More Chevron Spies & Lies

This Huffington Post blog is the stuff of spy novels and would be hard to believe if it all hadn't been so well-documented.

In the blog, Karen Hinton offers up a compilation of some of the dirty tricks played by Chevron's private investigative firms that have been hired to discredit the $19 billion judgment against the company for oil contamination.

A short excerpt reads:

The Chevron Corporation has spied and -- perhaps is still spying -- on the Republic of Ecuador, fueling a fierce battle between the oil giant and President Rafael Correa, who is calling on other South American countries to hold Chevron accountable for the world's largest oil-related disaster in the Ecuadorian rainforest. 

Fearing the loss of an historic, long-running environmental lawsuit in the Ecuadorian rainforest in 2009, Chevron secretly videotaped the judge hearing the case - with a spy pen and spy watch - in an effort to derail the trial by entrapping him, government officials and indigenous community leaders in a faked bribery scandal. 

It goes without saying that if Chevron had been caught trying to secretly videotape a U.S. judge, it would be facing criminal charges.

Read the entire blog here.

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Chevron Can't Stop The Lies

In a recent letter to the Canadian newspaper, The National Post, Chevron repeats its lies to distract attention from its own misconduct in the world's largest oil-related environmental disaster in the Ecuadorian rainforest. 


For example, Chevron representatives are fond of claiming that a number of U.S. courts have “found” that there was “fraud” in the litigation in Ecuador. This is completely false. When Chevron made this assertion to one journalist who included it in his story, his publication, Courthouse News, was forced to run a retraction once it realized the reporter had been misled, stating that while “[a]n earlier version of this article quoted a Chevron spokesman as saying that eight federal courts had found the Ecuadorean plaintiffs had committed fraud. In fact, the courts issued crime-fraud exception findings during discovery. Chevron’s fraud allegations against the Ecuadorean plaintiffs remain unproven.” See here.

No U.S. court has made any final determination with respect to Chevron’s fraud allegations. In fact, 13 U.S. courts rejected or otherwise declined Chevron’s invitation to apply what is known as the crime/fraud exception. Such an exception requires a court to make only a prima facie showing that a fraud might have occurred if proven to be true. But no actual factual findings have been made. As one court succinctly put it: “The circumstances supporting [Chevron’s] claim of fraud largely are allegations and allegations are not factual findings."  Another wrote that Chevron was making a "mountain out of a molehill."  See here.

Chevron tries to distract attention from these facts with statements replete with falsehoods; meanwhile, independent journalists have long confirmed the company’s hand in creating this unprecedented catastrophe.  See these recent news reports from the Australia program Sunday Night; the American show 60 Minutes and this extraordinary video from the plaintiffs summarizing the evidence and Chevron’s corrupt attempts to derail the trial.   A story in Vanity Fair on the courageous Ecuadorian lawyer Pablo Fajardo, who was raised in abject poverty and who has been targeted with death threats, can be seen here.

Chevron takes emails and other correspondence out of context and cleverly edits video to make it appear that our own experts do not believe there is contamination. Yet one of the most respected experts in the world on how contaminants travel in groundwater – Dr. Ann Maest -- testified under oath recently that there is massive contamination of water in Chevron’s concession area. See here and here. In a blatant act of deceit, in a blog Chevron leaves the false impression that Dr. Maest agrees with the company that there is no water contamination.  See here.

Chevron’s assertion that the plaintiffs wrote the judgment is a both a fabrication and a final act of desperation. For this argument, Chevron relies on more paid experts who analyze what they call “word strings” from an internal memo from the plaintiffs that appeared in a handful of paragraphs in the 188-page judgment.  Yet arguments from the memo using the same language were submitted to court in numerous motions throughout the eight-year trial.  It is completely plausible for a court to adopt arguments and language from briefs or other materials submitted to the court.

The real and only fraud is Chevron's environmental crimes, its phony remediation, its manipulation of evidence during the Ecuador trial and its abuse of the rule of law by delaying and attempting to derail the trial during the eight-year-long proceeding. See here, here and  here.

These facts, as confirmed by Ecuador’s courts and independent journalists, are bad for Chevron.  More to the point, they explain why the company tried to sabotage the proceedings in Ecuador, and how it will now try to convince courts it Canada that somehow it was the victim of a shakedown by indigenous groups in Ecuador.

