BY ED SLAVIN
April 25, 2010
It's another beautiful day in a beautiful place. It's time to appreciate better St. Augustine's strengths and to let freedom ring.
...[P]lanning for four upcoming historic celebrations gives St. Augustinians a chance to let democracy work and to invite the world to visit us.
(snip)
Four historic celebrations are rapidly approaching -- the 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida (2013), 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, made possible by a filibuster broken thanks to St. Augustine activists (2014), 450th anniversary of St. Augustine (2015) and 100th anniversary of the National Park Service (2016).
When Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar appoints members of the 450th Commemoration Commission, local citizens will be empowered to tell the federal government how we want to celebrate these anniversaries.
My answer: a St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway (See www.staugustgreen.com). Let's make St. Augustine the place where families take their children to learn about our history and our environment, encouraging everyone, particularly African-American and Hispanic families to visit St. Augustine and learn about our city's and nation's history. A park will increase property values while increasing income from higher-spending historic and environmental tourism. A park will help protect inviolate forever at least five current state parks; better protect St. Johns River Water Management District lands; restore threatened wetlands and wildlife habitat; preserve endangered species (like sea turtle and Anastasia Island Beach Mouse); protect our coasts from erosion; protect our homes from flooding and hurricanes; and provide better jobs at better wages.
National parks are a uniquely American idea, which capture and preserve America's history and nature and make them available to everyone. Parks begin with the dreams of passionate local residents, as shown by Ken Burns' 12-hour PBS series ("Our National Parks -- America's Best Idea").
It is up to us. Let us resolve to learn from the history of our city and the National Parks. The park promises solutions to our economic and environmental problems. Let's respect our visitors by presenting effectively our fascinating history and beautiful environment -- showing them off to the world, while preserving them forever!
Let every voice be heard. Let the celebrations begin. As JFK said, "Here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own."
*
Ed Slavin is chief information officer of Global Wrap LLC, former editor of the Appalachian Observer (Clinton, Tenn.), a graduate of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Memphis State University Law School, and author of the blog, www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com. He first proposed the St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway on Nov. 13, 2006.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Nation's Oldest City Deserves Newest National Park
Our Nation's Oldest City deserves the newest National Park.
Working with the University of Florida and and the National Park Service, we can do it.
It's promising that the City and UF are planning to meet with NPS. The meeting should be in public, in the Sunshine.
Let's invite UF to come here, meeting with NPS in public, instead of having another closed door meeting, something the City of St. Augustine must stop now.
See below.
Working with the University of Florida and and the National Park Service, we can do it.
It's promising that the City and UF are planning to meet with NPS. The meeting should be in public, in the Sunshine.
Let's invite UF to come here, meeting with NPS in public, instead of having another closed door meeting, something the City of St. Augustine must stop now.
See below.
St. Augustine Record: City, UF seek to end feud Goal: Stop fighting over historic properties
By PETER GUINTA
University of Florida and City of St. Augustine representatives worked to find common ground Wednesday rather than struggle for control of the 34 historic state properties here.
John Regan, St. Augustine's chief operating officer and next city manager, said he and Chief Administrative Officer Tim Burchfield plan a trip to Gainesville next week to hammer out a three-party agreement with the city, the university and the National Park Service.
"That will define how we move forward," Regan said.
Ed Poppel, UF's vice president for business affairs, said the university will "bring a wealth of resources, know-how and expertise" to those properties. "All the colleges on campus will engage with St. Augustine. We can provide depth of content to the city to make this a better story."
Superintendent Gordon Wilson of the Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas national monuments said the historic property issue is intimately tied to completion of a proposed $10 million Visitor Orientation Center in the Spanish Quarter.
That project received $500,000 for the Park Service for planning and pre-design.
"We want to start the building process to make this work for everyone involved," Wilson said. "It's a unique opportunity to show the world what St. Augustine has to offer."
At the moment, he added, there's no construction money.
And another obstacle is clearing the site's title, which is held partly by the city and partly by the state.
The National Park Service is prohibited from building or owning structures on property it doesn't own, so some land swaps may be necessary to get a large enough parcel.
Schematics show a two-story, 17,000-square-foot colonial-style building designed to provide context to St. Augustine's history as well as to display artifacts uncovered during archaeological digs here.
The building will have a 2,500-square-foot footprint.
The new, more congenial relationship between the city and UF is far different from the defiant words and political push by St. Augustine Mayor Joe Boles, who last month asked the Legislature and Cabinet to give the historic properties to the city and not UF.
Boles was in North Carolina on Wednesday and got a report on the meeting by Regan.
"I couldn't be more pleased," Boles said. "The details have to be worked out, obviously. It is also possible that we can figure out a way to be helpful to UF by giving its students a venue (for internships)."
He still believes the city could do much better raising money on its own than waiting for the Legislature.
"That there's no state money is not anything new. We'll embark on our own fundraising plan. The adversarial period appears to be behind us," he said.
Poppel said essentially the same thing that morning.
"We don't need to be fighting among ourselves for control," he said.
Deputy Regional Director Gayle Hazelwood of the National Park Service's Atlanta office chaired the meeting and said she had heard many good ideas.
"Maybe we can get the best of those plans together and attain our goals," Hazelwood said. "We can't do the planning and design for the (Visitor Orientation) center unless we have this dialogue and discussion."
Regan said any tally of St. Augustine residents' core values would show historic preservation at the top of the list.
He said the city's goals include not losing its relationship to UF, stepping up its business plan and achieving measurable goals, and developing a clear vision of what St. Augustine wants to become.
In addition, a city resolution passed in April should not have used the word "sunset" in referring to the 2007 law giving UF control of the properties, he said.
"We want to move forward with UF and NPS. The university could take those buildings from us today. But we don't want to turn over the keys until UF has smiling people ready (to deal with visitors)," he said.
Poppel said UF was indeed invited to St. Augustine.
"This is not at our request. Outreach is what we do, and we do it in a big way," he said. "But this is about what is best for St. Augustine. It's not about UF."
University of Florida and City of St. Augustine representatives worked to find common ground Wednesday rather than struggle for control of the 34 historic state properties here.
John Regan, St. Augustine's chief operating officer and next city manager, said he and Chief Administrative Officer Tim Burchfield plan a trip to Gainesville next week to hammer out a three-party agreement with the city, the university and the National Park Service.
"That will define how we move forward," Regan said.
Ed Poppel, UF's vice president for business affairs, said the university will "bring a wealth of resources, know-how and expertise" to those properties. "All the colleges on campus will engage with St. Augustine. We can provide depth of content to the city to make this a better story."
Superintendent Gordon Wilson of the Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas national monuments said the historic property issue is intimately tied to completion of a proposed $10 million Visitor Orientation Center in the Spanish Quarter.
That project received $500,000 for the Park Service for planning and pre-design.
"We want to start the building process to make this work for everyone involved," Wilson said. "It's a unique opportunity to show the world what St. Augustine has to offer."
At the moment, he added, there's no construction money.
And another obstacle is clearing the site's title, which is held partly by the city and partly by the state.
The National Park Service is prohibited from building or owning structures on property it doesn't own, so some land swaps may be necessary to get a large enough parcel.
Schematics show a two-story, 17,000-square-foot colonial-style building designed to provide context to St. Augustine's history as well as to display artifacts uncovered during archaeological digs here.
The building will have a 2,500-square-foot footprint.
The new, more congenial relationship between the city and UF is far different from the defiant words and political push by St. Augustine Mayor Joe Boles, who last month asked the Legislature and Cabinet to give the historic properties to the city and not UF.
Boles was in North Carolina on Wednesday and got a report on the meeting by Regan.
"I couldn't be more pleased," Boles said. "The details have to be worked out, obviously. It is also possible that we can figure out a way to be helpful to UF by giving its students a venue (for internships)."
He still believes the city could do much better raising money on its own than waiting for the Legislature.
"That there's no state money is not anything new. We'll embark on our own fundraising plan. The adversarial period appears to be behind us," he said.
Poppel said essentially the same thing that morning.
"We don't need to be fighting among ourselves for control," he said.
Deputy Regional Director Gayle Hazelwood of the National Park Service's Atlanta office chaired the meeting and said she had heard many good ideas.
"Maybe we can get the best of those plans together and attain our goals," Hazelwood said. "We can't do the planning and design for the (Visitor Orientation) center unless we have this dialogue and discussion."
Regan said any tally of St. Augustine residents' core values would show historic preservation at the top of the list.
He said the city's goals include not losing its relationship to UF, stepping up its business plan and achieving measurable goals, and developing a clear vision of what St. Augustine wants to become.
In addition, a city resolution passed in April should not have used the word "sunset" in referring to the 2007 law giving UF control of the properties, he said.
"We want to move forward with UF and NPS. The university could take those buildings from us today. But we don't want to turn over the keys until UF has smiling people ready (to deal with visitors)," he said.
Poppel said UF was indeed invited to St. Augustine.
"This is not at our request. Outreach is what we do, and we do it in a big way," he said. "But this is about what is best for St. Augustine. It's not about UF."
City of St. Augustine Beach press release and resolution on offshore oil drilling
PRESS RELEASE
At its May 3, 2010 regular meeting, the St. Augustine Beach City Commission approved Resolution 10-06. This resolution opposes off-shore drilling for oil in areas other than those already approved for oil leasing and exploration. In addition the resolution states the City Commission’s support for the further development of non-fossil energy sources, such as solar and wind energy. It also encourages elected officials at the County, State and Federal levels to oppose legislative attempts to allow the expansion of near shore oil drilling operations.
