Public Periscope

Well, he coulda said it

The Washington Farm Bureau seems intent on criticizing Al Gore for saying something silly - even if the veep never really said it. In a recent column credited to Whitman County wheat farmer and bureau President Steve Appel, the farm group accuses Gore of calling Grand Coulee “the most environmentally unstable dam in the world” and one that “needs to be removed or mothballed” … Them’s fighting words out where the dam helped turn darkness into dawn, made the desert bloom and so on. Even the liberal media would have to turn on Gore the first time he showed his stone face in the Northwest.

Trouble is, there’s no record of Gore saying any such thing. The ghostwriter of the column, bureau spokesman Dean Boyer, concedes he didn’t personally hear it … Boyer heard it from a member he declines to name, who claimed to have heard an anchor on Seattle’s KIRO TV quote Gore on Feb. 22. Or maybe Feb. 21.

Boyer didn’t verify the statement before sending out the column and when later questioned about it, said he couldn’t check it now because “KIRO won’t return our calls.”

KIRO News Director Bill Lord said the bureau never called, but his check of transcripts of Feb. 21 and 22 broadcasts found nothing close to this comment … An independent news monitoring business in Seattle did a broader search of KIRO broadcasts and found nothing. Ditto for a computerized search of Internet news sites.

There’s a good reason, said Elliot Diringer of the White House Council on Environmental Quality: “The vice president made no such statement.”

Boyer doesn’t think the column ran in any newspapers. But he’s unapologetic for turning third-hand information into a precise quote: “We had information that we thought was reliable, that we still feel is reliable.”

Speaking of quote quibbles

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doesn’t like what some dam-removal groups are saying about one of its studies. Trout Unlimited, Save Our Wild Salmon and the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association say economists working on a federal study have concluded breaching the four lower Snake River dams would add $1 billion a year to the region’s economy through enhanced recreation from a free flowing river and restored fish runs … If true, that’s more than the annual cost of losing the dams’ electricity, cheap transportation and other benefits. But corps officials say that’s “an inaccurate description and misrepresentation of a partially completed study” … Liz Hamilton of the Sportsfishing Industry Association said the groups are confident the number will stand up and be in the final study when it comes out in May.

The sport fishing industry lost 10,000 jobs in the past decade, she said. They could be restored if the salmon come back in fishable numbers … That could take several decades, corps officials note.

Why bother?

Periscope’s vote for the silliest fax of the week goes to the fine pollsters at Zogby Internations, a Utica, N.Y.-based firm that usually asks pretty good questions. But last month, they apparently couldn’t craft an “inquiring minds want to know” query about Monica’s dress or JonBenet’s murder, so they asked about next year’s presidential race … But not about anything that can really happen in 2000. Zogby asked 756 likely voters if they would vote for a ticket of George W. Bush and Elizabeth Dole or a ticket of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Not surprisingly, Bush/Dole beat Clinton/Gore handily … No word on how many people gave callers a lecture on the 22nd Amendment on presidential term limits before denouncing them as bozos and hanging up.

Kudos for rooms with a view

The Spokane Public Library is duly proud of recent accolades for its downtown library. USA Today named the two floors of reading space that offer views of the Spokane Falls as one of 10 great reading rooms … The list was compiled by Ginnie Cooper, past president of the Public Library Association and director of libraries for Portland’s Multnomah County. We’re sure her accompanying comment about Spokane should be taken in only the most positive sense …“It’s not a very wealthy community,” she said. “And this is a pretty spectacular reading room (arrangement).”