- A retired criminal investigator for the Forest Service said in a letter Wednesday that President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management was actively involved in the planning of a 1989 eco-terrorism incident.
- The retired investigator said the nominee, Tracy Stone-Manning, was “extremely difficult to work with; in fact, she was the nastiest of the suspects … She was vulgar, antagonistic and extremely anti-government.”
- The investigator said Stone-Manning’s refusal to cooperate with his investigation set his case back by many years.
- Stone-Manning received legal immunity from prosecution in 1993 to testify that she mailed an anonymous and threatening letter in 1989 warning that a local Idaho forest had been sabotaged with tree spikes.
- Stone-Manning told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in May that she was never the subject of a criminal investigation.
- The retired investigator said that is not true: “She was aware that she was being investigated in 1989 and again in 1993 when she agreed to the immunity deal with the government to avoid criminal felony prosecution. I know, because I was the Special Agent in Charge of the Investigation.”
A retired criminal investigator for the Forest Service who served as the lead investigator into a 1989 tree spiking case in Idaho revealed Wednesday that President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management was actively involved in the planning of the eco-terrorism incident.
The investigator, Michael Merkley, said in a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation that Stone-Manning was “extremely difficult to work with; in fact, she was the nastiest of the suspects” during the initial stages of his investigation in 1989.
“She was vulgar, antagonistic and extremely anti-government,” Merkley said.
Merkley said that Stone-Manning refused to answer any questions when she was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in 1989. Her refusal to cooperate with his investigation set the case back by many years, according to Merkely.
“Eventually, after further investigation, I discovered that she had known all along who had perpetrated the crimes,” he said.
Merkley’s letter was addressed to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and the committee’s ranking member Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming. The letter was first reported by Politico.
Merkley said he learned in December 1992 from the ex-girlfriend of one of the individuals who was later convicted for spiking the trees that Stone-Manning was the person responsible for mailing an anonymous and threatening letter to the Forest Service warning that the Idaho forest had been sabotaged with tree spikes.
The ex-girlfriend “also recounted a conversation she had overheard wherein Ms. Stone-Manning along with other co-conspirators planned the tree spiking and discussed whether to use ceramic or metal spikes.”
Merkley said that through the ex-girlfriend’s account “it became clear that Ms. Stone-Manning was an active member of the original group that planned the spiking of the Post Office Timber Sale trees.”
Merkley added that the ex-girlfriend’s testimony led a grand jury to send Stone-Manning a “target letter” informing her she was set to be indicted on criminal charges for her “active participation in planning these crimes.”
