Chevron's "Dirty Tricks" Hero Diego Borja Now Under the Gun

Chevron employee Diego Borja was known among his friends and acquaintances as “Chevron’s dirty tricks man” in Ecuador, according to a testimony of a childhood friend of Borja’s. One of those tricks was to try to entrap the judge hearing the $27 billion lawsuit against the company — a dirty trick he discussed with Chevron officials in San Ramon, the oil company’s corporate headquarters.

Borja’s friend, Santiago Escobar, said Borja told him that when he first spoke with Chevron about the videos, he made it clear he wanted to be paid for his efforts. Borja said he expected to be covered in terms of security and economically – “in everything” after handing over the videos. He told them, “Obviously, I’m not going to ask for anything now, because it would ruin everything.” Chevron told him not to worry, but it is “totally understood.”

This is just one of many dirty tricks played by Chevron to undermine the trial. Read more below in an informative post by Han Shan at the ChevroninEcuador blog.

Tables Turned: Lawsuit Targets Chevron "Dirty Tricks" Operative in Ecuador

Chevron and its liars – oops, I mean lawyers – are about to get a taste of their own medicine.

As the San Francisco Daily Journal reported yesterday, Chevron's 'dirty tricks guy' in Ecuador, Diego Borja, has been targeted with a subpoena and a demand to sit for a deposition and tell the truth about his operations to undermine the trial over Chevron's contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Chevron has been on a legal rampage, filing motion after motion against the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' expert witnesses and consultants residing in the U.S. Most notably, the oil giant outraged 1st Amendment supporters when it subpoenaed hundreds of hours of raw footage from filmmaker Joe Berlinger whose film CRUDE examined Chevron's toxic legacy in Ecuador.

Now, as the Daily Journal writes, the tables have turned:

On Friday, Ecuador filed its own discovery request in San Francisco federal court under the same law Chevron has been using - 28 U.S.C. 1782, a statute designed to help parties obtain U.S.-based evidence for use in foreign proceedings. Ecuador is seeking to depose Diego Borja, one of two men who secretly videotaped a conversation with the original Ecuadorean judge in the case. In re Application of the Republic of Ecuador, 10-80225. Chevron claims the tapes showed the judge - who denied wrongdoing but recused himself - had already made up his mind to rule in the plaintiffs' favor as part of a bribery scheme. But Ecuador cites a report made by an investigator hired by the plaintiffs that suggests Borja is improperly linked to Chevron.

Last summer, Borja, a long-time Chevron employee in Ecuador who has been closely associated with the oil giant's legal defense in the environmental lawsuit, spearheaded the undercover sting operation against the judge overseeing the trial in Ecuador. Borja and a shady American former drug trafficker and convicted felon named Wayne Hansen posed as businessmen interested in contracts for environmental remediation should the plaintiffs prevail in the legal battle demanding Chevron clean up its oil contamination of the region.

As the Amazon Defense Coalition explains in a press release:

The court filings, made by the American law firm Winston & Strawn on behalf of Ecuadorian authorities fighting Chevron over an international arbitration claim, seek to depose Borja about his involvement in the sting operation, conducted with Borja's sidekick Wayne Hansen. In 2009, both Borja and Hansen used cameras hidden in a pen and a watch to secretly tape meetings with the trial judge presiding over the environmental case, and supposed government officials.

The men then turned over the tapes to Chevron, which posted them on YouTube. Chevron initially alleged the tapes showed an attempted bribery of the judge, but it was only the Chevron employee who discussed the bribe, and the judge was never in a meeting when a bribe was discussed.

But don't take their or my word for it. Reporting on revelations about the shady past of Borja's partner Wayne Hansen, the New York Times reported, simply:

"No bribes were shown in the tapes..."

In fact, Borja's plan to corrupt the trial and reap a windfall from Chevron has been unraveling since it was hatched.

In April, the Amazon Defense Coalition and Amazon Watch revealed a series of stunning admissions by Borja. A childhood friend of Borja's named Santiago Escobar, disgusted by Borja's bragging about his 'dirty tricks' for the company, recorded conversations and saved online chats in which Borja admits he "cooked" evidence in the trial and would reveal the damaging evidence unless he received enough money from Chevron for his 2009 sting operation.

Santiago Escobar has received death threats for blowing the whistle on Borja's operations but it didn't stop him from testifying before Ecuador's Prosecutor General's office about what he knew. And now, Borja will have to testify.

Among the quotes from the recordings cited in the legal filings is this gem:

"... I have correspondence [with Chevron officials] that talks about things you can't even imagine, dude... they're things that can make the Amazons win this just like this [snapping fingers]... I mean, what I have is conclusive evidence, photos of how they managed things internally."

And at one point, Borja laughs and says to his friend, "Crime does pay."

Before Chevron pushed its bullshit "corruption scandal" story out, the company paid to relocate Borja and his wife – who also apparently assisted in schemes to corrupt the trial – to the United States. For more than a year, Chevron has been paying $6,000 a month in rent for his large home with a swimming pool that abuts a golf course in a gated community only minutes away from Chevron's headquarters in San Ramon, CA. Chevron claimed to have moved Borja and his family to the U.S. for his "security" but it also helped him escape prosecution for any of the illegal activities he was involved in during the attempted sting operation against the judge, or in tampering with evidence in the trial.

Ironically, the fact that Borja is currently residing in the U.S. is what makes him subject to the legal action he now faces. The oil giant admitted a year ago that it had hired a high-powered and expensive criminal defense attorney for Borja, who was caught on tape talking about his "bosses" at Chevron directing his operations. Today, I'm sure those Chevron bosses are hoping the lawyers they've hired are worth their cost.

To the plaintiffs and many of the people who have watched with disgust at how Chevron has waged a dirty and deceitful campaign to evade responsibility for environmental devastation and human suffering in Ecuador, Diego Borja is but a bit player in the wide-ranging criminal enterprise that Chevron has built around this case. And none of it compares to the crimes the oil giant committed against the indigenous people whose way of life ended with the company's arrival in their land.

