Advocate Summary

Issue:  Derivatives
Advocate:  Barrick Gold Corporation – Michael J. Brown
Date of Interview: 5/23/02

Basic Background
We had an issue that came on the radar screen, it was a byproduct of the Enron mess.  I was actually in London when it occurred, at an international meeting.  We learned that Senator Feinstein of California had an amendment to ban over the counter derivatives, which are financial instruments.  They're used to hedge risk.  We got a call from Senator Reid's office.  We have most of our U.S. operations are in Nevada, so we're very close to senators from Nevada.  We got a call from the legislative director, saying have you seen this hedging amendment from Senator Feinstein.  So I was patched through to London.  I said no, we might have some concern with that.  Within an hour I got a call from our corporate treasurer, who had received a call from Goldman Sachs, the big financial trading company in New York City, because they were letting all their clients know that this amendment was out there.  
	What it would have done is taken what are essentially – derivatives are contracts between private parties and as a result they are regulated but they are not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trade Commission.  It's essentially a business arrangement between Barrick and Goldman.  What she was trying to do with Enron was to ban something called Enron Online, which was an electronic trading concern.  She wrote the amendment so broadly that it swept in everything, including our privately negotiated arrangements.

Prior Activity on the Issue 
I wish I could tell you there's a lot of theory behind this.  I suppose there really is.  In our case, absent the great compromise at the Constitutional Convention, we would be constituency challenged.  The little experience I have in Australia and Canada, where they have the House of Lords, those folks don't have the same clout that the U.S. Senate has.  So the rural industries in those countries are real challenged, because they just don't have representation.  
Over the years, we've never lost a Senate vote and we've never won a House vote.  We don't even try anymore.  We have, over the years, been able to do some creative things in the House where we've aligned the left and the right and been able to do some things at the committee level.  

We have the advantage of we're a small Western industry with a Senate advantage, but we're very well-connected among our industry.

