Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, NRA hired 'black ops' company that targeted environmental groups

[meegbear]

Source: RawStory.com / Mother Jones

A private security firm managed by former Secret Service officers spied on myriad environmental organizations throughout the 1990s and the year 2000, thieving documents, trying to plant undercover operations and collecting phone records of members, according to a new report.

Documents obtained by James Ridgeway, a Mother Jones correspondent formerly with the Village Voice, reveals the contractor collected confidential internal records -- donor lists, financial statements -- even Social Security numbers, for public relations outfits and "corporations involved in environmental controversies."

Beckett Brown International also offered "intelligence" services to the Carlyle Group, the controversial DC-based investment company; "protective services" for the National Rifle Association; "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company and for Pirelli; "information collection" for Wal-Mart.

"Also listed as clients in BBI records," Ridgeway reveals: "Halliburton and Monsanto."

Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Police_rank_black_ops_on_environmental_0411.html

[sasquatch]

1. Jesus! This is digusting

[izquierdista]

2. The privatization of fascism!

eom

[MidwestTransplant]

3. The CIA has also outsourced much intelligence collection to private companies.

[saigon68]

5. And since they are "Private" Companies

You have no expectation of privacy

And you can't sue them for violating your civil rights

[annabanana]

14. Presumably you COULD hit them with restraining orders, though.

Right?

[saigon68]

15. Technically if you can prove "They did it to you"

But that extends only "To You"

They are always free then to go after someone else.

There are criminal laws like "Burglary" (see Watergate) that hopefully prevent them from breaking in and bugging your phonre.

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Barrett808]

4. And off to the Greatest Page. n/t

[saigon68]

6. "crisis management" for the Gallo wine company

Night Train Express
17.5% alc. by vol.



Don't let the 0.5% less alcohol by volume fool you, the Night Train is all business when it pulls into the station. All aboard to nowhere ! The night train runs only one route: sober to stupid with no round trip tickets available, and a strong likelihood of a train wreck along the way. This train yard favorite is vinted and bottled by E&J Gallo Winery, in in Modesto, CA. Don't bother looking on their web page, because they dare not mention it there. As a clever disguise, the label says that it is made by "Night Train Limited." Some suspect that Night Train is really just Thunderbird with some Kool-Aid-like substance added to try to mask the Clorox flavor. Some of our researchers indicated that it gave them a NyQuil-like drowsiness, and perhaps this is why they put "night" in the name.





As pictured , look for the pigeon feces and you'll find this old bird. As soon as you taste this swill, it will be obvious that its makers cut every corner possible in its production to make it cheap. Self-proclaimed as "The American Classic," Thunderbird is Vinted and bottled by E&J Gallo Winery, in in Modesto, CA. Disguised like Night Train, the label says that it is made by "Thunderbird, Ltd." If your taste buds are shot, and you need to get trashed with a quickness, then "T-bird" is the drink for you. Or, if you like to smell your hand after pumping gas, look no further than Thunderbird. As you drink on, the bird soars higher while you sink lower. The undisputed leader of the five in foulness of flavor, we highly discourage drinking this ghastly mixture of unknown chemicals unless you really are a bum. A convenience store clerk in Show Low, AZ once told me that only the oldest of stumbling indian drunks from the reservation buy Thunderbird. Available in 750 mL and a devastating 50 oz jug.

The history of Thunderbird is as interesting as the drunken effects the one experiences from the wine. When Prohibition ended, Ernest Gallo and his brothers Julio and Joe wanted to corner the young wine market. Earnest wanted the company to become "the Campbell Soup company of the wine industry" so he started selling Thunderbird in the ghettos around the country. Their radio adds featured a song that sang, "What's the word? / Thunderbird / How's it sold? / Good and cold / What's the jive? / Bird's alive / What's the price? / Thirty twice." It is said that Ernest once drove through a tough, inner city neighborhood and pulled over when he saw a bum. When Gallo rolled down his window and called out, "What's the word?" the immediate answer from the bum was, "Thunderbird."

WARNING: This light yellow liquid turns your lips and mouth black! A mysterious chemical reaction similar to disappearing-reappearing ink makes you look like you've been chewing on hearty clumps of charcoal.

[Auggie]

19. I don't know whether to laugh or puke

[saigon68]

28. Its supposed to be funny

On the North side of Milwaukee they aways say give a pint in a skirt (Skirt=paper bag).

Although its hard to refuse a 30 pack of Natty Ice for $11.30 a case 5.9 % alcohol

But true street bums always go for Cisco, Night Train etc You get more bang for your buck.

[Auggie]

39. Either way, it's poison like that helped propel Gallo into the largest wine

company in the U.S. (though they may have been overtaken by Constellation in the last few years).

[Submariner]

20. At the sub barracks we stepped up from T-Bird

to Boones Farm. That was better than the Gallo white port at 55 cents a pint I tried.

About a decade or more ago when Gallo got into the 'visit our vineyard and watch us play respectable' groove, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself knowing it's rep to all the drinkers in the '60s.

[Acadia Blue]

7. Boycott the pigs. K-mart , target...use other discount stores if necessary.

[defendandprotect]

8. Bookmarked this one . . . takes a lot of corruption to get us where we are now --!!!

Thank you -- back later

[xxqqqzme]

9. I hate gallo - They refused to recognize the UFW

& hired thugs to beat up the organizers. I have never bought any gallo wine because of that. Someone brought a bottle to the house one night for dinner. When they left, I gave it back to them.

