Tracy Stone-Manning, the radical environmentalist whom President Biden thinks should run the Bureau of Land Management, knew for weeks about a plan to spike trees before a federal timber sale in 1989.
The latest on Stone-Manning comes from one of the men convicted in the terror plot, E&E News reported on Thursday.
Stone-Manning has falsely maintained for years that she knew little of the scheme to harm loggers and stop them from taking timber in the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho.
But this week, the federal agent who investigated the crime told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that Stone-Manning was an angry Earth First! extremist.
Now, with the testimony of her accomplice, ranking Republican John Barrasso can push even harder to get Biden to drop Stone-Manning and nominate someone without a past as an unhinged wacko.
She Knew
In its report about Michael Merkley’s letter to Barrasso and committee chairman Joe Manchin, E&E News included the story from Stone-Manning’s coconspirator, convicted felon John Blount.
He said “Stone-Manning knew of the plan and had agreed weeks in advance to send the anonymous letter warning the Forest Service of the illegal deed,” the website reported. Stone-Manning did not participate in the sylvan raid:
“She knew about it far in advance, a couple of months before we headed out,: said Blount, the ringleader of the operation who was convicted of tree spiking in 1993 and sentenced to 17 months in prison.
“Was she heavily involved in the planning? Did she go put a nail in a tree or anything? Absolutely not,” Blount added.
But, he said, “She had agreed to mail the letter well in advance” of the actual tree-spiking operation.
In other words, Stone-Manning was an unindicted co-conspirator — even if she didn’t, as Blount told the website, follow the agreed-upon plan.
“She was supposed to mail the letter from Billings where she had planned on going in two or three more days, so that it wasn’t postmarked ‘Missoula,’” Blount told E&E.
But Stone-Manning ignored the order and did mail the letter — a threat that warned federal officials the trees were spiked — from Missoula. She was a graduate student in environmental studies at the state university.
Another terrorist involved in the plot, Jeffrey Fairchild, told the Washington Post that writing and mailing the tree-spike threat was Stone-Manning’s only role:
“Other than the mailing of the letter, Tracy knew nothing and was not involved,” Fairchild told the newspaper from his home in Tennessee. “She was a bridge builder. She was a moderating voice in every discussion. … She was always the one to say, ‘Hey, look, loggers have families, too.’”
“She strongly disagreed with doing any stupid stuff like that,” said a third individual named Stephen LaCrosse. “She was like, ‘Never. Don’t involve me.’”
LaCrosse, who escaped conviction in the crimes, called her the “voice of reason.”
Lied to Committee
The “voice of reason” waltzed away from a federal felony conviction only because she ratted on her co-conspirators, Merkley told Manchin and Barrasso. Stone-Manning provided testimony in exchange for immunity.
Stone-Manning was no “innocent bystander,” Merkley wrote. She wasn’t just a dopey idealist in grad school yearning to hug trees. She was a member of the Earth First! leadership. But the snitch was also a recalcitrant witness:
Throughout this initial investigation in 1989, Ms. Stone-Manning was extremely difficult to work with; in fact, she was the nastiest of the suspects. She was vulgar, antagonistic, and extremely anti-government. She was very uncooperative and refused to provide the hair, handwriting exemplars, and fingerprints as ordered by the federal grand jury. It was not until after we informed her that she would be arrested if she did not comply with the subpoena that she reluctantly provided those samples to me. However, she refused to answer any of my other questions. Eventually, after further investigation, I discovered that she had known all along who had perpetrated the crimes in the Clearwater National Forest….
Stone-Manning only came forward only after her attorney struck the immunity deal, and not before she was caught. At no time did she come forward of her own volition, and she was never entirely forthcoming. She was aware that she was being investigated in 1989 and again in 1993 when she agreed to the immunity deal with the government to avoid criminal felony prosecution.
Stone-Manning has lied at least twice to public officials about her past.
She falsely told the Manchin-Barrasso panel that she was never investigated for a federal crime. Years ago, during testimony for a top environmental job in Montana, she falsely said was never involved in tree-spiking.
Hat tip: Breitbart
