Forest Service Won’t Cooperate
With Probe Over "Inside" Deals

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. Forest Service is defying the request of a congressman who wants to get to the bottom of suspicious agency behavoir by learning which employees may have ties to environmental activist groups.

The issue arose after the Forest Service settled a grazing lawsuit in New Mexico and Arizona through a secret deal that excluded livestock interests.

U.S. Rep. Don Young, a Republican who heads the House Committee on Resources, says he is investigating charges that the Forest Service, cowed by activists' lawsuits and compromised by the groups’ inside connections, has become a "captive agency."

In a July 28 letter to Regional Forester Ellie Towns, Young detailed 19 requests for information about the agency's relationship with environmental activists and ranchers.

He sought the names of federal employees who handled the lawsuits, and asked whether Forest Service administrators were aware of any employees who were members of the activist groups named in the lawsuits or who contributed money to the groups.

Towns, in her reply last week, provided a list of Forest Service employees involved in the lawsuit, but wrote, "the Forest Service does not track the membership of employees in organizations."

Federal privacy law "prohibits the Agency from maintaining records of such First Amendment information," she said.

In a thinly veiled slight, Towns added, "The Forest Service encourages its employees to participate in professional organizations and in their communities."

In a letter sent in August to the Santa Fe New Mexican, Young said there have been allegations of unethical, inappropriate, or illegal conduct by some of the parties involved in the lawsuits.

He stated that any "inside" information provided by the Forest Service to the Forest Guardians, the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity or other groups that filed lawsuits, could be a violation of the ethical standards required of federal employees.

Peter Galvin, a Southwest Center spokesman, claimed Young is trying to intimidate Forest Service employees. Forest Guardians president Sam Hitt has accused Young of using the Communist-baiting tactics of the late Senator Joe McCarthy.

Hitt described Young's letter to Towns as "part and parcel of this (cattle) industrywide effort to get the Forest Service back in their camp."

"It's encouraging that the Forest Service didn't cave in the face of Young's Inquisition-like effort," Galvin said.

In his letter to the New Mexican, Young concluded: "It appears as if some people are getting nervous."

Pat Jackson, the Forest Service's regional coordinator for appeals and litigation in Albuquerque, said the agency was not intimidated by Young's request.

"We don't track that sort of thing for employees any more than we track their religious affiliations or that sort of information," Jackson said.

The Forest Service agreed earlier this year to limit cattle grazing in the 11 Arizona and New Mexico national forests in a secretly arranged settlement of a lawsuit filed by the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity.

The agreements with the Southwest Center and Forest Guardians, which filed a similar lawsuit, would keep cattle away from 330 miles of streams on 80 grazing allotments.

Ranchers angry about the settlements and their exclusion from participation protested by picketing in New Mexico last month.