Notes from the front
News: MOJO UPDATES
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Incendiary prose. MoJo's investigation of arson fires in the Pacific Northwest ("Firetrail," March/April 1993) has set a fire or two in Washington, D.C. On March 9 Congressman Mike Synar (D-OK) requested a Government Accounting Office audit of timber salvage sales, due out by the fall budget cycle.
Meanwhile MoJo and activist groups are pushing the Clinton administration to take immediate action on salvage policy. Jeff Ruch of the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based whistle- blower protection agency, interviewed Forest Service employees in California and Oregon in February. He reports that while salvage sales are intended to protect the forest by eliminating damaged trees, in fact they "have little to do with forest health. Fallers who work for logging companies are determining which trees should be taken, and many healthy trees are being 'salvaged.'"
Ruch also points out that the government sells salvage timber at bargain-basement rates. "If you're taking healthy trees in a salvage sale," Ruch says, "it's a real steal."
We told them so. Six months after MoJo's investigative report on inadequate beef inspection appeared ("Unhappy Meals," July/August 1992), five hundred people in the Northwest fell ill and several died after eating tainted burgers from Jack in the Box restaurants.
Our story targeted fast-food chains' use of beef from slaughterhouses deregulated under Ronald Reagan and called for bacterial testing at slaughterhouses.
Six weeks after "Meals" was released, Congress voted to scrap the meat-inspection system we exposed, but their decision didn't take effect until this April. In March, President Clinton proposed bacterial testing using advanced scientific techniques and monitoring equipment, and upping the number of inspectors. Meat inspector Steve Cockerham, the major source for our report, has met with Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and says, "I'm confident things will change for the better."
--Kristina Schreck
The long arm of Lew? Last fall the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jack Brooks (D-TX), finished its three-year investigation into the "Inslaw affair." Its scathing report accused the Reagan/Bush justice departments of conspiracy to steal Inslaw's software, pass it on to other U.S. and foreign agencies, and cover it all up (see "Outlaws at Justice," May/ June 1992). Brooks promised to release a 3,000-page appendix containing supporting documents and evidence. But in February he re-versed himself, ordering the appendix shredded; the incident received virtually no news coverage. A committee lawyer would only say that Brooks felt that the report spoke for itself and that the appendix's release was unnecessary.
But sources close to the committee have another explanation. In the appendix was material concerning a man who'd been caught on wiretaps in the 1980s describing the New York Mafia's attempt to tighten its grip on L.A.-based entertainment giant MCA, Inc. Mob involvement with MCA has been rumored for years, and sources speculate that it was the MCA-related material in the appendix that caused Brooks to flip-flop.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 1991-92 MCA chairman Lew Wasserman and MCA's PAC contributed $4,000 cash to Brook's campaign and $217,730 in soft-money donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee. Wasserman and MCA represent a huge chunk of Hollywood, so given the big bucks candidate Bill Clinton received from Tinseltown, the Inslaw appendix case is cause for concern. If crusty old Jack Brooks can't stand up to the heat, how will young Bill?
