Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups

[one...two...tree 2,762]

James Ridgeway

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.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/20...tal-groups.html

[Ban Hammer 14,800]

steven, they really are watching you......

[one...two...tree 2,762]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

[almaty 19]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

lol..and plenty of those............

[Ban Hammer 14,800]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

you are contributing to landfills!

[William33 110]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

you are contributing to landfills!

Well at least the diaper contents are biodegradable....

[Ban Hammer 14,800]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

you are contributing to landfills!

Well at least the diaper contents are biodegradable....

that's open to debate, see the thread i just posted.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

you are contributing to landfills!

Well at least the diaper contents are biodegradable....

that's open to debate, see the thread i just posted.

We're hoping to start using cloth diapers at least some of the time, but right now he's filling his diapers as fast as we're changing them.

[Ban Hammer 14,800]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

you are contributing to landfills!

Well at least the diaper contents are biodegradable....

that's open to debate, see the thread i just posted.

We're hoping to start using cloth diapers at least some of the time, but right now he's filling his diapers as fast as we're changing them.

maybe it's time to get one of them little bouncy swings and just position him over the toilet.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

you are contributing to landfills!

Well at least the diaper contents are biodegradable....

that's open to debate, see the thread i just posted.

We're hoping to start using cloth diapers at least some of the time, but right now he's filling his diapers as fast as we're changing them.

maybe it's time to get one of them little bouncy swings and just position him over the toilet.

LOL...next in news...a toddler was found dangling over a toilet for nearly 2 years before his parents finally called the authorities.

[Ban Hammer 14,800]

steven, they really are watching you......

The only thing they'll find in my garbage is dirty diapers.

you are contributing to landfills!

Well at least the diaper contents are biodegradable....

that's open to debate, see the thread i just posted.

We're hoping to start using cloth diapers at least some of the time, but right now he's filling his diapers as fast as we're changing them.

maybe it's time to get one of them little bouncy swings and just position him over the toilet.

LOL...next in news...a toddler was found dangling over a toilet for nearly 2 years before his parents finally called the authorities.

was this in kansas too?