Most sapient Americans—those who are skeptical of the mainstream media—know the outrageous but largely unreported story that Bill and Hillary Clinton, with the help of Obama officials and over congressional experts’ objections, allowed Russia to gain control of 20 percent of America’s uranium supplies.

What is unknown is whether the Clintons sweetened the deal for their Russian friends by engineering closure of a million federal acres of the nation’s best source of uranium. The “evidence” of such mischief is purely circumstantial, but it is disconcerting.

Here is what we know, thanks to the reporting of the estimable Andrew C. McCarthy, the essential Peter Schweizer, and the indefatigable Deroy Murdock. In March 2010, then-Secretary of State Clinton traveled to Russia to meet with then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In June, Bill Clinton was gifted $500,000 by a Russian bank with close connections to Putin’s government for a speech in Moscow. In October of 2010, the Obama administration, with the blessing of the State Department run by Hillary Clinton, allowed the Russians to purchase a company called Uranium One, which controls more than 20 percent of American uranium.

There is even more intrigue, all worthy of a Stephen Coonts’ novel: a Russian agent in Maryland involved in extortion, fraud, and international money laundering; a Washington, D.C. lobbyist who, hearing danger afoot, became an FBI informant; congressional critics decrying “the take-over of essential U.S. nuclear resources by a government-owned Russian agency”; non-disclosure by the FBI of its investigation into Russia’s “racketeering and strong-arming” as the administration considered the Russian acquisition; the transfer of $145 million to the Clinton Foundation by sources tied to the Uranium One deal; prolonging of the FBI investigation for years; and indictment and slap-on-the-wrist sentencing of the agent and his conspirators just before Labor Day and Christmas, all without fanfare.

Oh, and the informant? The FBI forced him to sign a non-disclosure agreement, enforceable even against Congress.

How important is uranium? America’s 104 nuclear power plants give electrical life to one in every five American homes and businesses; the Navy fleet is largely nuclear; and, uranium is essential to our nuclear arsenal. Even so, the U.S. is 90 percent dependent on foreign sources for it; half comes from Russia. Obviously, America should develop its uranium.

“[T]he highest uranium potential in the country,” according to the federal government is on lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in Arizona, well north of Grand Canyon National Park—enough to power New York City for six decades. Thus, since 1984, the federal government has kept those lands open for mineral exploration and development.

In July 2009, however, the acting director of the BLM proposed a study to determine if it were “appropriate” to close the area to mining to protect the Grand Canyon. The area was closed for two years and the study began. In July 2011, before the agencies completed the study, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar ordered an “emergency withdrawal” and then six months later withdrew the entire area from all mining for 20 years. Oddly, his new grab bag of reasons was not listed in the BLM’s application, nor was it supported by underlying documents. Finally, he took pains to destroy the validity of the valuable claims held by scores of small miners represented by the Mountain States Legal Foundation.

Was it purely coincidental that, in mid-2011, with the Uranium One deal completed the previous October, Salazar, a friend of the Clintons, saw yet another reason to kill uranium mining in Arizona for decades? Did others help? John Podesta, Bill’s former chief of staff and Hillary’s 2016 campaign manager, was “the hidden hand involved in every environmental advancement accomplished in the Clinton and Obama administrations,” says top Clinton official Bruce Babbitt of Arizona.

Was he “involved” in this effort to placate environmental groups? Can we put anything past the Clintons? Does anyone care?

William Perry Pendley is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, has argued cases before the Supreme Court and worked in the Department of the Interior during the Reagan administration. He is the author of "Sagebrush Rebel: Reagan's Battle with Environmental Extremists and Why It Matters Today."

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