Posted on 06/12/2003 9:16:57 AM PDT by Beck_isright
Quietly, State Dept. Turns Over American Islands to Russia, Others
In recent years several U.S. islands have been ceded to Russia and other countries, without congressional approval or public debate.
These islands, many uninhabited, are significant because they hold potential mineral, gas, oil and fishing rights – not to mention potential strategic military value.
So where exactly are these disputed islands?
The Arctic islands, which lie west of Alaska and north of Siberia, include the islands of Wrangell, Herald, Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta.
The islands in the Bering Sea make up the westernmost point in Alaska’s Aleutian chain and include Copper Island, Sea Otter Rock and Sea Lion Rock. These islands together have more square mileage than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
Though the United States had staked claim to these islands for more than a century, the State Department has been anxious to turn them back to Russia.
The tranfer would have gone unnoticed were it not for State Department Watch, a Washington-based group that monitors State Department acitivities.
Retired U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Carl Olson, who heads State Department Watch, recently checked with the Census Bureau, asking if it had plans to count the inhabitants of these disputed islands in the current census.
Olson was stunned by the response he received from the Census Bureau.
"Census Bureau officials were informed by the U.S. Department of State that these islands remain under the jurisdiction of Russia," wrote Kenneth Prewitt, director of the Census Bureau in a letter to Olson.
"Without confirmation and appropriate documentation from the Department of State to the contrary, the Census Bureau cannot include these islands as part of the State of Alaska," Prewitt concluded.
Americans Become Russians
Olson notes that the Census Bureau, with the approval of the State Dept., has just stripped Americans of their citizenship.
Consider the inhabitants of Wrangell Island, the largest of eight disputed islands – five lying in the Arctic Ocean and three in the Bering Sea.
Geographically speaking, the island’s inhabitants would also be citizens of the state of Alaska since no other American state comes even close to the proximity of the islands.
But if anyone desired to visit Wrangell Island, they would be greeted not by the Stars and Stripes waving proudly in the brisk air but by a Russian military tower.
According to Olson, the islands including Wrangell have 18 Russian soldiers and one officer and 50 to 100 inhabitants.
Olson insists these people have been made to endure foreign occupation by the Russian military and believes the U.S. government should do something about taking the islands back.
NewsMax.com contacted Mark Seidenberg, a former senior traffic management specialist within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and asked him if he believed the United States should pursue its sovereignty on the islands. Seidenberg, without hesitation, said "yes."
U.S. Territory for Long Time
U.S. claims for these islands are strong.
When the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the impending treaty included all of the Aleutian Islands, including Copper Island, Sea Otter Rock and Sea Lion Rock.
A number of years later, in 1881, U.S. Captain Calvin L. Hooper landed on Wrangell Island and claimed it for the United States. One of the landing party was famed explorer John Muir.
Also in 1881, the U.S. Navy claimed Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta islands for the United States. Later that century, the British gave up their claim to Herald Island, allowing the Americans to take it over.
Claims of these islands, however, didn’t become an important issue between the former Soviet Union and the United States until the 1970s, when the concept of international fishing zones 200 miles from national coastlines went into affect.
With both the Soviet Union and Alaska having coastlines within a much closer proximity than the needed 400-mile buffer zone, a maritime boundary had to be established.
Secret Transfer
The resulting U.S.-U.S.S.R. Maritime Boundary Treaty was passed by the Senate and ratified by former President George Bush in 1991. Russia, however, never ratified the treaty because its leaders complained that the U.S.S.R. didn’t benefit enough from it.
Nevertheless, former U.S. Secretary of State Jim Baker and the Soviet Union’s Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze signed a secretive executive agreement the year before that bound both governments to the treaty.
Currently, Russia is demanding hundreds of millions of pounds more fishing rights from the United States that would undermine the Alaskan fish industry and, subsequently, the state’s economy.
A wealth of petroleum and natural gas hang in the balance as well.
When NewsMax.com contacted the State Department for an explanation, a spokesman said he wasn’t aware of any issue involving the Wrangell Islands and the U.S. government and that it was his belief that the islands have been recognized as a part of Russia since the 1800s. During the course of the interview, the State Department official asked if he was being "put on."
