Some Inconvenient Truths About Al Gore

The inside track on "Cousin Albert"

By Stephen Marshall

Published: Thursday May 25th, 2006

Editor’s note: With the release of his global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has reemerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most high-profile stars. Despite his repeated statements that he is a “recovering politician” and is not interested in running for office, many believe Gore will throw his hat into the presidential ring come 2008. But despite his many years in high elected office, what do we really know about Gore’s politics? In this exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming book Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing (Disinfo, Jan. 2007), GNN’s Stephen Marshall talks with Gore Vidal about some inconvenient truths about his relative:

While his “cousin Albert” has effortlessly inhabited the vestments of a liberal politician, to hear Gore Vidal tell it, the former Vice President’s liberalism is merely a prop developed to bring him to the head of the Democratic Party.

“Well, although we are cousins, and I was a friend of his father’s, I’ve always thought he was absolutely pointless as a politician. He’s just another conservative southerner.”

In fact, Al Gore’s voting record as a senator was surprisingly conservative until he rolled his eye toward the White House. Throughout most of his career, he was pro-life and had an 84% anti-abortion rating from the National Right to Life Committee. From 1979 – 81, he voted five times on the side of a Republican sponsored rider that granted a tax exemption for schools like Bob Jones University that discriminate on the basis of race. He was openly anti-gay, calling homosexuality “abnormal” and “wrong,” and telling the Tennessean in 1984 that he did “not believe it is simply an acceptable alternative that society should affirm.” Gore was such a strong supporter of the gun lobby – ultimately voting against the critical 1985 legislation for a mandatory 14-day waiting period for handgun purchases – that National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre once said, “We could have made Al Gore NRA Man of the Year – every single vote.” Finally, when it came time to vote on conservative Supreme Court nominees, Gore publicly praised but voted against the scandal-ridden Clarence Thomas. He voted in Antonin Scalia. If the wider public had been more aware of his legacy, few would have recognized the Al Gore of 1988 who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Pulling his hat down so that his eyes are shadowed from the sun, Vidal continues his effortless assault on Al Gore: “Another border-state, southern lover of the Pentagon…there was never anything the Pentagon asked for that Cousin Albert wasn’t down there giving it to them; he voted for the first war in the Gulf.”

Indeed, Al Gore was one of only ten Democrats to break with the party and vote for President Bush Sr.’s Gulf War in 1991. But while Vidal sees this as a facet of Gore’s eager-to-please statism, others have attributed his dissenting vote to self-interest. Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson accused Gore of peddling his vote on the Iraq War in exchange for high-visibility, headline-grabbing speech time on the floor. According to Simpson, the night before the vote Gore stopped by the GOP cloakroom and asked, “How much time will you give me if I support the President?” Taking him at his word, Simpson and Senator Bob Dole offered Gore twenty minutes, thirteen more than his own party would grant. In Simpson’s account, over the course of the night Gore jockeyed to have the floor during prime time to ensure that he would get coverage in the next day’s news cycle. The negotiations went right up to the last minute, leaving Simpson to conclude that Gore “arrived on the Senate floor with… two speeches in hand. [He] was still waiting to see which side – Republicans or Democrats – would offer him the most and the best speaking time.”

For Vidal, stories like this just prove the moral bankruptcy of American politicians who serve no master other than their own ambition. And their corporate backers. In Gore’s case, this meant Russian-born oil tycoon Armand Hammer, owner of Occidental Petroleum. Though it was Gore’s father, Senator Al Gore Sr. who was the primary beneficiary of Hammer’s support – in exchange for political and diplomatic favors to further his international business interests – Gore Jr. slipped quietly into his father’s shoes.

Occidental is one of the worst corporate polluters in the world. In its most scandalous case, an Occidental subsidiary dumped thousands of tons of toxic chemical waste near the residential area of Love Canal, New York, causing birth defects, miscarriages, and incidences of cancer in the nearby community. But Gore remained a friend of the company. And the company, a good friend to Al Gore.

Despite being a predominantly Republican supporter, Occidental funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to the Clinton/Gore Democrats over the course of their two-term administration. In return, Gore maneuvered to facilitate Occidental’s acquisition of oil drilling rights in the Elk Hills National Petroleum Reserve outside Bakersfield, California. Long held as a federal oil resource, Elk Hills represented the largest turnover of public lands to a private corporation in American history. It tripled Occidental’s U.S. petroleum reserves, increasing the company’s stock value by ten percent. Gore later admitted to controlling between $250,000 – $500,000 worth of shares through a family held trust.

Gore’s vaunted record as an environmental populist clashed harshly with the 1996 Elk Hills-Occidental deal. Democratic fund-raiser (and former Gore campaign manager) Tony Cohelo sat on the board of the private company hired to provide an environmental impact report for the Energy Department. After the deal was approved, Peter Eisner of the DC-based Center for Public Integrity remarked, “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen an environmental assessment prepared so quickly.” Perhaps even more damning, Elk Hills is part of the Kitanemuk people’s traditional lands. Despite protests from the tribe, it took less than five years for Occidental’s massive operations to wipe out any trace of the 100 native archaeological sites, including ancient burial grounds, that were left in Elk Hills.

Throughout Al Gore’s campaign for the 2000 Democratic presidential candidacy, environmentalists protested his relationship to Occidental. This time the issue was Gore’s defense of the company’s plan to drill near the sacred grounds of the Colombian U’wa tribes people. During Clinton’s second term, Occidental spent millions lobbying for American military aide to Colombia in order to bolster the country’s ability to defend its pipelines from rebel armies. The close links between the company and national security forces surfaced when U’wa leaders sued Occidental, claiming the Colombian army used the company’s planes in an operation that ultimately resulted in the murder of 18 innocent peasants. As a measure of last resort, the 5,000 remaining U’wa threatened collective suicide if Occidental refused to alter their drilling plans. And, in February 2000, when U’wa representative Robert Perez traveled to Washington in order to make his people’s case against the company, Gore refused to meet him. In 2002, after a protracted public battle over the U’wa drill site, Occidental pulled out, saying that U’wa protests had “no effect at all” on Occidental’s withdrawal decision. Apparently, neither did Al Gore.

But, for Vidal, the act that most proves Gore’s contempt for representative politics was his total acquiescence in the face of the contested 2000 presidential election result in Florida. The image of Gore presiding over the certification of Bush’s victory was a moving, if tragic, scene in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. There he stood, banging his gavel as each successive member of the Congressional Black Caucus rose to challenge the assignment of Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Bush. “There was a hell of a lot of people ready to march,” Vidal says defiantly. But Al Gore wasn’t one of them.

“He is of above average intelligence, on issues that people didn’t really care about, like the environment. But if there’s a hot issue, he runs the mile,” Vidal concludes firmly and then, looking up at the clouds that have moved over the sun, rises.

GNN co-founder Stephen Marshall is the director of BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire’s Edge, and This Revolution, a political thriller starring Rosario Dawson, and the co-author of True Lies (Penguin/Plume). He is currently shooting a new documentary entitled Holy Wars and finishing a new book entitled Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, due out in January 2007.