Gore's secrecy baffles some --- Really That's the way It's going to be So deal with him

Gore's secrecy baffles some --- Really That's the way It's going to be So deal with him
ORGANIZERS QUESTION EXCLUSION OF TV, RADIO FROM S.J. TALK ON GLOBAL WARMING
By Paul Rogers
Mercury News
Al Gore is scheduled to speak in Silicon Valley on Friday to a sold-out crowd of 1,400 people. His topic: how high technology can help reduce global warming.
But the broader public won't be able to see or hear what the former vice president says.
Gore has banned TV and radio coverage of his keynote address at the ``State of the Valley'' Conference, at McEnery Convention Center in San Jose. The secrecy, which has baffled organizers, is part of a pattern.
Over the past two years, Gore has repeatedly prohibited news coverage of his speeches, often requiring universities and other hosts to sign contracts barring reporters.
Last week, Gore banned the press from global warming speeches he gave in Idaho and South Dakota. A year ago, he prohibited coverage when he spoke to 1,000 people at Stanford University's Memorial Hall. The Mercury News attended anyway and wrote a story about the event.
The strategy has left environmentalists and many of his sponsors disappointed.
Kalee Kreider, Gore's communications director, said Gore sometimes allows coverage -- he was on Oprah in December, for example -- but he enjoys unscripted conversations with audiences.
``Mr. Gore is a private citizen. He is not on a campaign trail,'' Kreider said. ``He simply likes to go out and talk to people,'' sometimes with reporters present and sometimes without.
Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a non-profit group hosting Friday's event, said he had hoped Gore's speech would be open to all media so it would reach the widest audience. Print reporters originally were banned, too, but Gore's staff reversed that decision after the Mercury News informed them it would be writing about the press restrictions.
``We invited him to come and to address Silicon Valley on how we can lead America to a new energy future,'' Hancock said. ``I assumed it would be on the record.''
In the age of YouTube, blogs and the Drudge Report, any slip-up by a public figure can be posted on the Internet for millions of people to see. Gore, a reporter in the 1970s for the Nashville Tennessean, is chairman of Current TV, a cable network that broadcasts viewer videos and is a paid adviser to Google.
``It's ironic,'' said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. ``Al Gore is very much involved in the new technologies which are making it more difficult for politicians to speak freely in public. So his answer is to bar the press?''
Sabato said Gore may be trying to lower his public exposure -- and better control his image -- in case he decides to run for president in 2008 as a surprise candidate.
Many environmentalists wish Gore would change his mind.
``Al Gore's film, `An Inconvenient Truth,' played a huge role in helping to raise public awareness about global warming,'' said Craig Noble, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco.
``But we need to keep driving the point home.''
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