By Chris Lydgate

Pamplin Media Group, Oct 16, 2008

The reporter’s call came on a busy afternoon last month. Brent Foster, executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper, couldn’t believe his ears.

FreedomWorks Oregon, a conservative group, had issued a media statement linking Riverkeeper to eco-terrorists, Marxist-Leninists, and other extremists “that support the destruction of the American way of life.”

As evidence, FreedomWorks cited Riverkeeper’s Myspace page, which listed more than 300 “friends” – among them, an obscure (but militant) animal rights group called SHAC 7 and a cabal of Marxist students at Portland State University.

To Foster, the charge was absurd. But the timing was curious. For years, Columbia Riverkeeper has been fighting against a proposed $600 million liquid natural gas terminal on the Columbia River at Bradwood Landing in Clatsop County, 20 miles east of Astoria. The attack from FreedomWorks arrived the day before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission held a key vote on the terminal.

“My first thought was, this is pathetic,” Foster says. “If this is the best they can come up with, they’re desperate.”

Riverkeeper is hardly the only environmental watchdog Freedomworks has attacked.

In August, FreedomWorks launched a $1 million media blitz, running radio ads deriding “extreme environmental groups” who “only answer to their ultra-rich, ivory tower donors.”

The campaign’s central message is that environmentalists are being hypocritical by opposing new sources of energy such as liquid natural gas, wave power and wind power.

In an era when energy prices are soaring, and workers are fearful for their paychecks, the ads are intended as an “educational campaign” to build support for new energy projects, according to Freedomworks local executive director, Russ Walker, who calls Columbia Riverkeeper “a perfect example of obstructionist groups that are hurting our economy.”

To Foster and other environmentalists, the FreedomWorks offensive is a political hatchet job.

“It’s a classic misinformation campaign,” Foster says.

Networks of influence

FreedomWorks bills itself as a grass-roots organization dedicated to the familiar goal of lower taxes and less government.

Founded in 2004 as the result of a merger of two groups, Citizens for a Sound Economy and Empower America, its executive director is Dick Armey, the former Republican congressman from Texas who served as majority leader of the House of Representatives from 1993 to 2005.

The local chapter is headed by Walker, who also serves as vice chairman of the Oregon Republican Party

Citizens for a Sound Economy originally was founded by the legendary oilmen David and Charles Koch, two brothers whose company, Koch Industries of Wichita, Kansas, now is the biggest privately held company in the United States, with estimated revenue of $98 billion last year – far more than Microsoft Corp.

The Koch family has long been active in conservative and libertarian circles. Patriarch Fred Koch was one of the original founders of the John Birch Society. His son, David, ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980. His other son, Charles, co-founded the Cato Institute. The brothers are worth about $17 billion each, according to Forbes magazine, and have a long record of supporting conservative causes.

In 2005, a Koch subsidiary purchased lumber-products giant Georgia-Pacific for $13 billion – a move that gave it a powerful interest in the Bradwood Landing project.

That’s because Georgia-Pacific owns a pulp mill in Wauna, on the Columbia River. Pulp mills have a notorious appetite for energy, and the Wauna mill would be one of the prime beneficiaries of liquid natural gas from Bradwood Landing.

Walker denies any suggestion that Freedomworks is doing Koch’s bidding, calling the idea “patently false.” And the organization’s most recent IRS 990 form does not list any members of the Koch family on the organization’s board of directors.

But Walker refused to mention any specifics about his funding sources. “Our money comes from people who care about the issues,” he told Sustainable Life.

Asked if some of those donors stand to benefit financially from projects like the terminal at Bradwood Landing, he replied: “Just because someone’s going to make money from something doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.”

Walker acknowledges that his detractors long have contended that his group is a front for big business and Big Oil. “We’ve heard that complaint for years,” he says. “I’m not so sure that Big Oil is such a bad thing. Big Oil has helped fuel our economy for the last hundred years and brought prosperity to our country. We should be drilling more, not less.”

Freedomworks ads mislead

Apart from the issue of who is paying for the ads, the campaign includes dubious suggestions. For example, Freedomworks slams the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit surfers’ advocacy group, for shutting down a proposed wave-energy project off the coast of Florence, implying that the group cares more about protecting surf spots than renewable energy.

But Charlie Plybon, Oregon field co-ordinator for Surfrider, says that is a distortion. True, Surfrider did file a motion in court to give it the ability to weigh in on the Florence project, but so did government agencies such as the Department of State Lands and the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In fact, he says, Surfrider has worked together with energy companies on other wave-energy projects, such as one in Reedsport.

“We support wave energy,” he said. “We just want to make sure it’s done in a responsible way. We’ve been engaged with the developers at Reedsport. I’ve never seen anyone from Freedomworks at any of those meetings. They aren’t trying to be part of the solution. They’re just trying to slime us.”

In a similar vein, Freedomworks criticizes “radical groups,” such as the Audubon Society, for opposing wind farms in Oregon.

In point of fact, the Portland Audubon Society supports wind power, according to Conservation Director Bob Sallinger, but wants to make sure the turbines are built in the right place.

For example, he says, the Altamont Pass wind farm in California was located in the middle of a migratory corridor, and as a result chops up nearly 5,000 birds a year.

The Audubon Society has not opposed any wind farms in Oregon, Sallinger says, except for one project – a proposal by Columbia Energy Partners to site a 200-turbine wind farm near Steens Mountain in Harney County.

In that case, Sallinger says, the developer found a way to short-circuit the usual oversight process and has done no research on the potential effects on birds and wildlife. “We’re opposed to that project until they do their due diligence,” Sallinger says.

Sallinger says the Freedomworks campaign is unfair. “To me, it is an effort to undermine the entire movement, and to destroy the credibility of the people who are trying to protect the environment.”

Walker, a veteran conservative activist, shrugs off the complaints. In fact, he seems to enjoy stirring up the hornet’s nest. Which ought to come as no surprise.

Back in 2004, Walker orchestrated a surreal campaign to help Ralph Nader get on the presidential ballot in Oregon. Was it because he agreed with Nader’s politics? Hardly. Instead, he told supporters it was a golden opportunity to “drive a wedge through the liberal left.”

His attitude today seems similarly calculated to infuriate his opponents.

“Let us drill,” he says.

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