Last Stand: Ted Turner's Quest to Save a Troubled Planet

by Todd Wilkinson

  A few months later, at a Global Green event in Los Angeles, Turner flew out to introduce his friend to the audience. Turner could tell something was bothering Gorbachev. After persistent prying, Gorbachev revealed that some Swiss contributors did not follow through on their pledge for the foundation. Mitchell shares the details of their exchange.

  “Well, how much do you need?” Turner asked.

  Gorbachev demurred, trying to change the subject.

  “No, I’m serious, Mikhail. What will it take to complete the building the way you want it?”

  At last, and only with strong-arming by Turner, did Gorbachev reluctantly divulge the amount of the shortfall in the construction budget: several million dollars.

  “Ted handled it really well,” Mitchell said. “He didn’t make a big deal out of it, but he wanted to get it resolved for Gorbachev’s peace of mind and for his own. He wrote Mikhail a check, told him that friends need to be there for each other, and insisted he take it to fulfill the important role that the foundation was meant to play.”

  There was no press release issued because that’s not how friends operate. Turner reached out when others did not, Gorbachev remembers, saying, “The biggest donation came from Ted. Without him, we wouldn’t have been able to complete the building.”

  To not honor a true “freedom fighter” that risked everything, as Gorbachev had been, would be a travesty, Turner says. “He deserved to be treated with respect.”

  In the United States, Gorbachev had seen the impact of charitable giving, American style. He was awed, he said. Such a tradition did not exist in Russia. Gorbachev had hoped his foundation would become an example for how his countrymen might think about the value of private philanthropy and giving back to society as an obligation of one’s own prosperity.

  Turner and Mitchell were invited to attend the dedication of the new structure in Moscow. “Ted did not want any acknowledgment. He wanted it to be President Gorbachev’s day to be honored,” Mitchell says. Still, Gorbachev paid homage to his American droog and today, if one looks closely in the courtyard of the Gorbachev Foundation, there is a plaque under a tree, thanking Turner in Russian and English.

  In reaching out to a person he considered a great man, Turner didn’t realize that Gorbachev aspired to imitate him, to embrace the Turner Foundation as a template. It is a spirit of empowerment that goes back to his interaction with Cousteau.

  Amid his incessant travel, filled with public speaking appearances, shuttle diplomacy, and fund-raising in support of philanthropy, there are few tangible examples of private individuals creating a roadmap to follow. Turner is the one Gorbachev invokes when he talks with world leaders. Why? Because of the range of interrelated projects he funds.

  “This is a man who knows how to make money, but more importantly he is a visionary who knows how to spend it right,” Gorbachev says. “Ted will tell it like it is and in particular, if there is a need to defend something or someone out of principle, he will do it. I am proud to say I regard Ted as one of my best friends.”

  The former KGB careerist who had, at times, evinced an intense poker face in his talks with Reagan at Reykjavik, smiles again. He recounts a visit to Turner’s ranches in Montana. He shares the tale of meeting a Turner friend, a magpie named Harry. The corvid had fallen out of its nest at the Snowcrest Ranch, then was hand-raised by Turner and his staff. He was charmed seeing the way that Turner interacted with the avian member of the crow family, a species known for its intelligence.

  Turner recalls how Harry joined Gorbachev one morning at the breakfast table, sat on his shoulder, and beak-tapped his forehead. (The bird is still alive but now resides at the Beartooth Nature Center in Red Lodge, Montana, his viewers surely unaware of the prominent group of human friends he made along the way.)

  Mostly, Gorbachev says, he was impressed to learn about the kinds of environmental restoration efforts occurring on Turner’s properties at a time when many natural landscapes around the world are unraveling. He mentions the planting of a million longleaf pine seedlings at Avalon Plantation in Florida to restore the native forest and absorb carbon dioxide.

  “On another property [the Armendaris Ranch] he is protecting bats!” Gorbachev says, becoming more animated and enthusiastic.

  From their visits together, Gorbachev proudly has made a point of becoming conversant about the ecological niche bats fill. “Preserving hundreds of thousands of bats on just one property!” he says. “And, of course, Ted is raising and saving bison. He may even try to help rescue the bison of Europe!”

  Unknown to many Americans, he relates, is that Turner’s popularity around the globe stems from him calling himself an internationalist who embraces different cultures, religions, and customs.

  When Gorbachev delivered his lecture in 1991 upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, he said: “Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations. Peace is a movement towards globality and universality of civilization. Never before has the idea that peace is indivisible been so true as it is now. Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences. And, ideally, peace means the absence of violence. It is an ethical value.”

  “We have discovered often that policies are not enough. We need to build a new world order that will sustain life on Earth and unite the efforts of all nations,” he added later in our conversation. “But foremost we need to make the kind of change that is needed tangible in people’s minds. This is what Ted, on his ranches and through his philanthropy, is trying to do.”

  The threat of armed conflict and nuclear terrorism is heightened by nations attempting to wall themselves off in self-exile from the rest of the world, he says.

