President Joe Biden’s embattled nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Tracy Stone-Manning, is once again under fire for allegedly lying to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about her involvement in an eco-terrorism plot, the Washington Times reported.
The allegations stem from Stone-Manning’s responses earlier this year to a questionnaire asking whether she had “ever been investigated, arrested, or charged by any federal, state or local law enforcement authority for the violation of any federal, state, or local law, regulation, or ordinance, other than a minor traffic offense.” Stone-Manning reportedly hand-wrote that she had “never been arrested or charged,” and, to her knowledge, she had “never been the target of such an investigation.”
But the recently resurfaced information suggests that she could have misled Congress. The Times cited two interviews with Stone-Manning where she explicitly states that she was a target of investigation in an eco-terrorism case involving tree-spiking in Idaho in the 1980s.
The first interview was given to the Montana Great Falls Tribune in August 1990, in which she said she had been investigated by federal authorities over the tree-spiking case.
“It was degrading. It changed my awareness of the power of government,” said Stone-Manning. “Yes, this was happening to me and not someone in Panama. And, yes, the government does bad things sometimes.”
At the time, Stone-Manning was a member of the radical environmentalist group Earth First! According to the Times, in 1989, the group attempted to stop a timber sale in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest by hammering 500 pounds of metal spikes into trees scheduled to be cut down. As allthingsnature.org notes, “tree-spiking is a type of ecotage which is intended to prevent loggers from taking trees. In the United States, it is a federal felony, as of 1988.” Left unnoticed, the spikes damage the saws used to cut the trees down and may even cause serious injuries and deaths.
Stone-Manning‘s role in the ecoterrorism scheme came to light when a member of the group acknowledged that she mailed a crudely worded letter warning the U.S. Forest Service of the sabotage. She received immunity in exchange for her testimony and was never charged with a crime. The Montana Kaimin reported at the time that Stone-Manning was one of seven people served subpoenas, and was forced to provide fingerprints, palm prints, hair samples, and handwriting samples to the federal grand jury.
The case eventfully came to a standstill as Stone-Manning and her associates continued to deny wrongdoing.
“They were on a fishing expedition and while they were fishing they took advantage of intimidation,” Stone-Manning reportedly told the Missoulian in October 1990 in another interview about the case.
Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the committee’s top Republican, told the Times that the nominee blatantly lied to Congress about the matter. He points that in Stone-Manning’s official questionnaire, where only one reference was made to the tree-spiking case, with the nominee writing she “testified before a federal grand jury” as part of “investigation into an alleged tree-spiking incident related to a timber sale.” Stone-Manning did not disclose that she was privy to an immunity deal for her testimony against her co-conspirators and did not collaborate with the government “until she was caught.”
Earlier in June, Stone-Manning was accused by watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust of violating federal law with her allegedly untruthful response to the question of whether she was ever the subject of an investigation. The group sent a complaint to the U.S. Attorney’s Office that reads:
Common sense and publicly available facts point to the conclusion Ms. Stone-Manning was under investigation for her role in the tree-spiking eco-terrorism plot…. Further, she was aware of the need to cooperate with the authorities to avoid federal indictment and/or prison.
The complaint added that it is irrelevant whether she was ultimately charged or convicted in the case: “She was being investigated by federal authorities in the tree spiking case, and the fact of her immunity undeniably reinforces this point.”
A former head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under Barack Obama, Robert Abbey, called on President Biden’s pick to withdraw her nomination over her ties to an eco-terrorist group and involvement in a crime. “As a 30-year BLM career employee, I don’t take her actions lightly, nor should anyone else,” Abbey said. “If Stone-Manning participated in any aspect of planning, implementation or cover-up in the spiking of trees, then she should not be confirmed.”
The influential conservation group The Dallas Safari Club revoked its support for Stone-Manning, citing her past association with Earth First! — noting the group “has a history of sabotage, property destruction and creating dangerous work environments for loggers and sawmill operators” — as the reason for DSC shifting its stance.
Stone-Manning recently made headlines for her master’s thesis, in which she argued for a population-control propaganda, urged Americans “to breed less consuming humans,” and called children an “environmental hazard.”
The White House continues to stand by Stone-Manning despite controversies over her links to an eco-terrorist plot and her views on population control.