Even though now recognizing Russian jurisdiction over the islands, the State Department had testified at the June 13, 1991, treaty hearing that the maritime boundary agreement "does not recognize Soviet sovereignty over these [five Arctic] islands."
Enraged by the turnover of Alaska’s sovereign land, Rep. John Coghill Jr. of that state’s legislature sponsored House Joint Resolution 27, which beseeches the Department of State to inform the Alaska Legislature of any decisions regarding the maritime agreement.
The resolution further points out that setting a maritime boundary between Alaska and Russia is a "constitutional issue of states’ rights."
One of the issues over these islands and the surrounding waters are the fishing rights of Alaskan fishermen. Oil, of which Alaska has the largest national reserves, may also be abundant in the disputed territory.
Military Value
Olson notes the area's strategic value as well.
Beneath the icy waters around the islands, submarine warfare has taken place in the past between the former Soviet Union and the United States. The ice is now one of the last places for submarines to hide. The islands could also be hosts to vital facilities tracking hostile government movements.
"Everybody knows that the shortest distance between the U.S. mainland and Asia is the polar route, giving easy access to aircraft and whatever else," Olson explained. "And the Asian mainland doesn’t just consist of Russia. It includes China."
More American Islands Lost
Olson adds that the Arctic islands are not the only American islands the State Dept. has been giving away without congressional approval or treaty.
In recent years four American Pacific Islands – Washington, Fanning, Makin and Little Makin – have been ceded to the island nation of Kiribati without a treaty.
"Lost” islands include Nassau Island in the Pacific Ocean and Bajo Nuevo and Serranilla Bank in the Caribbean Sea. The islands became American territory under the Guano Act in the late 1800s.
Regarding these three lost islands, the Census Bureau's Prewitt, in a letter dated March 15, stated, "With respect to Nassau Island, Bajo Nuevo, or Serranilla Bank, the Department of State has not informed the Census Bureau that claims to these islands have been certified."
In addition to the abandonment of the islands is the loss of all resources within a 200-mile economic zone of each island. As is the case with most of the Arctic islands, the economic zones around each of the islands may be more important than the islands themselves.
No, it isn't clear at all which island the article is referring. For one thing, the article says "Wrangell," not "Wrangel."
For another, the article claims that American citizens are living on Wrangell...something that the Russian speaking Siberians on "Wrangel" island might find as a shock.
For a third, "Wrangel" is only a guano island, protected by the Guano Treaty only as long as bat guano is being actively mined there by U.S. citizens.
You think there are bats living on permanently frozen islands in the Arctic Sea?
Being 100 miles North of Siberia, one would expect that the island might have a little snow...but that's not what makes or breaks a "guano" island.
The Guano Treaty gives U.S. explorers the right to temporarily extend U.S. sovereignty to any uninhabited, unclaimed island...so long as they mine it. The predominant type of such mining was once for bat guano, but other mining may also qualify for this temporary extension of American territorial sovereignty.
Do you mean Arctic *Ocean*? Do you think that bat guano is the *only* type of mining covered by the Guano Treaty?
See Post #27."Stefansson had sent the party to Wrangel Island with the hope that Canada or the United States would be able to claim control of the island, which had always been a part of Russia. The island encompasses an area of about 2,000 square miles. It’s 80 miles long and 18 to 30 miles wide, which makes it about half the size of Puerto Rico.
Now a Russian wildlife refuge, in the early part of the century the island was mysterious because it is surrounded almost constantly by ice fields and often blanketed in dense fog."
Your words in post number 61 were: For a third, "Wrangel" is only a guano island, protected by the Guano Treaty only as long as bat guano is being actively mined there by U.S. citizens.
So what kind of other creatures produce guano on Wrangel Island?
No Child, no matter how you play this off in your pathetic classes, it ain't a legitimate issue.
If you claim "Wrangell" then you can't explain why there is no Russian guard tower on that Alaskan island or why their U.S. chamber of commerce web site is still online.
If you claim "Wrangel" then you can't explain the dearth of Alaskan eskimoes (per the article for this thread), the lack of Guano Treaty applicability (the only potential shot at having any U.S. sovereignty there), or the Russian wildlife refuge there.
