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Was Albert Gore Sr. a Crook?No, but he was sleazy enough to embarrass Junior.

By Timothy NoahPosted Thursday, April 6, 2000, at 3:00 AM ET
Illustration by Charlie Powell

Presidential campaigns have a way of loosening political skeletons from the closet. Lately, the press has made a run at the presumptive Democratic nominee's father, Albert Gore Sr., a former Tennessee senator who died in 1998. (Click here to read a relevant excerpt from The Buying of the President 2000, by the Center for Public Integrity; click here to read a recent investigative piece in the New York Times.) Albert Sr. had a long association, while he was in Congress and afterward, with the late Occidental Petroleum Chairman Armand Hammer. There isn't any evidence that Albert Sr. did anything illegal, or even (within the context of the times) profoundly unethical, to benefit his wealthy patron. It has been suggested, preposterously, that the Occidental ties influenced Al Jr.'s recommendation as vice president that the federal government sell off the naval petroleum reserve in Elk Hills, Calif., which was eventually purchased by Occidental. (In truth, government reformers had been arguing for years that the reserve wasn't needed.) A few tendentious questions have also been raised about some Tennessee farmland that passed from Occidental to Albert Sr. to Al Jr.

Still, the exercise of rummaging through Albert Sr.'s dirty laundry has value—not as a way of assessing Al Jr.'s moral compass, but as a way of assessing his psychology. The son is, after all, someone who always made clear that he would never follow in his father's footsteps. For a time, he renounced politics altogether; when he changed his mind and ran for Congress, he projected a public persona that was cautious, wooden, and intellectually pretentious—the polar opposite of his father's hot-tempered, fiddle-playing populism. Though Albert Sr. seemed to love the gaudy side of politics, Al Jr. has always seemed merely to endure it. What is Al Jr. recoiling from?

A possible answer lies in Albert Sr.'s pungent past. He may not have been a crook, but Albert Sr. was a politician of his time—and that time had distinctly less refined notions about mixing money and politics than our own. For those political reporters who flatter themselves that they are chronicling the most corrupt political epoch in American history, this may come as a surprise. Bob Zelnick's hostile biography of Al Jr., Gore: A Political Life, (click here to buy the book) confidently asserts that "when it came to political fundraising, the time would come when the younger man would have been able to teach his father a thing or two." In fact, Albert Sr. and the political world he inhabited were much more colorful and ethically dubious than Al Jr. and his. You want to see "no controlling legal authority"? Let's travel back one generation.

Born in 1907, Albert Gore Sr. rose from humble beginnings on a farm in rural Possum Hollow, Tenn., where he attended a one-room schoolhouse and absorbed his father's deep admiration for William Jennings Bryan. He worked his way through the University of Tennessee and Murfreesboro Teachers College and attended night law school while serving as superintendent of schools in the small town of Carthage. He met his future wife, Pauline, when she waited on him at a Nashville tearoom; she was putting herself through law school, too. After graduating, Albert Sr. set about climbing the greasy pole of Tennessee politics, from state labor commissioner to U.S. congressman to senator.

The contemporary image of Albert Sr. derives mainly from a Harper's profile by David Halberstam published in 1970, the year Albert Sr.'s spirited opposition to the Vietnam War cost him his Senate seat. "Albert is an old-style Senator, a Roman Senator really," Halberstam wrote. "One can almost imagine him seated with Webster, Calhoun, and Clay." To Halberstam, Albert Sr. was a man of unshakable principle. After zinc deposits were discovered on his Carthage farm, Halberstam wrote, zinc lobbyists seeking tax breaks came to see him at the Capitol; Albert Sr. "ran them out of his office." Albert Sr. is also often depicted as a brave Southern maverick for refusing to sign the segregationist Southern Manifesto in 1956. That's basically correct, though Bill Turque points out in Inventing Al Gore (click here to buy the book) that Albert Sr. voted with the states' rights crowd against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

