This is “A Book Review and Associated Thoughts” regarding Christopher Burchfield’s 2014 book, The Tinder Box – How Politically Correct Ideology Destroyed the U.S. Forest Service. It was written by Karl Brauneis, posted here with his permission, and published last year in Smokejumper Magazine. Karl is a retired USFS Forester and Fire Management Officer and “Missoula Smokejumper Class of ‘77” member.
Here is a link to Karl’s new book, The Blackwater Fire and the Men Who Fought It: How Firefighters Turned Tragedy into New Beginnings: https://warnercnr.source.colostate.edu/karl-brauneis-blackwater-fire-book/
Here is his review of Burchfield’s book:
The Tinder Box is a must read for those who struggle to understand what happened to the U.S. Forest Service in our lifetime. Burchfield begins with a short background of the why and the how. He breaks open the Bernardi Consent Decree (1981) that required the Forest Service to reach the goal of a 43% female work force in just a few short years.
This is how, in part, Chief Max Peterson and his Pacific Southwest (California) Regional Forester Zane Grey Smith destroyed the U.S. Forest Service. There was no need for the Bernardi Consent Decree because the Forest Service had done nothing wrong. The Justice Department, representing the Forest Service, could have easily won the case brought by plaintiff Gene Bernardi. However, Max Peterson wanted to re-make the Forest Service and he certainly did. Once a stellar organization it is now ranked among the worst of the federal agencies to work for.
As an older man I feel some compassion for men like Zane Grey Smith. The consent decree made life a living hell for not only those who were affected by it but by those who proposed and initiated it. Burchfield uncovers the trauma experienced by so many.
The root of destruction is found in the Frankfurt school of Germany and its quest to spread their neo-Marxist philosophy throughout the world. In short, communism could claim only limited success in countries where the masses attempted an overthrow. The only true success had been in Russia with the Bolsheviks. And it was bloody. The neo-Marxist philosophy taught that the destruction of western civilization could only be accomplished through the elites via an insidious takeover of western institutions. A demolition from within. From the top down. We see this everywhere today from the destruction of the middle class and open borders to a 32 trillion dollar national debt.
The Frankfurt school of thought was first imported to Columbia University in the 1930’s and soon spread to other institutions of higher learning. We might call this the same spirit that sparked and drove the Nazis in their quest for world domination.
When reading The Tinder Box my thoughts affirmed the psychological study of the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. An Army psychologist assigned to the trials arrived at this secular conclusion: “Evil is the absence of empathy.” This also confirmed what I experienced in my forest service career. I began under a Christian culture and set of norms. A strong Judeo-Christian work ethic existed. This was soon taken from us and replaced with neo-Marxist dogma. Their tenants violated not only the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution (equal protection of the law) but also the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Title VII), as passed by the US Congress, and the Civil Service merit promotion standards. But the law was ignored and twisted in policy by our leaders. Their absence of empathy only accelerated. Discrimination against white males became a corporate manifesto. Part way through my career, candidates for promotion were no longer evaluated by their knowledge of forestry, fire and range but rather by their adherence to affirmative action and multiculturalism. Consideration for promotion was now based on race, color, sex and creed. Females were given privileged and preferential treatment. When I left the agency all of the forest supervisors and park superintendents in the greater Yellowstone area were female.
Christopher Burchfield writes about the Plutonium Rule:
“Implicit with the extralegal incorporation of 43 % (Females by Consent Decree) was the extinction of the Golden Rule, the universally accepted premise, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Dead too was the notion of reciprocity – that everyone has a right to just and equal treatment and a responsibility to ensure that others receive the same just and equal treatment.
In their place the agency introduced a lethal plutonium rule. Incoming employees would not be required to adapt to their senior employee’s expectations or traditions – so essential to meeting mission objectives. Rather, the new employees would see to it that the seniors adapted to their expectations and innovations.”
Then there was the clandestine back room development and enforcement of quotas by the agency, unknown to Samuel Conti the federal judge presiding over the case. When he learned that the Forest Service had gone behind his back the judge had enough. He then held the agency to their arrogant stupidity and labeled it “consent decree as amended”.
In contrast? Hubert Humphry vigorously declared when addressing the wealth of Civil Rights laws passed by congress: “I will start eating the pages of the law, page by page, if anyone can find a clause that calls for quotas or preferences of racial balance in jobs or education.”
Pete Barker was one Forest Service fire engine captain interviewed in the book. Asked about the performance of the Forest Service from when he began in 1977 until he retired in 2007. His answer? He guessed the agency was running at 50%. Later, Randal O’Tool in “The Rot Starts at the Top” would evaluate the agency at 20%.
This is my second reading of The Tinder Box. Burchfield explains so much in detail that I had to read the book again.
