The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning (Executive Calendar)” mentioning Cindy Hyde-Smith was published in the Senate section on pages S5085-S5090 on July 27.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Nomination of Tracy Stone-Manning
Mr. MARSHALL. Madam President, I rise today to join my colleagues in opposing the motion to discharge President Biden's nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning.
Since Ms. Stone-Manning's first hearing in the beginning of June, members of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee have gathered copious amounts of information regarding a number of controversies that disqualify her for this important role within our Federal Government.
As has been highlighted today, Ms. Stone-Manning was involved in a tree-spiking plot as a member of the ecoterrorist group Earth First!--a tree-spiking plot.
I have to tell you, I didn't know what tree spiking was until a couple of weeks ago.
Could you imagine taking this nail and driving it into a tree with the hopes it would deter that tree from ever being cut down
And the concern is, someone that would take a chain saw, cutting through that tree, when they would hit this spike, what would happen?
I, unfortunately, had to take care of more than one chain saw situation in the emergency room. Let me tell you about a chain saw accident. The chain doesn't cut the flesh; it tears the flesh apart. It tears the skin apart, the muscles apart. It grabs the tendon and literally wraps them around the chain saw, usually permanently maiming people.
So could you imagine, if a chain saw hit this spike, what would happen?
Again, I have ran a chain saw before, and I know, as you are running the chain saw and you hit something solid, something hard--a knot--
sometimes that chain saw bounces. It bounces back into your body. And that is where most of the accidents occur.
So could you imagine, if that chain saw hit this spike, the chain saw is going to bounce back, going to recoil into the person's body, and turns this spike into a piece of shrapnel?
This Earth First! Ms. Stone was a member of is a radical organization that spanned the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the peak years of what is often referred to as ``the wilderness wars.'' As described by the Wall Street Journal, Earth First! had, at the time, ``defined itself''--and I should quote here, ``defined itself as the tip of the fanatical spear,'' and Ms. Stone-Manning was referred to as ``an Earth First! spokesperson.''
Debuting in 1985, the group engaged in a number of protests over the expansion of certain campgrounds and street theater asking people to take oaths to protect the Earth. However, they graduated into violence and ecoterrorist activities, including arson, equipment destruction, and the dangerous practice of tree spiking, which mangles saws and can easily result in the death of loggers.
In 1989, Ms. Stone-Manning was involved in an incident of tree spiking herself. Despite her denial, she was aware of the act being carried out, aided those who were involved, and helped cover it up. She obstructed the investigation and, finally, traded testimony for immunity.
At a time when the Biden administration has declared domestic extremism as one of the biggest threats the United States faces today, how can the President nominate someone with a record like this to lead the Agency that governs one-eighth of the country's landmass? How can this body bring her confirmation vote to the floor?
It is reckless and dripping with hypocrisy.
Republican Members who have come to the floor today are not the only individuals who believe she is unfit for this role. President Obama's first Bureau of Land Management Director, Bobby Abbey, who led the Agency from 2009 to 2012, said last month that Ms. Stone-Manning should withdraw her nomination due to her involvement in the tree-spiking case.
Steve Ellis, who served as Deputy Director of BLM under President Obama, joined Mr. Abbey last week in expressing his concern about Ms. Stone-Manning's nomination, stating the leader of the BLM must--again, I quote--``be respected by career employees and across the landscape, in both blue and red states'' in order to be effective.
In addition to her involvement with Earth First! and this horrific tree-spiking incident, Ms. Stone-Manning had a questionable financial history during her time serving in government. During the lengthy hearing process, I was alarmed to learn that Ms. Stone-Manning received a $100,000 loan from a Montana land developer and Democratic donor when she worked as a congressional staffer. Senate Ethics rules and Federal statute prohibit Senate staff from accepting gifts greater than $250, including a loan, unless a waiver is granted.
By Ms. Stone-Manning's own admission, she did not consult with Senate Ethics about the loan, she did not disclose the loan to the Senate Ethics Committee, she did not seek a written determination that the personal friendship exemption applied, and she did not receive a written determination that the personal friendship exemption applied.