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
I spent the next two nights in London, with the time zone difference, working from my hotel room.  The first thing we had to do was Western senators, which in a natural resource industry are very important because if you look at my industry in gold mining there are twenty-three House members with a gold mine in their district.  But there are twenty-eight senators with a gold mine in their state.  So the politics of what are called the Western issues are over in the Senate. 
So we rang the bell with the other mining companies, there are like six of us here in town, and we just kind of immediately grouped together.  We got hold of one of our best lawyers who knew all about the law surrounding derivatives, because none of us really knew much about this.  These are financial issues, we're traditionally more natural resource mining lobbyists.  Then we had to get Senator Reid and Senator Ensign up to speed real fast.  Technology is just amazing now.  I went onto our web page, where we had for our investors a whole briefing section on what these products are.  I downloaded that and sent them on to Senator Reid's office, along with the lobbyist, contract -- we immediately also retained two contract lobbyists that we use here in town.  Put them into the mix.
So the first forty-eight hours was we've got to get our friends smart on this issue, and we had to get smart ourselves, which was also part of the challenge.  We had a little bit of trouble because in the Nevada senator's mind, mining issues are natural resources.  It was hard for them to switch to kind of a Wall Street issue.  Downloading this thing off our web page, when they put it in front of them, it was like, okay, now we get it.  We were just coming up on the Easter recess.  
The Western industries, because of the great compromise in the constitutional debates, where each state got two senators, if you look at the West, you will discover that their members tend to stay a long time, have a lot of seniority.  Right now they chair most of the key committees.  So the Westerners they're not media hounds, you don't see them on the Sunday talk shows and whatnot, these guys have serious juice in the process.  Reid, who is a very talented parliamentarian, essentially managed to stage a series of delays that pushed Mrs. Feinstein's amendment beyond the Easter recess.
I got back from London and I went over to Goldman Sachs office.  I figured Goldman Sachs would have a huge concern, all sorts of lobbyists on this thing.  I got over there and they're really thanking us for delaying this thing.  I'm thinking, we knew we were active, but I was out of the country, I didn't think we were that instrumental in it – and discovered we were.  Because while it was important to the financial types, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and the Wall Street types, it was very important to very small parts of their business.  So their government relations people were saying, it's not on our agenda, we've got all these other things.  But to the guys who run the metals division or the energy trading division within Goldman, this was the difference between doing business here or moving it to London.  
So that caused us to kind of retrench.  We realized that we were going to have to win this issue, they couldn't win it on their own.  Again, thanks to the power of the Internet and e-mail, we could generally stay one step ahead of where Feinstein was going with most of this.  We were finding that you can program the words derivative and the words Feinstein into the computer system so that anytime anything pops up anywhere in the world, you get an e-mail on it.  So we were staying one step ahead of our compatriots in the financial lobby.  
I went to my guy, Hooper here, and I said, we have a real problem here, the financials just don't have it together.  So he called his associate at Morgan Stanley and got him to understand how important this issue was to Morgan Stanley.  They then put a guy on this full-time.  We have great name recognition in the Mountain West, but get beyond that and no one knows who we are.  He had all the access to people like Dodds and the Democratic financials.  Finally the financial industry realized they were going to get there.  They put a letter together that was signed by fifty name-brand financial institutions, plus they managed to have letters from the Treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve president.  
But through the process, we found we continued to have to kind of stimulate it, they were kind of all tied up in their own corpocracy.  It's always amusing to me, when I meet some of my fellow advocates from these things, they have so many issues to deal with, these broad concerns, that they really have a lot of trouble putting focus on something.
So we got the letters.  We had put the Western bloc together.  We were in constant dialogue with Senator Reid and Senator Ensign's office through this.  Then when Congress came back, Senator Reid's a very clever guy, went forward first with an amendment to exempt metals.  Okay, Mrs. Feinstein, if your problem is just energy, then we'll just pull metals out of here.  We gave Feinstein's office language on how they could fix their Enron Online problem without interfering with anybody else's arrangement, and she wouldn't take it.  I don't understand why.  
Then we put together all the floor materials that might be needed in a floor debate, we put together a big chart that shows how all this works.  We wrote draft remarks for the senators.  It was really for two reasons.  One was, it's your obligation to get these guys smart on the issue and provide all the props, the text and everything they need.  But the second thing is, if you're on staff up there and you don't see that kind of activity, then you wonder why are we putting the boss so far out there if these guys aren't there to back us up.  I'd say only about half of what we sent up there was used in any fashion, but it gave the staff increasing comfort with where they were going.
So the Congress came back and we were the first thing out of the chute.  We put up an amendment but didn't put enough notice – it's sort of complicated.  Filed a motion for cloture, which kind of put her in the position of now having to come up with sixty votes.  So the bar suddenly got raised.  But at the same time, he then filed an amendment to exempt metals from it.  
Metals amendment came up.  We had looked at the array of arguments that Senator Feinstein might bring forward.  There were two areas where there had been some problems.  In the early 1980s, the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the silver market and then there was a rogue trader at [Sumitomo?] Corporation that had played around in the copper market.  Neither of those involved over the counter derivatives, but our intuition said to us if we were sitting over there we might make an issue of these things.  So we went to the Silver Institute and we went back to the commodity experts at one of the big financial houses and we said, we need a one-pager on both of these, just so they've got it.  
As we're rolling toward this, we have this little group of six mining lobbyist and we're connected by telephone and e-mail.  Actually during votes, kind of keep an open line among all of us.  Then dealing with all the various staffers that each of us has a relationship with.  When the metals amendment came up, Mrs. Feinstein, as we figured, brought up both [Sumitomo?] and Hunt Brothers.  They had their rebuttal points right there, right when they were needed.  Reid went off on a story about a friend of his who tried to corner the pepper market.  
But we won 59-42, I think was the vote, which was a solid win.  What that had done now was also taken the metals off the table.  So now it was really up to the energy guys and the financial houses to win this, we were now in a protected position.  But the next vote then was the cloture vote.  Mrs. Feinstein couldn't hit the magic sixty.  What we later learned was that Senator Graham had taken the letter with the fifty financial concerns written on it and was actually sitting in the well of the Senate holding this thing.  The senators came down to vote, he'd say look at this.  
That's one of the things I've learned in this, is that when they call the roll call votes in the House, they go down and put the cards in.  There's a big board that comes up and people generally look how's it going.  In the Senate, when they go down to vote, it's a long process.  You watch it on C-SPAN, it's about a twenty minute process to go from Senator [inaudible] to Senator Wellstone.  If you actually watch what's going on down in the well, and you know the issue and you know the players well enough, I've seen votes won and lost just by watching these guys work back and forth.  We could watch and see Senator Graham moving around, we could see Senator Reid moving around.  So Feinstein didn't hit cloture, so it was off the energy bill at that point.  
A lot of press on it.  Most of the press on this issue, absolutely wrong.  The media sees what they see sitting up in the gallery.  It's really not our job to go correct it.  
But we also realized that this wasn't the defeat of her amendment, it was a parliamentary delay.  So we kept this issue on the radar screen now.  Again, my consultant  argues that our little  Mountain Western industry, we're so networked together and so cohesive that we see things faster than the financial lobbyists do, who are spread out.  Plus our little industry has a record, we've done seventeen floor votes since 1990.  Most lobbyists don't have, it's like a policeman having to pull his gun, most policemen don't pull their gun in their career and if they do they don't fire it.  
We've won seventeen floor votes since 1990, so we've become adept at dealing with this.  Where in the financial houses, they just don't have that kind of thing.  They work at the committee level generally, and they're trying to do little amendments here, little amendments there.  Because of the noise of public land issues and whatnot, we've had to become very adept at Senate procedure, Senate floor votes.  We're also, because we're in an industry that some people view as unpopular, we've had to deal with NGO groups, environmental groups and whatnot, that are constantly watching us.  
So we're very good at watching what's going on.  Our computerized system started popping up with the anti-derivative people were having press conferences and producing studies.  We were the people discovering this.  Then we would forward it on to the financials.
So now what we're in a position of is we're really trying to get a tour together so that we can take some of the congressional staffers up to New York City to actually see how this stuff works.  Explaining financial derivative is very hard.