[kenfrequed]

10. Truly revolting

Modern day Pinkertons. Or perhaps this is more akin to a creeping kind of "fall of rome" thing. After all, mercenary armies and hired thugs were a good part of the fall of the Roman Republic. Obviously now adays we look back at Rome and question how democratic it was, but there certainly were differences between the Republic and the empire.

[Wizard777]

11. This is industrial espionage

[defendandprotect]

12. In other words, we haven't really been engaged in political battle . . .

we've been engaged with fighting off Mafia-minded thugs ---

I'm surprised that we haven't seen ExxonMobil's name there --- !!!

Though Kraft, of course --- and Monsanto are there!! GE?

[defendandprotect]

13. And these are the things we know about now . . . what else don't we know?

[gratuitous]

16. Afraid of a fair fight, are they?

Guess all those guns the NRA has doesn't make them feel any safer from us tree hugging hippies.

[Trillo]

17. Another obscene danger of "concentration of capital"

At least now I feel better that I haven't eaten at Taco Bell for many years. The little locally owned taco shops are much better, at least around these parts. More authentic, as well.

I have no idea what I can do to chop off Halliburton's and Monsanto's money though. Congress can do something, however. But I imagine some of them are conflicted since those companies are deep campaign pockets when election time rolls around.

Why isn't this 'private investigation' and black-ops crap the companies are funding illegal, and why aren't they being prosecuted?

[berni_mccoy]

18. Must be another subsidiary of Mark Penn's (Hillary's chief advisor) Company.

[truedelphi]

21. Monsanto was the first company that ever tried to take out my computer with a virus

I'd luckily installed one of the early internet Firewalls and virus protectors the week before.

And the Clinton administration blocked my home phone from being able to ring into their various departments. That occurred after I cracked the code and got myself some three months of chatting with Clinton's staff, asking such things as is it true that we took ouit a maternity ward in a Belgrade hospital this morning?

Oddly enough the Bush administration has left me free rein - until about three months after Katrina, I could call and talk to Andy Card or Karl Rove personally.

Of course this might only mean that they are less sophisticated when it comes to communications than the Clintons.

[darue]

22. people have been warning about this for a decade. we are one step away from death squads folks

fight back and make our political leaders do something about this. why is no DA prosecuting this company BBI? If I did that shit to the executives of wal-mart you k now damn well I'd be in jail today for illegally "spying" on them, stealing documents, etc... This is double-standard bullshit and something must be done about these private companies, because blackwater and the rest will kill your friends and children with impunity in a few short years if this isn't stopped.

[Lorien]

23. Death squads is a bit extreme and unnecessary. Many corporations

cause death with defective products and wars of choice, but I don't believe that roving death squads are going to be targeting tree planting kids.

This IS an issue that needs to make it into many mainstream media sources, though. Multiple criminal acts are being committed here, as a Sasquatch noted upthread, it's privatized fascism at it's worst. Both Democratic candidates need to address this situation ASAP. But I doubt that either will, as neither is as good a friend to the environment as they are to big corporations.

[darue]

26. I said "one step away" and we are. they've made their lists, checked them twice...

their work will look like random break-ins and street crime at first. Maybe it won't come to that, I hope not, but they have the means and ability in their hands and we're only left to hope they don't decide they need to use it.

[hisownpetard]

24. This is beyond belief. Is anything being done against these companies?

[hisownpetard]

25. K&R.

[DainBramaged]

27. All you can do is stop doing business with them and let them know why

WalMart fucking America since Sam Walton became worm food.

[bananas]

29. Exclusive: Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups

Source: Mother Jones

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.

By James Ridgeway
Additional reporting by David Corn, Jennifer Wedekind, Daniel Schulman, and Nick Baumann

April 11, 2008

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.

<snip>

Supporting Documents
August 20, 1998 Briefing (PDF)
Daron Work Report (PDF)
BBI Report for Ketchum (PDF)
"Dow Global Tracking Team" Report (PDF)
Florida PI's Dumpster-Diving Attempt (PDF)
The "Glow-in-The-Dark Tacos" Emails (PDF)
Handwritten Document With Greenpeace Door Codes (PDF)
"Sat Surveillance" Outside Fenton's Home (PDF)
Nestle Project Billing (PDF)
"Our Operative Should Be Inquiring But Not Participatory" (PDF)
Possible Target Addresses (PDF)
Lawyer Doubts Dumpster-Diving's Legality (PDF)



Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/04/firm-spied-on-environmental-groups.html

[niyad]

30. k & r

back in the 60's and 70's, the fbi infiltrated civil rights and peace and women's groups. alas, nothing new here.

[texastoast]

31. Recommended n/t

[niyad]

32. remember the scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 with that dangerous peace group in CA?

[Kaleko]

33. Everybody knows, that's how it goes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h27HRNm_r4U


Meh.

[laststeamtrain]

34. K & R n/t

[Initech]

35. Corporate-sponsored dictatorship, brought to you by Taco Bell!

Shit like this is really starting to piss me off. Yet another reason not to patronize Taco Bell or Walmart. :argh:

[Orwellian_Ghost]

36. K&R n/t

[Omaha Steve]

37. I started a local group in the early 70's ( I was in Jr. High)

I've been pro active for the environment ever since. Wonder how many lists I ended up on?

RECAP Recycling Environmental Conservation Action Program

We had several Florence area groups participating before it self destructed.

[nashville_brook]

40. this is why we used to have a Bill of Rights.

[nashville_brook]

41. this is fascism. these are warlords.

[DarkTirade]

42. The dystopia starts in the here and now.

[lonestarnot]

43. K & R

[Echo In Light]

44. K&R