Unfortunately, Ms. Stone-Manning has also been unable to provide any written documentation of the terms of the loan, the schedule of payments, the actual payments, or any other relevant documents. We can only rely on contradictory statements from the hearing and her vague responses to our questions submitted for the record. Many of her answers only lead to further questions about the legality and morality of accepting such a large loan.
Due to the radical nature of many of President Biden's nominees, the majority leader has been forced to bring six motions to discharge to the floor in order to clear them from the committee.
Under the previous power-sharing arrangements, which lasted for 5 months during the 107th Congress, there were no instances where Majority Leader Trent Lott had to utilize a motion to discharge. With at least four other nominees having received a tie in committee and their nomination failing to be reported favorably, this practice is becoming commonplace under this administration. Ms. Stone-Manning's record of dishonesty should be unacceptable and is one of my many issues that should make rational people question her integrity in a position of power. I encourage all Members of this body to reject this motion to discharge and this radical nominee.
I yield back.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho
Mr. RISCH. Madam President and fellow Senators, I rise today to join the chorus of my colleagues that are urging that Tracy Stone-Manning not be confirmed and, indeed, not even be discharged from the committee that voted to not send her to the floor for confirmation.
First of all, it is amazing to me that someone with this background has been appointed to this position. Now, I understand she has held some positions in the State of Montana for politicians there, and I don't comment on that. That is up to them, who they want the hire to do that.
In Idaho, that has a very, very significant number of acres of BLM ground, we have a different view of how our public resources should be protected and be administered, and this appointee in no way reflects the values we have.
This woman is an ecoterrorist. She participated in a conspiracy to murder people who work in the timber industry for a living. She is a perjurer, very recently. And she is someone who is supposed to put out fires and, as late as 2020, has made very disqualifying statements regarding her desire to do that and, indeed, commitment to do that.
Let's start with the ecoterrorist charge. I want to go a little bit further than what my colleague who just spoke did about using a chain saw to tear down--or to take down a tree in the forest.
Let me explain to you how this works. The prop that he held up was a spike that ecoterrorists put in trees. There is one reason to put a spike in a tree--one reason and one reason only--and that is to kill and to maim the people who harvest that tree.
These are innocent people who are involved in the timber business. They are my friends. They are my neighbors. We have lots of them in Idaho, and they work in a dangerous industry anyway. But for someone to go out and intentionally put these spikes in the trees, as the Senator spoke before me, Senator Marshall mentioned, there can be an injury in the forest when you are actually cutting the tree with a chain saw.
But that isn't the main difficulty with this. The main difficulty is when it hits the mill. They cut these logs up into mill-sized pieces and then run them through the mill, which is cut either with a circular saw or band saw into boards. And when that happens, the log and saw move very quickly through the log and cut up the wood into timber, which is not a problem unless there is a spike in the way. If there is a spike in the way, somebody in that mill will be badly injured and/or killed.
When that saw hits the spike, the saw shatters, the spike shatters, and it sends shrapnel to everybody who is standing within the vicinity. It has happened. It is documented. And it is ugly.
So when ecoterrorists do this, this is not a Sunday school prank. This is an act knowingly, willfully, intentionally with a black and abandoned heart committed in order to murder someone who works in the timber industry. This is wrong.
The person that we are voting on today participated in a conspiracy to do just that. Indeed, she wrote a letter. She claims she just typed it. Originally, she said it was handed to her by some person and asked to type. We now find out, of course, that this was a letter that was composed by a number of people, not the least of which was a gentleman that she lived with; but she is the one who put this together and sent it to the Federal Government as part of this act of conspiring, to take the lives of innocent people in the forest.
She says she edited the letter. But if she did, then it is what it is in front of us. She said she typed this and sent it to the Forest Service.
She said: This letter is being sent to you to notify that the Post Office sale in Idaho has been spiked heavily. The project required that 11 of us spend 9 days in God-awful weather conditions spiking trees. We unloaded a total of 500 pounds of spikes, measuring 8 to 10 inches, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, if she edited this letter, then she properly stated what her participation was in all of this. And there is no question that she admits that she prepared this letter and sent it to the Forest Service.
Today, in Idaho, those spikes remain in the trees. We don't know when one of those logs is going to be cut and going to cause damage, possibly the loss of life, but certainly the maiming of people who attempt to process that log into usable lumber. She says they put 500 pounds total of spikes in those trees.