But hopefully, this latest legal action, and a thorough interrogation of Chevron's self-proclaimed 'dirty tricks' guy, Diego Borja, will help to further unravel the web of lies that Chevron has woven to conceal the truth about its poisonous legacy in Ecuador.

Background:

San Francisco Daily Journal, September 14, 2010:
With Discovery Bid, Ecuador Turns Tables On Chevron

Amazon Defense Coalition press release, September 14, 2010:
Lawsuit Targets Chevron "Dirty Tricks" Operative Over Ecuador Video Corruption Scandal

The whistleblower report on Diego Borja, including recordings of him spilling the beans to his childhood friend about his involvement in Chevron's systematic attempts to corrupt the trial:
Chevron's Dirty Tricks Operative in Ecuador, Diego Borja: Whistleblower Report

And for further background, read two Huffington Post articles I wrote:

First, I blew the lid off the whole supposed "corruption scandal" only days after Chevron announced it last fall:
Chevron's 'Dirty Tricks Operation' in the Amazon

Then I revealed the shockingly shady past of Diego Borja's convicted felon, drug-trafficker, partner-in-crime Wayne Hansen:
Chevron's Man in Ecuador: Felon, Drug-Trafficker, and Liar, Oh My!

– Han

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Fortune's Roger Parloff Sucked In By Chevron Spin

More headlines on Chevron’s fraud. A post on ChevroninEcuador.com:


Enough to Make You Sick: Chevron's Successful Spin & Toxic Lies in Ecuador

Yesterday, I began my workday drinking coffee and reading over a brutal article on Fortune.com by legal reporter Roger Parloff, entitled Evidence of fraud mounts in Ecuadorian suit against Chevron.
My hopes that the article would help to highlight Chevron's long history of corruption and fraud were quickly dashed... it was not exactly the start to the week I had hoped for.

As I read Parloff's review of the latest in the titanic legal battle to force Chevron to clean up its poisonous legacy in the Ecuadorian Amazon, my chest tightened as it ocurred to me how good Chevron has become at making this case about everything except for the ravaged rainforest and the men, women, and children who have suffered over the decades due to the oil giant's greedy, reckless, behavior.

The article begins:

Over the past ten months, Chevron's outside lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher have filed 11 civil actions in federal courts across the United States, each designed to pull back the curtain on what they say is an elaborate, two-year-long charade in which plaintiffs lawyers covertly planned and ghostwrote a crucial report on damages that was ostensibly being authored by an independent expert appointed as an "auxiliary" to the Ecuadorian court. The expert's final report, issued in November 2008, recommended that Chevron pay the plaintiffs $27.3 billion.

And throughout the article, Parloff does an exceptional job at presenting the story as if it wasn't lifted almost entirely from a bunch of Chevron talking points. The gist of Chevron's claim is that the lawsuit against the company is a giant baseless swindle concocted by contingency fee lawyers looking to get at the oil giant's deep pockets. And now, as Parloff's writes, Chevron's multiple discovery actions – most notably its successful subpoena of hundreds of hours of outtakes from Joe Berlinger's documentary film CRUDE – have produced evidence that the plaintiffs attorneys have engaged in fraud.

Except that neither Parloff, nor any of the federal judges who have opined about the case in rulings granting Chevron's motions for discovery, have any basis upon which to draw their conclusions except for Chevron's self-serving, dishonest, and, apparently, superbly-made arguments.

In fact, as the lawyers for the Ecuadorians noted in a response to Parloff's article:

"...Parloff has never been to Ecuador, never examined the 200,000-page trial record, never seen an original lab report from the 64,000 sampling results at trial, never talked to any witnesses who have testified in the case, and utterly fails to understand either the enormous quantum of evidence or the procedural rules that govern trials in Chevron’s preferred forum of Ecuador."

A major focus of Chevron's latest legal & PR blitz is the relationship between the plaintiffs and court-appointed expert Richard Cabrera. Unsurprisingly, this is also the major focus of Parloff's article.

Richard Cabrera is the court-appointed expert who was asked to come up with an overall damages assessment – in the end, $27.3 billion – to assist the judge overseeing the trial in Lago Agrio to make a final ruling about Chevron's liability for massive oil contamination across a vast swath of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Parloff rolls with Chevron's cynical narrative:

Chevron claims that the logs already prove that the plaintiffs' consultants ghostwrote Cabrera's report, and the plaintiffs lawyers do not deny that they and their consultants provided materials to Cabrera.

He then goes on to detail the ex parte contacts between the plaintiffs side and Cabrera as if it's a smoking gun (ex parte is a Latin legal term that in this context refers to contacts between one party and the court or experts without the opposing party present).

But, as the plaintiffs explain in a legal filing in U.S. Federal Court opposing a subpoena served upon the lead U.S. attorney in the case (an extraordinary over-reach unto itself):

“Ex parte” contacts with Mr. Cabrera remain at the heart of this petition, yet (i) the matter of contacts between Plaintiffs and Cabrera is undisputedly before the Lago Agrio Court, and that court has given no indication that such contacts are improper; (ii) Chevron has still not denied it that also had ex parte contacts with court experts in Lago Agrio; and (iii) Chevron still cannot point to a single order, rule, regulation, or law prohibiting such contact; to the contrary; it is reduced to relying on lengthy expert opinions to resolve what it had claimed was a cut and dry example of fraud under Ecuadorian law.

Chevron complains about the “ghostwriting” of expert reports, yet it has become clear that Chevron’s private expert, John A. Connor, ghostwrote part of the report of another independent, neutral court expert in Lago Agrio: Mr. Barros. Attached as Exhibit 67 is a report Chevron’s private expert, Mr. Connor, prepared dated June 16, 2005 titled Prácticas y Reglamentos Internacionales Para el Uso y la Remediación de Piscinas de Campos Petroleros. Apparently without any attribution, the neutral and independent expert appointed by the Lago Agrio Court, Mr. Barros, copied entire pages of Chevron’s report, word for word.