RESOLUTION 10-06
CITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH
ST. JOHNS COUNTY, FLORIDA
RE: OPPOSING THE APPROVAL OF OIL DRILLING IN FLORIDA’S WATERS IN AREAS OTHER THAN THOSE ALREADY APPROVED FOR OIL LEASING AND OIL EXPLORATION AND SUPPORTING THE SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES, PROTECTING FLORIDA’S TOURISM INDUSTRY, AND PRESERVING FLORIDA’S BEACHES
WHEREAS, Florida’s economy depends on its multi-billion dollar tourism industry, which resulted in more than 82 million visitors coming to Florida in 2008, during which period tourism generated over $4.0 billion in taxable sales; and
WHEREAS, tourism accounts for one-third of Florida’s budget revenue, and 96% of those visitors cite the beaches as an influential factor in their decision to visit Florida; and
WHEREAS, tax revenues generated from Florida’s growing tourism industry are critical to continued funding of essential governmental services, including transportation, schools, and public safety; and
WHEREAS, oil rigs and the pipelines that support them, including their required setback areas, severely limit access to the scarce sand sources that are vital for Florida’s beach renourishment program; and
WHEREAS, a 2007 report by the U.S. Department of Energy shows that opening the Florida coast to drilling as close as three miles would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil prices before 2010, if ever; that it is not economically feasible to drill for oil in certain offshore areas; and even if all available areas were opened, at the peak of production, it would have little, if any, effect on price; and
WHEREAS, nearly 80 per cent of estimated U.S. oil reserves are already currently available to exploration and more than 68 million acres are available to drill, and the U.S. is the third largest oil producer at over 7 million barrels of oil per day; and
WHEREAS, the area with the potential for the greatest risk of environmental damage is the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico, three miles off the western coast of Florida; and
WHEREAS, environmental specialist contend the major risk from drilling platforms is the wastewater they routinely discharge, which contains drilling fluids and heavy metals including mercury; and
WHEREAS, according to oil industry data, an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico can dump up to 90,000 tons of drilling fluid and metal cuttings over its lifetime. These contaminants accumulate in the marine food web and may contaminate local beaches and have a negative effect on the environment and the tourism industry; and
WHEREAS, near shore drilling creates an environmental threat to marine mammals whereby mechanical sounds carry through the water for hundreds of miles and have been known to cause permanent hearing loss and also disrupts their feeding, migration, social bonding, and have been associated with stranded whales; and
WHEREAS, it is our belief that despite technological advances in oil drilling technology, there is no positive assurance that catastrophic damage to our coastline, beaches, plant and fish life could be avoided during normal operating conditions or during storm situations; and
WHEREAS, there is no assurance that oil companies will not become more interested in developing the near shore Atlantic coast; and
WHEREAS, lifting the moratorium on mineral leasing in the Gulf of Mexico poses an intolerable threat to the beaches, waterways, and economy of Florida;
WHEREAS, the City Commission of the City of St Augustine Beach supports further development of non-fossil fuel energy sources, such as solar and wind energy, etc.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the City Commission of the City of St. Augustine Beach, St. Johns County, Florida, that we strongly encourage all elected officials at the County, State and Federal levels to oppose legislative attempts to allow near shore oil drilling expansion past the areas already approved for pre-leasing, leasing, and oil production activities and to take immediate steps to encourage and assist in the development of alternative sources of energy.
RESOLVED AND DONE, this 3rd day of May, 2010, by the City Commission of the City of St. Augustine Beach, St. Johns County, Florida.
_____________________________
Mayor – Commissioner
ATTEST:
______________________________________
City Manager
At its May 3, 2010 regular meeting, the St. Augustine Beach City Commission approved Resolution 10-06. This resolution opposes off-shore drilling for oil in areas other than those already approved for oil leasing and exploration. In addition the resolution states the City Commission’s support for the further development of non-fossil energy sources, such as solar and wind energy. It also encourages elected officials at the County, State and Federal levels to oppose legislative attempts to allow the expansion of near shore oil drilling operations.
RESOLUTION 10-06
CITY OF ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH
ST. JOHNS COUNTY, FLORIDA
RE: OPPOSING THE APPROVAL OF OIL DRILLING IN FLORIDA’S WATERS IN AREAS OTHER THAN THOSE ALREADY APPROVED FOR OIL LEASING AND OIL EXPLORATION AND SUPPORTING THE SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES, PROTECTING FLORIDA’S TOURISM INDUSTRY, AND PRESERVING FLORIDA’S BEACHES
WHEREAS, Florida’s economy depends on its multi-billion dollar tourism industry, which resulted in more than 82 million visitors coming to Florida in 2008, during which period tourism generated over $4.0 billion in taxable sales; and
WHEREAS, tourism accounts for one-third of Florida’s budget revenue, and 96% of those visitors cite the beaches as an influential factor in their decision to visit Florida; and
WHEREAS, tax revenues generated from Florida’s growing tourism industry are critical to continued funding of essential governmental services, including transportation, schools, and public safety; and
WHEREAS, oil rigs and the pipelines that support them, including their required setback areas, severely limit access to the scarce sand sources that are vital for Florida’s beach renourishment program; and
WHEREAS, a 2007 report by the U.S. Department of Energy shows that opening the Florida coast to drilling as close as three miles would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil prices before 2010, if ever; that it is not economically feasible to drill for oil in certain offshore areas; and even if all available areas were opened, at the peak of production, it would have little, if any, effect on price; and
WHEREAS, nearly 80 per cent of estimated U.S. oil reserves are already currently available to exploration and more than 68 million acres are available to drill, and the U.S. is the third largest oil producer at over 7 million barrels of oil per day; and
WHEREAS, the area with the potential for the greatest risk of environmental damage is the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico, three miles off the western coast of Florida; and
WHEREAS, environmental specialist contend the major risk from drilling platforms is the wastewater they routinely discharge, which contains drilling fluids and heavy metals including mercury; and
WHEREAS, according to oil industry data, an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico can dump up to 90,000 tons of drilling fluid and metal cuttings over its lifetime. These contaminants accumulate in the marine food web and may contaminate local beaches and have a negative effect on the environment and the tourism industry; and
WHEREAS, near shore drilling creates an environmental threat to marine mammals whereby mechanical sounds carry through the water for hundreds of miles and have been known to cause permanent hearing loss and also disrupts their feeding, migration, social bonding, and have been associated with stranded whales; and
WHEREAS, it is our belief that despite technological advances in oil drilling technology, there is no positive assurance that catastrophic damage to our coastline, beaches, plant and fish life could be avoided during normal operating conditions or during storm situations; and
WHEREAS, there is no assurance that oil companies will not become more interested in developing the near shore Atlantic coast; and
WHEREAS, lifting the moratorium on mineral leasing in the Gulf of Mexico poses an intolerable threat to the beaches, waterways, and economy of Florida;
WHEREAS, the City Commission of the City of St Augustine Beach supports further development of non-fossil fuel energy sources, such as solar and wind energy, etc.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the City Commission of the City of St. Augustine Beach, St. Johns County, Florida, that we strongly encourage all elected officials at the County, State and Federal levels to oppose legislative attempts to allow near shore oil drilling expansion past the areas already approved for pre-leasing, leasing, and oil production activities and to take immediate steps to encourage and assist in the development of alternative sources of energy.
RESOLVED AND DONE, this 3rd day of May, 2010, by the City Commission of the City of St. Augustine Beach, St. Johns County, Florida.
_____________________________
Mayor – Commissioner
ATTEST:
______________________________________
City Manager
City archaeologist: Oldest street in US is here
Aviles Street is a narrow, brick road in downtown St. Augustine that is chock-full of history. Now, an archaeological dig appears to prove what many people in St. Augustine already claimed - that Aviles is the oldest street in the United States.
"We know this road dates back to the early 1600's based on the pottery we've recovered," Carl Halbirt, archaeologist for the city of St. Augustine, said.
Halbirt and his team have found pottery shards several feet under the current bricks of Aviles, in older layers of Aviles Street. However, Philadelphia claims its road, Elfreth's Alley, is the oldest residential street in America dating back to 1720.
A woman who answered the phone at the Elfreth's Alley Association in Philadelphia said her group does not claim Elfreth's Alley is the oldest street in America, rather the oldest continuously residential street in the country.
Halbirt said people have been living along Aviles Street in St. Augustine for a lot longer than the 1720's.
"Eat my dust, Philly," Halbirt joked. "Clearly we have taken Aviles Street back 100 years before the official development of that street in Philadelphia," he explained.
What's more, Halbirt has found areas of dark ashes under the 1600's layer of Aviles Street. He said those burned areas could be from 1586 when Sir Francis Drake and his men burned St. Augustine to the ground.
"So, Philadelphia is clearly wrong," Halbirt said with a smile. "We're throwing down the gauntlet here in St. Augustine!"
FlaglerLive.com:
Heather Beaven’s WTF Campaign
Pierre Tristam | May 6, 2010
Even on a bad hair day, John Mica has reason not to worry about the Beaven campaign. (Images from Beaven
I’ll get to the obscenity in a moment.
A little background first. If you’re like me a few months ago, or if you’re like you today, you’d have likely not heard of Heather Beaven much. She is the Democratic Party candidate for Congress in Florida’s 7th district, running against John Mica, an 18-year incumbent. She runs a non-profit education foundation based in Flagler Beach. Some time back I had a chance to meet Beaven over lunch with several other people in Daytona Beach. She came across as bright, energetic, and to the right of Suzanne Kosmas, which is difficult to do without being a Republican.
Beaven wears what she calls her “New Testament Christianity” on her sleeve (she’s a Baptist). She is opposed to extending Medicare to all as a universal health care solution. She supports expanding existing, private-insurance schemes–essentially, the Obama package finally approved. She is more conversant in chamber-of-commerce-type pro-business-speak than labor interests. When welfare reform passed in 1997 the Republican governor of Kansas picked her to enact it in a state that hasn’t voted Democratic in her lifetime (she’s 41).
Vagueness, Not Issues
If you’re trying to get more specific than that, good luck, especially if you go to her website, which–in this year of endless national and local challenges–lists all of three issues, two of which are standard-issue bromides: “Inspiring learning and teaching” and “Ensuring our veterans are honored.” Really? Why not add “honoring our fathers and mothers,” too. “Investing in entrepreneurship and job creation” sounds promising, but the bullet points quickly shoot that promise down with more bromides.
Issues yet to be determined.
I’m saying all this, mind you, as a liberal who’d like nothing more than to see John Mica replaced. Which is why the Beaven campaign as currently packaged and undeliverable is so disheartening. It’s not a serious campaign. It’s not a serious candidacy. Not even as the sort of campaign that’s conducted knowing all along that it’s a lost cause.
Those campaigns are important: every seat must be contested no matter what. It compels the opposition to fight, spend and dilute resources, putting in play more seats that would otherwise be walkovers. It’s also contemptuous of the democratic process to leave incumbents unopposed. So we should always be grateful for candidates’ willingness to put themselves in the line of fire, naive and no-chance candidates included.
But Beaven’s candidacy isn’t naive. This is the CEO of a statewide organization currently engaged in a $20 million fund-raising campaign. She knows business. She knows people. What she doesn’t seem to know is why she’s running, and why we should take her seriously. Her campaign is doing its best to make us not take her seriously. And doing so with lapses insulting to our intelligence, literally and figuratively.
“We’re #1. WTF?!?!”
