People have lost their minds.

Now even I want to move to Canada: environmental groups accused of allying with drug gangs
By Victor Spooner

Environmentalists get large sums of illegal cash from Mexican drug lords, and they earn this money by restricting loggers and hunters from penetrating national forest areas where large crops of marijuana are cultivated. So says Daniel Webster, descendant of American dictionary maven, Noah Webster, and owner-editor of the Pioneer Press in Fort Jones, California.

Fort Jones is in the area of the Klamath National Forest, and is just south of the Oregon border. Agriculture and other natural-resource industries constitute the main economic engine that drives the local economy, and the entire surrounding region is regularly jolted by fierce political battles waged between land-owners and environmentalists over such issues as logging, farming practices, hunting, and riparian rights.

About twenty years ago, as Daniel Webster tells it, leading environmentalists personally escorted the Mexican drug mafia into Northern California, showed them remote locations perfect for growing illegal pot, and then went to work running interference to keep it all a big secret. (In a brief telephone interview, Webster told me that his primary sources included people once involved with the area’s drug gangs.) In a series of articles on the subject, including some that reportedly led to lawsuits against his newspaper, Webster purportedly listed the names of alleged environmentalist conspirators, and even implicated people supposedly affiliated with one or more California chapters of the Green Party.

The fact that drug gangs use many of our national forests for large-scale production of marijuana, methamphetamine, and even opium is a well-known fact. Querying the websites of the National Park Service (www.nps.gov) and the Bureau of Land Management (www.blm.gov) reveals that pot plantations and drug labs are frequently discovered on public lands throughout the United States, and Time magazine even published a byline on the crisis back in 2003.

If Webster is correct, then segments of California’s environmental lobby deliberately prostituted their legal, political, and cultural clout in exchange for a steady stream of untraceable drug money. If true, the motives of environmentalists, like those of all other political groups, can never again be viewed as being above reproach. For some, it would appear that environmentalism might simply be a damn good hustle.

Shortly after Daniel Webster first went public with this story, he was quickly hauled into court to face charges of engaging in illicit sex with a male minor. The sex charges were found to be groundless, but, according to local papers, Webster did receive a misdemeanor conviction for distributing small amounts of marijuana and prescription drugs to a teenager. Nevertheless, Webster seems personally convinced that the sodomy charges were brought against him to discredit his testimony against local drug gangs and their environmentalist allies.

If Daniel Webster’s accusations are correct, then important questions need to be asked. How much influence do drug gangs wield within other environmental groups headquartered across our nation? How pervasive is the deliberate use of environmentalism as a cover for drug manufacturing in America, and overseas? Like labor unions before them, are environmental organizations being clandestinely infiltrated and exploited by rogue organizations? Do the mainstream proponents of environmental causes (e.g., local and national politicians) knowingly or unknowingly assist drug gangs operating on our public lands?

Perhaps, the most important question begging to be answered concerns the reasons why major national media deliberately chose to ignore this story. After all, they are the only ones with journalistic resources sufficient to get at the final truth of Daniel Webster’s seemingly fantastic tale.