Chevron Blogger Dumped by San Francisco Chronicle for Ethics Lapse

Zennie Among Several Paid By Chevron To Fake Positive News Coverage

The San Francisco Chronicle has finally thrown blogger Zennie Abraham off of its website City Brights after his ties to a Chevron operative were disclosed.

Recently, The Chevron Pit, exposed Zennie and his connections to Sam Singer, a Chevron media consultant based in San Francisco. Singer clearly pays Zennie to write positively about many of his clients, including Chevron. See this post here. Yet, Zennie never disclosed that he was paid to shill for Singer's clients.

The Chronicle’s decision to take a more ethical look and ultimately terminate Zennie should be applauded. Considering that Chevron often uses underhanded methods to buy positive media, the hometown newspaper of the San Ramon-based company is no longer being used as an unwitting instrument of the oil giant.

Chevron has a long and sordid history with writers like Zennie who pretend to be something they are not, so Chevron can circulate its deceptions about the company’s intentional contamination of the Ecuadorian rainforest.

Given the oil giant’s horrific record of contamination in both Ecuador and the U.S, paying for good news is about the only way for Chevron to get any. This year an Ecuador court awarded a group of indigenous tribes $18 billion for damages related to oil contamination left by Chevron in the rainforest. Several months later, a U.S. court denied efforts by Chevron to avoid paying the judgment.

Chevron, though, sees itself above the law of the land and doesn’t hesitate to resort to such tactics as:

Allowing the spouse of a Chevron employee to fake being an independent journalist so he could attack the legal case of the Ecuadorians.

Pro-Chevron blogger, Alex Thorne, tried to pass himself off as a legitimate journalist by emailing questions to environmental groups about their funding of the San Francisco-based Amazon Watch, a supporter of the Ecuadorians. Thorne claimed to be working on an “article” for a publication that he refused to specify. He also did not use his last name in the email, signing it only as “Alex.” The e-mails then asked the funders “if it is time” to “reevaluate” their support for Amazon Watch in light of Chevron’s phony charges of fraud in the lawsuit.

But Thorne failed to acknowledge two major points in his emails to the environmental groups. First, he is married to Kristen Thorne, Chevron’s senior policy advisor on environment and energy issues. Second, he has operated a pro-Chevron website critical of the leaders of the Ecuador lawsuit against Chevron.

After these facts came to light, Thorne closed down his blog.

Trying to pay a journalist to spy on the Ecuadorians.

In 2010, Chevron tried to pay a real journalist $20,000 to spy on sick Ecuadorians to determine if they really had illnesses. Chevron wanted the reporter, Mary Cuddehe, to lie to the Ecuadorians saying she wanted an “interview” about their medical condition when really she would be reporting back to Chevron. Recruited by Kroll – a private investigative firm hired by Chevron – Cuddehe considered the offer. Her conscious got the best of her, though. She turned Chevron down and then wrote about the whole thing, exposing Chevron’s deception.

Faking a television newscast sympathetic to the company.

In 2009 when Chevron learned that a potentially damaging report about the company’s oil contamination in the Amazon rain forest was being prepared by 60 Minutes Chevron executives hired former CNN correspondent, Gene Randall, to produce a misleading report espousing solely Chevron’s point of view but appearing to be objective.

In the video produced by Chevron, Randall, interviewed Chevron’s managers and consultants but completely ignored the arguments of the plaintiffs. The fake news report ends with the deceptive voiceover “Gene Randall reporting.”

The “news cast” remains on Chevron’s web site and appears in Google searches.

As for Zennie, we can only hope that one day he’ll get a real job.

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Chevron Groupie Posing As Journalist Removes His Blog From Web

Looks like Chevron groupie Alex Thorne has ended his short-lived career as a “journalist.” After the Amazon Defense Coalition issued a press release exposing Thorne masquerading as a journalist in an effort to undermine funding for an environmental advocacy group, Thorne deleted his blog and appears to be taking a hiatus from posting articles.

Karen Hinton, who represents the Ecuadorians suing Chevron for oil contamination, suggests that Thorne focus on his children, a worthy profession. Thorne admitted to Hinton last week that he was a “bored stay-at-home Dad,” not a journalist.

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Once Again Chevron Masquerades As A News Organization

Uses Employee’s Spouse -- A “Stay-Home Dad” -- To Undermine Environmental Group Critical Of Its Contaminated Legacy In Ecuador

In a press release issued today, the Amazon Defense Coalition revealed another example of Chevron posing as an independent “journalist” to send e-mails to funders of a small environmental organization that has been critical of Chevron’s management for refusing to pay the company’s court-ordered $18 billion liability in Ecuador.

This stunning revelation about Thorne’s e-mails comes just days after several large Chevron shareholders blasted Chevron CEO John Watson for displaying "poor judgment" in Ecuador which “has led investors to question whether [Chevron’s] leadership can properly manage the array of environmental challenges and risks that it faces.” The comments from the investors, who manage a combined $156 billion in assets and include New York’s pension fund, are contained in a letter sent to Chevron.

Alex Thorne

Thorne recently sent e-mails to several funders of the U.S.-based environmental group Amazon Watch in which he claimed to be working on an “article” for a publication he refused to specify. He also did not use his last name in the email, signing it only as “Alex.” The e-mails then asked the funders “if it is time” to “reevaluate” their support for Amazon Watch in light of Chevron’s oft-criticized claim that the 18-year legal case is part of an extortion racket.