This is a person whom the administration has chosen to administer the largest chunk of Federal land in the United States of America, possibly in the world. She is going to manage these after she committed this act of ecoterrorism and participated in this conspiracy.
Now, you say: Why isn't she in prison? Well, her coconspirators went to prison because she testified against them. She was found out. The investigators determined what her participation was in the conspiracy. She hired an attorney, and the attorney negotiated a deal where she would rat on the fellow conspirators and she did so and thereby avoided going to prison.
So that is what happened in her prior history. It is important to know those things because somewhere down in the recesses of her heart and her soul, she was prepared to participate in a conspiracy that would cause the death and the injury of innocent forest workers.
Now, more recently than that, she has made statements that certainly call into considerable question how she will be able to do her job. For those of you who don't live in the Western States, as I do and many of us do, when public land starts on fire, it is important that the fire be put out and be put out as quickly as possible. Her husband wrote an article. I wouldn't ordinarily tag her with her husband's view of things, but she took that article; she republished it in 2020 and said this was a ``clarion call.'' Now, if you look up ``clarion call'' in the dictionary, it is an urgent call to require somebody to do something. She calls this a clarion call.
He wrote this article about how people shouldn't be building in the forest around what is called interface land. If you are not--again, we westerners are familiar with interface. We have so much public land that many of our subdivisions, our individual homes, our cities butt up against interface land.
So this is what she said was a clarion call. The solution to houses in the interface is to let them burn. This is the person that the administration is going to put in charge of fire suppression in an interface zone. Let me state it again. The solution to houses in the interface zone is to let them burn is what she said.
Then: How do you feel about that?
She said:
There's a rude and satisfying justice in burning down the House of someone who builds in the forest.
That was in 2020. In 2020, she said that. This is whom the administration wants to take over the Bureau of Land Management.
Well, in addition to that, she lied to the committee. She lied under oath. I will tell you, this is disgusting. She shouldn't be here. She should be charged and standing in front of a jury.
Now, I told you what she did about her participation in the tree-
spiking incident, and this was a question that was asked of her under oath as she came to the committee for her confirmation:
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?
No.
Now, we know she wrote this letter. She admits it. She participated in it because she testified she participated in it when she testified against the other people who were eventually convicted and sent to prison. Yet she swore under oath to our committee this year that, no, she wasn't involved in that. They asked: Have you ever been arrested or charged--they asked her whether or not she had ever been a target of such an investigation. She says:
No, I have never been arrested or charged and to my knowledge I have never been the target of such investigation.
She knew she was a target; she was sent a letter that she was a target; and she hired an attorney to get her out from underneath that mess because she was a target. Yet she said no. So she has perjured herself this year.
Well, look, this is not the right person for this job. It just amazes me that they would even consider a person like this for this job. This is an insult to the thousands of good, hard-working people who are in the Bureau of Land Management and who work day and night to protect our resources on the public lands in the Western States.
Look, I know we are going to lose this. It is going to be a party-
line vote. All Republicans are going to vote against confirming her. The Democrats are all going to vote in favor of her. I say to this administration, this is not going to go away. This person's record of perjury, of ecoterrorism, of participating as a person involved in this plot and this conspiracy to actually take the life of Forest Service workers--this is not going to go away during the entire time that she is the head of this Agency. It is going to come up again and again, and it should.
So I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, I say to the President of the United States, who has nominated her for this position, if this is the character of someone who you want us to remember as the legacy of your administration, here she is, a perjurer, an ecoterrorist, a person who has participated in a conspiracy to murder innocent people working in the forest. If that is what you want as your administration, here it is. Vote for it. I suspect that is exactly what is going to happen, but this is not going to go away.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi
Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Madam President, I rise to join my colleagues in expressing my grave concern over the nomination of Ms. Tracy Stone-
Manning to be the Director of the Bureau of Land Management.
The Office of the Director of the Bureau of Land Management is tasked with an enormous responsibility. As it manages an eighth of our Nation's land, its leadership should be held to the highest standards.
Every nominee referred to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee must complete and submit the statement for completion by Presidential nominees, which is the standard committee questionnaire. In the sworn statement, Ms. Stone-Manning told the committee that she has never been arrested or charged and, to her knowledge, has never been the target of an investigation.