The legal memorandum continues:

Nowhere does Barros appear to acknowledge that he has cut and pasted Chevron’s expert’s materials into his own avowedly neutral and independent report. Does Chevron deny it had ex parte conduct with Barros? It does not.

Is it a miraculous coincidence that an entire section of the Barros report is a clever cut and paste of disparate portions of Chevron’s work product? It is not.

By Chevron’s argument, this is fraud on the court, collusion with a neutral, independent expert, and criminal conduct that should send the people at Chevron who engineered the fraud to jail.

Chevron also fails to refute the now-undisputed declarations that Chevron’s lawyers met secretly and repeatedly not just with experts, but with the Court, and specifically discussed the Lago case. When this ex parte conduct was exposed, Chevron’s security guards tried to keep plaintiffs’ representative away. This secret contact was pursued by Chevron’s counsel, yet counsel is completely silent in Chevron’s opposition: not one declaration, not one response on the facts. If it is acceptable for Chevron’s lawyers to meet ex parte with the Court itself, why is it unacceptable for plaintiffs to meet “ex parte” with an expert? Chevron does not and cannot explain.

Evidently, Parloff has chosen the convenient path of simply ignoring the plaintiffs' thorough debunking of Chevron's breathless accusations.

In a brief aside, Parloff writes:

It should be noted that the fraud claims -- even if true -- do not necessarily impugn the legitimacy of the Indians' underlying cause, or even the genuineness of their lawyers' belief in that cause..."

But as Parloff also notes, to the certain gratification of Chevron and its highly-paid American corporate lawyers, legitimacy of the indigenous communities' cause – and the reality of their continued suffering – won't necessarily secure them justice in court.

I'm not sure what is more devastating about an article like this, but either choice is just a different side of the same coin. Yesterday, I was saddened that a man as smart as Parloff can be so completely taken in by the dishonest narrative that Chevron has spun. Today, I'm sickened by how astonishingly good at their devious task the Chevron lawyers and spinmasters have grown to manipulate a man as smart as Parloff.

Chevron has scored another PR victory, yes. But the truth, as I've said before, has a way of bubbling to the surface like crude in the Amazon.

Concluding their response to Parloff's article, and to Chevron's increasingly dishonest and abusive legal tactics, the lawyers for the communities in Ecuador write:

Chevron’s problem in Ecuador is that it is losing the case based on the evidence and that its own officials are under criminal indictment for fraud related to a sham remediation. The real story is that the evidence convincingly demonstrates that an American company went to a foreign nation and deliberately devastated the Amazon rainforest environment out of greed. The destruction was done in violation of Ecuadorian laws, industry standards, Chevron’s own operating contract, and all sense of basic decency. Chevron’s allegations of “fraud” are themselves part of an elaborate scheme to cover up the company’s pervasive illegality in its Ecuador drilling operation and in its advocacy during the trial.

– Han

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Chevron’s “Wild Distortions” Eviscerated in Court Filing

A legal paper filed in U.S. Federal Court last week by the plaintiffs taking on Chevron over its toxic contamination in Ecuador filed an explosive legal memo that finally shines some light on Chevron's consistent mischaracterizations of heavily edited, out-of-context film footage that the company has used to make hyper aggressive allegations of fraud. It turns out that the company, predictably, has used "wild distortions" of the Ecuador video to make their claims - wild distortions that are plainly contradicted by showing the film footage in its entirety and in the context that it was shot. Take a look at the press release from the Amazon Defense Coalition about Chevron's distortions, and the filing that sheds light on them:

 

Chevron Submits "Wild" Distortions of Ecuador Video to Federal Court; Conceals Evidence of Own Misconduct

Violates Federal Court Order By Sending Filings to Media

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In an explosive legal filing, lawyers for Ecuador's Amazonian communities suing Chevron for environmental damage have submitted evidence that the oil giant is attempting to mislead a U.S. Federal Court with "wild, superficial allegations" based on "snippets" of private video outtakes from Joe Berlinger's award-winning documentary film CRUDE.

Representatives of the 30,000 rainforest residents, who have suffered from nearly 50 years of living in and around oil contamination, responded in their own legal filing to Chevron's misleading use of the video clips by claiming Chevron is hiding "massive evidence of its own misconduct" contained in the footage.

CRUDE chronicles part of the 17-year legal battle between the Ecuadorian Amazonian communities and Chevron, which the residents accuse of creating the worst oil-related disaster on Earth.

Chevron had pressed to have U.S. federal judge Lewis Kaplan decide its motion before the plaintiffs could review the entire 500 or hours of film clips, as Chevron refused to share them after receiving them from Berlinger under court order. Review of even a small sample of clips by lawyers for the communities shows clearly that Chevron had attempted to mislead the Court and had violated a court order by turning over excerpts from the outtakes to the media before even serving opposing counsel.

According to the motion filed by the communities:

"Now it is clear why Chevron hid the full outtakes from the Court and from Plaintiffs, and pressed to have this motion decided before Plaintiffs could even review the evidence. Chevron and its counsel have rushed to mislead the Court and the public with a McMotion based on sound-bites and highly-edited, de-contextualized snippets constituting less than 0.1% of the outtakes. It did so while concealing massive evidence in the outtakes of its own misconduct. And it did so in plain violation of a Second Circuit order."

The motion also pointed out that Chevron provided its filing to a blogger previously paid by Chevron, Carter Wood, and sent out a press release and Tweet around two hours before it served opposing counsel. In direct violation of the court order, Chevron then produced transcripts of the outtakes directly to the San Francisco Chronicle, according to a report in that newspaper.

The legal brief for the communities showed Chevron's bad faith and selective editing of the film clips, including Chevron's false assertion that consultants for the Amazon communities admitted they have no evidence of groundwater contamination, when in fact those consultants said repeatedly that the groundwater is contaminated.

"Chevron's failure to accurately describe the evidence is part of a larger scheme by the Chevron lawyers to hide the company's misconduct in Ecuador," said Jonathan Abady, an American attorney for the Amazonian communities.

"Chevron is engaged in a desperate attempt to distract attention from the environmental disaster and public health crisis it caused in Ecuador," he added.