Don’t believe it.

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Also follow us on Twitter at @ChevronPit and like us on Facebook.

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Zennie: The Lies That Destroy Your Credibility

Last week our friend and pro-Chevron blogger Zennie Abraham at zennie2005.blogspot.com took a page from Chevron's talking points and went on yet another ill-informed rampage against the 30,000 rainforest residents suing Chevron. The point of Zennie's rant? That one of the lawyers for the Amazonian communities supposedly "destroyed" the case against Chevron with a single statement, as shown in film outtakes from Joe Berlinger's documentary CRUDE.

Zennie makes his usual outlandish claims – ranging from those relating to the film outtakes (the "statement that destroys the case") to wholesale and paternalistic condemnations of entire countries ("under-developed nations like Ecuador…don't take steps to make life better for their poorest people [but instead] allow them to be exploited by [lawyers] for their own personal gain.") At one point he claims that the video shows consultants to the communities stating that they don't have evidence of groundwater contamination and the lawyers saying it doesn't matter because the case is all "smoke and mirrors."

But Zennie and Chevron are wrong again. It turns out that the video that created this manufactured outrage are heavily-edited clips that were, predictably, spliced and diced by Chevron to mislead the court. In reference to Chevron's court filings, filmmaker Berlinger told Fortune magazine
that he was ""dismayed at the level of mischaracterizations... 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."

Once the plaintiffs finally got a chance to look at the same outtakes (which in an amazing violation of protocol Chevron had refused to turn over to the Lago plaintiffs), their response shredded Chevron's claims. An excerpt from the brief from 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.

Zennie's claims that the scientists for the communities said that there is no evidence of the damage to the region? The actual quotes from the film scene show the consultants really said just the opposite:

"[W]e also have water with very, very high contents of carcinogenic minerals .... The contaminants are located all over. If you just go through the area and you look at a small stream you will see the sheen of the oil on the water. Which means it's still going on."}; "The ground water is contaminated. How much? How far? You know, we know that Texaco is wrong, Chevron's wrong, you know, it's definitely some ground water contaminated, there's discharges that go right in the waterways .... They destroyed this area. It's done."

Zennie, why the animus toward the thousand of rainforest residents? What in your fragile psyche makes you lie on behalf of an American company trying to cover up its crimes?

We hope you are smart enough to get paid handsomely for your undying service to Big Oil's cause.

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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 Lawyer Admits “Release” Doesn’t Cover Ecuador Lawsuit

Chevron Lawyer Rodrigo Perez Pallares

If there was ever ironclad proof that Chevron is being deceptive in court and before the public about the "release" it claims it received in Ecuador, it can be found in the sworn deposition testimony of Chevron's own lawyer in Ecuador who signed the release for the company. It turns out that this lawyer, Rodrigo Perez Pallares, admitted under oath that the "release" does not apply to the claims in the pending Lago Agrio lawsuit in Ecuador. This contradicts what Chevron's American lawyers and public relations operatives are telling judges, journalists, the SEC, and shareholders all over the world.

Proof of this admission can be read here. Remember, Perez Pallares negotiated and signed the "release" for Chevron so we can assume he knows what he's talking about.

Chevron's CEO, John Watson, and General Counsel, Hewitt Pate, continually refer to the release as "proof" Chevron's contractual rights are being violated in Ecuador by the mere existence of the lawsuit brought by the indigenous groups for environmental clean-up. The company has submitted this false information as "fact" to the Bush and Obama Administrations in an attempt to convince them to cancel trade preferences for Ecuador as a "punishment" for letting its own citizens sue Chevron in their own courts. (Chevron, remember, fought for nine years to move the case to Ecuador out of U.S. federal court where it was filed in 1993.)

But that's not all. Chevron is also basing an entire international arbitration against Ecuador's government – which commenced recently in London -- on what is essentially a misrepresentation of the facts. This is not the first time Chevron has tried this maneuver – they also tried it against Ecuador's government in a litigation in New York federal court that lasted from 2004 to 2009 (which is where Perez Pallares testified). In that case, Chevron hastily withdrew the "release" claim when it appeared a U.S. federal judge could actually review it and issue a ruling.