One incident is emblematic of the Beaven campaign. On Jan. 26 she sent an email to her supporters with the following subject line: “We’re #1. WTF?!?!” WTF is the acronym for “what the fuck,” the juvenile but high-currency expression of 20-somethings, or older people who wish they were 20. It’s not the end of the world. But it’s certainly not the sort of expression you’d want associated with a campaign for federal office. Even less so the name it was attached to.
The email announced Lily Ledbetter’s coming campaign stop on behalf of Beaven. (Ledbetter is the woman behind the Fair Pay Act of 2009). The subject line wasn’t WTF’ing that. But you’d have had to scroll through a couple of items to get to the reason: the fact that Flagler was #1 in unemployment.
Fine. An error in judgment, if not quite of sentiment: the high unemployment rate is something to curse. Almost four hours later, Beaven sends an apologetic email explaining the lapse was “a reflection of an impassioned staffer who reacted too quickly to the horrific unemployment situation in Florida. That was clearly a mistake that should have never happened.”
Staffer was stretching it. Beaven doesn’t have a campaign staff. We’ll get to that one, too, in a moment.
Beaven is right. Mistakes happen. But this is where it gets interesting. And infuriating.
After getting the emails in question sent me anonymously last month (I wasn’t on her email list), I wrote Beaven on April 21 asking her a few questions about the email–who was responsible, whether she reviewed her emails before sending them out, how many she sent out on any given day, who her campaign manager was. No reply. I resent the email to a different address I found on her site, after some scrounging. No reply. I did hear from Frank Karabassis, who corrected a few entries on a campaign finance chart posted here.
Beaven and I finally spoke a week later.
She said she does manage all the content that is emailed under her name, “but it never dawned on me before that to ask what the subject line was going to be.” As for the staffer who sent it: “I’m not going to tell you his name, if that’s what you’re asking, but he was on my campaign with an organization called Blue Empire, a strategy consulting company.”
A campaign for elected office hiding its staffers’ identity isn’t a good sign.
Enter Blue Empire. And Exits.
Moments after we hang up, I get a call from a guy called “Evan” (“unknown” on the caller ID) who says he’s the one who sent out the email. He refuses to give me his phone number, says he’s no longer with Blue Empire, and doesn’t know how to get in touch with that consulting firm. Basic verification: If Beaven says she hired a consulting firm called Blue Empire that sent a man called “Evan” to work with her, verifying that Blue Empire exists, and that it did, in fact, contract with Beaven is the next step, especially when a consulting firm called Blue Empire is listed on Beaven’s campaign-finance reports as being paid $4,000 in March. For all I know at this point, “Evan” is a guy Beaven picked off the street and asked to give me a call to put questions to rest.
At least it looked like a website.
After hanging up with him, I get a call from a Ben Chao. (Beaven is obviously working her phones.) He describes himself as Beaven’s “media consultant.” He’s been paid $5,000 by the Beaven campaign through March. He says Evan is actually Evan Tanner, that he was Beaven’s “campaign manager from afar.” I ask him for Blue Empire’s number. He doesn’t have it. “Maybe Blue Empire is out of business,” he says, adding that his group and Blue Empire aren’t in partnership. No?
The Blue Empire website is just one page, as if it was put up hastily, with no addresses, no phone numbers, no names. A simple check through domain registrations reveals that Ben Chao put up the website on January 15. But Ben Chao has no idea how to get in contact with the group whose website he created.
Beaven said she contracted with Blue Empire in December. Chao clarifies: “Evan Tanner was working for, running Blue Empire, helping Heather’s race.”
While I’m on the phone with Chao, Evan Tanner, this time clearly identified as such on the caller ID, calls again. Good work, Heather. He gives me a third story: He created Blue Empire in January. He was Blue Empire. He disbanded it in March. “I failed with that email, and I failed with the company itself.” he said. “Bottom line is, I was like, what the fuck.”
Habits are hard to break.
Chao says he’s known Tanner for years and let him work out of his Nashville office. What office? Chao’s outfit is called Chao Strategy Message and Media. he has a website, too (and a better-looking one than the imperial version) that chants: “We beat Republicans for a living.” If only. But he doesn’t give me a street address. Chao, who’s worked with a few campaigns around the nation, doesn’t give me an address. Here we go again.
That’s the sort of entourage running Beaven’s campaign: amateurish, opaque, pointlessly furtive.
“Political tax evasion”
Last month on her Facebook page Beaven gushed that she’d crossed the $100,000 threshold. Yet she won’t hire a campaign manager, which could help straighten all these things out. Beaven says she has no staff, because her operation is too small to afford one. You could say: “That sounds like political tax evasion.”
Those aren’t my words. They’re those of Ben Chao, Beaven’s media consultant. He spoke them two years ago when he was running Democrat Bob Tuke’s Senate primary campaign in Tennessee. Chao was being critical of Tuke’s opponent, Mike Padgett, who only hired consultants–the way Beaven is hiring Chao, the way she hired “Blue Empire.” (Campaigns are like businesses. When they hire staff, they have to pay payroll taxes, including unemployment insurance.)
It’s not just the WTF email, the absence of a message, or a general sense of carelessness. Beaven’s website is shoddy, too. Two weeks ago the home-page link to press releases was dead. Its fix-up now lists nothing more recent than Feb. 2. The photo link still brings up an “under construction” notice. The last event scheduled under the events tab dates back to March 11. Her blog hasn’t been updated since March 6. Links to her newsletter brought up each document with computer formatting that didn’t bother deleting the “Dear [[First_Name]]” coding that showed the stuff to be cut-and-paste work from email blasts. (At last check that looked like it’d been fixed.)
The contact link brings up a form for you to fill in–not phone numbers, not emails to contact directly. There’s not a single phone number on the entire site. (You’ll find info@BeavenForCongress.com on inside pages, but my email went unanswered and unacknowledged. One phone number, 386/956-6920, appears on pdf documents required for campaign contributions, and contributors.) That doesn’t scream transparency. It screams catch-me-if-you-can opacity. Beaven is obviously not hiding: she’s far more active on her personal Facebook page and her campaign’s Facebook page, though I don’t know if it’s accessible to people beyond her 771 friends (I’m among the 771).
Even there you should beware the information you glean. A Tuesday posting has almost more errors than it has words: “In November 2009, China owned $789 billion in U.S. Treasuries (33%), making it the largest owner.”
A simple check of the Department of Treasury’s monthly tabulations shows that in November, China held $929 billion. That was 25 percent of Treasuries held by foreign interests only, not 33 percent, and not 33 percent of all Treasuries, but 7.2 percent of the national debt, and 11 percent of the public debt, which excludes the $4.5 trillion the federal government owes to itself (the Social Security Trust Fund is owed about four times more than China is.)
Obviously, the Beaven campaign has a lot more than a Facebook posting to worry about. Unfortunately, John Mica is not among those things right now. To bad for us liberals in this year of renewed Republican ascendancy, and too bad for Beaven, who surely is better than this.
St. Augustine Record Letter:"What is the criteria for 'Best Developer'?
Roy Miller
Published Sunday, July 17, 2005
Editor: I think it is nice for you to put a category in your "Best of St. Augustine" for the best developer.
I think that in order to vote for best developer there should be tips to help us decide, such as: which developer has bulldozed the most gopher tortoises? Which developer has cut down the most trees with eagles' nests in them? Now with Rivertown coming, how about which developer has destroyed the most panther habitat? If we are to vote for "best developer," let's get it right.
More News the WRecKord Never Reported: Federal Judge Rejected WHETSTONE’s $45 million lawsuit against Nestlé for trade secret and contract breaches
On December 11, 2003, United States District Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr. granted summary judgment against WHETSTONE CANDY Co., INC. in its $45,000,000 trade secret infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Nestlé.
St. Augustine lawyer Robert L. McLeod , II represented WHETSTONE. Jacksonville lawyers William Sheppard and D. Gray Thomas of Sheppard, White, Thomas & Kachergus, PA and three Washington, D.C. lawyers --- James Douglas Baldridge (Venable LLP) and Brian D. Wallach and Peter E. Moll (Howrey, Simon, Arnold & White, LLP) -- represented Defendant Nestlé..
In its $45,000,000 complaint in federal court, WHETSTONE alleged Nestlé that misappropriated its trade secrets, but Judge Adams held WHETSTONE failed to protect its trade secrets and did not show they were misappropriated by Nestlé.
WHETSTONE never proved its case. Henry Whetstone said in his deposition, taken by lawyer Wallach, “do I have evidence, no. You haven’t been forthcoming in discovery.”
WHETSTONE never proved there was any misappropriation of its trade secrets.WHETSTONE never proved it had protected its trade secrets.
WHETSTONE never bothered to get its employees or contract janitors and tradesmen to sign nondisclosure agreements.
WHETSTONE was ordered by Judge Adams to pay $9,964.00 in costs
WHETSTONE did not appeal.
However, Judge Adams denied a motion to hold Henry Whetstone in contempt of court.
Not one word of this ever made it into local newspapers, including the St. Augustine WRecKord and Jacksonville TImes-Union, owned by right-wing MORRIS PUBLISHING CO. of Augusta, Georgia..
“Let them eat cake” was the bon mot often attributed to Marie Antoinette.
“Let them live on handouts” is the de facto motto of the St. Augustine WRecKord and MORRIS PUBLISHING.
Newspaper reporters and editors who lack gumption perpetually ignore the important news stories, as if their job was to cover up for polecats rather than to cover the news This disturbing proclivity led MORRIS PUBLISHING to file bankruptcy earlier this year.
Another wrinkle: in 2008, veteran Washington, D.C. investigative reporter James Ridgeway reported (see below) in Mother Jones magazine that Nestlé took trash from WHETSTONE’s dumpster.
If WHETSTONE had known about this in 2002, it might have avoided summary judgment and gone to trial. If WHETSTONE had read Mother Jones (a progressive publication) and had jumped on that news and hired a hardball litigator in 2008, it might have prevailed on a court to reopen and reconsider his allegations. Federal court records show that WHETSTONE did not do so.
The Whetstone family identify with the Republican Party, support City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, and are not likely to read progressive publications like Mother Jones. If only the Whetstone family were liberal Democrats, they might have learned timely of the Nestlé spying operation and dumpster-diving in WHETSTONE's trash -- they might have been able to reopen their case.
For more information, you can read 202 public records online in Case no 3:01-cv-415-3-25HTS, Whetstone Candy Co., Inc. v. Nestlé USA, available at pacer.gov.