  “What happens is that sometimes there are insulting attitudes expressed on the outside, and inside of that wall those words are meant to incite. But we forget, the people on either side of the wall have the same dreams. No matter where we live, we all have God’s gift of life, we’re all children of one peaceful loving God, but we can express those beliefs differently,” Gorbachev says. “People like Ted may not adhere to a single religion, but as I know him, he believes in the spirit of humanity. That’s his religion. And I don’t think any god would fault him for that.”

  The next facet of Turner is the Turner who might have been.

  Today, and while he is loath to admit it, it pains him to watch the decline of CNN in the content and ratings wars, the news channel that he birthed, nursed to global respectability, and transformed into the standard bearer for international coverage of world events. More than a decade after he was usurped, not a day goes by when former colleagues and faithful CNN viewers aren’t pining for his return. He holds no personal ill will toward his onetime rival and ideological nemesis Rupert Murdoch.

  Murdoch’s reputation has been sullied plenty of late with the hacking scandal involving his newspapers in Britain. “No one has ever accused me or my company of illegally stealing private information and no television network I ran was operated to, so destructively, divide a country for partisan reasons and destroy any confidence that citizens have in America.” Turner refuses to identity FOX by name but it should be implicit.

  No one in television today fills the niche that Turner did. The fact is, he loved his role as a self-made media man. He appreciated the good it allowed him to do in the world. Although he says that he’s had a fully satisfying life involved with other endeavors, a turn of events erased his ambition of bringing the role of news to an even higher plane.

  “I don’t say this to be dramatic, but one tragic part of Ted Turner’s life—and it is nothing short of a tragedy—is what happened in wresting him of his power to complete the revolution in television he had envisioned.”

  Sharing the comments above, John Malone, founder of Liberty Media and a valued Turner fr
iend, is referring to the blockbuster deal at the end of the twentieth century that brought together Time Warner Turner and Internet company AOL.

  Malone still has strong feelings of revulsion for how Turner lost control of the media properties he spent his life building. He was with Turner the day that news of his ouster reached him. It didn’t arrive in person, nor in a phone call, but via a fax sent to him at the Ladder Ranch in New Mexico.

  Turner and Malone, it should be noted, have the same kind of trusting friendship as Turner and Gorbachev have. As Turner notes, he and Malone “were involved in cable TV before cable was cool.” Both became billionaires because of their vision in bringing it mainstream.

  In 2012, Malone earned the title of largest private landowner in America, overtaking Turner. He is effusive, however, in praising Turner for transforming the way he thinks about the environment and conservation and land. Because of Ted Turner, John Malone told me, he realizes there is no legacy more profound than how one treats the Earth because it reaches beyond generations.

  If Turner had remained in media, and overseen the news media elements of Time Warner and AOL after the merger, Malone believes there would be a different tenor today in America. Turner, he says, would have devoted considerable resources, including his own wealth, to using television and print communication to foster a better and farther reaching dialogue about the problems facing America and the world—be it the debt crisis, the influence of lobbyists in politics, climate change, overpopulation, poverty in the developing world, or nuclear security. He would have assembled a dream team of newspeople and statesmen and women to moderate discussions.

  Pat Mitchell, chief executive of the Paley Media Center, says Turner’s removal confirms another irony: “We hear a lot about social corporate responsibility today. Ted invented that concept when he gave television a green conscience. We can only imagine what good might have come from him having the forum and resources to promote civility in America and foster goodwill.”

  The AOL Time Warner merger made Turner incredibly wealthy almost overnight, and when the stock value collapsed he also experienced one of the largest slides of fortune in human history. Even more painful than losing the money, Malone says, was Turner knowing that the orchestrators of the merger, Gerald Levin representing Time Warner Turner and Steve Case, founder of AOL, had frozen Turner out from any senior management role in the new company. But they could never tell him of their intentions to his face.

  “I told him after reading the fax. I said, ‘Ted, I’m sorry to inform you of this, but, friend, you just got screwed,’” Malone says.

  Today, AOL Time Warner is a topic Turner seldom discusses, even among friends. He does note that Levin made a general apology in the newspaper, although he has never expressed his contrition personally to Turner, nor has Case reached out.

  But Levin told the New York Times in response to decisions that cost Turner and fellow shareholders billions: “I was the CEO. I was in charge. I’m really very sorry about the pain and suffering and loss that was caused. I take responsibility.”

  “I don’t care what Jerry Levin says. He double-crossed Ted Turner, pushed him out of television, and we are the worse for it,” says John Malone.

  “To call the transaction the worst in history, as it is now taught in business schools, does not begin to tell the story of how some of the brightest minds in technology and media collaborated to produce a deal now regarded by many as a colossal mistake,” wrote reporter Tim Arango in the New York Times on January 10, 2010, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the AOL Time Warner deal.

  Turner isn’t bitter, just disappointed. He had dreams of what he would have done with the money, spending it on efforts to totally eradicate polio from the face of the Earth, getting mosquito nets into the hands of every family in malaria-prone regions of the world, amping up efforts to rescue species, battling poverty, promoting solar and wind and decommissioning nuclear weapons facilities, perhaps even incentivizing the Koreas to join hands in a peace park.