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
So that issue stays on our screen.  It's one that at the beginning of the year didn't exist.  We're trying to get some staff up to New York to actually see how all this fits together.  We anticipate hearings.  Now she's going to introduce a freestanding bill which will give our folks the opportunity to say something on this.  There's a series of staff briefings that are now scheduled on Capitol Hill where we can walk through all of this.  We'll see where it goes.

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
Harry Reid (R-NV)
John Ensign (R-NV)

Targets of Direct Lobbying
None mentioned.

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
None mentioned.

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and the Wall Street types, at Morgan Stanley - never met the guy.  It's all been e-mail and telephones.  The National Mining Association was involved on our side.  

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
The Swaps and Derivatives Association was involved in that one.  

They put a letter together that was signed by fifty name-brand financial institutions, plus they managed to have letters from the Treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve president.  

[Opponents]
Senator Diannne Feinstein (D-CA)

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
All we want to do is to make sure that the metals arrangements stay the way they are.  We think we have the high ground on this.  Here's the reason.  Most over the counter derivatives in metals involves gold.  Most of the gold that's used in these transactions is central bank gold.  So the Bank of England, Bundesbank of Germany, the Swiss Bank, is taking their gold, loaning it to Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs is then doing a financial deal with us where our mine eventually replace that gold – they sell that gold into the market using our money.  Then we replace the gold in the Bank of Switzerland with gold that we mined.  
So from our standpoint, this is a deal between our company, Goldman Sachs and the Bank of England.  I'm not sure there's a role here for the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to become involved in.  I can't go up to our Nevada senators and have them walk out on a whim.  We've got to be comfortable with the facts on this.  The facts were, there had been no scandals involving over the counter derivatives in metals.  The types of products we use are vital to the financing of our industry and to the creation of jobs in rural Nevada.  Finally, the gold that's actually involved in these transactions is not privately held gold, it's gold held by central banks of the world.  If you want to deal with Enron Online, we actually offered up language to Senator Feinstein's staff, here's how you do it.  This is how you deal with it.  But for some reason, and we never understood why, they didn't accept that.