St. Augustine Record: Boles Beats Whetstone
CITY COMM. SEAT 3: Boles joins City Commission
Published Wednesday, November 03, 2004
With his win Tuesday, Joe Boles is the only new face on the St. Augustine City Commission.
Boles defeated Hank Whetstone to win commission Seat 3. The other City Commissioners up for re-election won commission seats Tuesday. Boles said as the newcomer he will observe and learn from the other commissioners.
"I'm going to sit and listen and learn and see if I can be of help to the city," he said. "I'm just pleased as punch about it."
Boles said he hopes to bring balance to the City Commission. He said the management of a small city is not like running a corporation, and the goal isn't to profit at any cost, but to create a great place to live.
This position is a two-year term with a salary of $12,000.
St. Augustine Record: Jones Beats Whetstone
St. Augustine Commission Seat 3: Jones beats Whetstone for city seat
Published Wednesday, November 06, 2002
St. Johns County School Board employee Errol D. Jones edged out St. Augustine businesswoman Virginia Whetstone for the Seat 3 City Commission seat Tuesday night.
This was an open seat, with no incumbent.
Jones, 60, is the first black St. Augustine resident elected to the commission since the 1980s.
He is a district social worker for the St. Johns County school system and teaches sociology at Bethune-Cookman College.
Whetstone, 41, is a St. Augustine native who is president of Whetstone Chocolates and chief administrative officer of SweetWorks, a candy and gum company.
Jones said, "Obviously, I'm elated. I thank God and the citizens of St. Augustine for having faith in me. I will do my utmost to represent them well."
Whetstone's campaign workers said she was already out picking up her campaign signs and wasn't available for comment.
But she did leave a prepared statement with her campaign manager.
"I greatly appreciate the confidence the voters had in me in my first race," she said. "We are proud of the positive campaign that our team ran."
The commission seat is for two years and pays $6,000 a year.
Jones will be sworn in on Dec. 2, the day the commission reorganizes for the new year.
He said the vote "clearly showed" he was the city's choice.
"I look forward to serving the city. Miss Whetstone ran a very good race."
Mother Jones Magazine: Nestlé's Private Investigators Took Trash From Whetstone Chocolates Right Here in St. Augustine, Florida
excerpt from James Ridgeway, Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups, November 4, 2008:
Whether or not BBI sought counsel, the dumpster diving continued. In November 1999, according to company documents, Jay Bly traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, to meet with a private detective. He told the investigator that BBI wanted to obtain garbage from the offices of Whetstone Chocolates, a locally based candy manufacturer. (According to BBI billing records, BBI at the time was working for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Nestle Project-Florida." At press time, Nestle had not responded to a request for comment.) This private investigator and another local gumshoe then tracked the garbage men who made pick-ups at Whetstone and tried to persuade one of the drivers to turn over the trash from Whetstone. The trash collectors wouldn't cooperate. A month later, another private investigator apparently attempted to grab the garbage himself. He sent Bly a fax reporting, "We made a pickup run on December 23,1999 as requested. We were unable to enter the area where the dumpster is located as there appeared to [be] a company party taking place in the break area located in front of the dumpster. We remained in the area for a short time, however, the party continued and we departed the area." A December 1, 1999, BBI briefing paper on a "Nichols-Dezenhall/St. Augustine Project" reported on activities within Whetstone and said that "BBI now has operative in place."
Eric Dezenhall says that he cannot identify clients or vendors with which his firm worked. But he notes in an email that he never saw the briefing paper referring to a BBI operative and Whetstone and that "we would not have been involved in any infiltration operation." He adds, "Nichols-Dezenhall Communications never authorized, directed, or was informed of unethical or illegal activities by forensic investigators employed on any project we have worked on. With regard to our work on matters in which we were teamed with investigators, we are aware only of information-gathering through public records checks and other legitimate means." Dezenhall says that "any use of an 'operative' to infiltrate a company…would be counter to our business interests and any information gathered in that manner would be unusable in court." (In 2003, Dezenhall bought out Nichols and renamed the company Dezenhall Resources. "Our client base and employees from the 1990s have turned over almost entirely," Dezenhall says. According to a source familiar with the firm's current operations, the company has moved away from handling corporations involved in environmental controversies.) Another target of BBI's trash men was Fenton Communications, the liberal PR firm headed by David Fenton that for years has assisted environmental causes. On December 8, 1999, a BBI operative, according to an internal report, "sat surveillance" at Fenton's Washington home, beginning at 2:50 am. In the report, the operative noted the time of the morning garbage pick-up and that he returned to the office to "sort material" and "analyze." BBI ran background checks on both Fenton and his then-wife. The company's files contained photographs of their house as well as client lists, billing information, and personnel information from Fenton Communications. Between July 1998 and February 2001, Fenton says, his firm experienced several break-ins, during which boxes of files and two laptops were stolen. The culprits were never caught.
http://www.spinwatch.org/latest-news-mainmenu-10/265-intelligence/4819-cops-and-former-secret-service-agents-ran-black-ops-on-green-groups
(end of excerpt)
Here's the complete article:
Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups
Mother Jones, James Ridgeway, 11/4/2008
NEWS: Meet the private security firm that spied on Greenpeace and other environmental outfits for corporate clients. A tale of intrigue, infiltration, and dumpster-diving.
A private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. According to company documents provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit collected confidential internal records—donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these organizations and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies.
In addition to focusing on environmentalists, the firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i), provided a range of services to a host of clients. According to its billing records, BBI engaged in "intelligence collection" for Allied Waste; it conducted background checks and performed due diligence for the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm; it provided "protective services" for the National Rifle Association; it handled "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; it made sure that the Louis Dreyfus Group, the commodities firm, was not being bugged; it engaged in "information collection" for Wal-Mart; it conducted background checks for Patricia Duff, a Democratic Party fundraiser then involved in a divorce with billionaire Ronald Perelman; and for Mary Kay, BBI mounted "surveillance," and vetted Gayle Gaston, a top executive at the cosmetics company (and mother of actress Robin Wright Penn), retaining an expert to conduct a psychological assessment of her. Also listed as clients in BBI records: Halliburton and Monsanto.
BBI, which was headquartered in Easton, Maryland, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, worked extensively, according to billing records, for public-relations companies, including Ketchum, Nichols-Dezenhall Communications, and Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin. At the time, these PR outfits were servicing corporate clients fighting environmental organizations opposed to their products or actions. Ketchum, for example, was working for Dow Chemical and Kraft Foods; Nichols-Dezenhall, according to BBI records, was working with Condea Vista, a chemical manufacturing firm that in 1994 leaked up to 47 million pounds of ethylene dichloride, a suspected carcinogen, into the Calcasieu River in Louisiana.
Like other firms specializing in snooping, Beckett Brown turned to garbage swiping as a key tactic. BBI officials and contractors routinely conducted what the firm referred to as "D-line" operations, in which its operatives would seek access to the trash of a target, with the hope of finding useful documents. One midnight raid targeted Greenpeace. One BBI document lists the addresses of several other environmental groups as "possible sites" for operations: the National Environmental Trust, the Center for Food Safety, Environmental Media Services, the Environmental Working Group, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, an organization run by Lois Gibbs, famous for exposing the toxic dangers of New York's Love Canal. For its rubbish-rifling operations, BBI employed a police officer in the District of Columbia and a former member of the Maryland state police.
Beckett Brown's efforts to penetrate environmental groups and other targets came to an end when the business essentially dissolved in 2001 amid infighting between the principals. But the firm's officials went on to work in other security firms that remain active today.
Beckett Brown International began when John C. Dodd III met Richard Beckett at a bar in Easton in 1994. Dodd had recently become a millionaire after his father had sold an Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship on Maryland's eastern shore. Beckett ran a local executive recruiting and consulting business. Soon after they met, according to Dodd, Beckett introduced him to Paul Rakowski, a recently retired Secret Service agent, who had put in two decades protecting presidents and foreign heads of state and had become regional manager of the agency's financial crimes division. Rakowski told Dodd he had an idea for a new security business.
Dodd subsequently received a fax of a business plan for the new company. The sender's address at the top of the fax, according to Dodd, read: "11/02/94 USSS Financial Crimes Division/Forgery"—which suggested it had come from a Secret Service office. But Dodd was reluctant to put in the start-up money for the enterprise, because he didn't know who all the partners were. To impress him, Dodd says, Rakowski and his former Secret Service colleagues began taking him and his friends on special tours of the White House. "This wasn't a White House tour conducted by tour guides," he says. "They would take us…to areas that said 'Do not pass this line.'"
At one point, Dodd says, a senior Secret Service agent named Joseph Masonis arranged for him to tour a Secret Service facility. "To encourage me to invest in this company," Dodd notes, "they all said 'why not go up to technical security headquarters [of the Secret Service] and you will get an exclusive tour.'…They showed me everything....They were worried about someone flying way up high in a plane, miles from the White House, jumping out of a plane, skydiving, popping the chute and getting on the White House grounds without anybody knowing it. They were working on the technology to pick that up." Dodd says he was blown away by what he saw. (Masonis says, "I have never taken Mr. Dodd to any facility in D.C.") And at a waterfront party, Dodd says, he was introduced to and deeply impressed by George Ferris, another Secret Service officer and an expert in demolitions.
Eventually, Dodd says, he agreed to be the sole investor of the new firm, and he put up $170,000, the first of what would be several loans at 15 percent interest. (His investment in the firm, Dodd estimates, would grow to a total of $700,000.) The company was officially launched in August 1995, named after Beckett and Sam Brown, a lawyer who helped get it started. Rakowski, Masonis, and Ferris were officials in the firm.
Business was good. In early 1997, Beckett Brown provided security services for Bill Clinton's second inauguration, landing a contract worth nearly $300,000. Early clients also included Phillip Morris, Mary Kay, Browning-Ferris Industries, and Nichols-Dezenhall, a Washington-based firm founded in 1987 by Nick Nichols and Eric Dezenhall that specialized in crisis communications, particularly for corporations involved in biotechnology, product safety, and environmental controversies. BBI provided protection for retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, Dodd says, and there was talk it might also get a job to guard the Rolling Stones.