Christopher writes; “It was not simply the numbers Stewart (Pacific Southwest Regional Forester replacing Smith) and Chief Forester Robertson (replacing Peterson) were seeking to transform. Lace curtain radicals almost without peer, they were determined to uproot by trencher, bulldozer and front end loader, every last vestige of the forest service culture advanced by Pinchot, Silcox and McArdle.”
The women of the forest service even filed a class action suit separate from the men against the leaders of demolition de-construction. The women were then called in a very condescending way by court monitor Jeannie Meyer “good old boys in women’s clothing,” There was no end to their arrogance and subterfuge.
Burchfield surmises;
“Postmodern forestry’s real mission was the tree by tree, acre by acre, employee by employee destruction of a male dominated institution that since its inception had performed with such striking success. If dismantling that male institution injured the interests of more women than it benefitted, that was unfortunate but incidental to the task.”
When the South Canyon (1994 – Death of 14 Firefighters on Storm King Mountain) tragedy unfolded the subsequent investigation brought new concerns to congress. Why was so little of the money allocated to finance fire preparedness ever seen on the ground? Tired of lip service congress forced the agency to develop a fire budget process that would ensure that the money sent from Washington went to the field. Our small fire budget on a “cowboy ranger district” in Wyoming went from $7,000 to $77,000 dollars overnight. The bureaucrats had scammed 90% of the districts fire budget to finance their social agenda. I was not alone. A hot shot superintendent told me that 60% of his operating budget had been siphoned off the top. It was an eye opener for me. But the betrayal only continued.
Arlen S. Roll of the Northern Rocky Mountain Region was bold in his zeal to usurp federal law with forest service policy. He seems more a patron of the Goering – Goebbels inner circle than a forest service official. Already the agency had lost 500 cases in court that required backpay and promotion to individuals suing the agency for discrimination due to affirmative action quotas. The costs alone in California for these losses ran at around 2 million dollars. It is estimated that another 500 cases were settled out of court in favor of the plaintiffs. But Arlen pressed on claiming there was no such thing as reverse discrimination and that employees must follow policy or find another job. While others worked in the shadows to break the law Arlen was bold in his proclamations. Christopher Burchfield states “What is so astonishing about him was his Hitlerian bluntness.” The real power in government no longer resided with its elected officials or in the rule of law.
It was the dawn of an agency weaponized against its own employees. Policy would now usurp the law. But the new Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas cried foul when he took over. He told his employees to tell the truth and follow the law. The entrenched ignored Thomas and continued to undermine their own chief. The culture change was now complete and further sealed with the early buy outs of the late 1990’s that gutted the agencies’ remaining resource management expertise. When Jack Ward Thomas left he noted nine matters he never wanted to deal with again. The top of the list included political correctness, the violation of civil rights and dismissal of equal employee opportunities.
A deep state, a shadow government or fourth branch of the government was now reality. While the agency consolidated field units and closed ranger stations, guard stations, forest fire lookout towers and some forest supervisors offices it also added 300 new employees to the Washington headquarters. In Wyoming I counted six small town district ranger stations closed. Two forests and one national grassland (Routt – Medicine Bow – Thunder Basin) were combined across the Colorado and Wyoming state lines and their respective congressional districts to promote centralization. The forest service soon became irrelevant in rural America as the Washington office seized more power to promote their policies of social re-invention, environmentalism and off forest hiring practices.
Local individuals who knew their communities became difficult to hire under a new national and regional employment and review system focused on multiculturalism. This further separated the agency from what rural roots might have been left. Forest service engine captain Tom Locker stated that the agencies subversive goal was to, “Out and out culturally cleanse the small towns of America.”
I have worked with some outstanding women in the forest service and fire. Woman that will be the first to stand up for civil rights and merit promotion. I have coached boys and girls in high school (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) cross country and track. I have sons and daughters and nine grandchildren so far. So, why should I write this review? Because I want an even and fair playing field for all of them. Discrimination based on race, color, sex and creed is against the law and has no place in our society. “Content of character” is what counts. We must also be confident that our federal agencies follow the law and not contrived policy.
We live in the present and not yesterday. Our actions speak for today. I also know that we are bound to repeat yesterday’s mistakes if we do not study the past. What happened to the U.S. Forest Service is history that should not be swept under the rug. In history you take the bad with the good. You learn from it.
The individual tragedy for many of us is that our boy hood dreams in the calling of conservation at a once premier forest service lay dashed upon the rocks. As a hot shot, smokejumper and forester I went from the “golden boy” to the “black sheep” in a few short years. I never changed. But the agency did. I loved a forest service that I soon came to distrust. Tragically, I experienced the change from a highly decentralized conservation learning organization to a highly centralized politically correct environmental bureaucracy.
In closing. There are agendas and then there is reality. When the agenda does not match reality we call its proponents delusional. Thank you Christopher Burchfield for exposing the delusion of the Great Betrayal in The Tinder Box.
