Word: anacondas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...documents it requested from the CIA and the State Department were not released, and those released were heavily censored. Furthermore, the division the Church Committee makes between the activities of American corporations and those of the CIA is misleading, since most of the companies involved--ITT, Pepsi-Cola, Anaconda Copper--have a long history of involvement with the CIA, providing cover jobs for agents in return for CIA defense of their interests abroad...
...owes its development-and recent decline-to copper. In 1882, a prospector named Marcus Daly found a 5-ft. vein of 30% pure copper ore while searching for silver. Daly's discovery touched off a wild scramble for the precious ore, which was eventually won by Anaconda. By 1910, the company owned the rights to the minerals underlying 90% of the city. It also held the right of eminent domain, which allows it to buy up any sur face property that stands in the way of its operations...
...cost was high. Pollution fouled streams and scarred mountainsides. By the mid-1940s, Butte's high-grade ore thinned out, forcing the company to increasingly undermine the town in its search for copper. By 1955, when the decreasing quality of the ore made even those operations uneconomical, Anaconda turned to cheaper open-pit mining...
...next step would be to dig into the rest of the mineral-rich hill on which the city stands. As yet, the company, which is itself facing financial problems and has actually been losing money on its Butte operations, has not decided the fate of the hill. Says Anaconda's Montana mining chief Leonard Powell: "We don't know yet if we'll want it. There are too many variables...
...Answer. Butte's few remaining boosters have not been able to come up with any realistic answer to the city's dilemma. If Anaconda were to abandon its operations in Butte and lay off its 3,000 employees there, the economic impact on the city would be devastating. Searching for a solution, the leaders of twelve Butte companies formed a nonprofit organization to look into the possibility of relocating the threatened business district, and even found three suitable sites on the flatlands south and west of the city. But they have been unable to figure...