They [the financial institutions that sent a letter to the Hill] were defending hedging and risk instruments and whatnot.  I'm simply saying, I've got this Nevada senator who's the assistant majority leader.  What he needs to know is that first off, without these products, Nevada's largest growing industry would have never been created.  These products, since we've gone through a commodity depression and prices have dropped for metals and all the commodities.
Once they understood that it was important in Nevada, it was important to real miners in Nevada, then from there we had to take him to the level of this is how they work and this is why you shouldn't be concerned.  This was the assistant majority leader for the Democratic Party.  Power and Enron are clearly issues that the Democrats have an interest in scoring an advantage on with the president.  There may be stuff there.  So I can't put him in the position six or seven months from now, this comes back and haunts him.  You've got to – a state senator once said, treat your district like your mother.  I treat our constituency the same way.

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
None mentioned.

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
None mentioned.

Nature of the Opposition
[Feinstein and those supporting her amendment.]

The anti-derivative people, it's the public interest groups that have kind of jumped on the Enron issues.  Rightfully so, what was going on at Enron was astounding.  Then there's actually an NGO group, I discovered, that's been created that's just anti-derivatives, it's part of the anti-globalization campaign.  I don't get it, but these days all you need is a computer and a foundation grant and you're in business.  There's really been an explosion of all these groups in the last ten years.  That's the business they're in.

They were very wrapped up in Enron.  They were designed more for the national media than to win votes on the Senate floor.  This is something that as you watch this process, there are senators who are these national media figures that can't get a bill passed.  Then there are senators who know the process and can work the process, like Byrd and Reid and Nichols, who are very intimate to the floor.  But you don't see them on the Sunday talk shows.  

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition 
Everything on their side was – the energy crisis in California, Enron bad, why is Enron bad, Enron Online, why is it bad, over the counter trading, derivatives.  They had gone to – recognizing that this was going to be viewed as real partisan, they had gone to Senator Fitzgerald of Illinois, who would come down and say I'm a banker and I know about these things.  But he didn't show up for the vote.  He just didn't show.  It was just blatant to me.

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition
Generally there's a deep suspicion of business within these organizations.  There's a group called the Swaps and Derivative Association that two years ago there was enacted new laws dealing with the management of commodities and energy trading.  Over the counter derivatives were excluded from this for energy and metals.  
What we didn't know, we got into this debate on forty-eight hours notice, was that there were long-simmering feuds between the financial houses, the anti-derivative people and the major commodity exchanges in the nation.  They want this business on the exchanges.  So you have not only do you have a conflict between the financials and the anti-derivative people, who are just suspicious of business and concerned about having globalization issues, but then between the financial houses and the exchanges you have a conflict over business.  If the exchanges can get over the counter derivatives banned or regulated, then all the business comes to them.  So here you have one business group trying to use the Enron crisis to strengthen their business development efforts.  
So it's really kind of a triangle issue and we're just kind of stumbling around.  It came out of this 2000 law dealing with modernization of commodity and energy trading.  I can't remember what it's called, but if you ring me up later I can certainly find it.  [it’s the Commodities Futures Modernization Act]. So what you had was some people who lost that debate in 2000 who when the Enron thing surfaced suddenly had their day in the sun again.
Mrs. Feinstein was in the position of California having this great energy crisis.  We certainly understand the politics of what she's having to do, because coming from Nevada we can tell you that when California sneezes, Nevada catches a cold.  Our energy situation in Nevada was much worse than California's.  But we don't have fifty-four House members to get these kind of groups of members and whatnot that California has.  So we stepped into this ongoing battle that we're trying to stay out of.  

