IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE! POSSIBLE CONFLICT OF INTEREST ALERT! DO NOT READ THIS BLOG POST WITHOUT CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING CRITICAL INFORMATION WHICH MAY IMPACT YOUR ASSESSMENT OF THIS POST! CHEVRON SPOKESPERSONS HAVE REQUESTED THAT I INCLUDE THIS INFORMATION IN THIS POST SO THAT I DO NOT LEAD HUFFPOST READERS ASTRAY! (SHEEPLIKE GROUP THAT THEY THINK YOU ARE!) MY SPOUSE WORKS WITH THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF ECUADOR WHO ARE THE PLAINTIFFS IN THE LAWSUIT AGAINST CHEVRON FOR THE MASSIVE POLLUTION THE COMPANY LEFT BEHIND IN THE RAINFOREST. WHILE CHEVRON CONDUCTS A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR MEDIA SPIN CAMPAIGN TO PAINT THEMSELVES AS THE ENVIRONMENTAL "GOOD GUYS", SAID SPOUSE WORKING OUT OF HER HOUSE WITH HER TWO CATS AND CELL PHONE APPEARS TO HAVE GOTTEN UNDER CHEVRON'S CORPORATE SKIN. SO IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE, HERE IS A PHOTO OF MS. "LET NO CHEVRON LIE GO UNCHALLENGED" IN THE ECUADORIAN RAINFOREST, LOOKING ON AS GOBS OF CHEVRON OIL OOZE OUT FROM THE WATER TABLE IN A VILLAGE NEAR LAGO AGRIO:
WE NOW REJOIN OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG. THANK YOU.
When it comes to corporate conspiracy tales, The Insider's recounting of Big Tobacco's skullduggery in covering up the addictive qualities of nicotine set a high bar. But Chevron's attempt to influence the outcome of a long-running lawsuit over what Robert F. Kennedy's daughter Kerry has called "Chevron's Chernobyl in the Amazon" makes The Insider look more like Peter Pan. Replete with spy pen cameras, smear campaigns, media manipulation, political payoffs, and boardroom intrigue -- and played out on an international stage from petroleum drenched rainforest villages and the Presidential Palace in Quito to Washington, New York and San Francisco -- Chevron's gambit to undermine a sovereign legal system may be unmatched in the annals of corporate duplicity and subterfuge.
But now Chevron's high stakes scheme is rapidly unraveling.
The phones of top executives at Chevron starting ringing early this morning as their strategy to preempt a day of reckoning over the environmental disaster in Ecuador suffered another embarrassing setback. By day's end, even the normally somnolent Chevron board had to sense that Chevron's chicanery has backfired badly on the company. The trigger for the flurry of activity: a series of news reports detailing the extent of Chevron's campaign of corporate espionage aimed at discrediting the legal system of Ecuador. As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere ("Revelation Undermines Chevron Case In Ecuador"), Chevron utilized a convicted international drug trafficker to try (unsuccessfully as it turns out) to entrap Ecuadorian officials into judicial misconduct. The company's goal: derail what increasingly looks likely to be a record judgment against the company in the long running pollution case.
Chevron general counsel Charles James, a John Ashcroft disciple who has been described as Chevron's in-house Karl Rove, seems to have rewritten the old lawyers motto: " When the facts are against you, argue the law. When the law is against you, argue the facts". With Chevron on the losing side of the law and facts, James has new addendum: "Ratf**k the legal system".
But what can you expect from a company that named an oil tanker after Condi Rice?