Chevron also came under fire from Berlinger for violating a federal court order prohibiting use of the materials for press or public relations purposes, noting Chevron's distribution of the material on Twitter and to bloggers hours before it was served on opposing lawyers.

Chevron's lawyers also suggested that an "enterprising" law student copy the outtakes from the court and post them on the Internet, in an apparent violation of the order, according to a blogger.

In his own court filing, Berlinger accused Chevron of making "false and misleading" statements about the film outtakes. He told Fortune magazine that he was "dismayed at the level of mischaracterizations in Chevron's Memorandum brief... The footage citations are being taken out of context and not being presented to the court in its entirety, creating numerous false impressions, precisely what we feared when we were first issued the original subpoena."

More information about the filing can be found at www.chevroninecuador.com.

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Chevron Breaks Promise to U.S. Courts, Misrepresentation Campaign Continues

As predictable as ever, Chevron has violated another promise made to a U.S. federal court – this time just days after it was made by Gibson Dunn lawyer Randy Mastro.

Last week Mastro (the former Deputy Mayor to Rudy Giuliani who is now Chevron's lead lawyer in the Ecuador litigation) promised the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals that the oil giant wouldn't use any footage turned over by filmmaker Joe Berlinger in its publicity campaign to distract attention from its role in creating the worst oil-related disaster on Earth.

Chevron had been trying to access the film footage - Berlinger shot it for his award-winning documentary "Crude" – in a highly criticized, unprecedented assault on the First Amendment. After a long court fight, Berlinger surrendered the film to Chevron after the company promised not to use it for any purpose other than litigation.

Only days after getting the footage, Chevron has gone back on its promise and pushed the contents of the film out to its pet bloggers – exactly what it had promised not to do. Predictably, Chevron has spliced and diced the footage to claim it shows evidence of "fraud". The basis for this extraordinary accusation? One scene which showed a lawyer telling the scientific consultants for the plaintiffs that he thought no more proof was necessary to make the case that Chevron was responsible for massive environmental contamination, and then asking the filmmaker to turn off the camera.

Wow Randy – you really hit paydirt!!!!

Talk about spending millions of dollars in legal fees to hit a dry well. Chevron's lawyers at Gibson Dunn, sniffing a billing bonanza and promising on its website to mount a "rescue operation" from the potential $27 billion liability in Ecuador, sold Chevron's in-house counsel on the idea that Berlinger's outtakes contained "smoking gun" evidence of "collusion" between lawyers for the Amazonian communities and Ecuador's government. On this theory Mastro has justified a legal odyssey that has trampled the First Amendment and lined up pretty much every actor and filmmaker on the planet, from Leonardo Di Caprio to Bill Moyers to Michael Moore, against Chevron. Gibson Dunn actually had the audacity to bill for this abomination.

Mr. Mastro, we're still waiting for that smoking gun evidence. In the meantime, why don't you investigate Chevron's fraud in the so-called "remediation," the use by Chevron of a bogus laboratory test to fraudulently induce a release from Ecuador's government, the bribe that your buddy Reis Veiga orchestrated to stop the Guanta inspection, the Borja sting operation orchestrated by Chevron's in-house counsel, the corporate espionage campaign where you hired Kroll to pay journalists to go undercover in Ecuador to spy on the plaintiffs, and the role of you and your colleagues in whisking Borja and others out of Ecuador so they could not be questioned by prosecutors.

In Chevron's desperate attempt to direct attention away from the massive evidence of the contamination caused by its oil operations in Ecuador's rainforest (all told, more than 64,000 scientific sampling results and more than 200,000 pages of trial record point to Chevron's culpability), the company is using every card in the old tobacco industry playbook. Chevron management surely knows what its lawyers try to hide from the public: that the evidence before the court conclusively proves its responsibility for an environmental disaster at least twice the size of the BP disaster in the Gulf.

This isn't the first time Chevron has gotten itself into hot water for manufacturing videos to "prove" its points. Last year the company fell flat on its face when it misrepresented the contents of a secret video created by Borja and became a laughingstock when it paid former CNN reporter Gene Randall to produce a propaganda video masquerading as a "news" report.

So Chevron's misrepresentation campaign marches on, with human lives destroyed and the integrity of the company in tatters, and with lawyers like Mastro laughing all the way to the bank.

Federal courts should sanction Chevron and Mastro for this latest travesty. The oil giant clearly thinks it is above the law. Let's hope that the Court reminds Chevron's lawyer Mastro that promises to the federal judiciary are not made in vain.

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Trudie Styler: Chevron Trying to Restrict Constitutional Rights

Trudie Styler -- the noted environmentalist, humanitarian, filmmaker and co-founder of the Rainforest Foundation -- took aim today at Chevron's unprecedented legal assault on the constitutional rights of fellow filmmaker Joe Berlinger. Berlinger, who made the documentary film "Crude" about Chevron's conduct in Ecuador's rainforest, is being sued by the oil giant in an effort to force him to turn over more than 600 hours of private video outtakes. Chevron's legal maneuver is both unprecedented and reprehensible - and is a direct threat to Berlinger's 1st Amendment rights. Styler published a response to Chevron's actions on the Huffington Post today. Take a look below or after the jump.

Chevron Tries to Restrict 1st Amendment in Latest Twist in Crude Saga

The ongoing saga of the class action lawsuit, Aguinda v. Chevron, originally filed in 1993 by the people of Ecuador whose rainforest land had been contaminated by oil production practices, and documented on film by Joe Berlinger in Crude, has taken a new turn. Chevron's latest diversionary and delaying tactic is to engage in a widespread and unprecedented legal assault on the First Amendment in their attempt to force Berlinger, the celebrated independent documentarian, to turn over more than 600 hours of private film outtakes from Crude.

Chevron's legal tactic has attracted widespread criticism from prominent individuals across the media community, including actor and filmmaker Robert Redford, journalist Bill Moyers, bestselling author John Perkins, documentarians Michael Moore and Ric Burns, the Director's Guild of America, the Writer's Guild of America, and others.