Targeted Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition (and Targets)
None mentioned.

Described as a Partisan Issue
Yes.

Venue(s) of Activity
Senate 

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
We anticipate hearings.  Now she's going to introduce a freestanding bill which will give our folks the opportunity to say something on this.  There's a series of staff briefings that are now scheduled on Capitol Hill where we can walk through all of this.  We'll see where it goes.

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
[Oppose Feinstein’s amendment to bring over the counter derivatives under the regulation of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, specifically want to keep derivatives linked to minerals unregulated in the event energy derivatives do become regulated. ]

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
I've been with the company for eight years.  I was in the Reagan Administration in the 1980s, involved in gold.  Then I was at one of our trade associations, the Gold Institute, which represents all the interests here in town.  Then joined the company and put their Washington office together in 1995.  

Reliance on Research: In-House/External (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Yeah, do it all in-house, Macintosh computers are very essential to this kind of stuff.  What we don't do in-house, we turn to our various trade associations and say we need this.  On the IMF gold issue, we also realized we needed more lobbying help.  We went out and hired, the chairman of the Foreign Operations Committee in the House was from Alabama.  There's never been a gold mine in Alabama.  So we went out and hired a former Alabama House member just to help with that.  We went out and hired former Congressman Charlie Wilson to help over there in the House, who was a member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee.  You just look at these lists and there's no one.  You have no constituency base whatsoever.  

Number of Individuals Involved in Advocacy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
No, I'm the guy.  I also do state government.  I do South Dakota and Nevada, where we have interests.  We retain two lobbyists to help us out, one on the tax side.  That's more monitoring than anything else.  Then we have a very talented young woman who looks after natural resource issues and  other things for the company when I'm out doing state stuff.

Units in Organization Involved in Public Affairs/Policy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
[Do you work much with the headquarters?]  Yes.  It's best, I think, for government relations advocates to be part of the legal department.  When you get in the public relations department, some of them are situated, you're just driven by different things.  I've always insisted as an advocate that I want to be one phone call away from someone who can commit the company.  I know where I can go but there are moments late at night or far away in Carson City, Nevada, where I've got to commit the company in fifteen minutes.  I want to be one phone call away from someone who can do that.  So working for a general counsel of a corporation is usually the best way to do that, because you can get that yes or no.  Sometimes you just don't have time.  
What I've noticed is everything has sped up.  As technology has come into play, it is drowning the congressional offices in information.  First it was faxes, now it's e-mail.  So congressional staffers have 150 e-mails waiting for them.  So they're just drowning in information.  Frankly their offices, if you've spent time up there, are just not set up for this kind of stuff.

We also have access to a law firm here, a big-name law firm that helps us out.  I don't have much of a back room.  I don't have people who can write the policy papers and write all this.  So we turn to them for the back room stuff.  But then there are some nights, on derivatives, I was here until eleven o'clock at night trying to piece a coherent and responsible argument together that I could send to Senator Reid's office.

Advocate’s Outstanding Skills/Assets (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
None mentioned.

Type of Membership: None, Institutions, Individuals, Both (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Membership Size (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Organizational Age (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Miscellaneous
[He spoke at length about another issue (not derivatives) that he worked on a bit back, do not code the following:]