Unfortunately, as many of us are now aware, Ms. Stone-Manning's responses were not forthcoming nor fully accurate.
I am particularly disturbed by Ms. Stone-Manning's involvement with the ecoterrorist organization Earth First!, which organized the tree-
spiking plot in Idaho. As you all may know, tree spiking involves hammering a metal or ceramic rod into a tree trunk in order to prevent loggers from harvesting the timber. If the saw makes contact with a spike, it can result in severe injury or even the logger's death.
Make no mistake, the people who put these spikes into the trees are well aware of the potential consequences of their actions. These schemes are carried out with intent to harm or even, at the very least, the intent to frighten the loggers who are carrying out their daily jobs.
I want to be clear, no one is claiming that Ms. Stone-Manning put any spikes in any trees herself. However, it is undisputed that Ms. Stone-
Manning assisted the people who did.
Ms. Stone-Manning wrote a letter laced with vulgarities to the U.S. Forest Service, threatening loggers who were simply carrying out their jobs, doing what they do for a living.
In the aftermath of this tree-spiking conspiracy, Ms. Stone-Manning was investigated and subpoenaed by a Federal grand jury. Ms. Stone-
Manning was silent about her involvement in the plot, but when new evidence came to light 4 years later, she struck a deal for immunity in 1993.
Tracy Stone-Manning's involvement in ecoterrorism as well as her dishonesty to the Senate is more than alarming. There are questions that need to be revisited and answered. The statements from the former lead investigator of the Idaho tree-spiking scheme as well as the actions of the Federal grand jury tell a different tale than what Ms. Stone-Manning led the committee to believe. These discrepancies must not be cast aside.
I am concerned about the precedent that will be set for future nominees if my colleagues simply agree to accept or disregard these inconsistencies.
I am very disappointed that my Democratic colleagues on the Energy Committee moved forward with Ms. Stone-Manning's nomination. There are serious unanswered questions about her voracity and her qualifications to lead.
I applaud my colleagues who have sought the truth, and I am disheartened that those efforts have met with resistance. The American people deserve transparency. I cannot support this nominee, and I would urge my colleagues to do the same.
Thank you, Madam President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to use a prop during my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, in 1989, Tracy Stone-Manning rented a typewriter to draft and then send a letter threatening those who might choose to harvest trees. The letter stated that the trees in question had been sabotaged with hundreds of pounds of spikes. She closed the letter with:
``You bastards go in there anyway,'' meaning notwithstanding her threat, ``and a lot of people could get hurt.''
She and her cohorts thus used the threat of physical violence to achieve a political goal. This is the definition of terrorism.
In 1993, multiple associates of Ms. Stone-Manning were convicted of tree spiking by a Federal jury. Though she signed and swore that the information provided to the committee was ``to the best of [her] knowledge and belief, current, accurate, and complete,'' Ms. Stone-
Manning told the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that she had never been investigated.
This was, in fact, not true. It was widely reported that in 1990, Ms. Stone-Manning was required to give hair samples, a full set of fingerprints, and writing samples. This was already a year after she had conspired with her circle of friends, members of the radical environmentalist group Earth First!. She was still not cooperating with the authorities.
Now, how do we know that she was, in fact, a target of the investigation and not simply a bystander? Well, we know that based on a letter from Michael Merkley, a retired special agent criminal investigator for the Forest Service. He writes the following:
[The witness] described how Ms. Stone-Manning typed and mailed the letter to the Forest Service. She also recounted a conversation she had overheard wherein Ms. Stone-Manning along with other co-conspirators planned the tree spiking and discussed whether to use ceramic or metal spikes in the trees.
As a result of [the witness's] testimony, the grand jury sent Ms. Stone-Manning a ``target letter'' which meant she was going to be indicted on criminal charges for her active participation in planning these crimes. She hired an attorney who negotiated a deal with an Assistant United States Attorney to gain immunity in exchange for her testimony against the other defendants.
Ms. Stone-Manning did not gain immunity simply for being a good person or a model citizen. No, she traded her knowledge after withholding it for years. This is verified by her own admission in the May 21, 1993, edition of the Missoulian, reading:
Stone-Manning said she could have been charged with conspiracy . . . were it not for the agreement she reached with the U.S. attorney.
