Anti-fracking protest. (photo: Christian O'Rourke/Survival Media Agency)
Federal
Agents Went Undercover to Spy on Anti-Fracking Movement, Emails Reveal
By Lee Fang and Steve Horn,
The Intercept
20 July 16
When
more than 300 protesters assembled in
May at the Holiday Inn in Lakewood, Colorado — the venue chosen by the Bureau
of Land Management (BLM) for an auction of oil and gas leases on public lands —
several of the demonstrators were in fact undercover agents sent by law
enforcement to keep tabs on the demonstration, according to emails obtained
by The Intercept.
The
“Keep it in the Ground” movement, a broad effort to block the development of
drilling projects, has rapidly gained traction over the last year, raising pressure
on the Obama administration to curtail hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking,
and coal mining on federal public lands. In response, government agencies and
industry groups have sharply criticized the activists in public, while quietly
moving to track their activities.
The
emails, which were obtained through an open records act request, show that the
Lakewood Police Department collected details about
the protest from undercover officers as
the event was being planned. During the auction, both local law enforcement and
federal agents went undercover among
the protesters.
The
emails further show that police monitored Keep
it in the Ground participating groups such as 350.org, Break Free
Movement, Rainforest Action Network, and WildEarth Guardians, while relying
upon intelligence gathered by Anadarko,
one of the largest oil and gas producers in the region.
“Gentlemen,
Here is some additional intelligence on the group you may be dealing with
today,” wrote Kevin Paletta, Lakewood’s then-chief of police, on May 12, the
day of the protest. The Anadarko report, forwarded to Paletta by
Joni Inman, a public relations consultant, warned of activist trainings
conducted by “the very active off-shoot of 350.org” that had “the goal
of encouraging ‘direct action’ such as blocking, vandalism, and trespass.”
The
protesters waved signs and marched outside of the Holiday Inn. The auction went
on as planned and there were no arrests.
“I
believe the BLM reached out to us,” Steve Davis, the public information officer
for the Lakewood police, told The Intercept about preparations
for the protest. He added that the protest was “very peaceful.”
“Our
goal is to provide for public safety and the safety of our employees,” says
Steven Hall, the BLM Colorado Communications Director, when asked about the
agency’s undercover work. “Any actions that we take are designed to achieved
those goals. We do not discuss the details of our law enforcement activities.”
BLM reimbursed the
Lakewood police for costs associated with covering the protest, the emails and
a scanned copy of the check show.
Aggressive
Stance
Despite
a relatively uncontroversial protest, the tactics revealed by the emails, recent public statements,
and other maneuvers suggest that the federal government is beginning to take a
more aggressive stance toward the Keep it in the Ground movement.
“I’m
really wondering what more the BLM is up to,” said Jeremy Nichols, a climate
and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. “Some of the emails
indicate more extensive intel gathering on their end.”
“Why
are climate activists, who are only calling on the BLM to follow President
Obama’s lead and heed universally accepted science, facing this kind of uphill
response?” Nichols asked rhetorically. “It’s a shame that the BLM has turned
climate concerns into a law enforcement issue instead of a genuine policy
discussion.”
During
a congressional hearing in March, Neil Kornze — the agency’s Director and
former senior policy advisor for U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid —
appeared to compare the anti-fracking activists to the armed anti-government
militia members who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.
“We
have had a situation where we have had militia; we’ve had people raising arms
at different times. We are on heightened alert and we are concerned about
safety. And so a situation that we are not used to, separating out who is a
bidder and who is not, gives us pause,” Kornze said, explaining to GOP congressman that
his agency faced “abnormal security” concerns.
The
bureau maintains its own force of special agents to investigate crimes
committed on public lands. The website for the agency notes that
“investigations may require the use of undercover officers, informants, surveillance
and travel to various locations throughout the United States.”
Broader
Trend
In
recent years federal and private sector groups have poured resources into
surveilling environmental organizations.
In
2013, The Guardian revealed that the FBI
had spied on activists organizing opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. The
agency “collated inside knowledge about forthcoming protests, documented the
identities of individuals photographing oil-related infrastructure, scrutinized
police intelligence and cultivated at least one informant.” The FBI later confirmed that the
investigation violated its own guidelines.
In
2011, an executive with Anadarko boasted that his
company was deploying military-like psychological warfare techniques to deal
with the “controversy that we as an industry are dealing with,” calling the
opposition to the industry “an insurgency.”
Online
Auctions to “End the Circus”
The
focus on preventing the leasing of public lands for fracking gained national
headlines in 2008 when activist Tim DeChristopher successfully bid on 22,000
acres of oil and gas land in Utah. DeChristopher, who served two years in prison,
did not intend to pay but won the bid in order to disrupt the auction and call
attention to the leasing program. That pricing regime allows private
corporations to pay deeply discounted rates — as little as $1.50 per acre — for
drilling rights.
In
2009, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Inspector General released
a report calling on the
bureau to do a study on “which auction process is best suited for oil and gas
leases” in order to prevent the next Tim DeChristopher, whose action landed an
explicit mention in the report’s introduction. An email exchange from the
day before the Lakewood Holiday Inn action shows both a Lakewood police officer
and BLM officer on high alert about the possibility of another
DeChristopher-type action taking place. Among the choices laid out in the
report as a possible new bidding method was online bidding.
Just
days after the Lakewood protest, Kathleen Sgamma — a lobbyist for
industry-funded group Western Energy Alliance — advocated for online bidding as
a means to “end the circus.” In a May 18 email, BLM Office of
Law Enforcement Special Agent-in-Charge Gary Mannino thanked Lakewood Police
Chief Kevin Paletta for his department’s help and conveyed that public auctions
could soon become a thing of the past.
Congress
has followed suit. On June 24, Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., and Rep. Garret
Graves, R-La., introduced Innovation in Offshore Leasing Act
(H.R. 5577), which calls for online bidding for oil and gas
contained in waters controlled by the federal government. On July 6, the U.S.
House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources held a hearing on the bill
and it has since passed out of the
House Natural Resources Committee.
While
the oil and gas industry has come out in support of online bidding, and one
contractor in particular named EnergyNet stands to profit from
such an arrangement, several environmental groups issued a statement decrying the
shift toward online bidding. EnergyNet, whose CEO testified at the June 24
congressional hearing, will oversee a September 20
BLM auction originally scheduled to
unfold in Washington, D.C.
Two
recently-released studies concluded that phasing
out fossil fuel leases on public lands is crucial for meeting the 2° C
climate change temperature-rise goal, with one concluding that even
burning the existing fossil fuels already leased on public lands would surpass
the 2° C goal. After the release of those two studies, environmental
groups filed a legal petition with
the Interior Department calling for a moratorium on federal fossil fuels
leases.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
No comments:
Post a Comment