Tim DeChristopher

On Saturday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Bill Whitaker devoted a full story to an environmental activist in Utah, Tim DeChristopher, who disrupted an oil lease auction by illegally making bids that he knew he could not pay, which slowed down the process making it possible for Barack Obama to block President Bush’s directive allowing the auction. Anchor Russ Mitchell introduced the report: "The Bush administration has less than three days left, but almost to the end, it’s been taking actions that have environmentalists fuming. One young activist used an unorthodox tactic, as we hear from Bill Whitaker."

After recounting that DeChristopher moved to Utah to attend college and became enamored with the beautiful landscape, Whitaker continued: "But where DeChristopher sees beauty, others see bounty. When one of the last-minute acts of the Bush administration was to auction off some of this land for oil drilling, the 27-year-old student said he had to act."