Virtually every major U.S. media outlet, including the NY Times, LA Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, Associated Press, Dow Jones, HBO, and others have opposed Chevron's action in court.

This latest action by Chevron is part of a worldwide, desperate litigation campaign by the oil giant to escape liability for what is thought to be the world's worst oil-related environmental catastrophe. The extent of the contamination is almost unfathomable - by Chevron's own admission they dumped at least 15.8 billion gallons of toxic 'produced water' in the region, and their own audits indicate that the number may actually be much higher - more than 18.5 billion gallons.

Of the 18.5 billion gallons of toxins, at least 345 million gallons of it was pure crude oil. To put this in perspective, as of June 15, 2010, U.S. government estimates have indicated that the BP spill in the Gulf has spilled somewhere between 73 and 126 million gallons of oil. At least the BP spill was not intentional. By contrast, Chevron's dumping was, by the company's own admission, a deliberate production decision to maximize profits. According to experts, a saving of approximately $1-3 per barrel of oil was achieved by dumping the toxins rather than disposing of them properly.

The end result of this has been incredible devastation of a formerly pristine section of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest. Though Chevron no longer operates in the area (having ceased Ecuadorian drilling operations in 1990), the pollution still remains.

The people living in that region do not have widespread running water or plumbing, and have had no access to water that has not been polluted by the oil operations for nearly four decades. I have seen firsthand the reality of the aftermath of Chevron's actions in Ecuador. I have seen some of the unlined, unfenced waste pits that Chevron left behind. I have met many people there who have lost their parents, their children, and who are losing heir own lives. The area is besieged with oil-related illnesses; families are plagued with extremely elevated levels of childhood leukemia, spontaneous abortions, birth defects, and other serious oil-related health impacts. Experts have estimated that at least 1,400 people have died needlessly from oil-related sicknesses due to the illegal dumping.

In 1993, the people in the region brought a lawsuit against the oil giant to force the company to clean-up the damage it caused on their land. An independent court-expert has estimated that the damage caused in the region could cost as much as $27.3 billion to clean up. However, even that amount will be insufficient to return the people to the lifestyles they knew before the Chevron showed up.

Small wonder Chevron are running scared. Without taking sides in the lawsuit itself, the enormous legal liability tied to all of these harms provides the context for why Chevron is so aggressively attacking its critics across the world.

Chevron has one animating principle in their attacks on Joe Berlinger, the Ecuadorean people, and anyone attempting to hold the company responsible for the pollution it left behind in Ecuador: to find some way of eliminating the legal liability to protect the company's bottom line.

But the time has come for Chevron to stop its attacks, and to stop trying to evade its responsibilities. The company should cease its futile attempts to force documentarians and journalists to open up their files to the company's lawyers, and instead focus on the essential issue: how they will remediate the damage it caused in Ecuador to the 30,000 affected people and their land.

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Norman Lear Latest to Blast Chevron for Trying to Seize Ecuador Film Footage

This article, by Norman Lear, appeared today on The Huffington Post:

Was Oil Named 'Crude' Because of the Way Oil Companies Do Business?

Let me leave it to you; which is it? "Couldn't be" or "certainly possible"? The recent BP crisis could be called the greatest of "natural" disasters. Natural for a company that had already received 760 citations for "egregious, willful violations," accounting for "97% of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry..." according to the Center for Public Integrity,as quoted by Frank Rich in this past Sunday's New York Times.

Currently setting another high standard for crude behavior in the oil business is Chevron. As for the battle between Chevron and the indigenous groups of people in Ecuador who are suing the oil company for despoiling a swath of the Amazon rainforest the size of Rhode Island that is their habitat, and upon which they depend for their sustenance, I am not taking sides. It is Chevron's reaction to a documentary on that very subject, Crude, which received the most glowing reviews in 2009, with which I take issue.

With no precedent for such a broad action, Chevron has subpoenaed the filmmaker, Joe Berlinger, to turn over his entire vault of footage -- over 600 hours shot (Berlinger is an exceedingly thorough filmmaker) plus the notes and sources the film was based on -- by citing the relevance of three scenes totaling about six minutes in a film that has a running time of 105 minutes and represents an infinitesimal fraction of the total hours shot.

Let me say that again: Chevron wants it all, every scene, 600 hours, because they believe they've found six minutes of footage that they think can help discredit the class-action suit filed against them by 30,000 Ecuadorians. Who would have guessed that Chevron would find a crudely sympathetic ear in U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan? Flouting the First Amendment, the author's right to keep his sources and work product private, and simple common sense (600 hours for the six minutes that they hold in question, my God!!) Judge Kaplan, ruling in favor of the company, ordered the largest turnover of a reporter's work product in American history.

Giving deep-pocketed corporations the right to rummage around in the files of a well-respected, independent documentarian like Berlinger will not only send a very discouraging message to anyone involved in the news-gathering business, but also to anyone who might want to talk to reporters about exposing the kind of corporate negligence or potential villainy that made the BP disaster possible. Chevron is the largest corporation in California and the fifth largest on the planet. I am quite confident that the Founding Fathers did not want corporations to use their vast profits to discourage this kind of reporting from taking place and at the same time place considerable financial burdens on filmmakers like Berlinger to defend their constitutional rights.

Although the American media has been on hand to catch BP with its tactics and ethical shorts down, the Chevron situation took place far from the lens of most American journalists and is the kind of story often overlooked by the mainstream American press. Whatever the reason for that may be, the chilling effect that this ruling will have on investigative filmmakers like Berlinger will mean that stories like this might not be told in the future. This is such a matter of grave importance that the bulk of American media companies signed on to leading constitutional lawyer Floyd Abrams friend-of-the-court brief recently filed on behalf of Berlinger's case. The group filing included all three major broadcast networks, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The crudest thing of all in this story is the tilt in this country in favor of corporations. From the Supreme Court's recent decision allowing corporations to flood Washington with campaign finance -- which in turn keeps our country tethered to an antiquated fuel source that is destroying our environment -- to Chevron's current attempt to destroy the protections that allow a free press to function, it is time we put the future of this country back in the hands of its citizens, not its corporations.