But Albert Sr. wasn't too principled to ally himself with Occidental Petroleum chairman Armand Hammer, who turns out to have been one of the truly sleazy business figures of the 20th century. In Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer (click here to buy the book), journalist Edward Jay Epstein presents overwhelming evidence from Soviet archives that Hammer used his manufacturing and mining concessions in the Soviet Union during the 1920s to launder funds to pay Communist spies in the United States. (More conventionally for a capitalist, Hammer also seems to have defrauded practically everyone he came in contact with, in both his business and his personal affairs.) Yet even during the red-baiting 1950s, Hammer maintained an aura of respectability. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover knew of Hammer's activities, and sometimes restricted his foreign travel, but never took it any further, in part because Hammer had powerful friends in Washington—one of them Rep. (and later Sen.) Albert Gore Sr.

Albert Sr. was no intellectual, but he was keenly intelligent and had a pretty good nose for phonies. It's hard to believe he didn't have some notion that underneath the respectable veneer, Hammer was an unsavory character. But the Gores were always a bit strapped for cash. (It was a stretch to send Al Jr. to St. Albans; and though the residential hotel the Gore family lived in, which later became a Ritz-Carlton, is often described as posh, in fact it was a fairly dowdy place when they lived there.) Apparently, Hammer was able to help.

Albert Sr. met Hammer at a Tennessee cattle auction sometime around 1950. Soon afterward, Hammer made Albert Sr. his partner in an Angus-cattle-breeding partnership, which, according to Epstein's book, netted Gore "a substantial profit." Important people would fly in from all over the country to pay top dollar at Albert Sr.'s cattle auctions. Zelnick's book quotes former Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter, a Gore family friend, as saying, "I've sold some Angus in my time too, but I never got the kind of prices for my cattle that the Gores got for theirs." McWherter (who has been campaigning lately for Al Jr.) confirms that he said it but denies implying that Albert Sr. was selling access or influence. His point, he says, was that Albert Sr.'s cattle were "registered," i.e., an especially fine breed, whereas his, McWherter's, were not. Albert Sr.'s cattle, he says, were "probably the best in the state of Tennessee." Well, maybe. If true, though, that raises a further question: How did a part-time rancher of modest means end up with the best Angus herd in Tennessee?

The names of two people who acquired Albert Sr.'s cattle arouse particular suspicion. One was V.H. Monette, who hired former New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio to attend a Tennessee auction in September 1958. Monette was a food broker who did millions of dollars' worth of business with the Pentagon. Turque's book quotes one Cecil Wolfson, who was also at the auction that day, as saying that Monette was trying "to open doors to the military establishment."

The other eyebrow-raising name is Louis Wolfson, Cecil's brother and business partner. Cecil bought 10 head of Albert Sr.'s cattle as a gift for Louis, who owned a horse farm; Cecil told Turque he'd had "no interest in currying favor with Gore." But Louis Wolfson was no mere gentleman horse farmer; he was also a financier and world-class tummler who would become famous a decade later after Life magazine reported that Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas was on the payroll of Wolfson's family foundation—and that Wolfson had sought Justice Fortas' advice while he was being investigated for securities fraud. (The scandal forced Fortas to resign, and Wolfson eventually did prison time for violating securities laws.) Wolfson also was involved in a scheme to funnel money to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's screwball investigation of the Kennedy assassination that nearly landed TV talk show host Larry King in jail. (Click here to read more details.)

There is no evidence that Monette or Wolfson received anything of value from Albert Sr. in exchange for bidding enthusiastically for his cattle. Albert Sr. wasn't on the right committees to affect Pentagon spending, so he probably couldn't have helped Monette much even if he'd wanted to. (Ironically, he did sit a few years later on a select committee created "to investigate the subject of attempts to influence improperly or illegally the Senate or any Member thereof.") Moreover, the $10,975 that Cecil Wolfson paid for his 10 head of purebred Angus cattle—we don't know what Monette paid for his—would not have been an inordinately high price, according to Jack Robinson, a Nashville attorney who was an aide to Albert Sr. at the time. Still, at the very least, Albert Sr.'s cattle-buyers were buying good will and propinquity; you never know when you might need a U.S. senator to return your phone call. This was, Epstein points out, an era "when people had lots of ways of funneling money to politicians" without attracting moral opprobrium. It wasn't until after the Watergate scandals that this flow was scrutinized and regulated at all—however inadequately.