Furthermore, she received a target letter, meaning she knew very well that she had been under investigation.
This is a direct contradiction of a sworn statement that she made to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on which I serve, so she deliberately misled U.S. Senators. Unfortunately, Ms. Stone-Manning has been able to deceive a lot of people. Even a White House official acknowledged that this was a ``massive vetting failure.''
So what exactly did this tree spiking involve? Well, it involved spikes like these, spikes made of steel that, when placed into a tree, can cause widespread damage to those harvesting the trees, those milling the trees They have maimed many and wounded many others as a result of radical environmentalists taking this tactic to try to stop the harvesting of timber on Federal lands.
Now, regardless of how you may feel about timber-harvesting policy on Federal lands, I think all Americans of good faith and conscience can agree that it is not a good idea to use terrorism to advance your goals and that it is not a good idea to use threats of physical violence and present people with a real, foreseeable, and, in fact, foreseen and intended risk that they will be harmed or could even die as a result of the 500 pounds of these tree spikes that they placed in the trees in question.
So, yes, the White House admitted that this was a vetting failure, and a vetting failure it was. It was either a vetting failure or no one at the administration cared when Tracy Stone-Manning tweeted out only months ago an article written by her husband, an article that itself states: ``There's a rude and satisfying justice in burning down the house of someone who builds in the forest.''
When she tweeted out this story, apparently with her approval, she called it a clarion call--her words, not mine--seeming almost to celebrate their misfortune, to revel in the misery and loss of those who had just had their homes destroyed, oftentimes as a result of chronic mismanagement on Federal lands in allowing fuel to build up and remain untreated.
There are plenty of homes in forests in Utah. I presume that there are plenty of homes elsewhere--that there are plenty of homes in Arizona, in Montana, in California, in Colorado, in Nevada, in West Virginia, and elsewhere. So I would ask the question: How can we entrust the responsibility to protect the homes of those Americans who live on or near a forest from forest fire to an individual who actively advocated only months ago for their demise and who, apparently, celebrated their demise?
Lastly and, perhaps, most heinously, revelations have also come out regarding research that she conducted for her thesis. In 1992, Tracy Stone-Manning published her graduate student thesis at the University of Montana, entitled ``Into the Heart of the Beast: A Case for Environmental Advertising,'' which espoused several radical views on population and grazing.
In this thesis, she published a photo of a child with the caption--
this photo with this caption right here. It has a picture of a young child, a toddler. ``Can you find the environmental hazard in this photo?'' She then indicated that the child--this baby--was the environmental hazard.
She then elaborates:
Americans believe that overpopulation is only a problem somewhere else in the world. But it's a problem here too. . .
. We breed more than any other industrialized nation. At the same time, we suck up one-third of the world's energy. . . . When we overpopulate, the earth notices it more. Stop at two. It could be the best thing you do for the planet. . . . Do the truly smart thing. Stop at one or two kids.
This is a fringe belief. It is a dangerous belief. Not only is it factually flawed, but it is morally repugnant. As a father of three, I am repulsed, ashamed, and saddened. As much as anything, as the resident of a State, two-thirds of which is owned by the Federal Government and 40 percent of which is under the direct management and control of the Bureau of Land Management, the entity that she has been nominated to head, I am mortified that she is going to be in charge of all of that land, because this is how she views human beings.
We should all accept the fact that human beings are assets; they are blessings. They are not liabilities. Children are beautiful gifts from Heaven above, not environmental hazards.
I have consistently voiced outrage at China's one-child policy, and we are here today, voting on a nominee who calls for a similar action--
telling parents in the most condescending tone imaginable: ``Stop at one or two kids.'' According to Ms. Stone-Manning, we are simply breeding too much.
So now we must ask ourselves: Will this body advance the nomination of a person who played a central role in endangering the lives of foresters and sawmillers, who engaged in acts of reckless and deliberately harmful environmental terrorism in using 500 pounds of tree spikes, who attempted to deceive Members of the U.S. Senate about these same violent actions, who has advocated for homes to be left to burn in the wilderness, indicating that she would celebrate when that happened, and who has called children an environmental hazard?
The Director of the Bureau of Land Management, the position that Ms. Stone-Manning has been nominated to fill, has immense discretionary power. This isn't simply a matter that is concerning for symbolic reasons. It is that, too, but far more than that. If confirmed to this position, she is going to have immense discretionary power.
