[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 171 (Thursday, September 30, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6830-S6831]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning

  Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, the Senate should emphatically oppose 
the nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning to lead the Nation's Bureau of 
Land Management.
  It is hard to believe, but she has colluded with ecoterrorists, plain 
and simple. She stonewalled a criminal investigation for years. She 
lied to the Senate, and she still holds radically dangerous views; and 
yet she is still the nominee of the President of the United States for 
this very important post. It is outrageous.
  Let's begin with her ties to ecoterrorists. We worry about terrorism 
in this world and in this country. By her own admission in her court 
testimony, when she was in graduate school, she collaborated with 
ecoterrorists who had hammered hundreds of metal spikes into trees in a 
national forest. It was in Idaho.
  Tree spiking involves hammering a metal rod, like this one, into a 
tree trunk. This can do serious damage. They put about 500 pounds of 
these in tree trunks in a national forest. If a logger or firefighter 
cuts this rod--you say, Why would a firefighter be there? They have 
chainsaws and they work to clear areas to try to fight fires, or a 
logger taking down trees--the saw will shatter, shrapnel will fly in 
every direction, and the user of that saw could become terribly injured 
or even killed. If a sawblade comes across a spike like this in a 
sawmill, the saw can explode. The results could be catastrophic to both 
life and limb.
  Well, ecoterrorists who spike trees absolutely know what they are 
doing. It is always premeditated. Even the Washington Post has labeled 
tree spiking as one of the most vicious tactics of the ecoterrorists. 
That is what we are dealing with President Biden's nominee to be the 
Director of Bureau of Land Management.
  You say: What is her connection to this horrible, horrible practice?
  Well, she has admitted that she edited, typed, and then anonymously 
sent a threat letter to the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of known tree 
spikers. She and her Democrat defenders have claimed this letter was a 
warning so no one would get hurt. That is false.
  Here are just a few quotes from the letter she typed and she mailed 
to the U.S. Forest Service:

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

  And:

       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.

  Think about these lines. Think about what it must be like if you had 
received such a letter. She mailed this threatening letter to the 
target of the tree spiking--and that was the U.S. Forest Service--
because she didn't want any trees in that area to be harvested.
  She and her circle of friends were investigated for their involvement 
with this ecoterrorist network and the attack. She was subpoenaed. She 
had to give hair samples, palm sample, handwriting, fingerprint samples 
to investigators.
  All this time, she knew who the tree spikers were. She could have 
gone to the authorities to identify them, but she refused, didn't 
cooperate with investigators. The lead investigator on the case wrote a 
letter to Chairman Manchin and to me after she had testified in the 
Senate to the Energy Committee, and he referred to her as the 
``nastiest of the suspects.''
  He also said she not only had knowledge of the plan to spike the 
trees with spikes like this, she was one of the planners. She was a 
ringleader. The lead investigator in the criminal case wrote:

       It became clear that Ms. Stone-Manning was an active member 
     of the original group that planned the spiking of the Post 
     Office timber sale.

  Now, he wasn't the only one who said she knew about it in advance. In 
an interview recently, within the last couple of months, with the E&E 
News, one of the convicted tree spikers, one of those who went to jail 
for doing this, he also confirmed that Tracy Stone-Manning, the 
President's nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management, to be in 
charge of the national forests--that Tracy Stone-Manning knew of the 
plan to spike the trees well in advance. This was premeditated.

  So who have we heard from?
  We heard from the criminal who is in jail--went to jail. We heard 
from the cop who prosecuted the case. Both the cop and the criminal 
agree that she was involved and she knew about the plan to spike the 
trees.
  According to the investigator's letter, Ms. Stone-Manning's lack of 
cooperation would set back the investigation for years. From 1990 until 
the end of 1992, the case went cold. Remember, she knew who spiked the 
trees. She was protecting the ecoterrorists' identities the entire 
time.
  Eventually, Ms. Stone-Manning was identified, and she received an 
investigation target letter to let her know she was being targeted as 
part of the investigation. The lead investigator said she only agreed 
to testify after she was caught and after her lawyer negotiated an 
immunity deal to testify.
  Her defenders have said she helped put the bad guys away. In fact, 
President Biden's nominee is one of the bad guys. She helped plan the 
tree spiking. She covered up the terrorist activity for years. She did 
not cooperate with the authorities, and she only testified after she 
was caught and received immunity.
  After all of this, she lied to the Committee about the incident. On a 
sworn affidavit in her Committee questionnaire, she said she was not 
the target of any investigation. We know that is a lie. We know she 
received a letter that she was a target of the investigation.
  She complained in the press about how degrading it was to be 
investigated. Then why did she tell us she was never investigated and 
told the press how bad it was and degrading to be investigated?
  She also admitted to the press that she could have been charged with 
a crime if not for her immunity deal.
  She also lied about her involvement in the tree spiking. I asked her 
directly:

       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?

  And she replied ``no.''
  She sent their letter. She knew the plan in advance. She knew their 
identities, and she refused to tell the authorities.
  How is that not supporting activities associated with ecoterrorism 
and tree spiking?
  Finally, Senate Democrats are very quick to say this tree-spiking 
episode was decades ago, can't be relevant anymore, in spite of the 
fact that it is a Federal crime--as if collusion with terrorists is 
just a youthful indiscretion. But she lied this year when she came to 
testify to the U.S. Senate. She lied to our committee and she lied to 
this institution.
  It is clear to me that her radical views have not changed. In 
September of 2020, 1 year ago, she tweeted an article written by her 
husband that calls--because she would be in charge of areas related to 
the forest--retweeted an article by her husband that calls for homes in 
forests to be left to burn during wildfires.
  Senator Sullivan talked about the fires in Alaska. We have had fires 
in Wyoming. We have firefighters in there protecting structures and 
human life.
  Her husband says: Let them burn.
  Her husband wrote:

       There's a rude and satisfying justice in burning down the 
     house of someone who builds in the forest.

