Cockburn on Headwaters Forest

* The tone and content of Alexander Cockburn’s Aug. 2 Column Left inevitably leads one to the conclusion that he couldn’t stand the objectivity of Times reporter Frank Clifford’s article (July 25) on the effort to resolve the controversy surrounding the Headwaters forest in Northern California.

For starters, and as the false and misleading crux of his entire premise, he misidentifies the Headwaters forest. Cockburn should have known that the same Environmental Protection Information Center that he twice mentions in 1990 defined the Headwaters forest, in its own ballot initiative, as approximately 3,000 acres.

Then he suggests that Ivan Boesky, an individual Charles Hurwitz never met, came to Hurwitz’s aid. It never happened.

He moves on with his trail of inaccuracies to rename Pacific Lumber. There has been no renaming; the 127-year-old company still proudly bears that name.

Next, he decides that Hurwitz somehow owes all of us a “debt” from the failure of a Texas savings and loan in which he was an investor and in which he lost his equity investment.

Cockburn then criticizes any and all who are working to craft a solution that will preserve Headwaters.

One can only hope that these constructive efforts will not be deterred by the out-of-sync “Babylonian” blatherings of Cockburn, who seems incapable of comprehending that the public and private sectors just might be able to reach an agreement to save Headwaters and, in the process, reaffirm the Constitution’s private property guarantee.

ROBERT W. IRELAN

Vice President, Public Relations

Maxxam Inc., Houston