Malcolm Wallop
Malcolm Wallop is the founder of Frontiers of Freedom. Republican Senator from 1977-1995. Wallop continues to have close connections to the current Republican Administration. He is seen as a friend of current Vice-president Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld has spoken at FoF conferences. Freedom staff have been invited to private briefings with President Bush on issues such as Kyoto.
Wallop himself is an ultra conservative rancher from Wyoming, who works on tax reform, federal deregulation, energy policy, private property rights, and national defense. He is also a die-hard opponent of gun control. One of his nicknames amongst green activists is “strip-mine”.
Wallop sits on the boards of Hubbell, Inc, El Paso Energy Company, and Sheridan State Bank[5]. In the 2003 Senate lobbying records, Malcolm Wallop is a registered lobbyist for Sherritt International, receiving $60,000 for the first six-month lobbying period. Sherritt is a diversified Canadian natural resource company that operates in Canada, Cuba and internationally[6]. He also listed as the lobbyist (actually he is Chairman) for the Western Strategy Group, working for Belle Haven Consultants[7].
The Western Strategy Group is a New York- and Washington, D.C.-based public relations and government affairs firm. In 2002, Western Strategy undertook a due diligence exercise on behalf of the Itera Group of Companies, which are a privately held conglomerate with 80 percent of its principal activity in natural gas production, transportation and marketing. The company controls natural gas reserves half the size of ExxonMobil’s[8]. In 1999, Western Strategy Group’s clients included Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, under attack about human rights abuses and lack of democracy[9].
Wallop spoke at the 1997 Wise Use Fly-in for Freedom along with Republican Richard Pombo. Also that year, Ebell is given as the press contact at Frontiers of Freedom for the launch of Ron Arnold’s book “Ecoterror – the Violent Agenda to Save Nature”, issued by the Centre for the Defence of Free Enterprise. In 2001 FoF held another “Eco-Terror” conference with Ron Arnold.
