(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) When seeking documents about President Joe Biden’s Bureau of Land Management nominee, an NBC News journalist promised the Interior Department’s spokesperson that he would downplay the nominee’s participation in environmental terrorism, The Federalist reported.
Josh Lederman, an NBC correspondent in Washington, requested documents from the Interior Department about Tracy Stone-Manning, who the Senate confirmed as BLM Director last October.
In 1989, Stone-Manning wrote an anonymous letter to the Forest Service, warning that eco-terrorists would place 500 lbs. of “spikes measuring 8 to 10 inches in length” around the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho if regulators allowed companies to harvest its trees.
The spikes, which explode upon contact with saws, could kill foresters, firefighters who had to manage the land, civilians, and animals.
Prosecutors agreed to drop charges against Stone-Manning because she testified against the plot’s co-conspirators and because she wrote the letter on behalf of John T. Blount, her friend and former roommate.
She apparently did not intend to participate in the terrorist plot.
Lederman sought information about Stone-Manning’s role in an obsequious and groveling manner.
“We will not go overboard on it or anything,” Lederman told Interior Spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz on July 8, 2021.
“It’s a legitimate story given the position to which she has been nominated,” he continued. “But we will point out that a) she did not participate in spiking trees herself, b) she was not charged, c) this was decades ago when she was in her early 20s, and d) her record is otherwise unblemished.”
The government oversight group Protect the Public’s Trust obtained Lederman’s emails from a Freedom of Information Act request.
Senate Republicans opposed Stone-Manning’s nomination, noting that her terrorist affiliates planted spikes that are still in trees on federal land to this day.
Those booby-trapped trees now likely reside on the 245 million acres of land that Stone-Manning manages.