In his deposition, Perez Pallares was clear that Chevron's arguments about the "release" are bogus. Under questioning from a lawyer from Ecuador's government, he said the "release" does not apply to the claims of the plaintiffs in the Lago Agrio case.

An excerpt from his sworn testimony:

Q: But what [Article 8 of the MOU] does do instead is it carves out entirely any action brought by parties who were not parties to the settlement agreement. Would you agree with that?

The Witness (Pallares): I agree…

Q: If I'm understanding you correctly, and I don't mean to mischaracterize your testimony – you'll tell me if I'm incorrect – I think what you're saying is that a plaintiff can sue in Ecuador but can only obtain relief to the extent that Ecuador permits that relief.

Pallares: That's exactly it.

Q: But the MOU and the settlement doesn't affect that one way or the other. It doesn't give them rights they would not otherwise have. Is that a fair statement.

Pallares: That's correct.

Read the entire page of the testimony here.

Note also that section VIII of the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Chevron and Ecuador's government in 1994 explicitly states (in reference to the release):

The provisions of this agreement shall apply without prejudice to the rights possibly held by third parties for the impact caused as a consequence of the operations of the former PETROECUADOR-TEXACO Consortium.

Because of these facts, Watson and Pate have Chevron in a legal pickle over the Ecuador problem. Chevron is faced with overwhelming scientific evidence of the extreme destruction that Texaco's substandard operational procedures caused in the Ecuadorian rainforest when it operated there from 1964 to 1992. As a result, Chevron faces an enormous potential liability.

Chevron has spent years trying to evade accountability in Ecuador. The company has tried lobbying, public relations campaigns, wild accusations, and even a "Nixon"-style dirty tricks operation to undermine the trial. Now, Chevron is using all of its influence in Washington and around the world to try to pressure the government of Ecuador based on a myth about the "release" -- just so it can extract an advantage in a private litigation that it is losing.

Chevron needs to understand that the Obama (and Bush) Administrations try to make policy on what is best for the country, not what is best for Chevron. That is why for five straight years our government has renewed Ecuador's trade preferences over Chevron's objections.

About the only thing separating Chevron from that enormous liability in Ecuador is a misrepresentation about its supposed "release". That must not be terribly comforting for Chevron's shareholders, even if it gives false comfort to those managing the company.

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More On Chevron’s Lies To Dupe Columbia Journalism Review

In a previous entry, we detailed how Chevron lied to Columbia Journalism Review writer Martha Hamilton about the operation of a well site called Shushufindi 38 in the Ecuadorian rainforest and the amount of toxic contamination at the well to convince her that 60 Minutes had not been fair to Chevron in its coverage of an environmental lawsuit against the oil company for extensive oil contamination.

Chevron told her the government-owned oil company Petroecuador operated the site, and fecal matter, not oil, had contaminated the well. Both statements are flat-out lies that Hamilton accepted as fact but 60 Minutes checked and, as a result, did not report.

Upon further review, it looks like Chevron also lied to her about the drinking water well site near the oil well site.

A water sample taken in the trial directly from this freshwater well showed toxic levels of likely carcinogens and harmful heavy metals that are derived from oil, including benzo[a]pyrene, indeno[1,2,3]pyrene, and cadmium. The U.S. government has determined that each of these chemicals are likely or probable carcinogens, as reflected in a toxic substance registry maintained at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. See this press release about the water well.

In her critique of the coverage, Hamilton wrote that the news show should have stated Petroecuador was responsible for the cleanup of the well site under a 1995 agreement. (It's unclear if she meant drinking water or oil well, but either way both has dangerous levels of contamination.)

But the agreement she references is the centerpiece of the legal dispute, as 60 Minutes clearly says. Following the visuals of Shushufindi 38, the news show states:

"Chevron says the pollution is now the responsibility of Petroecuador. That dispute is at the heart of the lawsuit."

Even though Hamilton says she is not weighing in on the merits of the lawsuit, one has to wonder why she did not contact the plaintiffs to check basic facts, something that we are sure Columbia Journalism Review would encourage all journalists to do.

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Chevron’s Ready-Made Scandal Continues to Fall Apart

New post from Paul over at ChevroninEcuador.com:

Chevron's Ready-Made Scandal Continues to Fall Apart

A new Associated Press investigation revealed that the purported environmental remediation specialist, Wayne Douglas Hansen, who secretly filmed meetings meant to catch Ecuadorian officials in acts of corruption has never owned a remediation company—as claimed—nor does he have any relationship with Honeywell Inc. as claimed in one of the videos.

