There are plenty of controversial people working for President Donald Trump. But not many of them once wrote for a fringe magazine of the late cult leader, convicted fraudster and paranoid conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. William Perry Pendley, a top Trump administration official who's charged with managing 10 percent of the land in the United States, did just that. HuffPost's Chris D'Angelo and Alex Kaufman broke that story this week. We asked D'Angelo about it.
How did this story come about?
The progressive political action committee American Bridge tipped us off to Pendley’s two pieces in the fringe LaRouche publication, but it became clear after some initial research that there was much more to this story than Pendley’s contributions to the magazine. While combing through old issues we found several news briefs celebrating Pendley’s legal fights against environmentalists and the federal government. Pendley and LaRouche operated in the same circle, shared a hatred for the environmental movement and clearly took an interest in one another’s work. The question then became, 'Did Pendley ever meet with LaRouche or his associates?' A first draft of this piece simply explored the likelihood that he had, but we later dug up documents that show Pendley was at a wise-use conference in 1994 where two LaRouche associates called on attendees to prioritize killing Senate support for an international biodiversity pact.
What did you find that was most surprising?
First, how bizarre much of the content published in LaRouche’s magazines was and still is. Second, how closely Pendley and LaRouche’s views and rhetoric on environmentalists and environmental issues line up. In his 1996 book “Green Backlash,” author Andrew Rowell writes that LaRouche was among the first to brand environmental protesters as “terrorists,” and that it was property rights folks like Pendley who adopted that language. Pendley’s been using it ever since to attack those who he sees as a threat to a western way of life, including 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
What was the hardest part about reporting, writing or editing the story?
I think just laying out all of Pendley’s ties to the LaRouchians in a way that readers could digest. It’s a long piece, but my hope is that we stitched it together in a way that kept our audience engaged and wanting more. Sleuthing through old documents and magazine issues was a bizarre albeit entertaining rabbit hole.
What do you want readers to take away?
That these extreme anti-environmental views, including that environmental/climate activists are simply out to destroy industry jobs and private property rights, are common in the Trump administration. As Nick Martin, a reporter at The New Republic, eloquently wrote in a piece this week: “Pendley is the rule, not the exception.” I’d also just emphasize how ridiculous it is that Pendley's response to this reporting and detailed questions was to repeat his go-to claim that his opinions and past actions are “irrelevant” to running this important federal agency. They are absolutely relevant. In fact, they are a big reason he got the backdoor appointment and, I suspect, why the Trump administration hasn’t gone through the formal process of nominating him for the job. His views on climate change, environmentalists and public lands would certainly be fair game during a Senate confirmation hearing.
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