Ballinger Affair 1909
Gifford Pinchot - Creates the affair. The first head of the United States Forest Service. Pinchot was a fanatic who saw conservation as a means of managing the nation's natural resources for long-term SUSTAINABLE COMMERCIAL USE.
Pinchot and Roosevelt both subscribe to government controlling private industry by controlling natural resources. The question remains was this TR’s strategy or Gifford Pinchot’s strategy...?
"Ballinger Affair" - November 1909 nine months into Taft’s presidency the affair led to Taft firing Pinchot.
Pinchot accused Richard Ballinger of reopening exploitation of public lands that had been closed. The issue was should the government cut off the wilderness from private industry (Malefactors of Wealth).
Pinchot falsely accused Richard Ballinger the Secretary of the Interior of criminal behavior by improperly using his office to help the Guggenheims and other powerful interests illegally gain access to Alaskan coal fields.
In January 1910 Pinchot, in an open letter to congress, criticized Ballinger and Taft claiming they violated the fundamental principles of the country’s heritage and conservation. He called for a criminal investigation.
Taft was livid and he immediately fired Pinchot.
The firing of Pinchot, a close friend of Roosevelt, alienated many progressives within the Republican party and drove a wedge between Taft and Roosevelt leading to the 1912 fatal split of the Republican Party.
From January to May 1910 the House held hearings on Ballinger. He was cleared of all and any wrongdoing. It was proved Ballinger hadn’t misused the power of his office and the charges of corruption were entirely unjustified.
Returning from Africa Pinchot convinced Theodore Roosevelt that Taft had so badly betrayed the ethical principles of conservation that he had to be ousted.
Henry Pringle in his 1939 biography of Taft portrayed Ballinger as an innocent victim of vindictive Roosevelt loyalists.
Pringle wrote that after an examination of thousands of pages of evidence you can only conclude Ballinger was the victim of an attack fostered by fanaticism.
Harold Ickes Secretary of the Interior under FDR reached the same conclusion. In The Saturday Evening Post, he asserts in a 58-page report that Ballinger was totally innocence and paints Pinchot as a vindictive publicity-seeker who without pity pursued Ballinger even after Ballinger's death on June 6, 1922.
Pinchot may have been a psychopath with difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong. He has been seen as demonstrating a disregard for the rights of others, manipulative, deceitful, impulsive, and may commit acts of violence, theft and fraud.
Roosevelt’s August 31, 1910 “New Nationalism” speech delivered in Osawatomie, Kansas was written by Gifford Pinchot and edited by William Allen White.
The NY Times reported Roosevelt was suggesting Communism. The Washington Post called it Socialism.
Pinchot’s actions caused Wilson to be elected 1912 that Impacts World War I, destroys Roosevelt’s political influence and career and sends him to Brazil that leads to his early death.
Gifford Pinchot Forest - located in the state of Washington. B. D. Copper parachutes into the forest from a 727 with his stolen cash and is never heard from again. Some of the money was eventually recovered from the forest floor. Mount St. Helens is in the forest along with Big Foot.
Pinchot State Forest - Located in Pennsylvania.
Muir Woods - In California not far from San Francisco where the Red Woods grow. Last scene of Star Wars was filmed there.