AP reporters interviewed Hansen on the phone earlier this month. When they asked him the name of his company, he refused to answer. He instead described water treatment projects he is working on in Mexico and Ecuador. When the reporters questioned him about details of these projects, he hung up.

The AP investigation also uncovered Hansen's repeated run-ins with the law, ranging from letting his pit bull go wild on a neighbor's dog, to conspiring to smuggle 275,000 pounds of marijuana from Colombia into the United States! (He was convicted and served time in federal prison.)

The investigation shatters Chevron's attempt to portray Hansen as a sincere, concerned citizen who hand delivered the supposed bribery videos out of a sense of civic duty.

A parallel plaintiffs' report on Hansen was also published today, going into exhaustive detail on the information recently uncovered.

What remains to be uncovered is: one, the extent to which Hansen's involvement in the video scandal constitutes a federal crime for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and two, whether Chevron knowingly participated with Hansen in illegal activity to get their hands on a "smoking gun."

– Paul

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Today’s Bribery Tale Very Different from the One Chevron Told Seven Weeks Ago…

The tale that Chevron told about how two men secretly recorded a bribery scheme in Ecuador is a very different tale today from the one Chevron unveiled seven weeks ago on YouTube and through the news media. Chevron's attempt to use the bribery scheme to derail a potential $27 billion lawsuit for oil contamination in the Ecuadorian rainforest could turn out to be as big of a corporate scandal as the pretexting debacle at Hewlett Packard.

Below is a quick comparison of Chevron's original version of the story and what we know today. For more information, take a look at this complete list of Chevron's unanswered questions about the purported bribery scandal, and this compilation of media reports about the purported bribery scandal.

What Chevron Said Seven Weeks Ago:

• Patricio Garcia is a government party official who met at the party's headquarters office in Quito with Borja and Hansen
  

  
  

• Diego Borja is [only] a former Chevron logistics contractor
  

  
  

• Wayne Hansen, is an American business man who was looking for remediation work in Ecuador.
  

  
  

• Borja and Hansen have not received any payment for secretly taping Garcia in meetings.
  

What We Know Today:

• Garcia is not even a registered party member, much less a party official. Government party officials know of no formal role Garcia has played with the party, except to hand out flyers or cater events.
  
  
• Garcia, Borja and Hansen did not meet at the party's headquarters office; they met at a house owned by Garcia and at Borja's office.
  
  
• Garcia said Borja's office is in the same building as Chevron's legal team in Quito and that Borja's family owns the office building.
  
  
• Borja is not just a "former logistics contractor" for Chevron. He worked on the lawsuit for Chevron, helping to obtain soil samples for contamination testing as recently as March, only a few weeks before the first meeting with Garcia was secretly recorded.
  
  
• If Hansen is a businessman with an expertise in oil clean-up work and who owns his own remediation company, he does not advertise his services. (Chevron has confirmed that the only "Wayne Hansen" listed on any internet search engine is not the same Wayne Hansen who filmed the meetings.)
  
  
• Nowhere on the video recordings do any government officials, the plaintiffs or the judge discuss or accept a bribe.
  
  
• Despite what Chevron said about not paying for their services, Chevron paid Borja relocation expenses for him and his family to move to the US and for "interim support." Chevron has offered to pay both men's legal fees for the two top criminal defense lawyers Borja and Hansen have hired. The lawyers work in San Francisco, only a few miles from Chevron's headquarters in San Ramon.
  

Note that Borja's attorney, Cristina Arguedas, represented Hewlett Packard's former general counsel Ann Baskin in the pretexting scandal.

Chevron should pay attention - they may end up needing Arguedas' help as well…

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Chevron Not Even Buying The Lies Chevron Is Selling.

(This was originally posted by Nick over at www.chevroninecuador.com – interesting, so cross-posted here.)

Chevron's Ecuador claims rejected by US courts for 5th time in two years.

Well is seems Chevron's brand new chief in-house Lawyer Hew Pate is really going to have his work cut out for him. Chevron must be telling him something like "hey buddy, we've got nowhere to go but up. Good luck".