Armand Hammer, of course, did get significant help in Washington from Albert Sr. When Hammer came under attack, Albert Sr. defended him in floor speeches. When a wary President Kennedy kept Hammer at arm's length, Albert Sr. got the Commerce Department to sponsor a Hammer trip to Moscow. Albert Sr. also tried, but failed, to get Hammer appointed an emissary to Berlin. And he helped Hammer negotiate a few less significant matters with the State Department, the Defense Department, and the FBI, according to letters unearthed by the New York Times. Hammer apparently liked to boast that he had Albert Sr. "in my back pocket." Did Hammer use the cattle partnership to funnel his own money to Albert Sr.? Epstein says that Hammer's ex-mistress Bettye Jane Murphy told him that Hammer gave Albert Sr. "large sums of money by letting him participate in cattle deals at prices that were well under the price that Hammer had paid." According to Murphy, Epstein said, Hammer bragged to many people "that he lost money on them so that Gore could make money."

Still, whatever money flowed from Hammer to Albert Sr. probably wasn't a torrent. Kyle Longley of Arizona State University, who is researching a biography of Albert Sr., says he's found no evidence that the Gore family's lifestyle during this period grew any more opulent. "If there was some bribery and stuff like that," Longley says, "they sure weren't flaunting it."

After Albert Sr. was defeated in 1970, he went to work for Hammer as chairman of Occidental's coal subsidiary. It was an odd move for a populist, but Albert Sr. was disinclined to apologize to the Tennesseeans who'd voted him out. "Since I had been turned out to pasture," he later explained to the Washington Post, "I decided to go graze the tall grass." Hammer reportedly paid Albert Sr. an annual salary of $500,000. Hammer also bought, and then sold to Albert Sr., some land near Gore's farm in Carthage, Tenn., that Occidental supposedly wanted to mine zinc from, though it never did. Instead, it paid Albert Sr. $20,000 annually for the unused mineral rights. (Albert Sr. later sold the land to Al Jr. It was subsequently mined by another company and has brought the vice president a total of about $450,000 in lease payments and some grief from environmentalists on the campaign trail.)

Albert Sr.'s romance with Armand Hammer does tarnish, just a bit, Halberstam's Roman bust of the principled Southern maverick. Still, it's unlikely that George W. Bush will make an issue of Al Jr.'s ambiguous patrimony. Hammer, after all, was at least as chummy with Republicans as he was with Democrats; in 1975, he pleaded guilty to a three-count misdemeanor for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon. The stain this put on Hammer's treasured reputation maddened him, but eventually he got it erased with a presidential pardon. Who gave him the pardon? President George Bush.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
COMMENTS

Reader Response from The Fray:


For the past four years, I have devoted a substantial part of my time to researching and writing an unauthorized biography of Senator Albert Gore. I have read tens of thousands of documents in presidential libraries, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and congressional archives and private holdings spread throughout the United States, including a month in the Gore archive at Middle Tennessee State University spread over four trips. In this time, I have read hundreds of books, dissertations, articles, and conducted interviews with dozens of Gore's supporters and opponents. I wake up in the morning thinking about the topic and go to sleep doing the same.

