[eds. note, the following article is reposted for our readers enjoyment and though we must recognize that it is a rather cheap and factually incorrect hit piece, it is, nevertheless, kinda interesting for us to appear in a 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon spin-off.]
from the UK Daily Mail
As New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich prepared to visit the Oval Office to mark the birth of a new national park in his home state, revelations emerged about his past partnership with an environmental extremist who pleaded guilty to plotting an eco-sabotage crime against a nuclear power plant in 1990.
Heinrich co-founded and chaired the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance in 1997. Another co-founder was Dave Foreman, the one-time leader of Earth First!
The Daily Caller reported Monday that Foreman’s wife financially supported the Democrat’s 2012 US Senate campaign with donations totaling $1,750.
Earth First! ran a campaign of environmentally motivated ‘eco-tage’ in the 1990s and 2000s. Among its initiatives was an unfulfilled plot to destroy power lines leading to a nuclear power plant.
Foreman, then Earth First!’s leader, pleaded guilty to conspiring in that plot. The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance was founded six years later, in 1997.
Sen. Martin Heinrich co-founded and chaired the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance with Dave Foreman (R) of the eco-sabotage group Earth First! The loose-knit organization has been active around the world, especially in the US and the UK, since the 1990s
By that time, Foreman’s criminal charge had been reduced from felony conspiracy to the misdemeanor crime of vandalism to government property. That arrangement was dependent on five years of good behavior. He later paid a $250 fine.
Other Earth First! activists including Foreman’s wife also served on the New Mexico group’s board of directors while Heinrich was its chairman.
The Foremans’ home often served as the organization’s meeting place during that time.
In a documentary film titled Earth First!: The Politics Of Radical Environmentalism, Foreman spelled out his green pressure philosophy.
‘We aren’t fooled for a minute that we’re engaged in the liberal reform,’ he said. ‘We’re sticking a wrench in the system, we’re slowing it down, we’re thwarting it, we’re kicking it in the face.’That ‘monkey wrenching’ philosophy often extended to the personal lives of business and government leaders who the group saw as putting economic progress ahead of the planet.
‘The earth is not dying,’ its official motto read. ‘It is being killed. And those who are killing it have names and addresses.’
The group put out several hit lists during the 1990s and 2000s, including one in its newsletter, the Earth First! Journal, that spelled out the names and addresses of biotechnology executives involved with the genetic modification of food crops.
FBI reports showed that Ted Kaczynski, the so-called ‘Unabomber’ who ran a deadly bombing campaign in the United States from 1978 to 1995, was first inspired to kill after reading such a hit list published by Earth First!
His first murder victim was Thomas Mosser, an advertising executive at Burson-Marstellar. In his widely published manifesto, Kaczynski misspelled the firm’s name as ‘Burston,’ making the exact same error as the Earth First! Journal’s hit list.
Both Earth First! and Kaczynski believed, incorrectly, that Mosser had a hand in rehabilitating the public image of Exxon after the Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
FBI agents found copies of the Earth First! Journal in the secluded Montana cabin that served as Kaczynski’s home for several years.
Ron Arnold, the executive vice president of the nonprofit Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, told MailOnline that Foreman ‘is a very mixed bag.’
‘He advocates for the “rewilding” of America, meaning the depopulation of major sections of the nation. His chief tactic since a serious run-in with the law a decade ago has been “incrementalism,” eradicating developed areas a bit at a time within the system, such as pressing for new “protective” designations such as national monuments and wilderness areas.’
Arnold also noted that Foreman later resigned from Earth First!
A spokeswoman for Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe, who has crossed swords with the environmental movement throughout his time in Washington, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A message left with the Earth First! Journal was not returned.