Could we rest knowing that she was at the helm of the Bureau of Land Management, making decisions about grazing, wildfire response, wildfire prevention, suppression, and rehabilitation and everything else that the Bureau of Land Management is charged with? I could not. I cannot and I will not. So I urge my colleagues to reject her nomination.
I yield the floor
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). The Senator from Montana.
Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to use a prop for my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, President Biden's nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning, may not have personally spiked trees--that is what the facts have shown as we have investigated--but she covered up a terrifying tree-spiking crime until she faced possible prosecution.
For many who are watching, what is tree spiking? I think it is very important to know that these are these large spikes that ecoterrorists put into trees for the purposes of injuring loggers or sawmill operators. When the blade goes through it, when the blade strikes these large spikes, the blade explodes like a grenade, causing serious injury to sawmill operators or loggers.
For 4 years, she refused to tell Federal investigators who the perpetrators were--the time from 1989 to 1993--even though she knew and had every opportunity to tell it. This happened in my home State. The actual spiking was in Idaho, but when the Feds were doing the investigation, this was in Missoula, MT. She was covering this up until she faced probable prosecution. She has never apologized for this crime, for covering it up. I think the coverup is as serious, in many ways, as anything else. For this reason and some others, I oppose her confirmation and believe that Montana and our Nation deserve better.
One week ago today, I stood here and laid out the new and very damning information we had learned just over the last 47 days about Ms. Stone-Manning and her obstruction of a Federal investigation into an ecoterrorist tree-spiking crime. In fact, just last week, in a U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee meeting on Ms. Stone-
Manning, my Republican colleagues and I urged committee Democrats to listen to the new information, to listen to the alarming new facts that we have learned about her knowledge of the crime and the relationship she had with the perpetrators.
In coming from Montana and having spoken with several Montana State legislators, I want to make sure my colleagues understand that the story that was told for years is much different than what we now know to be true. Up until 47 days ago, Montanans, the Montana State Legislature, the Montana media, and I were led to believe that, in the tree-spiking crime that happened in 1989, Ms. Stone-Manning was a hero, that she helped put bad people in jail. As I shared last week, that is unequivocally false.
Here is the truth: Ms. Stone-Manning obstructed the Federal investigation for 4 years. Rather than bring criminals to justice--we are talking about very bad people who went on to commit even more violence--Ms. Stone-Manning assisted and helped them evade justice for years--for years. Now, last week, during the committee meeting and the debate we had over Ms. Stone-Manning's nomination, there was discussion, discussion as to whether or not she was part of the investigation at all or whether she was a target of the investigation.
What we know now is that Ms. Stone-Manning only came forward after she was caught. What happened is, 4 years later, suddenly, an insider to the crime came forward with new information to the FBI. So she came forward after she was caught. She knew she was likely headed to prison. She didn't come forward because she wanted to help put bad people in jail, primarily. She didn't come on her own volition. She knew she had to get some kind of a deal or she was on her way to prison. She didn't come forward when she was subpoenaed, when she was questioned about the crime, when she was asked by the FBI for her hair, handwriting, and fingerprint samples. In fact, she was described by the investigator as the ``nastiest of the suspects.'' She was described as being vulgar, antagonistic, and extremely anti-government.
You see, Ms. Stone-Manning only came forward after she received a target letter from the grand jury, meaning that she was going to be indicted on criminal charges. She struck an immunity deal several years later for her involvement. I am not sure how one can argue that she was not part of an investigation. That is how she answered, by the way, when she was questioned by the committee if she were part of an investigation. She said no. Now, you tell me how you are not part of an investigation when I have laid out these facts.
Ms. Stone-Manning bad-mouthed law enforcement for investigating her involvement despite the fact that she knew all of the details of the crime--all of them. She stonewalled the Federal investigation. For 4 years, from 1989 to 1993, she remained silent, but she had all of the information. While she was withholding this information, tragically, one of the perpetrators went on to commit a terrible act of domestic violence
I want to talk for a moment about that letter that Ms. Stone-Manning typed and mailed. Remember, this was not available to us until just 47 days ago. Ms. Stone-Manning stated that she simply mailed this anonymous letter and that she got it from a rather ``frightening man''--her words. Well, we have learned since that, based on new information, that the frightening man was her roommate. We also learned that this letter had not only been collaboratively composed but that, after waiting for a few days, she went and typed it and sent it. She went and rented a typewriter to type this letter up when she sent it, which, according to her own testimony, was because she wanted to avoid having it on her own computer and avoid having any fingerprints that could be traced back to her.