From this research, I would disagree with several points raised in Chatterbox's article, "Was Albert Gore, Sr. a Crook? No, but He Was Sleazy Enough to Embarrass Junior." First, I have looked at the financial records of the cattle business, as has Bill Turque in his book, and from the evidence, it is clear that the cattle business was not the lucrative cash cow portrayed by many, especially in the horribly researched Bob Zelnick book (which accused the Senator of de facto acceptance of bribes. When liquidated, the business was valued at only a few thousand dollars.) Chatterbox does point out that the people attending often came because it was such a huge event where many people--including senator such as Wayne Morse, Robert Kerr, Mike Monroney, and Lyndon Johnson--might appear (they all were in the cattle business), as well as the cream of Tennesse politics. Furthermore, Chatterbox points out that no one ever proved that the senator returned favors for buying his cattle. I personally believe the senator would have been repulsed by anyone ever trying. That was not his nature, and even his opponents never once used the issue of integrity in a campaign, instead focusing on his controversial stands on civil rights (which he supported by refusing to sign the Southern Manifesto, votes for civil rights in 1957, 1960, 1965, 1968, and with actions such as nominating African-Americans for the Air Force Academy in 1957, his opposition to the Vietnam War, and support for Great Society programs including Medicare.

Finally, on the cattle business, the farm has never been the opulent land that you might expect. In an area where living costs are very low, the family never built magnificent houses or barns or anything else. As an example, I interviewed one Gore supporter who talked about being at the farm in 1970 and needing a car to pick Mrs. Gore up from Nashville. He got in the best one. Before he went down the road, it broke down. He opened the hood of the old station wagon and found a rusted battery. Not exactly the sign of anyone pouring large quantities of money into the operation.

Another point is that the living style of the Gore family never matched those of the rich and powerful. The family lived in a small apartment in Washington for reduced cost (Senator Gore refused to ever move his home from Tennessee, although it would have proved very lucrative, especially since the family arrived in 1939). Mrs. Gore bought at reduced costs or copied the fashions of the day rather than going to the large department stores and paying the high prices. In the late 1950s, Mrs. Gore wanted a fur coat but considered it a luxury. She finally got one when Name that Tune invited the senator to play his fiddle for their show and paid him a fee. Everything I have seen indicates these people, like many who raised themselves up by the bootstraps during the Great Depression, were frugal, and easily could have maintained their lifestyle on the salary of a congressman (1939-1953) or senator (1953-1971). I have found no signs that the family lived on anything except this and the businesses they acquired over many years in Carthage. I think this is an important point.

As for the period when Senator Gore left office, I clearly agree with Chatterbox and Turque that the senator focused on making a good living. He retired at 62, very disappointed by the results of the 1970 campaign. He used connections he made as a senator and looked to the future to provide for his family after thirty-two years in public service. I do, however, question a number of points made by authors other than Chatterbox. The most important is the sum that the senator received for his services. Epstein quotes $500,000 a year. I have searched and found nothing to support that claim. I have interviewed Gore's chief assistant in the Senate and when Gore headed Island Creek Coal Company, William Allen. He called the sum ridiculously high and the whole idea of the claim on bribery within the cattle business with words I will not include here. Clearly, Gore, like so many others, had a highly visible name and he and his associates benefited from it after he left office. Yet, you did not see the elder Gore even try to influence his son when he was in Congress or the Senate on environmental issues despite their differences. The point raised by Chatterbox about the betrayal of his populist ideas may be more valid (several people I have interviewed made this point) than other charges of the appearances of conflict of interest or payback for Senate favors.

The relationship with Hammer does raise significant questions, especially in light of the recent revelations. There is no doubt that Hammer had a dark side. I believe that Gore recognized the problems, although this does not mean that he accepted them. One of the keys to understanding Senator Gore is understanding the Upper Cumberland, where he was born and matured. People from that region are extremely loyal to friends, no matter what their weaknesses. The area's religion emphasizes grace and forgiveness (though not always practiced) and the economics of the small farmer and relative poverty that dominated for many years made people very dependent on family and friends. This in turn created a sense of loyalty (in part, this explains the VP's defense of President Clinton]. I think that this carried over to Senator and Mrs. Gore regarding Hammer as well as the fact that no one really had much of a clue about the whole Hammer operation. All these help explain in part the relationship, and undermine the cynical stand by Zelnick and others regarding the relationship.