By 1998, BBI had 22 employees working in five different divisions, along with subcontractors that it hired as operatives. The company also looked abroad for new opportunities and recruited more law enforcement and intelligence veterans. David Bresett, a former chief of the Secret Service's foreign intelligence branch, joined the firm as a vice president. (A company biography noted that Bresett, while detailed to the CIA, had directed the investigation that identified the terrorists who blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.) The firm retained Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, and earlier one of the government officials responsible for overseeing U.S. support of the Nicaraguan contras, as a consultant at $75,000 a year. "I did due diligence on a couple of customers," Cannistraro recalls. On the advice of Cannistraro and Bresett, BBI turned down a $1 million job with the Church of Scientology, according to Dodd. (Bresett did not respond to a message asking for comment.) At one point, an employee named Tim Ward, who had been a sergeant in the Maryland state police, traveled to Saudi Arabia for the company, according to Dodd.
Phil Giraldi, a former CIA officer, was also on the payroll. According to Giraldi, there was not a lot of work for him and Cannistraro. "We would go to a company like Enron and see if they had any issues if they were looking to acquire a company," he recalled. "See if the [company to be acquired] is connected to the Russia mob. That's what we were selling. We were not very successful." Giraldi left the firm in 1999. By then, he had become aware of the firm's more unconventional activities: "Scooping garbage, trying to get penetrations of companies and environmental groups. I didn't know a lot of the details." But, he says, he knew BBI was "working on Greenpeace."
In 2000, the firm—which had changed its name to S2i after Richard Beckett left the company—was targeting a group of activist organizations opposed to genetically engineered food that had formed a coalition called GE Food Alert. In the fall of 2000, with these groups poised to assail Taco Bell, S2i operatives got on the case.
Their thoughts soon turned to garbage.
On September 26, Jay Bly, a former Secret Service agent working for S2i, sent an email to Tim Ward, the former Maryland state trooper on the payroll:
Received a call from Ketchum yesterday afternoon re three sites in DC. It seems Taco Bell turned out some product made from bioengineered corn. The chemicals used on the corn have not been approved for human consumption. Hence Taco Bell produced potential glow-in-the-dark tacos. Taco Bell is owned by Kraft. The Ketchum Office, New York, has the ball. They suspect the initiative is being generated from one of three places:
1.Center for Food Safety, 7th & Penn SE
2.Friends of the Earth, 1025 Vermont Ave (Between K & L Streets)
3.GE Food Alert, 1200 18th St NW (18th & M)
#1 is located on 3rd floor. Main entrance is key card. Alley is locked by iron gates. 7 dempsters [sic] in alley—take your pick.
#2 is in the same building as Chile Embassy. Armed guard in lobby & cameras everywhere. There is a dumpster in the alley behind the building. Don't know if it is tied to bldg. or a neighborhood property. Cameras everywhere.
#3 is doable but behind locked iron gates at rear of bldg.
In this email, Bly explained the urgency and the goal: "Apparently there is an article or press release due out next week and [Ketchum] would like some pre release information." He then turned practical: "I want to send Sarah [another BBI employee] to site #1 for a job inquiry. She can see how big the offices are and get the lay of the land. Maybe this will narrow the field. If they have a job opening could she work there for two or three days to find out what's going on?" The Friends of the Earth site, he noted, would be tougher to penetrate. As for the garbage of GE Food Alert, Bly had a plan: "if we can get some help from our friends who ride the truck. The alley is tight. I think the truck can drive down the alley but the container probably is rolled out and dumped. Looks like one dumpster for the building. I'm sitting on the building at 4:00 am tomorrow morning (if Ketchum gives us a budget)." And Bly noted that there were other possible opportunities: "we have found some other affiliates with the above groups. We are looking for their locations in [Washington, D.C.] and hopefully a more S2i friendly site."
The following day, Bly emailed Ward about his early morning surveillance:
Re: Dumpster Dive.
I got hold of Jim Daron [a Washington police officer working for BBI] yesterday. He was supposed to do Vermont Ave and Penn Ave SE last night. I have not heard from him today—what's new. I did 18th St. Weard [sic] set up—the dumpster is behind locked gates. The truck drives down the alley and rings for the night guard to open the gate. The guard comes out, unlocks and goes back into the building (probably pissed off because they woke him up), the guys walk the bags out to the truck one at a time. When they finish they locked the gate behind them. There was so much trash they had to compact the truck two times while they were there. I did not find anything from the 5th floor, but the good news is it's doable.
On September 28,Ward responded:
Good news! Think that once Jim [Daron] calls you back we will know where we stand. If he can't get in with the shield, it will be difficult at sight #1. I think #2 we can do regardless. The issue is a hot one in general. I've been following it from here. Don't forget our GP [Greenpeace] boy in Baltimore has been handling the work for GP. It may be worth a check in the city. Maybe one of our BPD [Baltimore Police Department] guys can hit that one. When you talk with the client push the fact that their client (the cheese people)…should put together a trend tracking program for the future. The anti's now have found an exposed corporate target and they will be back for more blood.
This email appears to suggests that the Beckett Brown operatives were considering using a Washington police officer's badge to gain access to the garbage of the Center for Food Safety. And Ward was apparently hoping that Beckett Brown could persuade Ketchum to hire the company to monitor the ongoing activity of the activists opposed to genetically-engineered food.
These emails do not indicate whether Beckett Brown succeeded in scooping valuable intelligence from the garbage at these three sites. But Beckett Brown had already managed to penetrate the anti-GE food network. In a 1999 report to Ketchum—entitled "Intelligence Analysis for Dow Global Trends Tracking Team" —BBI described in detail a strategy session held by 35 representatives of various environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, US PIRG, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The report noted the targets the coalition was considering (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, the Grocery Manufacturers of America) and listed various tactics the group had discussed. Such strategy meetings of this coalition were confidential, according to Dale Wiehoff of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Neither Bly nor Ward would discuss this series of emails or any of the work they did for Beckett Brown or S2i. "Legally, I can't tell you anything about what the company did," Ward says. He accuses Dodd of trying to "besmirch the names of the people involved" in the company. Rakowski, Daron, and Beckett did not reply to requests for comments. Nor did Ketchum. A spokesman for Kraft says, "After a review of our historical procurement files, we have no record of work on or about Sept. 26, 2000, with either Ketchum, Beckett Brown International or S2i. In the late '90s, Ketchum provided some PR services to Kraft for one of our coffee brands. However, Ketchum does not currently provide PR services to Kraft and has not done so for many years."
Time and again, according to Beckett Brown records, the firm looked to trash for intelligence. These trash runs at one point did raise concern within the company. In 1998, David Queen, a senior vice president, sent Rakowski a memo about "dumpster diving." Queen, a former deputy assistant secretary of the treasury and once a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania, noted that in certain instances searching trash could raise "some troublesome issues," including possible violation of state trespass laws and "possible violation of trade secrets laws." He concluded, "If BBI expects to use this method of information gathering, it would be prudent to get the opinion of outside counsel which could be relied upon by BBI should there be future litigation directed against BBI."
Whether or not BBI sought counsel, the dumpster diving continued. In November 1999, according to company documents, Jay Bly traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, to meet with a private detective. He told the investigator that BBI wanted to obtain garbage from the offices of Whetstone Chocolates, a locally based candy manufacturer. (According to BBI billing records, BBI at the time was working for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Nestle Project-Florida." At press time, Nestle had not responded to a request for comment.) This private investigator and another local gumshoe then tracked the garbage men who made pick-ups at Whetstone and tried to persuade one of the drivers to turn over the trash from Whetstone. The trash collectors wouldn't cooperate. A month later, another private investigator apparently attempted to grab the garbage himself. He sent Bly a fax reporting, "We made a pickup run on December 23,1999 as requested. We were unable to enter the area where the dumpster is located as there appeared to [be] a company party taking place in the break area located in front of the dumpster. We remained in the area for a short time, however, the party continued and we departed the area." A December 1, 1999, BBI briefing paper on a "Nichols-Dezenhall/St. Augustine Project" reported on activities within Whetstone and said that "BBI now has operative in place."
Eric Dezenhall says that he cannot identify clients or vendors with which his firm worked. But he notes in an email that he never saw the briefing paper referring to a BBI operative and Whetstone and that "we would not have been involved in any infiltration operation." He adds, "Nichols-Dezenhall Communications never authorized, directed, or was informed of unethical or illegal activities by forensic investigators employed on any project we have worked on. With regard to our work on matters in which we were teamed with investigators, we are aware only of information-gathering through public records checks and other legitimate means." Dezenhall says that "any use of an 'operative' to infiltrate a company…would be counter to our business interests and any information gathered in that manner would be unusable in court." (In 2003, Dezenhall bought out Nichols and renamed the company Dezenhall Resources. "Our client base and employees from the 1990s have turned over almost entirely," Dezenhall says. According to a source familiar with the firm's current operations, the company has moved away from handling corporations involved in environmental controversies.) Another target of BBI's trash men was Fenton Communications, the liberal PR firm headed by David Fenton that for years has assisted environmental causes. On December 8, 1999, a BBI operative, according to an internal report, "sat surveillance" at Fenton's Washington home, beginning at 2:50 am. In the report, the operative noted the time of the morning garbage pick-up and that he returned to the office to "sort material" and "analyze." BBI ran background checks on both Fenton and his then-wife. The company's files contained photographs of their house as well as client lists, billing information, and personnel information from Fenton Communications. Between July 1998 and February 2001, Fenton says, his firm experienced several break-ins, during which boxes of files and two laptops were stolen. The culprits were never caught.
Greenpeace was the target of one of BBI's more elaborate—and cinematic—intelligence-gathering efforts, according to company documents and an interview with an eyewitness. Jennifer Trapnell, who was dating Ward in the late 1990s, recalls an evening when she accompanied Ward on a job in Washington D.C. "He said they were trying to get some stuff on Greenpeace," she says. Ward wore black clothes and had told her to dress all in black, too: "It was Mission Impossible-like." In Washington, Ward parked his truck in an alley, she remembers, and told her to stay in the truck and keep a lookout. In the alley, he met a couple of other men, whose faces Trapnell did not see clearly. Ward was talking on a walkie-talkie with others, and they all walked off. About an hour later, the men came back and placed two trash bags in Ward's car. Trapnell says she didn't know what they did with the bags—and Ward never explained. In addition to Ward's work, on several occasions in 2000, Jim Daron, the Washington cop who also worked for BBI, submitted reports to BBI for surveillance of Greenpeace's offices.
BBI gathered numerous internal Greenpeace documents, including financial reports. It also obtained the instructions for using the security system at Greenpeace's offices. And the Greenpeace files at BBI included a handwritten document that appears to record attempts to crack the security codes on entry doors with notations such as "codes do not match" and "open."