The words that Ms. Stone-Manning typed and mailed are explicit and not what you send and what you type when you want to protect people. They are what you say when you want to frighten people. That is the whole idea of terrorism.
Ms. Stone-Manning typed: ``You bastards go in there anyway, and a lot of people could get hurt.''
She also typed on this rented typewriter: ``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''--that was all typed in caps; it is publicly available--``nightmare.''
The text of this letter was made public for the first time just 47 days ago. You see, Montana has never had the opportunity to read what Stone-Manning retyped on a rented typewriter and mailed until 47 days ago.
I find the most disturbing piece of this story to be that Stone-
Manning has never shown contrition or remorse for her handling of the situation. She has never apologized for her role or for misleading Montanans. We have yet to see a public statement from her in response to this new information.
I believe healthy debate is important in this institution, and I believe it is important at the committee level when discussing and advancing nominees who will potentially lead a major Agency, including Stone-Manning and the Bureau of Land Management's--critical to the West--10,000 employees who are overseeing 245 million acres of land.
In fact, last week, one of my colleagues across the aisle explained how it was a shame that Ms. Stone-Manning was not there to defend herself from this new information we have learned over the last few weeks. I agree with that. I agreed with her comment then, and I agree with it now, because in light of this new information and the fact we have yet to see a statement in response from the nominee, I think Ms. Stone-Manning should come before the committee before we move forward, further explain her involvement, and have the opportunity to speak to the new information we have learned about her involvement in a tree-
spiking crime. That is why I am urging my colleagues to take this step here to not discharge her nomination from the committee today.
Now, by the way, for those who are watching, why is it we are going to discharge a nominee from the committee? What does that mean? Well, that means there was no bipartisan support for the nominee because we are in a 50-50 Senate. So it takes a special action here to bring a purely partisan kind of vote out of a committee for floor action. In fact, the only bipartisanship we have seen is her opposition, those who are opposed to her leading the Bureau of Land Management.
In fact, we now have two Obama officials who have raised concerns about Ms. Stone-Manning and what her confirmation would mean for the Agency. In fact, President Obama's former Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Bob Abbey, said that her involvement in the tree-
spiking crime would cause needless controversy and that it ``should disqualify'' her. We just learned yesterday that a second Obama official, Steve Ellis, who was the Deputy Director for the Agency under President Obama, said that this isn't a Republican or Democratic issue; it is about the letter she sent.
He went on to say:
The administration's got some great initiatives and their agenda for public lands is good, but you need the career employees to implement your agenda successfully across the West. Your leader has got to be respected by career employees and across the landscape, in both blue and red states.''
We know, sadly, this isn't the case.
I am here today to urge my colleagues to wait to move forward with this nomination of Ms. Stone-Manning and allow debate to continue at the committee level. We had very spirited debate last week.
One important note that I want to make here before wrapping is that this is not just an issue for the West. Ms. Stone-Manning's conduct should cause alarm to not only Senators who represent Bureau of Land Management States but every State with a logging industry.
Stone-Manning's refusal to come forward for 4 years placed the safety of loggers in jeopardy, which is offensive to loggers across our country, from the loggers in Maine, which is the most forested State in the Nation; to loggers in State likes New Hampshire, Georgia; to the forestry, wildlife, and logging groups like Meadow River Hardwood Lumber Company, the Houston Safari Club, the Idaho Logging Council, who withdrew their support or have come out in opposition.
Ms. Stone-Manning's actions matter and should not be accepted by any Senator. Montanans and all Americans deserve to hear directly from her, from Ms. Stone-Manning, about why she obstructed a Federal investigation for 4 years and why she has yet to show any remorse.
I think it is also important for my colleagues across the aisle who admitted they don't know anything about the nominee--we heard that in the committee hearing last week--or haven't spoken with her to have the opportunity to learn more as well.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois
Alerts Sign-up