There was a proposal a few years ago to sell gold by the International Monetary Fund to help heavily indebted poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa.  Our argument, we produced a very big study on it, was that [inaudible] over half the nations you're trying to help with debt relief are actually now gold-mining nations.  It's their largest source of exports.  You're about to hurt the same countries you're trying to help.  
This was a very challenging issue because it came out of the chute, it had all the bells and whistles, it had Bono the singer involved in it.  It was the Treasury Department's initiative, it was the IMF's initiative.  We're sitting there saying you want to help thirty-five countries and seventeen of them are gold-mining nations.  We were able again through the Western bloc of senators to slow this.  But we knew we couldn't [inaudible] on this because it had a big Washington focus.  Tony Blair, President Clinton, everybody was behind this thing.  
So initially what we did is we slowed the process down by going to each of the appropriations chairmen, because we knew that's where eventually they're going to have to get this thing through, and say give us some time, we'll show you that there's another way to do this.  By the way, there are these seventeen nations and – and we were about to build a huge mine in Tanzania, we were going to be the largest foreign investor in Tanzania.  That these are countries that essentially owe huge debts, how do you call your bank up and ask for relief again, even though you're trying to build this new gold industry.
So we got all our traditional supporters, the Western caucus, the Western senators.  We had letters from Reid and Daschle to the Treasury secretary.  But we knew in the end we couldn't win it on that.  So we produced the scholarly study we needed, we rolled it out to the diplomatic crowd here in Washington and let all the embassies from these sub-Saharan African nations know what was at stake here, and South American nations.  They began the process then of taking the issue back into their governments, which has long lead time.  As we were getting there, we realized our weakest point was the House Banking Committee, which at that time there were fifty-two members.  Sometimes there's no place to go.  We had no House members from the [inaudible] Mountain West on the Banking Committee.

So we had to strengthen our team as we went into this.  We had to have a PR side of this, where traditionally we try and stay out of the press.  We knew this one was going to be in the press.  So we turned to the local council in New York and said you guys are going to have to handle the press on this.  We didn't want to create press, and where we did create press it was with the, why are we trying to hurt the same countries we're trying to invest in?  It doesn't make sense.
Once we had that in place and that gave us a little bit of time, we then began the strategy of trying to go over to the left side of the political spectrum.  We literally walked right into the door at Oxfam and said, you want to help these nations, we want to help these nations, you want to do it one way, we want to do it another, is there any possibility of coming together on this?  Would you at least let us make our case to your side?  We had vetted a couple different organizations on the left.  But they're not used to working with business lobbyists.  That's just not something they're accustomed to.  So finally we found at Oxfam we could go in and talk to them.  We flew in some guys from London who laid out what we were trying to do.  
But the obligation was really on us – it was much simpler to sell the gold and bank it.  So we started searching around for an alternative policy way for the IMF to use the gold that didn't involve a market sale.  Because by the way, when this thing was announced, it took $50 off the gold price, threw 10,000 South African miners out of a job.  One of our people stumbled in their research upon a proposal that had been first put forward in the Truman Administration to revalue the U.S. gold reserve to market levels and use the difference between the book value and the market value to fund the Marshall Fund.  It was never adopted.  It was the most clever idea we could come up with.  
We realized that if the miners go forward and say this, that's not going to carry very far.  So one of our lobbyists started working with Congressman LaFalce's staffer, who's an economist who was really wrapped up in finding a way to do this.  He took a very strong intellectual interest.  We went and found a woman here in town who had long experience with the banking committees.  She was an economist, she was very well-respected up there.  We gave her mountains of material on gold and said, can you work up an idea?  By the way, this is the one idea that we've come up with.  She and her people worked with the LaFalce staffer and refined this into something that was workable, that could actually work.  So that took the miners off of having to put this forward.  It was now a solid policy thing, it had a good economist, it had been vetted by the Democrats, who even though they were in the minority were still viewed as the most sympathetic to all this.
As we roll on toward the end of session, weird things happen at the end of sessions.  So looking at the fifty-two members of the Banking Committee, they finally looked at us and said, we appreciate all of you North American miners coming in and talking about the plight of South African miners and Tanzanian miners and Peruvian miners, but you don't look African.  They were just kind of that blunt about it.  
So we called up our friends in Johannesburg and said we need some help up here.  We need you guys to step forward.  The South African government was in a difficult position.  They owe the World Bank and IMF a lot of money, so it's hard for them to oppose these initiatives.  But they said we'll send someone.  They sent up a guy named Matt Leasey, who was the black South African labor leader, 250,000 black South African miners.  They sent him up with the CEO of [inaudible] Gold, which is the largest corporation in South Africa.  
We then turned to a guy named John [inaudible], who for some odd reason was the principal lobbyist for, had relations with the Congressional Black Caucus.  He introduced us to the three leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus and we laid all this out.  They agreed to see Matt Leasey.  So Matt Leasey flew out from South Africa and we took him in there.  Curious thing is that they're still a little suspect of this thing, they have sitting in the room some of their labor leaders.  Just to make sure the guy we were bringing in was real.  We had this meeting and then he went off to speak to the Congressional Black Caucus.  We had a letter the next day signed by the thirty-seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus opposing this and urging this revaluation scheme.

