CHENEY'S ROLE PROBED IN 2002 KLAMATH RIVER FISH KILL DISASTER

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North Coast fishermen and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, are applauding a House committee chairman's decision to investigate Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement in the deaths of 68,000 migrating chinook salmon in fall 2002.

"We know where the smoking gun lays," said Chris Lawson, a fisherman and president of the Bodega Bay Fisherman's Marketing Association.

While the salmon kill, the largest ever in the West, long has been attributed to Bush administration decisions, a Washington Post story last month detailed Cheney's successful effort to rewrite federal water policy for alleged political gain.

The resulting diversion of water to Klamath basin farmers and ranchers who were battling a drought lowered the river's flow and set the stage for the fish kill.

"Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks," the Post reported.

The same day the story was published, Thompson and 35 other Democrats from California and Oregon called for a hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee to zero in on Cheney's actions. A day later, Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., agreed.

"They say a fish rots from the head down," Thompson said, applying an old aphorism to the episode that left thousands of rotting salmon carcasses in the lower Klamath. In this case, he said, the head is Cheney's.

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http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20070709/NEWS/707...