the letter went on. "I also want to be included on
all mailing lists so that I am kept aware of future
decisions and have the opportunity to comment on proposed
actions."
According to a May, 1996 statement submitted
in the BLM investigation by range management specialist
Matt Spaulding, the Battle Mountain District Office
received an "overwhelming" number of
interested-public requests from Eureka County.
"Our entire staff was trying to figure
out how we would manage the increase in paper work,"
Spaulding said he told PLUAC chairman Jim Bauman and
Eureka County Resource Manager Balliette in November of
1995, after complimenting them "on their
creativity."
Spaulding also said he again complimented
Balliette on January 18, 1996 in a meeting at the Battle
Mountain district office "regarding the still
increasing Interested Public requests we had been
receiving.
"I told him it was creating a tremendous
administrative work load on our range staff, and we still
hadn't perfected a way to deal with all the
requests."
According to documents obtained by Electric
Nevada, the BLM investigation of "possible mail
fraud" began March 22, 1996, when the acting
associate director of the BLM's Elko district
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office's renewable
resources division, Ray Lister, officially advised BLM
Special Agent Frank Castrogiovanni that "some"
Eureka County individuals "may" have submitted
falsely signed form letters.
Seven months later, Castrogiovanni recommended
the inquiry be closed, saying he had been able to
identify only three requests that conceivably could have
been false.
In one case, an informational notice mailed
out by the Elko district office had been returned by the
post office with the individual's name on the envelope
marked "deceased."
In the second case, an elderly Eureka
gentleman who had recently moved to Elko asked on March
14, 1996 to be removed from the Battle Mountain mailing
list for the Shoshone-Eureka Resource Area. He was quoted
as saying he had never requested the notifications.
In the third case, a rancher called the Elko
office from New Mexico on April 9, 1996 and asked for his
name to be taken off the list.
According to Castrogiovanni's report, the
rancher said he "doesn't remember how his name got
on the mailing list; probably signed his name on
something, and would like to have his name be taken off
the list." Yet there did appear to be a distinct
difference between signatures on the original
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