BBI prepared reports on Greenpeace—based on "confidential sources"—for Ketchum. In at least one case, according to Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace (who reviewed these reports at Mother Jones' request), a BBI report written for Ketchum contained information tightly held within the group about planned upcoming events. And a December 2, 1999 BBI report (which does not mention Ketchum) noted that Greenpeace had chosen Kellogg's, Kraft, and Quaker as "their main targets in the GE campaign," that it was developing a campaign tactic called "Food-Aid Expose" (which would highlight the export of genetically-modified foods to other countries), and that it was helping a Wall Street Journal reporter track food companies involved in the debate over genetically-engineered foods.
Over the years, Greenpeace has repeatedly been the target of public relations firms working for industry, and the group has experienced burglaries and caught would-be spies posing as students seeking employment. But Greenpeace officials say they did not know that their organization was under surveillance during that period of time.
In the late 1990s, Greenpeace was working with environmental groups in the stretch of Louisiana dubbed "Cancer Alley," organizing against various forms of industry pollution. Its work there and that of its Louisiana partners became another target for BBI. In 1998, according to BBI emails, correspondence, and records, BBI retained Mary Lou Sapone, a self-described "research consultant," who recruited a paid operative in Louisiana to infiltrate an environmental group called CLEAN. Sapone had something of a talent for infiltrating activist groups. In the late 1980s, working for a security firm called Perceptions International, which was, in turn, working for the U.S. Surgical Corporation, she penetrated a Connecticut-based animal-rights group, gathering evidence on an activist who would later serve jail time for planting a pipe bomb near the parking space of the company's CEO. The activist would eventually accused Sapone of coaxing her into the plot.
Sapone's operative in Louisiana relayed to her information on what the local enviros were planning, provided gossip on the internal rivalries, and identified the scientists aiding the groups. She passed the intelligence to BBI. In an August 20, 1998 "client briefing," BBI boasted that "our operative is being nominated to the citizen action panels for local industries" and it asked which local industry Condea Vista, the chemical manufacturing firm, would prefer the operative to focus on. (The previous year, Condea Vista had lost a lawsuit brought by the residents of Lake Charles, Louisiana, against the company for the 1994 ethylene dichloride leak and had been slapped with a $7 million judgment.) Another BBI document noted, "The operative has been trained to be inquiring, but not participatory. Operatives are not allowed to offer suggestions or `help' targets in any way. They are trained to seek documents, ID friends and foe legislators and regulators, follow money trails, ID informants, discover future targets."
BBI produced detailed confidential reports for Ketchum on the environmental activism underway in Louisiana. And BBI records indicate that the firm worked for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Condea Vista Project." Citing "strict confidentiality agreements," Dezenhall will not say whether his firm worked with Condea Vista (or any other company), but he notes in an email, "It would be extremely damaging and wrong…to interpret or portray the term 'operative,' a generic term often used by investigators and former law enforcement types to mean an individual, as implying someone necessarily engaged in illicit actions such as corporate espionage." (Sapone did not respond to a message requesting comment.)
Penetrating a citizens group was not a new endeavor for BBI. In 1996 and 1997 in northern California, where Browning-Ferris Industries was engaged in a battle over the future of a garbage dump, BBI conducted what its records labeled "covert monitoring" and "intelligence gathering" on the North Valley Coalition, a citizens group opposed to the Browning-Ferris project. In September 1997, BBI received a payment of $198,881.05 from BFI.
BBI fell apart in 2001 amid arguments over the company's finances. "It was not a happy company," says Phil Giraldi, the ex-CIA man who had worked there, adding, "I have worked for a number of security companies. Some are ethical, some are not. Beckett Brown was not especially so." When the company was collapsing, Dodd says, he heard that document shredding was underway in its offices, and one weekend he went to the offices and carted off scores of cartons stuffed with records.
BBI's demise led to a lawsuit. Dodd sued Rakowski, Ward, Bly and two others, claiming they had engaged in fraud. In a pretrial statement, Dodd accused them of having "dipped into the Company's coffers for generous salaries, commissions, bonuses, loans, benefits and unsupported expense reimbursements, all the while presenting false and misleading financial information" to Dodd. In 2005, after a month-long trial in Maryland's Talbot County Circuit Court, Dodd lost. He now was out the $700,000 he had invested in the company. By his own estimate, he had spent over a million dollars in legal fees. And he was mad. He claims that he only learned of the firm's sleazier actions after the company imploded and that his lawyers encouraged him not to raise that issue as part of his lawsuit. But after the trial was done, Dodd began contacting some of BBI's targets and shared its records with them. "I wanted the facts to come out," he says. "I feel terrible that my money was used to screw these people over."
Today, boxes and boxes of BBI records sit in warehouse space Dodd rents. Dodd has not gone through all of the material. (The records include internal and confidential financial reports of a local bank that had been the subject of a takeover.) Much of what BBI did remains a mystery to Dodd. A law firm representing the Mars candy corporation pored over all the records, according to Dodd and his lawyer, apparently in search of evidence that Mars had been the target of corporate espionage. (The files contain records indicating that BBI obtained information on the phone calls made by a PR man working with Mars.) Then Dodd heard nothing further from this law firm. Dodd says he would be delighted to testify before Congress about BBI—but no one has invited him to do so.
As for BBI's principals, they are still operating. Tim Ward now runs a security firm called Chesapeake Strategies, which bills itself as "a multinational security and investigative firm comprised of professionals with extensive security experience." Jay Bly works there. Its website boasts that it maintains affiliated offices in Paris, Beijng, Tokyo, Qatar, and Kuwait and that "many team members continue to hold Secret and Top Secret government security clearances." The firm has been active in protecting research facilities from animal-rights activists. In 2002, it won a contract from the General Services Administration "for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products." It was listed on a 2005 line-up of Defense Department contractors. "I don't have any comment about what I am currently doing or what I plan to do," Ward says.
Joseph Masonis works for the Annapolis Group, a security firm. Its website notes that the company's managing directors "have over forty-five years of combined experience with the United States Secret Service." Paul Rakowski married Amy DiGeso, who was CEO of Mary Kay when BBI worked for the cosmetics firm. (Currently, she is a top executive at Estee Lauder.) Rakowski's current occupation—if he has one—is not publicly known.
Richard Beckett is now CEO of Maryland-based Global Security Services, which, according to its website, offers clients a "suite of business solutions" that includes "intelligence services," "disaster management," "information systems security," and "paramilitary operations." Last year, his firm provided bodyguards to Senator Barack Obama.
Whether or not BBI sought counsel, the dumpster diving continued. In November 1999, according to company documents, Jay Bly traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, to meet with a private detective. He told the investigator that BBI wanted to obtain garbage from the offices of Whetstone Chocolates, a locally based candy manufacturer. (According to BBI billing records, BBI at the time was working for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Nestle Project-Florida." At press time, Nestle had not responded to a request for comment.) This private investigator and another local gumshoe then tracked the garbage men who made pick-ups at Whetstone and tried to persuade one of the drivers to turn over the trash from Whetstone. The trash collectors wouldn't cooperate. A month later, another private investigator apparently attempted to grab the garbage himself. He sent Bly a fax reporting, "We made a pickup run on December 23,1999 as requested. We were unable to enter the area where the dumpster is located as there appeared to [be] a company party taking place in the break area located in front of the dumpster. We remained in the area for a short time, however, the party continued and we departed the area." A December 1, 1999, BBI briefing paper on a "Nichols-Dezenhall/St. Augustine Project" reported on activities within Whetstone and said that "BBI now has operative in place."
Eric Dezenhall says that he cannot identify clients or vendors with which his firm worked. But he notes in an email that he never saw the briefing paper referring to a BBI operative and Whetstone and that "we would not have been involved in any infiltration operation." He adds, "Nichols-Dezenhall Communications never authorized, directed, or was informed of unethical or illegal activities by forensic investigators employed on any project we have worked on. With regard to our work on matters in which we were teamed with investigators, we are aware only of information-gathering through public records checks and other legitimate means." Dezenhall says that "any use of an 'operative' to infiltrate a company…would be counter to our business interests and any information gathered in that manner would be unusable in court." (In 2003, Dezenhall bought out Nichols and renamed the company Dezenhall Resources. "Our client base and employees from the 1990s have turned over almost entirely," Dezenhall says. According to a source familiar with the firm's current operations, the company has moved away from handling corporations involved in environmental controversies.) Another target of BBI's trash men was Fenton Communications, the liberal PR firm headed by David Fenton that for years has assisted environmental causes. On December 8, 1999, a BBI operative, according to an internal report, "sat surveillance" at Fenton's Washington home, beginning at 2:50 am. In the report, the operative noted the time of the morning garbage pick-up and that he returned to the office to "sort material" and "analyze." BBI ran background checks on both Fenton and his then-wife. The company's files contained photographs of their house as well as client lists, billing information, and personnel information from Fenton Communications. Between July 1998 and February 2001, Fenton says, his firm experienced several break-ins, during which boxes of files and two laptops were stolen. The culprits were never caught.
http://www.spinwatch.org/latest-news-mainmenu-10/265-intelligence/4819-cops-and-former-secret-service-agents-ran-black-ops-on-green-groups
(end of excerpt)
Here's the complete article:
Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups
Mother Jones, James Ridgeway, 11/4/2008
NEWS: Meet the private security firm that spied on Greenpeace and other environmental outfits for corporate clients. A tale of intrigue, infiltration, and dumpster-diving.
A private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. According to company documents provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit collected confidential internal records—donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these organizations and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies.
In addition to focusing on environmentalists, the firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i), provided a range of services to a host of clients. According to its billing records, BBI engaged in "intelligence collection" for Allied Waste; it conducted background checks and performed due diligence for the Carlyle Group, the Washington-based investment firm; it provided "protective services" for the National Rifle Association; it handled "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; it made sure that the Louis Dreyfus Group, the commodities firm, was not being bugged; it engaged in "information collection" for Wal-Mart; it conducted background checks for Patricia Duff, a Democratic Party fundraiser then involved in a divorce with billionaire Ronald Perelman; and for Mary Kay, BBI mounted "surveillance," and vetted Gayle Gaston, a top executive at the cosmetics company (and mother of actress Robin Wright Penn), retaining an expert to conduct a psychological assessment of her. Also listed as clients in BBI records: Halliburton and Monsanto.
BBI, which was headquartered in Easton, Maryland, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay, worked extensively, according to billing records, for public-relations companies, including Ketchum, Nichols-Dezenhall Communications, and Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin. At the time, these PR outfits were servicing corporate clients fighting environmental organizations opposed to their products or actions. Ketchum, for example, was working for Dow Chemical and Kraft Foods; Nichols-Dezenhall, according to BBI records, was working with Condea Vista, a chemical manufacturing firm that in 1994 leaked up to 47 million pounds of ethylene dichloride, a suspected carcinogen, into the Calcasieu River in Louisiana.