Today, in yet another instance where Chevron has quietly tucked it’s tail between its legs and went h,ome the 5th lawsuit Chevron has brought to US federal court has been tossed out. Following last months swift rejection by the US Supreme Court, and with little fanfare, Chevron withdrew it’s claim that they had been released by the Ecuadorian government of any liability for the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste water and crude oil.

Chevron claims that they had remediated a small portion of the 916 waste pits it built in Ecuador. Yet, according to a Special Master report from the Ecuador trial the so-called remediated sites are extensively contaminated, containing cancer-causing toxins at levels hundreds of times higher than U.S. and Ecuadorian law allows.

Chevron has long claimed that their remediation process has released them of all remaining liabilities. Well, their own decision to withdraw this claim from federal court begs the question... Does Chevron even believe the lies coming from Chevron these days?

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Chevron Praised Ecuador’s Courts for years and years…

until the company stood to profit by trashing them.

It turns out that long before Chevron picked up their new theme that "Ecuador's courts are biased" (no doubt a message that was refined in countless focus groups before Chevron's P.R. firms started pushing it out to you, loyal reader) the company spent years praising the courts, in an attempt to get the case transferred down to Ecuador. Turns out that Chevron loved the Ecuadorian courts - loved them just until evidence started being filed that showed that Chevron was responsible for the environmental and humanitarian disaster in the region. As soon as that happened, Chevron started their current messaging that Ecuadorian courts are corrupt and biased. Hmm – seems convenient for Chevron that Ecuadorian courts turned biased just as the evidence started revealing the depths of the environmental and humanitarian crime committed in the region.

But read for yourself – we're posting here the 14 sworn affidavits that Texaco (which Chevron merged with in 2001) filed in U.S. Federal Court praising the Ecuadorian courts as fair and unbiased. You can see for yourself exactly what Texaco (and now Chevron) thought about the Ecuadorian judiciary - right up until the company had a $27 billion interest in trashing them.

This is Chevron's M.O. - do anything, and say anything, you have to in order to avoid having to take responsibility for your actions.

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Director of Crude Points Out Lies

Interesting letter to the editor in today's Washington Times. Apparently filmmaker Joe Berlinger wasn't thrilled with Chevron's misinformation about the production of the documentary. Read on:

In his article about the ongoing legal battle against Chevron Corp. in the Ecuadorean Amazon ("Chevron urges U.S. to revoke Ecuador trade," Nation, Thursday), Tom LoBianco mentions that Chevron "has been bombarded with negative stories surrounding the lawsuit and is the target of a new documentary produced in part by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit." I assume that the documentary Mr. LoBianco refers to is my film "Crude," which premiered to great critical acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival last month. Contrary to your article, "Crude" was in no way produced by the plaintiffs or anyone affiliated with either side of the lawsuit. The film is a wholly independent production and was made with the cooperation of representatives of both the plaintiffs and Chevron, including Kent Robertson, the Chevron spokesperson quoted in Mr. LoBianco's article. In fact, I invited Kent Robertson to participate in the film's premiere in Park City, Utah - which was attended by the festival's founder, Robert Redford - but Mr. Robertson declined my invitation.

Making "Crude" was an intense, often grueling three-year process, and we worked extremely hard to ensure that the film presents an accurate portrayal of this highly controversial and complicated case. Following the screenings at Sundance, the film was widely praised by critics and journalists not only for its artistic merits, but also for its editorial balance and fairness to all sides of the lawsuit. For example, James Nelson of Agence France-Presse wrote, "Berlinger clearly knows about balance in covering an important issue." David Germain of Associated Press calls the film "a fairly balanced portrait of the case, with Chevron's side well represented."

To my knowledge, Mr. LoBianco has not yet seen the film, so his characterization of the film as a partisan attack on Chevron is troubling and makes me wonder where his information is coming from. Unlike my film, the writer of your article did not seem to think it was important to either see the film or to research the false claim of the film's partiality.

JOE BERLINGER

Director/producer, "Crude"

Hmmm. Looks like the Washington Times has egg on their face on this one. I bet they're not super thrilled with the Chevron PR guys right about now - looks like they trusted what this "Kent Robertson" told them about the production of the film and then they got burned.
I guess that's one newspaper that won't be rushing to do Chevron any favors anytime soon.

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