  On top of it, if he had been in charge of programming at CNN, he would have used the airwaves to educate millions of viewers. And he had a fantasy of recruiting the best broadcast talent and experienced people skilled in statecraft to host debates on issues of the day. TV, Turner said, should be used to resolve serious problems, not make them worse. With an arsenal of cash, he is convinced he could have made it work.

  “I’d like to forget it,” he said of the AOL Time Warner saga in his interview with the Times. “That’s what goes through my mind. I almost didn’t do this interview because I didn’t want to dig it up again. Let it pass into history. The Time Warner–AOL merger should pass into history like the Vietnam War and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It’s one of the biggest disasters that have occurred to our country.”

  Who is Ted Turner? Winner or loser? A reader’s conclusion based on what kind of ledger? The final essential piece of the puzzle in arriving at an answer must necessarily address the Turner to come, the man who will still exude an influence after he’s gone. And it won’t be in television or technology.

  What will happen when Ted Turner dies? It’s a question I’ve received more often than any other. Will everything that he’s tried to accomplish be all for naught? Will it vanish just as his physical presence is destined to disappear? Will he be forgotten like Charles Foster Kane?

  It’s a question that’s worried Turner himself, even as far back as those days when he sat in a Washington, DC, seminar and first thought of establishing the Turner Foundation. He called upon his estate planner, Bob Biebel, one more time to help him plot his final moves.

  Turner has crafted a document that is part of his will, giving instructions to his five children. He does not wish to merely leave them with a financial fortune. He wants them to carry on the stewardship he started, and yet put their own stamp on decisions that can affect, positively, the outcome of the world.

  Decades ago, Turner helped to ignite the conservation easement movement in America, which gives property owners tax breaks for agreeing not to develop their land and preserve elements of nature for the common good. As part of a new landmark partnership he’s invented with The Nature Conservancy, Turner has taken that idea to a whole new level.

  Most of Turner’s two million acres of land, extending across nearly two dozen properties, would be bequeathed to The Turner Conservation Trust, a sibling to The Turner Foundation. And The Nature Conservancy would serve as a “conservation guardian”—a watchdog—ensuring that the integrity of the land be maintained in perpetuity. The aim is to approach sustainability in such a way that the triple bottom line will be defended. Again, the “triple bottom line” refers to financial balance sheets, protection of the environment, and benefits to local and larger communities. “I believe the triple bottom line is our only hope,” Turner says. “We need to promote an accounting system that produces human wealth, safeguards the wealth of nature, and benefits society rather than making problems worse.”

  A written preamble reads in part: “The purpose of the Turner Conservation Trust will be to demonstrate how large ranches and other lands can be managed to achieve the objectives of conservation, renewable energy and other compatible uses, such as ecosystem services, in a way that is financially sustainable. It is hoped that the demonstration of such an approach to land management will show other owners . . . that there is a better way to manage their resources—a new model of land management that combines the best land conservation practices with renewable/sustainable commerce that minimizes impact on the land, while generating revenue that can be used to sustain the ranch. This new model of land management is currently being defined and refined by Turner ranches, the Turner Foundation and the Turner Endangered Species Fund under the direction and leadership of Ted and his family. After Ted’s death, his family, through the Turner Conservation Trust, will continue this work. The trustees will work alongside
The Nature Conservancy and other entities in securing the success of this project and disseminating the results in an effort to replicate the model as widely as possible.”

  Noteworthy is that while Turner’s net worth today is slightly north of $2 billion, he has, considering all of his combined philanthropic contributions and the conservation plans for his lands, given away a monetary amount equal to his fortune, and it is the fortune that will be used to make his eco-humanitarian philanthropy self-perpetuating.

  “I have no delusions about achieving immortality,” Ted says, “but it’s sure been a lot of fun living this life. There have been some rough patches but we made it through. We fought our hardest. That’s all we can do.”

  Not long after the black wolf appeared to Turner in his dreams, he and one of his friends were driving up a back road behind his Montana home when a real lobo, its coat as dark as night, appeared. Turner and his companion got out of the vehicle and watched it for a long time at exceedingly close range. It evinced no fear and showed Turner no malice. It made his heart race with excitement.

  Some human residents on the perimeter of the Flying D would like to see the ranch’s pack exterminated, or at least have its numbers severely slashed. But Turner is making a stand for wolves and for all kinds of other underdogs. He says his burgeoning relationship with the environment has made him think differently, to see himself in its reflection. Where once he had a bumper sticker made that read, “Save the Humans,” his new slogan is, “Save Everything.”

  On the same porch where he once looked into the starlight and thought of taking his own life, he now joins family members and friends in a little revelry. Fresh on the heels of a visit to the wolf den over the next ridge, Turner’s guests stand listening as Ted cups his hands around his mouth and offers a primal baying up into moonlight.

  A few minutes later, from that distant knoll, a wolf howls in reply. And then comes another.