  ``Rude and satisfying justice in burning down'' someone's home.
  Tracy Stone-Manning isn't responsible for the views of her husband, 
but a year ago--not as graduate student decades ago--we are talking 
now, as wildfires burn across the country, she actually endorsed her 
husband's views on letting the houses burn. In a tweet, she called her 
husband's writing a ``clarion call.''
  Well, clarion call, if you look it up, means a call to action.
  As the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning 
would be in charge of firefighting operations on public lands. Yet her 
husband and the things she retweets say: Let it burn.

[[Page S6831]]

  Apparently, she is comfortable leaving the houses and homes of our 
constituents in the Rocky Mountain West to burn because they built 
their homes in the forest. I have constituents who have homes in the 
forest. I am sure almost every Senator does. This tweet wasn't 30 years 
ago. This tweet was 1 year ago.
  Who actually thinks her beliefs are different today?
  Her views on firefighting are just the tip of the iceberg. In her 
graduate thesis, she actually argued that Americans need to have fewer 
children. You know why? Because she says children are a threat to the 
environment. She actually called children ``environmental hazards.''

       Can you find the environmental hazard in this photo?

  She told her readers to ``stop at one or two.''
  She even made ads like this one to promote these ideas, the child as 
an environmental hazard. And she is the nominee of the President of the 
United States for an important position in this government.
  She answered her own question by saying: Oh, yes, you can find the 
environmental hazard, ``that's right, it's the cute baby.''
  This thesis isn't the only time she argued for human population 
control. In an essay in the High Country News, she said Americans were 
``breeding our weapons'' in the war on the grizzly bear. She concludes 
that essay by saying: ``We should wage war on overpopulation.''
  These are ideas you hear in communist China, not from the nominee to 
be the Director of the Bureau of Land Management in the United States.
  Mr. President, there are many qualified Democrats who could run the 
Bureau of Land Management and do a fine job of it. We should reject 
this nomination, and the President can nominate someone else.
  It is astonishing to me to see Democrats digging in to defend a 
proven liar, an ecoterrorist collaborator who still holds very 
dangerous and threatening beliefs.
  Bob Abbey was the BLM Director under President Barack Obama. He said 
her actions ``should disqualify her'' from leading this important 
Agency. One Biden administration official admitted on NBC News her 
nomination was a ``massive vetting failure.'' So Obama's BLM Director 
said she should be disqualified--her actions should disqualify her--and 
a Biden administration official calls it a ``massive vetting failure.''
  And when our Committee asked the Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, 
about Stone-Manning's views, her response was: ``I didn't nominate 
her.''
  Well, no, she didn't. The President of the United States did. This is 
clearly not a rousing endorsement coming from fellow Democrats--the 
White House, former BLM Director under President Obama, and now the 
Secretary of Interior.
  If she is confirmed, Senate Democrats will be held wholly 
responsible. They should consider carefully if they want their name 
associated with Tracy Stone-Manning. Tracy Stone-Manning should never 
be the Director of the Bureau of Land Management.
  I strongly oppose her nomination. Every Republican--every 
Republican--strongly opposes her nomination, and Senate Democrats 
should do the same.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. TESTER. I want to thank you, Mr. President, the fine Senator from 
Georgia, for the recognition.
  Look, I have been listening to the debate here, or the conversation--
however you want to say it--on the floor for the last hour and a half 
about Tracy Stone-Manning.
  I will tell you that I take advice and consent that the United States 
has, and the Members of this body has, very seriously. That means not 
just picking up talking points the leadership might give you and 
reciting them back on the floor time and time and time again--which, by 
the way, I heard the same talking points time and time and time again 
for the last hour and a half. But it is to find out what is going on 
with this person because it is our duty to make sure there are good 
people in these Agencies.
  I wish we had taken that same kind of thought with some of the folks 
President Trump put forth, but it seems, though, the rules have 
changed.
  Now we are going to take a good woman--a good woman--the State of 
Montana knows well. In fact, she was vetted in the State of Montana. 
They said all these accusations have no merit. We are going to run her 
through the ringer here--character assassination like I have never seen 
before.
  But let's be honest. What is this really about? Is this about Tracy 
Stone-Manning? No. This is about the Republicans in the Senate trying 
to make Joe Biden look bad. That is what this is about. Make no mistake 
about it--that is what this is about.
  So let's get back to the issue at hand, and that is the person who 
has been nominated to run the BLM, Tracy Stone-Manning--somebody I have 
known for the last 25 years; somebody I have worked with for the last 
20 years; somebody who, when she was on my staff, worked with the wood 
products industry, worked with recreation folks--worked with everybody 
out there--to write a bill on how we could better manage our national 
forests with Montana input.
  She is somebody who lives by the statement ``You have two ears and 
one mouth; act accordingly.'' She is somebody who knows the value of 
collaboration. She is somebody who can listen, who can reason, and who 
knows our public lands and has recreated on our public lands for her 
entire life.
  She is somebody who will run the BLM in a hell of a lot better way 
than this dude by the name of Pendley, who sat in that office, 
unconfirmed, for months after months after months in the previous 
administration, and nobody on the Republican side of the aisle said a 
thing about him. He is somebody who wanted to sell off our public 
lands, somebody who really didn't care about access to them.
  But we have a person today we can confirm who can, once again, make 
the BLM the Agency it needs to be; somebody who understands multiple 
use; somebody who understands that the BLM needs to be run by a 
professional. Tracy Stone-Manning is a professional. I would encourage 
everybody to vote for her.
  I thank the Presiding Officer.