Having observed hundreds of thousands of Americans in almost 50 states wait in line as long as 90 minutes to spend a moment with a touring original copy of the Declaration of Independence, born the night of July 4, 1776, our country's birth certificate, I am here to report that the American people, the solid American people, are ready for a rebirth of citizenship. They are ready to be freed, to become born-again Americans -- citizens who once more declare their independence, this time from the growing corporatocracy in which we find ourselves today.

I suggest that we begin by applauding today's appellate court decision granting Berlinger a stay in order to have a full hearing on his appeal. I, along with my fellow citizens, hope that these judges will continue to put the sanctity of the First Amendment ahead of the rights of corporations when Berlinger's appeal is heard in July.

* * * * * * *

To learn more about how to help with Mr. Berlinger's legal efforts, please click here

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Redford: Chevron Move to Seize Ecuador Film Footage "Shocking"

The below article appeared on The Huffington Post today:

Joe Berlinger vs. Chevron: Why We Must All Defend Independent Filmmaking

I have devoted a significant part of my life's work in support of the independent artist -- independent referring not to the size of a project, its funding or subject matter; rather, to the singular vision and voice of that artist. I founded Sundance Institute 30 years ago out of the belief that it is vital to ensure that the artist's voice remains vibrant, valued and heard in civil society at large.

It is with this in mind that I ask you to join me in bringing wider attention and broader support to a critically important case currently in play in U.S. courts.

On May 6, 2010 Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered filmmaker Joe Berlinger to turn over to Chevron Corporation all raw footage -- some 600 hours -- from the making of his documentary, Crude: The Real Price of Oil. Chevron has sued to use this footage to bolster its legal proceedings in the very same case that is the central subject of Berlinger's film. The potential ramifications of this for the journalist community, film world and society in general are both shocking and profound.

Joe Berlinger has been connected to the Sundance family in a variety of ways for a number of years. Crude made its world premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival; he has volunteered his time and expertise to Sundance Institute by serving as both a competition Juror and a Festival panelist, and he has participated in the Institute's Documentary Film Program. He has directed Sundance Channel's award-winning Iconoclast series along with Bruce Sinofsky and his films have been broadcast on the Channel as well.

His stellar career includes such landmark documentaries as Brothers Keeper, Paradise Lost and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, all of which premiered at our Festival. But even if there were not these connections, I would strongly call for his support. Here's why.

Filmmakers like Joe Berlinger fulfill a crucial role in today's society by providing independent information on pressing contemporary human rights and social issues. Their success as storytellers depends on access to those men and women willing to talk on camera. If the subjects of those documentaries are fearful of the ramifications of telling the truth then the filmmaker has no story.

Without a shield law, there is no recognized journalist/filmmaker/source protection, creating the very scenario we have now. The judges in this case must recognize this is first and foremost a first amendment issue. The higher courts need to overturn the decision and adhere to higher standards of journalistic privilege.

If we allow the voice of the independent artist to be stifled we should expect nothing less than extreme repercussions for freedom of information...and freedom in general.

You can support Berlinger's legal efforts by going here.

Robert Redford is the Founder and President of Sundance Institute, a non-profit arts organization which supports independent artists worldwide.

www.sundance.org

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LA Times Editorial: Chevron Should Be Prevented From Violating Journalist's Privilege

Chevron sues over 'Crude'

A documentary's unused footage, akin to reporters' notes, should be protected.

Journalism that serves society does not always spring from objectivity, nor is it always written from a distance. When Upton Sinclair exposed the conditions of Chicago's meat industry, he did so on assignment from a socialist newspaper. He went to work in grim stockyards and returned with "The Jungle." The result was a revolution in food safety and the founding of the Food and Drug Administration.

Sinclair's closeness to his story gave his journalism urgency and moral power. It was precisely the sort of work that deserves the greatest protection from corporate intrusion. That lesson, however, has been turned upside down by a New York federal judge who this week ordered a documentary filmmaker to turn over outtakes of his work to Chevron.

The man at the center of this important 1st Amendment battle is Joe Berlinger, a respected documentary filmmaker who launched a project in 2005 to chronicle a landmark lawsuit filed by Ecuadoran indigenous people seeking compensation for environmental damage. Berlinger's acclaimed documentary, "Crude," followed the case, focusing on the lawyers for the plaintiffs. Chevron, however, says several scenes reinforce the company's charge that those lawyers cooked up the case: In one, a lawyer for the plaintiffs meets with an expert witness hired by the government to estimate damages from oil in the Ecuadoran jungle; in another, a lawyer is shown meeting with the judge and remarking that such a meeting would be inconceivable in the United States but not in Ecuador, because there "this is how the game is played. It's dirty." Because just a fraction of Berlinger's footage made it into the final film, Chevron believes there was potentially more damaging material left on the cutting-room floor, so it sought to force Berlinger to hand over his outtakes.

Were the material in question notes gathered by a journalist in pursuit of a story, the journalist's privilege, which recognizes the societal benefit of allowing journalists to shield their unpublished notes, would almost certainly have protected it. So the issues were: Was Berlinger a journalist, and do the protections for notes extend to film outtakes? U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sided with Berlinger on both points, concluding that the filmmaker covered a newsworthy event and disseminated his findings to the public — a fairly sound description of journalism in any form.

Nevertheless, noting that the journalist's privilege is a limited one, Kaplan ordered Berlinger to turn over the footage precisely because, paradoxically, Berlinger's close ties to the plaintiffs meant that he has material that Chevron is unable to get anyplace else. (Kaplan seems to have overlooked the presence of other witnesses in the filmed scenes.) Kaplan may be right that Berlinger has exclusive material, but forcing him to relinquish it turns the point of journalistic access on its head: If journalists must reveal what they learn but do not publish from those sources they cultivate most carefully, then sources will keep them at arms' length. This nation is better off because Sinclair was able to insinuate himself into Chicago's meatpacking plants; it will be better again if Berlinger prevails on appeal. And it will be better still when Congress passes a federal shield law that protects journalists and their sources.

