How did Al Gore's daddy make is grubstake?
Why do I keep trying to associate the name "Gore" with the commie money machine....
Who has the link or two-line summary of history? ? ? ? ?
The Gore family’s links with Occidental date back to the vice president’s father’s close relationship with Armand Hammer, the oil baron who created Occidental and who often found himself in the limelight of controversy because of his extensive investments in the old Soviet Union. When J. Edgar Hoover had accused Hammer of being a communist agent in 1962, Senator Gore defended him on the Senate floor, and after performing other favors for the company over the years, Gore Senior, after losing his Senate seat in 1970, took a job with an Occidental subsidiary for an annual salary of $500,000
The vice president inherited his father’s relationship with Hammer — as well as taking over a piece of land the oil magnate had sold his father in a lucrative sweetheart deal — and dined regularly with the oilman in Washington during the ‘80s. Hammer was Gore’s guest at the Reagan inaugural in 1984, and the then-senator also got him a prime seat at the Bush inaugural four years later.
Although Hammer died in 1990, Occidental’s CEO, Ray Irani, appears to have enjoyed a similarly chummy relationship with Gore. Indeed, according to the New York Times, the traditionally Republican firm gave heavily to the Democrats in the ‘90s, starting with a $100,000 contribution to the Presidential Inauguration Committee in 1992. Occidental is further reported to have forked over $50,000 in soft money after a phone solicitation from Gore in 1996 and a further $100,000 after Irani spent two nights in the Lincoln Bedroom that same year.
Skulduggery? None even vaguely proven. Irani, being a good businessman, gives to the Bush campaign, too. But the Occidental connection may nonetheless be a little unfortunate when Gore is seeking to make hay out of the accusation that his opponents are “of big oil, for big oil and by big oil.”