Like other firms specializing in snooping, Beckett Brown turned to garbage swiping as a key tactic. BBI officials and contractors routinely conducted what the firm referred to as "D-line" operations, in which its operatives would seek access to the trash of a target, with the hope of finding useful documents. One midnight raid targeted Greenpeace. One BBI document lists the addresses of several other environmental groups as "possible sites" for operations: the National Environmental Trust, the Center for Food Safety, Environmental Media Services, the Environmental Working Group, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, an organization run by Lois Gibbs, famous for exposing the toxic dangers of New York's Love Canal. For its rubbish-rifling operations, BBI employed a police officer in the District of Columbia and a former member of the Maryland state police.
Beckett Brown's efforts to penetrate environmental groups and other targets came to an end when the business essentially dissolved in 2001 amid infighting between the principals. But the firm's officials went on to work in other security firms that remain active today.
Beckett Brown International began when John C. Dodd III met Richard Beckett at a bar in Easton in 1994. Dodd had recently become a millionaire after his father had sold an Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship on Maryland's eastern shore. Beckett ran a local executive recruiting and consulting business. Soon after they met, according to Dodd, Beckett introduced him to Paul Rakowski, a recently retired Secret Service agent, who had put in two decades protecting presidents and foreign heads of state and had become regional manager of the agency's financial crimes division. Rakowski told Dodd he had an idea for a new security business.
Dodd subsequently received a fax of a business plan for the new company. The sender's address at the top of the fax, according to Dodd, read: "11/02/94 USSS Financial Crimes Division/Forgery"—which suggested it had come from a Secret Service office. But Dodd was reluctant to put in the start-up money for the enterprise, because he didn't know who all the partners were. To impress him, Dodd says, Rakowski and his former Secret Service colleagues began taking him and his friends on special tours of the White House. "This wasn't a White House tour conducted by tour guides," he says. "They would take us…to areas that said 'Do not pass this line.'"
At one point, Dodd says, a senior Secret Service agent named Joseph Masonis arranged for him to tour a Secret Service facility. "To encourage me to invest in this company," Dodd notes, "they all said 'why not go up to technical security headquarters [of the Secret Service] and you will get an exclusive tour.'…They showed me everything....They were worried about someone flying way up high in a plane, miles from the White House, jumping out of a plane, skydiving, popping the chute and getting on the White House grounds without anybody knowing it. They were working on the technology to pick that up." Dodd says he was blown away by what he saw. (Masonis says, "I have never taken Mr. Dodd to any facility in D.C.") And at a waterfront party, Dodd says, he was introduced to and deeply impressed by George Ferris, another Secret Service officer and an expert in demolitions.
Eventually, Dodd says, he agreed to be the sole investor of the new firm, and he put up $170,000, the first of what would be several loans at 15 percent interest. (His investment in the firm, Dodd estimates, would grow to a total of $700,000.) The company was officially launched in August 1995, named after Beckett and Sam Brown, a lawyer who helped get it started. Rakowski, Masonis, and Ferris were officials in the firm.
Business was good. In early 1997, Beckett Brown provided security services for Bill Clinton's second inauguration, landing a contract worth nearly $300,000. Early clients also included Phillip Morris, Mary Kay, Browning-Ferris Industries, and Nichols-Dezenhall, a Washington-based firm founded in 1987 by Nick Nichols and Eric Dezenhall that specialized in crisis communications, particularly for corporations involved in biotechnology, product safety, and environmental controversies. BBI provided protection for retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, Dodd says, and there was talk it might also get a job to guard the Rolling Stones.
By 1998, BBI had 22 employees working in five different divisions, along with subcontractors that it hired as operatives. The company also looked abroad for new opportunities and recruited more law enforcement and intelligence veterans. David Bresett, a former chief of the Secret Service's foreign intelligence branch, joined the firm as a vice president. (A company biography noted that Bresett, while detailed to the CIA, had directed the investigation that identified the terrorists who blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.) The firm retained Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, and earlier one of the government officials responsible for overseeing U.S. support of the Nicaraguan contras, as a consultant at $75,000 a year. "I did due diligence on a couple of customers," Cannistraro recalls. On the advice of Cannistraro and Bresett, BBI turned down a $1 million job with the Church of Scientology, according to Dodd. (Bresett did not respond to a message asking for comment.) At one point, an employee named Tim Ward, who had been a sergeant in the Maryland state police, traveled to Saudi Arabia for the company, according to Dodd.
Phil Giraldi, a former CIA officer, was also on the payroll. According to Giraldi, there was not a lot of work for him and Cannistraro. "We would go to a company like Enron and see if they had any issues if they were looking to acquire a company," he recalled. "See if the [company to be acquired] is connected to the Russia mob. That's what we were selling. We were not very successful." Giraldi left the firm in 1999. By then, he had become aware of the firm's more unconventional activities: "Scooping garbage, trying to get penetrations of companies and environmental groups. I didn't know a lot of the details." But, he says, he knew BBI was "working on Greenpeace."
In 2000, the firm—which had changed its name to S2i after Richard Beckett left the company—was targeting a group of activist organizations opposed to genetically engineered food that had formed a coalition called GE Food Alert. In the fall of 2000, with these groups poised to assail Taco Bell, S2i operatives got on the case.
Their thoughts soon turned to garbage.
On September 26, Jay Bly, a former Secret Service agent working for S2i, sent an email to Tim Ward, the former Maryland state trooper on the payroll:
Received a call from Ketchum yesterday afternoon re three sites in DC. It seems Taco Bell turned out some product made from bioengineered corn. The chemicals used on the corn have not been approved for human consumption. Hence Taco Bell produced potential glow-in-the-dark tacos. Taco Bell is owned by Kraft. The Ketchum Office, New York, has the ball. They suspect the initiative is being generated from one of three places:
1.Center for Food Safety, 7th & Penn SE
2.Friends of the Earth, 1025 Vermont Ave (Between K & L Streets)
3.GE Food Alert, 1200 18th St NW (18th & M)
#1 is located on 3rd floor. Main entrance is key card. Alley is locked by iron gates. 7 dempsters [sic] in alley—take your pick.
#2 is in the same building as Chile Embassy. Armed guard in lobby & cameras everywhere. There is a dumpster in the alley behind the building. Don't know if it is tied to bldg. or a neighborhood property. Cameras everywhere.
#3 is doable but behind locked iron gates at rear of bldg.
In this email, Bly explained the urgency and the goal: "Apparently there is an article or press release due out next week and [Ketchum] would like some pre release information." He then turned practical: "I want to send Sarah [another BBI employee] to site #1 for a job inquiry. She can see how big the offices are and get the lay of the land. Maybe this will narrow the field. If they have a job opening could she work there for two or three days to find out what's going on?" The Friends of the Earth site, he noted, would be tougher to penetrate. As for the garbage of GE Food Alert, Bly had a plan: "if we can get some help from our friends who ride the truck. The alley is tight. I think the truck can drive down the alley but the container probably is rolled out and dumped. Looks like one dumpster for the building. I'm sitting on the building at 4:00 am tomorrow morning (if Ketchum gives us a budget)." And Bly noted that there were other possible opportunities: "we have found some other affiliates with the above groups. We are looking for their locations in [Washington, D.C.] and hopefully a more S2i friendly site."
The following day, Bly emailed Ward about his early morning surveillance:
Re: Dumpster Dive.
I got hold of Jim Daron [a Washington police officer working for BBI] yesterday. He was supposed to do Vermont Ave and Penn Ave SE last night. I have not heard from him today—what's new. I did 18th St. Weard [sic] set up—the dumpster is behind locked gates. The truck drives down the alley and rings for the night guard to open the gate. The guard comes out, unlocks and goes back into the building (probably pissed off because they woke him up), the guys walk the bags out to the truck one at a time. When they finish they locked the gate behind them. There was so much trash they had to compact the truck two times while they were there. I did not find anything from the 5th floor, but the good news is it's doable.
On September 28,Ward responded:
Good news! Think that once Jim [Daron] calls you back we will know where we stand. If he can't get in with the shield, it will be difficult at sight #1. I think #2 we can do regardless. The issue is a hot one in general. I've been following it from here. Don't forget our GP [Greenpeace] boy in Baltimore has been handling the work for GP. It may be worth a check in the city. Maybe one of our BPD [Baltimore Police Department] guys can hit that one. When you talk with the client push the fact that their client (the cheese people)…should put together a trend tracking program for the future. The anti's now have found an exposed corporate target and they will be back for more blood.
This email appears to suggests that the Beckett Brown operatives were considering using a Washington police officer's badge to gain access to the garbage of the Center for Food Safety. And Ward was apparently hoping that Beckett Brown could persuade Ketchum to hire the company to monitor the ongoing activity of the activists opposed to genetically-engineered food.
These emails do not indicate whether Beckett Brown succeeded in scooping valuable intelligence from the garbage at these three sites. But Beckett Brown had already managed to penetrate the anti-GE food network. In a 1999 report to Ketchum—entitled "Intelligence Analysis for Dow Global Trends Tracking Team" —BBI described in detail a strategy session held by 35 representatives of various environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, US PIRG, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The report noted the targets the coalition was considering (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, the Grocery Manufacturers of America) and listed various tactics the group had discussed. Such strategy meetings of this coalition were confidential, according to Dale Wiehoff of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Neither Bly nor Ward would discuss this series of emails or any of the work they did for Beckett Brown or S2i. "Legally, I can't tell you anything about what the company did," Ward says. He accuses Dodd of trying to "besmirch the names of the people involved" in the company. Rakowski, Daron, and Beckett did not reply to requests for comments. Nor did Ketchum. A spokesman for Kraft says, "After a review of our historical procurement files, we have no record of work on or about Sept. 26, 2000, with either Ketchum, Beckett Brown International or S2i. In the late '90s, Ketchum provided some PR services to Kraft for one of our coffee brands. However, Ketchum does not currently provide PR services to Kraft and has not done so for many years."
Time and again, according to Beckett Brown records, the firm looked to trash for intelligence. These trash runs at one point did raise concern within the company. In 1998, David Queen, a senior vice president, sent Rakowski a memo about "dumpster diving." Queen, a former deputy assistant secretary of the treasury and once a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania, noted that in certain instances searching trash could raise "some troublesome issues," including possible violation of state trespass laws and "possible violation of trade secrets laws." He concluded, "If BBI expects to use this method of information gathering, it would be prudent to get the opinion of outside counsel which could be relied upon by BBI should there be future litigation directed against BBI."