Thorne is married to Kristen Thorne, Chevron’s senior policy advisor on environment and energy issues. Alex Thorne did not disclose in the emails to Amazon Watch’s funders that he is married to a high-level Chevron employee or that he has operated a pro-Chevron website critical of the leaders of the Ecuador lawsuit.

“Alex Thorne’s phony emails are part of Chevron’s Karl Rove-style campaign designed to intimidate American citizens who are trying to hold Chevron accountable for committing environmental crimes and fraud in Ecuador,” said Karen Hinton, the spokesperson for the Ecuadorian communities who brought the lawsuit.

In one email to the Moriah Fund, which was forwarded to Amazon Watch, Alex Thorne says: “I’m writing an article highlighting Amazon Watch’s top donors which will include mentioning the Moriah Fund… My article highlights organizations such as yours and questions whether it is time to reevaluate your support for Amazon Watch.”

Representatives of the Amazon communities have long charged that Chevron committed environmental crimes in Ecuador and that its “extortion” claim is nothing more than a last-ditch ploy to mislead shareholders. Two Chevron employees are currently under criminal indictment in Ecuador for lying about the results of a purported environmental cleanup that the plaintiffs say was a clear case of fraud.

Amazon Watch, which is based in San Francisco near Chevron headquarters, has a handful of staff members and a $950,000 annual budget. In contrast, Chevron has 62,000 employees and grossed $204 billion last year, or an amount roughly 200,000 times more than Amazon Watch’s annual expenditures.

Despite their lack of resources, Amazon Watch’s staff members have had an outsized impact on Chevron. They have infuriated Chevron’s management by filing complaints against the oil giant with the Securities and Exchange Commission, by confronting the company’s Board of Directors during shareholder meetings, and by organizing protests outside the home of Chevron CEO Watson.

Just last week at Chevron’s annual meeting, Amazon Watch Executive Director Atossa Soltani accused Watson of having a personal conflict of interest over the Ecuador issue while several Chevron Board members looked on in stunned silence.

Along with lawyers for the Ecuadorians, Amazon Watch also has accused Chevron of engaging in a Nixon-style “dirty tricks” campaign in Ecuador designed to sabotage the trial. These activities have been summarized in the sworn affidavit of Ecuador attorney Juan Pablo Saenz, filed in multiple courts and available here.

Chevron’s larger problem is that an Ecuador court in February imposed a cleanup tab of $18 billion for the deliberate discharge of billions of gallons of toxic waste into streams and rivers of the Amazon rainforest, where the company operated (via predecessor company Texaco) from 1964 to 1992. Chevron’s substandard operational practices in Ecuador – admitted to by the company at trial -- decimated indigenous groups and caused an outbreak of cancer and other oil-related diseases that will haunt tens of thousands of people for decades without a comprehensive remediation, according to evidence submitted by the plaintiffs.

For most of 2009, Alex Thorne maintained a website where he regularly attacked the leaders of the Ecuador lawsuit and Hinton.

After Hinton wrote in a press release about his wife’s participation in a “green technology” panel discussion that failed to describe Chevron’s environmental disaster in Ecuador, Alex Thorne created a separate website called “Hinton Communications Watch” that was designed to intimidate Hinton into stopping her work for the Ecuadorian indigenous communities, said Hinton. Alex Thorne later took down the websites and at the time apologized to Hinton.

This is not Chevron’s first attempt to use the image of independent journalists as cover for its campaign to undermine the legal claims of the impoverished Ecuadorian communities, said Hinton.

Last year, Chevron was caught trying to pay American free lance journalist Mary Cudahee $20,000 to spy on the plaintiffs in Ecuador by pretending she was conducting research for an article. Cudahee exposed the effort in The Atlantic.

In 2009, just days before a 60 Minutes segment critical of Chevron’s misconduct in Ecuador was slated to air, the company posted on the internet a pro-Chevron corporate video on Ecuador narrated by former CNN correspondent Gene Randall that was designed to look like a legitimate news broadcast. Chevron hid its role in paying for the production of Randall’s video until it was exposed by The New York Times.

Nor is Chevron shy about pushing the envelope when attacking its many vocal critics on the Ecuador issue.

Chevron CEO Watson ordered the arrest of five shareholder critics at the company’s 2010 annual meeting; Chevron took out newspaper advertisements attacking the U.S.-based Goldman Foundation for awarding its prestigious environmental prize to advocates for the Ecuadorian victims of Chevron’s human rights abuses; and Chevron recently filed a racketeering lawsuit in the U.S. federal court against 47 Ecuadorian villagers and their lawyers that named Amazon Watch as a “co-conspirator”.

Hinton noted that Chevron has been advised by CRC Public Relations, which launched the Swift Boat attacks ads that targeted 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry. CRC has close ties to the far right of the Republican Party and is a darling of the Tea Party movement.

CRC is one of at least six public relations firms and four corporate law firms used by Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate to deal with negative fallout from the Ecuador judgment, apparently the largest environmental liability in history other than the BP Gulf spill, said Hinton. Pate is a former high-level political appointee in the U.S. Department of Justice under President George W. Bush and is the person responsible for Chevron’s Ecuador litigation strategy, she added.

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