth of July at our fish camp 
cleaning brush, trees, working a chain saw, and I honestly was thinking 
about this. I was thinking, man, I have this saw, a little saw, not one 
of these huge things. Think about if you hit a spike
  But these were the kind of tactics that Tracy Stone-Manning, the 
Biden administration's choice to lead the BLM, once conspired in. Does 
that disturb you, America? Does that disturb you, national media? Does 
that disturb you, my fellow Senators? It sure the heck disturbs me. 
Every U.S. Senator on the floor here should be very, very disturbed 
about this.
  So what did she specifically do? Again, Senator Barrasso has 
highlighted this. She hasn't been truthful to the Senate, by the way. 
That is a crime in and of itself. Here is what she did. In 1989, she 
did a fellow friend, an Earth First! friend--really a comrade; it is 
more of a socialist Communist organization--a fellow comrade a favor. 
She rewrote word-for-word a profane, anonymous letter--you saw it here 
from Senator Barrasso a couple of minutes ago--from this Earth First! 
member about the 500 pounds of tree spikes that they had hammered into 
trees in an Idaho forest--by Earth First!, 500 pounds. That is a lot.
  She rewrote the letter on a rented typewriter because, she later told 
a reporter, ``her fingerprints were all over it,'' so she didn't want 
to get caught. So she knew she was obviously doing something criminal. 
She didn't just handwrite it; she typed it and then sent the letter to 
the FBI. And you saw it is a very disturbing, profane letter where she 
threatens people who are going to get hurt. So she is all in. She is 
all in.
  She kept quiet on this for years, and that was 1989, until she came 
forward in 1993, received immunity, obviously had been investigated--
lied about that--for her part in this tree spiking in Idaho.
  She has since then portrayed herself as a victim. But a former 
criminal investigator for USDA Forest Service--again, Senator Barrasso 
laid this out--wrote a letter to the chairman and ranking member of the 
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and here is what he 
said:

       Ms. Stone-Manning was not an innocent bystander, nor was 
     she a victim in this case. . . . Ms. Stone-Manning was not 
     only a member of Earth First!, but she played an active role 
     in the Earth First! hierarchy.

  He described her as vulgar, antagonistic, and extremely anti-
government. He said she was uncooperative and refused to provide hair, 
handwriting samples, and fingerprints as ordered by the Federal grand 
jury. Come on, U.S. Senate, really? You are going to confirm her?
  It was only after she knew that she might get in trouble that she 
began to cooperate. ``Let me be clear,'' Special Agent Michael Merkley 
wrote very recently. ``Ms. Stone-Manning only came forward after her 
attorney struck the immunity deal, and not before she was caught.''
  In testimony submitted to the Senate, she claimed that the tree 
spiking was ``alleged'' but never investigated. That is untrue. None of 
this is true.
  But here is what is true: She was a member of an ecoterrorist group 
who had as its goal to threaten or actually hurt Americans. Americans 
were hurt by this, hard-working Americans doing something legally. She 
is clearly dishonest, and she has no business heading up the BLM, a 
Federal Agency with enormous power, especially over my State.
  So this is a really important issue for me, which is why I have been 
on the floor talking about it. As I said, the President should have 
withdrawn her nomination, and I certainly hope my Senate colleagues 
will not vote to confirm her. I don't think any Republican is going to. 
But any of my fellow Democrats who live in places where men and women 
harvest logs, hard-working American families, it is going to be really 
interesting to see how you write those families after you vote yes, if 
you do.
  So I hope we defeat her vote here today, but I think there is 
something else to talk about. As I mentioned, it is one thing to put 
forward far-left individuals for these Senate-confirmed jobs. It is 
quite another to put forward someone who is far left and violent, with 
a record of trying to hurt your fellow Americans.
  I think this is a symbol. We know the Biden administration has a lot 
of allies in some of these groups, but the fact that the President of 
the United States, with all this evidence that has come out--maybe they 
overlooked it, but now it is all out--lying, violence. He is still 
standing behind her, and it looks like all my colleagues are going to 
vote for her. This is a travesty.
  I hope all Americans watching ask the proper question. Dishonest, 
lying ecoterrorist took action to hurt people, who is now going to have 
one of the most important positions of power in America over my 
constituents. We need to do better here, folks. If she passes, this is 
going to show just how far left the Biden administration is.
  Again, I try to be bipartisan here. I have a lot of friends on both 
sides of the aisle. But how compliant or scared my Senate Democratic 
colleagues are of these radical groups.
  Do the right thing, vote no on this nominee, and get the President to 
put forward someone else without a violent past who has been honest. We 
might disagree with them. But to my Senate Democratic colleagues today, 
do the

[[Page S5084]]

right thing. You know what the right thing is. Do the right thing. Vote 
to reject this very radical, unqualified, dishonest nominee.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.