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

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Chevron Tries to Silence Critics of Its Ecuador Environmental Disaster

Chevron is exhibiting some awfully thin skin lately over its Ecuador environmental disaster.

A clear pattern is emerging where the company, its lawyers, and its public relations firms try to intimidate critics of its Ecuador problem into silence. Award-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger, who recent made a movie documenting the company's abuses in Ecuador, is the latest victim. That has gotten Chevron on the bad side of prominent journalists and filmmakers such as Bill Moyers, Trudie Styler and Michael Moore.

Chevron has admitted to dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into Ecuador's Amazon to cut costs, decimating indigenous groups and creating an outbreak of cancer that affects thousands of people. For years, the company has engaged in abusive litigation to evade accountability for a clean-up.

Unlike the BP disaster in the Gulf, Chevron (via its predecessor company Texaco) discharged this waste on purpose. And unlike BP, Chevron's executives have buried their heads in the sand and refused to accept responsibility for the clean-up.

The increased pressure on Chevron – 60 Minutes did a highly unflattering segment on the company recently – seems be taking a toll.

Take look at Chevron's attacks on Free Speech just in the past year:

• Filing frivolous lawsuits to "punish" critics: Chevron, via its new law firm Gibson Dunn, initiated a "malicious prosecution" lawsuit in a California federal court to punish a 75-year-old lawyer, Cristobal Bonifaz. Bonifaz had brought a separate lawsuit against Chevron on behalf of a handful of individuals for health claims related to the company's Ecuador disaster in San Francisco federal court. A federal judge turned the tables on Chevron, finding the Chevron action violated a California law that bars nuisance lawsuits designed to suppress Free Speech. The judge dismissed virtually all of Chevron's claims against Bonifaz. The California law (called Anti-SLAPP) used by the court against Chevron was created to prevent legal attacks brought to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of defending a frivolous lawsuit. The decision was a tremendous setback for Gibson Dunn, which has a reputation for being paid millions to protect companies like Chevron from being held accountable for their human rights abuses.

• Attempting to intimidate journalists and gain access to their files: Chevron recently launched an unprecedented legal attack on award-winning documentarian Joe Berlinger to force him to allow the company to rummage through 600 hours of video footage Berlinger shot for the documentary, CRUDE. The movie – which has won 22 awards from film festivals -- chronicles the struggle of the 30,000 residents of the Ecuadorian rainforest to hold Chevron accountable for systematically polluting their lands. Chevron's lawsuit prompted a group of filmmakers that includes 20 Academy Award winners and many more nominees to write an open letter in support of Berlinger stating that Chevron's effort "will have a crippling effect on the work of investigative journalists everywhere." Filmmaker Michael Moore has stated, "The chilling effect of this is, someone like me, if something like this is upheld, the next whistleblower at the next corporation is going to think twice about showing me some documents if that information has to be turned over to the corporation that they're working for."

• Barring critics from public events: At the Chevron-sponsored Houston Marathon, a team of runners was barred from participating in the event, and threatened with arrest, for attempting to distribute materials critical of Chevron's human rights record in Ecuador. The race manager told the runners that "higher ups at Chevron were freaking out." At the time, runner Maria Ramos stated: "It is sad that the Chevron Houston Marathon – which raises awareness and money for many important causes – would deny the rights of participants to appease a corporate sponsor that is clearly ashamed of its human rights record."
• Attempting to pressure news outlets to silence critics: Chevron has used pressure tactics to force major media outlets to prevent advertisements critical of the company from being published. Chevron responded to an ad campaign from the Rainforest Action Network by directing its lawyers and public relations firms to leverage the company's influence and demand that the New York Times and Washington Post pull the ads. Despite Chevron's complaints, the New York Times ran the advertisements. However, the Washington Post initially succumbed to Chevron's pressure and pulled the ads temporarily. Of course, the fact Chevron was contemporaneously paying for the publication of advertisements attacking its critics was of no small irony.

• Taking out advertisements attacking critics: Chevron has taken out multiple paid advertisements in Ecuador, in the United States, and across the internet accusing the Amazon community leaders suing Chevron of being liars, frauds, and con men. Chevron has also taken out ads attacking the independent court-appointed expert in Ecuador, the judge, and other participants in the lawsuit. The use of paid public advertisements to attack and intimidate court officials is unethical and would result in sanctions against the company's lawyers if it were done in the United States.

Chevron's "scorched earth" approach to its critics is pathetic, to say the least. But that's what happens when some of Big Oil's corporate leaders don't want to be reminded that they are responsible for the discharge of more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon Rainforest.

But the facts are the facts. While we can understand Chevron's desire to forget about the mess it made in Ecuador, and to wish that its critics would go away, it's time for the company to stop trying to silence the opposition.

For more information, visit www.chevrontoxico.com.

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Bill Moyers Blasts Chevron For Attacking First Amendment Rights

Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers, the celebrated and venerable journalist, blasted Chevron's recent attempt to force an independent filmmaker to turn over the 600 hours of private video outtakes from the documentary "Crude," in an article which appeared on the Huffington Post recently. "Crude" chronicles the legal struggle of more than 30,000 indigenous people and their lawyers in Ecuador where Chevron is accused of dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste directly into the Amazon Rainforest.

Moyers, along with Michael Winship (the Director of the Writers Guild of America, East) wrote the article in response to Chevron's unprecedented attempt to force Joe Berlinger, the director of Crude, to allow Chevron to rummage through his files to find film footage that the oil company can take use to attack the litigation pending against the company in Ecuador. They were uncompromising in their condemnation of Chevron's maneuver, writing: "Chevron is trying to avoid responsibility and hopes to find in the unused footage -- material the filmmaker did not utilize in the final version of his documentary -- evidence helpful to the company in fending off potential damages of $27.3 billion…If we -- reporters, journalists, filmmakers -- are required to turn research, transcripts and outtakes over to a government or a corporation -- or to one party in a lawsuit -- the whole integrity of the process of journalism is in jeopardy; no one will talk to us."