Then on the IMF issue, we used the local council as our backup, because that was simply our issue.
We then decided that we'd been on the defense long enough and it was time to go on the offense.  So Matt Leasey started going around to see the press.  At the same time, Larry Summers' confirmation hearing was occurring, so Nevada Senator Richard Brian was all primed for the confirmation hearing.  So he had the chart that showed the fall in gold price and he got in the confirmation hearing Larry Summers to agree to this.  
So we hit the Treasury within a week with the confirmation hearing debate, the Congressional Black Caucus letter.  We took it into the news media.  Then finally, we had a letter from all the conservative members of the Banking Committee.  So if you're Chairman Leach and you've got fifty-two members, you suddenly don't have a working majority anymore.  You've just seen the left go off this way with the CBC and you've seen the right go off this way with the Western caucus.  Suddenly you don't have anything to build from.  The Treasury phoned us at that point and said we'd like to visit and we'd like to review in detail your proposal for revaluation.  
The problem is, no one was actually focusing on the detail of this thing.  Our proposal actually produced far more revenues faster than the Treasury proposal would have ever produced for these African nations.  But you can't get people sometimes to slow down and look at the facts.  But it produced the slowdown we needed.  So we sat in August of 1999 and we went through all of this and then they took it away.  We knew there were lots of meetings with the IMF and World Bank that we were not invited to.  But one of our friends in the diplomatic community called us up one day and said our sources tell us that this is the deal.  We're a Canadian-headquartered company so we were also in the loop with Canada on this, the Canadian people.  Just let them know we have this ongoing interest.  
Come September, time to do the foreign operations bill.  Out comes the amendment.  Treasury calls us over, says do you want to make any bells and whistles changes to this thing?  It became the law.  Ninety days later they revalued 10 percent of the IMF gold reserve, produced more money than anyone had ever anticipated for these heavily indebted poor countries.  It was a market neutral transaction.  We commissioned our gold mine in Tanzania six months later and we're now the largest foreign investor and largest private sector employer in Tanzania.  Everything's going great.  
This all occurred between February 6 of 1999 and October of 1999.  It was so hard to penetrate initially.  I wandered over to the House and I just kind of looked around.  My goodness, what are we going to do?  There's five gold mining lobbyists and what on Earth are we going to do?  But we built this coalition on the left and the right, we had the facts, we had an alternative.  Because there was one moment when Senator Brian pulled me aside, we'd just done a TV show on this issue.  He said, you're going to have to have an alternative.  We just won't stop this.  It was like, yes, sir.  That's what led to that.  At one point we had a letter from Jesse Helms and a letter from Jesse Jackson, Jr., basically on the same side.  The only way we could win something in the House was to take the left and the right and pull them together.
That was probably the biggest issue of my career.  I'll probably never have anything that big again.  It was enormous and I don't think I'll ever do it again.

One thing I forgot to tell you on the Banking Committee thing, when I was sitting there staring at fifty-two members.  I actually went into the office of the House member where my family grew up in, who I vaguely knew but hadn't seen in twenty years.  Sometimes the only place you can go is home.  I said I grew up in [inaudible] Ohio, [inaudible] gold mines in your district and I'm sorry I haven't spent enough time with you guys, but I've got this problem.