In short, you are DEBUNKED!
Nor are you the first to fall. This whole charade was hashed out here on FR in great detail more than 3 years ago already!
Thus, you've fallen for a debunked re-hash. That's like falling for an email scam like "the gangs will get you if you flash your high beams at them on the highway" years after such nonsense has already been exposed.
The burden to prove that the Guano Treaty applies to Russia's Wrangel island would be on whomever claims that American territorial soveriegnty applies there.
That wouldn't be me, by the way.
28 May 2003 Fact Sheet: Status of Wrangel and Other Arctic Islands
I looked at some of the old threads on this and it reinforced my strong opinion that Free Republic is a much better site now than it ever was.
FACT SHEET
STATUS OF WRANGEL AND OTHER ARCTIC ISLANDS
No negotiations regarding the U.S.-Russia maritime boundary have occurred since 1990, when the U.S.-USSR Maritime Boundary Agreement was signed. The negotiations that led to that agreement did not address the status of Wrangel Island, Herald Island, Bennett Island, Jeannette Island, or Henrietta Island, all of which lie off Russia's Arctic coast, or Mednyy (Copper) Island or rocks off the coast of Mednyy Island in the Bering Sea. None of the islands or rocks above were included in the U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, and they have never been claimed by the United States, although Americans were involved in the discovery and exploration of some of them.
Ah, the ad hominem. Sure sign of a losing argument.
If you claim "Wrangell" then you can't explain why there is no Russian guard tower on that Alaskan island or why their U.S. chamber of commerce web site is still online.
For those of you keeping score, it was Southack who confused Wrangell, Alaska with Wrangel (sometimes spelled Wrangell) Island. Now, in a nice example of chutzpah, he is trying to lay his confusion at the feet of his opponents.
If you claim "Wrangel" then you can't explain the dearth of Alaskan eskimoes (per the article for this thread), the lack of Guano Treaty applicability (the only potential shot at having any U.S. sovereignty there), or the Russian wildlife refuge there.
Wrangel Island was never claimed under the Guano Island Act. This is a complete fabrication on Southack's part. The US claim is based on the first landing on the Island by the USS Corwin in 1881, where Samuel Hopper, Captain, USN, "Went on shore and took possession of in the name of the United States". The Soviet Union's establishment of a gulag on the island, which Southack seems unaccountably to believe gives them claim on it, came much later.
Jesse Helms' commentary on the status of the five Arctic islands remains unrebutted.
You were the one who claimed sovereignty was a result of the Guano Island Act. Now you're demanding others prove what you asserted!
Hmmm, whom to believe? One of the most distinguished conservative Senators in our histroy, or some unnamed federal bureaucrat?
Physician, heal thyself.
"Despite the hysterical ranting of certain Bushbots on this thread, this appears to be a legitimate issue."
56 posted on 03/22/2004 3:19:27 PM CST by Right Wing Professor
No. From the article for this thread, above:
"So where exactly are these disputed islands? The Arctic islands, which lie west of Alaska and north of Siberia, include the islands of Wrangell, Herald, Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta."
And now from our dear Professor...
"Wrangel Island is 2925 sq. miles in area. It is not a guano island; in fact it's snow- and ice-covered."
60 posted on 03/22/2004 4:07:56 PM CST by Right Wing Professor
"Wrangel Island was never claimed under the Guano Island Act. This is a complete fabrication on Southack's part." - Right Wing Professor
No, it's not a fabrication; it's simply giving my feeble opponents, such as yourself, the benefit of the doubt as there is no other possible legal grounds for claiming a Siberian island that Russia didn't explicitly sell to us in our 1867 Alaska Purchase.
Had there been a Guano claim, then there would at least be some remote legal merit for this tinfoil thread and its tinfoil adherents.
Barring such a claim, then any territorial claim of a Russian island by any U.S. Captain would need U.S. Congressional support...something that Wrangel (with one "l") doesn't have (see the OFFICIAL U.S. State Department notice on Wrangel that I posted on this very thread).
We got there first. Jesse Helms says we have a valid claim. The operators of the Soviet Gulag there thought differently. You've made it clear which side you're on.
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