Whether or not BBI sought counsel, the dumpster diving continued. In November 1999, according to company documents, Jay Bly traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, to meet with a private detective. He told the investigator that BBI wanted to obtain garbage from the offices of Whetstone Chocolates, a locally based candy manufacturer. (According to BBI billing records, BBI at the time was working for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Nestle Project-Florida." At press time, Nestle had not responded to a request for comment.) This private investigator and another local gumshoe then tracked the garbage men who made pick-ups at Whetstone and tried to persuade one of the drivers to turn over the trash from Whetstone. The trash collectors wouldn't cooperate. A month later, another private investigator apparently attempted to grab the garbage himself. He sent Bly a fax reporting, "We made a pickup run on December 23,1999 as requested. We were unable to enter the area where the dumpster is located as there appeared to [be] a company party taking place in the break area located in front of the dumpster. We remained in the area for a short time, however, the party continued and we departed the area." A December 1, 1999, BBI briefing paper on a "Nichols-Dezenhall/St. Augustine Project" reported on activities within Whetstone and said that "BBI now has operative in place."
Eric Dezenhall says that he cannot identify clients or vendors with which his firm worked. But he notes in an email that he never saw the briefing paper referring to a BBI operative and Whetstone and that "we would not have been involved in any infiltration operation." He adds, "Nichols-Dezenhall Communications never authorized, directed, or was informed of unethical or illegal activities by forensic investigators employed on any project we have worked on. With regard to our work on matters in which we were teamed with investigators, we are aware only of information-gathering through public records checks and other legitimate means." Dezenhall says that "any use of an 'operative' to infiltrate a company…would be counter to our business interests and any information gathered in that manner would be unusable in court." (In 2003, Dezenhall bought out Nichols and renamed the company Dezenhall Resources. "Our client base and employees from the 1990s have turned over almost entirely," Dezenhall says. According to a source familiar with the firm's current operations, the company has moved away from handling corporations involved in environmental controversies.) Another target of BBI's trash men was Fenton Communications, the liberal PR firm headed by David Fenton that for years has assisted environmental causes. On December 8, 1999, a BBI operative, according to an internal report, "sat surveillance" at Fenton's Washington home, beginning at 2:50 am. In the report, the operative noted the time of the morning garbage pick-up and that he returned to the office to "sort material" and "analyze." BBI ran background checks on both Fenton and his then-wife. The company's files contained photographs of their house as well as client lists, billing information, and personnel information from Fenton Communications. Between July 1998 and February 2001, Fenton says, his firm experienced several break-ins, during which boxes of files and two laptops were stolen. The culprits were never caught.
Greenpeace was the target of one of BBI's more elaborate—and cinematic—intelligence-gathering efforts, according to company documents and an interview with an eyewitness. Jennifer Trapnell, who was dating Ward in the late 1990s, recalls an evening when she accompanied Ward on a job in Washington D.C. "He said they were trying to get some stuff on Greenpeace," she says. Ward wore black clothes and had told her to dress all in black, too: "It was Mission Impossible-like." In Washington, Ward parked his truck in an alley, she remembers, and told her to stay in the truck and keep a lookout. In the alley, he met a couple of other men, whose faces Trapnell did not see clearly. Ward was talking on a walkie-talkie with others, and they all walked off. About an hour later, the men came back and placed two trash bags in Ward's car. Trapnell says she didn't know what they did with the bags—and Ward never explained. In addition to Ward's work, on several occasions in 2000, Jim Daron, the Washington cop who also worked for BBI, submitted reports to BBI for surveillance of Greenpeace's offices.
BBI gathered numerous internal Greenpeace documents, including financial reports. It also obtained the instructions for using the security system at Greenpeace's offices. And the Greenpeace files at BBI included a handwritten document that appears to record attempts to crack the security codes on entry doors with notations such as "codes do not match" and "open."
BBI prepared reports on Greenpeace—based on "confidential sources"—for Ketchum. In at least one case, according to Rick Hind, legislative director for Greenpeace (who reviewed these reports at Mother Jones' request), a BBI report written for Ketchum contained information tightly held within the group about planned upcoming events. And a December 2, 1999 BBI report (which does not mention Ketchum) noted that Greenpeace had chosen Kellogg's, Kraft, and Quaker as "their main targets in the GE campaign," that it was developing a campaign tactic called "Food-Aid Expose" (which would highlight the export of genetically-modified foods to other countries), and that it was helping a Wall Street Journal reporter track food companies involved in the debate over genetically-engineered foods.
Over the years, Greenpeace has repeatedly been the target of public relations firms working for industry, and the group has experienced burglaries and caught would-be spies posing as students seeking employment. But Greenpeace officials say they did not know that their organization was under surveillance during that period of time.
In the late 1990s, Greenpeace was working with environmental groups in the stretch of Louisiana dubbed "Cancer Alley," organizing against various forms of industry pollution. Its work there and that of its Louisiana partners became another target for BBI. In 1998, according to BBI emails, correspondence, and records, BBI retained Mary Lou Sapone, a self-described "research consultant," who recruited a paid operative in Louisiana to infiltrate an environmental group called CLEAN. Sapone had something of a talent for infiltrating activist groups. In the late 1980s, working for a security firm called Perceptions International, which was, in turn, working for the U.S. Surgical Corporation, she penetrated a Connecticut-based animal-rights group, gathering evidence on an activist who would later serve jail time for planting a pipe bomb near the parking space of the company's CEO. The activist would eventually accused Sapone of coaxing her into the plot.
Sapone's operative in Louisiana relayed to her information on what the local enviros were planning, provided gossip on the internal rivalries, and identified the scientists aiding the groups. She passed the intelligence to BBI. In an August 20, 1998 "client briefing," BBI boasted that "our operative is being nominated to the citizen action panels for local industries" and it asked which local industry Condea Vista, the chemical manufacturing firm, would prefer the operative to focus on. (The previous year, Condea Vista had lost a lawsuit brought by the residents of Lake Charles, Louisiana, against the company for the 1994 ethylene dichloride leak and had been slapped with a $7 million judgment.) Another BBI document noted, "The operative has been trained to be inquiring, but not participatory. Operatives are not allowed to offer suggestions or `help' targets in any way. They are trained to seek documents, ID friends and foe legislators and regulators, follow money trails, ID informants, discover future targets."
BBI produced detailed confidential reports for Ketchum on the environmental activism underway in Louisiana. And BBI records indicate that the firm worked for Nichols-Dezenhall on a "Condea Vista Project." Citing "strict confidentiality agreements," Dezenhall will not say whether his firm worked with Condea Vista (or any other company), but he notes in an email, "It would be extremely damaging and wrong…to interpret or portray the term 'operative,' a generic term often used by investigators and former law enforcement types to mean an individual, as implying someone necessarily engaged in illicit actions such as corporate espionage." (Sapone did not respond to a message requesting comment.)
Penetrating a citizens group was not a new endeavor for BBI. In 1996 and 1997 in northern California, where Browning-Ferris Industries was engaged in a battle over the future of a garbage dump, BBI conducted what its records labeled "covert monitoring" and "intelligence gathering" on the North Valley Coalition, a citizens group opposed to the Browning-Ferris project. In September 1997, BBI received a payment of $198,881.05 from BFI.
BBI fell apart in 2001 amid arguments over the company's finances. "It was not a happy company," says Phil Giraldi, the ex-CIA man who had worked there, adding, "I have worked for a number of security companies. Some are ethical, some are not. Beckett Brown was not especially so." When the company was collapsing, Dodd says, he heard that document shredding was underway in its offices, and one weekend he went to the offices and carted off scores of cartons stuffed with records.
BBI's demise led to a lawsuit. Dodd sued Rakowski, Ward, Bly and two others, claiming they had engaged in fraud. In a pretrial statement, Dodd accused them of having "dipped into the Company's coffers for generous salaries, commissions, bonuses, loans, benefits and unsupported expense reimbursements, all the while presenting false and misleading financial information" to Dodd. In 2005, after a month-long trial in Maryland's Talbot County Circuit Court, Dodd lost. He now was out the $700,000 he had invested in the company. By his own estimate, he had spent over a million dollars in legal fees. And he was mad. He claims that he only learned of the firm's sleazier actions after the company imploded and that his lawyers encouraged him not to raise that issue as part of his lawsuit. But after the trial was done, Dodd began contacting some of BBI's targets and shared its records with them. "I wanted the facts to come out," he says. "I feel terrible that my money was used to screw these people over."
Today, boxes and boxes of BBI records sit in warehouse space Dodd rents. Dodd has not gone through all of the material. (The records include internal and confidential financial reports of a local bank that had been the subject of a takeover.) Much of what BBI did remains a mystery to Dodd. A law firm representing the Mars candy corporation pored over all the records, according to Dodd and his lawyer, apparently in search of evidence that Mars had been the target of corporate espionage. (The files contain records indicating that BBI obtained information on the phone calls made by a PR man working with Mars.) Then Dodd heard nothing further from this law firm. Dodd says he would be delighted to testify before Congress about BBI—but no one has invited him to do so.
As for BBI's principals, they are still operating. Tim Ward now runs a security firm called Chesapeake Strategies, which bills itself as "a multinational security and investigative firm comprised of professionals with extensive security experience." Jay Bly works there. Its website boasts that it maintains affiliated offices in Paris, Beijng, Tokyo, Qatar, and Kuwait and that "many team members continue to hold Secret and Top Secret government security clearances." The firm has been active in protecting research facilities from animal-rights activists. In 2002, it won a contract from the General Services Administration "for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products." It was listed on a 2005 line-up of Defense Department contractors. "I don't have any comment about what I am currently doing or what I plan to do," Ward says.
Joseph Masonis works for the Annapolis Group, a security firm. Its website notes that the company's managing directors "have over forty-five years of combined experience with the United States Secret Service." Paul Rakowski married Amy DiGeso, who was CEO of Mary Kay when BBI worked for the cosmetics firm. (Currently, she is a top executive at Estee Lauder.) Rakowski's current occupation—if he has one—is not publicly known.
Richard Beckett is now CEO of Maryland-based Global Security Services, which, according to its website, offers clients a "suite of business solutions" that includes "intelligence services," "disaster management," "information systems security," and "paramilitary operations." Last year, his firm provided bodyguards to Senator Barack Obama.
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