As for the favors that Gore did for Hammer, there is some context to them. First, many people asked and received assistance from Senator Gore. The Gore archive is overflowing with letters from people asking for everything from donations for their school to jobs for themselves or family members. Often, he helped them. Second, on the defense of Hammer against the charges of Commuist sympathies. From the beginning, Gore despised the witch hunts that characterized the 1950s and spoke out against them. In 1953, when he made his requests for committee assignments, the only stipulation that he made was that he not be placed on any committee with Joseph McCarthy. I believe that if any friend or constituent of the senator had been accused of Communist sympathies with just merit, especially by someone like J. Edgar Hoover, that Gore would have risen in defense. Where Chatterbox and I disagree most on the story is the fact that Vice President Gore may have been turned off to politics originally by the nature of Senator Gore's political relationships. I have dozens of published and unpublished interviews, and this idea never even remotely arises. I do believe that Senator Gore had an effect on his son's original reluctance, but it arose because the senator had such giant footsteps in which it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to follow. Like all sons, the vice president searched for his own way--although like many, he came back to a family passion, in this case public service.

I agree with Chatterbox that politics turned off the vice president to public service, but it was by the nastiest of politics in the late 1960s. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the anti-war riots, the race riots, the slash and burn political campaigns waged by both parties all contributed to his disillusionment. The 1970 defeat of his father by William Brock was a pivotal moment in his life. The vice president had watched his father fight for what he believed was right. The campaign was extremely nasty as Nixon made Gore "Target Number One." Brock spent millions, including a substantial amount of illegal funds from the Nixon White House through a Townhouse Fund (the distributor of funds was later convicted in the Watergate investigation. George Bush also received large quantities of funds from the illegal fund). Tennesseans rejected his father's stances on Vietnam and civil rights, which crushed the younger Gore. Added to this was the vice president's time in Vietnam and the watching of people such as Agnew (who Senator Gore called "our greatest disaster next to Vietnam") and Nixon (Gore wrote about Nixon "deficient in grace or charm, unprepossessing in appearance, plebeian in intellect, and painfully humorless") rise to power, undermining many of his idealistic views. On this point, I really disagree with Chatterbox, although I agree with him that the politics of the times were incredibly different and worse than even today in terms of money and influence peddling. Yet, I have seen nothing in the record to support Chatterbox's thesis and firmly believe that Senator Gore's influence on his son was extremely positive—which helps explain why he ran for office within six years of his father's defeat.

I believe that Chatterbox asked questions that need to be addressed. From my research, I would disagree very much that Senator Gore was sleazy and that this affected his son's view on politics.

--Kyle Longley

(To reply, click here.)


Worthy to sit with Webster, Clay and Calhoun? That's an insult, when it comes to questions of ethics! Webster, in particular, was incredibly corrupt by today's standards and well over-the-line even by those of his own time; Clay was also deep in the pocket of special interests; Calhoun was probably a bit more honest than the average of his time. But if you think the 1950s were loose by modern standards, what could one say of the 1830s?

--Jim Chapin

(To reply, click here.)


The race is heating up and the wandering minstrels are singing songs of skeletons and cigars in the closets. The slow climb is frustrating: can't we get right to it? I demand tales of classmates that Al Jr groped in the second grade. I want to know about all the illegal six-packs of Lone Star that George W. snuck when he was 16. Pull out all the stops now--let us have this vital information immediately if not sooner.

--Harry Walsh

(To reply, click here.)


The headline Is Al Gore, Sr a Crook got my attention and I thought that I wouldn't waste my time reading it and just put the comment, "He's a politician isn't he?" Being fair I decided to read the article and without further investigation than taking the Slate article as gospel my comment remains the same. "He's a politician..."

--Simon

(To reply, click here.)


Hey, guys, the old man may have been a sleazebag--and he definitely was a racist pig--but so what. It's the son who is the presidential nominee of the Party of Compassion and he and his opponent are the guys you're supposed to be writing about.

--Jose Escotus

(To reply, click here.)

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