Read the entire article here.

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The Real Corruption Is In The Ground, Not In Film Footage

In yet another 11th hour tactic to divert attention from a pending judgment in the $27 billion lawsuit Chevron faces in the Ecuadorian rainforest for extensive oil contamination, the oil company is trying to get its hands on all of the footage left on the cutting room floor of Joe Berlinger’s highly-acclaimed documentary Crude.

Filmmakers Michael Moore and Ric Burns have criticized Chevron’s actions. What Chevron hopes to find in the footage is not clear. What is clear is that the corruption is not in some 600 hours of videotapes. It’s in the ground and the underground water supply of the rainforest for anyone to see and smell. Chevron's quest for the footage is just another last-minute sideshow to taint the judicial process that is proving the case against Chevron, including some 62,000 chemical sampling results, the vast majority of which were provided by Chevron, that overwhelmingly show massive contamination at well sites drilled and explored by Texaco. In fact, Chevron intentionally dumped so much toxic sludge that it would take dozens of years for the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico to spill as much.

But Chevron’s actions in Ecuador were no accident; there was no explosion, no unexpected spill. Instead, Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, designed, installed, and operated a substandard oil extraction system that purposefully dumped some 18 billion gallons of toxic produced water directly into the populated rainforest’s streams and waterways and filled over 900 unlined oil pits to permanently store the oil and formation water waste left over from oil extraction. Since the 70s, this toxic brew has leeched and continues to leech into the soil and into the streams and waterways. Texaco knew it actions would pollute the environment and endanger the residents’ health.

Today the fishermen and shrimp boaters on the Gulf Coast fear the worst. In Ecuador, the indigenous and farmer communities in the region have lived it.

In the more than 40 years since Texaco first stepped foot in the region, many of the people have lost their livelihoods, their homes and, in many instances, friends and family to cancer and other diseases.

But instead of trying to fix the problem, Chevron has done nothing but try to cover up the disaster it inherited from Texaco, treating the whole disaster as an image problem to be managed, rather than a humanitarian and environmental crisis to be fixed. It has worked for Chevron so far, and clearly the oil company sees no reason to stop.

Notwithstanding Chevron's smoke and mirrors campaign, we still believe that at the end of the day Chevron will be held accountable for its indefensible and unconscionable conduct in the Amazon.

For more information, see these two blogs:
Chevron's Swift Boat Lies
Contempt for Investigative Journalism

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Chevron hit hard today by movie review in Washington Post

Interesting review of the movie "Crude" in today's Washington Post – the article really breaks down the way Chevron has handled the lawsuit to date. Take a look below or at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/22/AR2009102201443_pf.html

Not simply an underdog's tale

By John Anderson
Friday, October 23, 2009

Had Michael Moore wanted to make a serious movie about capitalism, he would have made "Crude." Joe Berlinger's scorched-earth documentary and David-and-Goliath drama offers more than a few eco-outraged observations on the not-so-free enterprise system: As the film very eloquently implies, when the greater good is defined as profits, and a lack of culpability is proportionate to your number of shareholders, well . . . a lot of petroleum-soaked chickens will be coming home to roost.

For three years, Berlinger followed the now-17-year-old lawsuit against Chevron filed by 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorans, and the results are an eco-war strategy as might have been devised by Sun Tzu. Witnesses are prepped, strategies are rehearsed, judges are buttonholed and celebrities are stroked -- and this is the strategy of the "good guys," as they probably would be defined by Berlinger. While both sides in the case certainly are given their voice, it's unlikely that the director -- who enjoys a lucrative commercial career in New York -- would have been inspired to leave hearth and home by his deep sense of injustice over the sufferings of Chevron.

And yet, "Crude" is that rare thing in fiction or nonfiction cinema, a movie that relies on its audience to draw the right conclusions. Chevron makes a decent case for itself: It wasn't even in the Amazon from 1972 to 1990, when an alleged 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater were dumped there, sickening the inhabitants (notably the plaintiff Cofán tribe). But Texaco was, and Chevron took it over in 2001. And while much blame is assigned by all parties to the government-owned PetroEcuador, which has run the country's oil production since the early '90s, all the experts brought in to make assessments conclude that the damage is deep and old.

Chevron's motives are clear -- although the pending judgment against it is "only" $27 billion, it hardly pays to set a precedent and settle. When Pablo Fajardo, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, and his associate Luis Yanza receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2008, a Chevron spokesman is heard calling them liars. Lawyers for the Ecuadorans admit that a Chevron defeat could mean big fees. When we see Chevron's agents -- such as counsel Ricardo Reis Veiga, who has since been indicted for fraud -- they admit nothing.

Berlinger ("Brother's Keeper," "Paradise Lost") lets it play out artfully. The fact that Chevron's representatives come across as soulless shills is hardly his fault; he lets them present their case without comment. It's hardly his responsibility to make someone such as corporation scientist Sara McMillan appear less reptilian when she contends that there's been no damage to the jungle, no oil-related illness, no correlation between pollution and death. From what the viewer can tell, Chevron is a little like the guy who performed a little surgery and stole your kidneys: What kidneys? Prove you ever had kidneys! If the movie is any indication, Chevron would have the public believe there was no Amazon at all -- something people might be willing to believe, were Berlinger not sticking "Crude" in their faces.

Anderson is a freelance reviewer.

*** ½ Unrated. At Landmark's E Street Cinema. Contains disturbing content. 105 minutes.

Whew. 3.5 stars (out of 4) for a film that Chevron and its shills keep trying to attack as just an anti-Chevron film. Maybe they try and go after the film because the company's arguments ring hollow - so rather than deal with the reality on the ground, the company encourages sympathetic bloggers like Carter Wood to attack the film. And therein lies Chevron's entire strategy (and the root of the company's problems): treat the situation in Ecuador as an image problem to be managed, rather than a humanitarian and economic crisis to be solved.

Hopefully the film will start to wake the company up to the reality: they made a mess in Ecudor, and they now need to clean it up.

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