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Recognizing a dozen years ago that the northwest timber economy was changing, pulp mill owners sought to move to new products. Sitka's Alaska Pulp Company asked the Clinton Administration to modify its 50-year timber contract so that it could switch to medium-density fiberboard. The Clinton response was to cancel APC's contract.

APC sued and the court has ruled twice for the mill owners. It appears that after 11 years, U.S. taxpayers are going to cough up $200 million to pay for the Clinton Administration's mismanagement.

Another fairy tale about the Tongass timber industry is that it threatens fish and wildlife. In the last five years before statehood in 1959, under federal management, salmon harvest for the entire state averaged 42 million fish a year. The timber industry was just getting started. In the last 10 years, under state management, almost twice that number of fish have been harvested in Southeast alone - where the logging was conducted.

Fairy tales in news reporting and editorial comment from newspapers outside of Southeast are unsurprising. Matt Zencey, an editorial writer for the Anchorage Daily News, was with the Alaska Rainforest Campaign for three years. According to its March 1993 minutes, the campaign's goal was locking up coastal forests from Kodiak to Ketchikan.

It hired an Atlanta media consultant, John Scardino, who, according to the minutes, "has already put together a media plan featuring use of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill settlement money to save habitat in Prince William Sound and the western Gulf of Alaska, and complete the job of saving/reforming the Tongass National Forest."

He was successful thanks to spill trustees and advisors appointed by the green-tilting Clinton and Knowles administrations. The trustees spent more than $400 million - 60 percent of the funds available for spill recovery - to buy outright, or to buy an easement, to more than 50 tracts of land, totaling 644,000 acres. The trustees' stated purpose was to protect them from development. We thought the spill settlement money was for restoring resources and areas damaged by the spill. Silly us.

The Anchorage newspaper lets its editorial opinion slip into its news stories occasionally, recently referring to "subsidized roads" in the Tongass. If there was a subsidy, it was provided by the timber industry for other users. In 1964, Congress authorized the purchaser road credit program for national forests. Under that law, instead of the Forest Service securing an appropriation to build roads in forests, the government agency had loggers build the roads. Logging companies were given credit against their stumpage fees for cost of construction. It worked well for the government. Its engineers set the cost of the road in advance. Often a logger found it had cost him more, but at least he had timber. The 1990 Tongass Reform Act killed that.

We also wonder about the conclusions of editors of the Seattle Times. They advocate spending more money on Alaska tourism, recreation and commercial fishing rather than "paying to build and maintain more roads to cut more trees no one wants."

We do need more roads in the Tongass for better access to communities and to the continental highway system so more people can afford to enjoy Southeast's recreation. Small mills surviving in the Tongass do need trees.

A fairy tale promoted by the two newspapers and other environmental advocates is that the best timber has been harvested in the Tongass and the rest is threatened. Check the Forest Service Web site. It alone sends people out to count the trees.

The Tongass covers 16.8 million acres with 9.4 million of those acres old-growth forests. Of those 9.4 million acres, 5 million contain commercial-size trees

Nearly 90 percent (4.5 million acres) of the 5 million acres of commercial-size old-growth are protected forever against roads.

Seattle and its newspapers never have been supporters of Alaska. They opposed territorial status in 1906. They opposed creation of a territorial Legislature in 1913. After World War II, Seattle opposed direct flights from Anchorage to other points in the Lower 48. Seattle was the only area of the West Coast to oppose Alaska statehood. It opposed construction of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline. It sided with Canadians against Alaska in recent salmon treaty negotiations.

Seattle failed in its opposition, so it is good news that it opposes oil production from ANWR, even though a number of Washington's gas stations were shut down recently for lack of oil for its refineries.

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The Anchorage Daily News, worried about subsidies, should cheer a report that Fort Richardson in Anchorage is on the 2005 list of possible base closures. We join that newspaper in supporting the closure and put an end to subsidizing Anchorage.

When Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington proposed in 1949 moving Boeing's Seattle plant to Kansas to protect it from Russian bombers if the Cold War turned hot, Alaska Gov. Ernest Gruening eloquently opposed the move. Should Alaska's current Gov. Frank Murkowski reconsider Alaska's stand?