South African chemical giant Sasol became embroiled in allegations of industrial espionage and sabotage against environmental activists, when Greenpeace took an American subsidiary to the Federal Court in Washington, DC.
Other respondents in the case include The Dow Chemical Company and two public relations firms.
Greenpeace accuses Sasol North America and Dow of hiring private investigators to steal its documents, tap its phones and hack into its computers between 1998 and 2000.
It is suing for damages, which it says should be established by a jury. Central to the complaint is a community’s battle against the pollution of Lake Charles, in Louisiana, near the Sasol plant.
Greenpeace claims that local residents suffer high rates of cancer and respiratory problems linked to the company’s production processes.
It claims that the two chemical companies, though their PR agencies, hired a security firm to keep tabs on it and the campaigns it was conducting.
At issue is whether Sasol can be held liable for the alleged sins of a company in which it invested. The Louisiana plant became part of the Sasol stable only in 2001, after the alleged espionage took place.
The chemicals
According to Sasol’s website the Lake Charles plant produces commodity and speciality chemicals for soaps, detergents and personal care products.
At the time of the Greenpeace complaint, it was manufacturing ethylene dichloride, a suspected carcinogen, and vinyl chloride.
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Sasol North America operates as part of Sasol Olefins Surfactants, headquartered in Germany, which is, in turn, part of the chemicals division of Sasol Limited.
“At the time referred to in the Greenpeace complaint the company in question was named Condea Vista Inc and was not owned by Sasol,” said Sasol Group communications chief Jacqui O’Sullivan this week.
O’Sullivan said Sasol acquired Condea Vista in March 2001. “The alleged … espionage relates to a time period more than 10 years ago,” she said.
Condea Vista allegedly leaked up to 21 000 metric tonnes of ethylene dichloride into the Calcasieu River in Louisiana in 1994, sparking an intensive environmental campaign. The area was the subject of an environmental investigation in 2001.
Evidence that Greenpeace plans to use in the lawsuit includes files from security firm Beckett Brown International, consisting of daily logs, emails, reports and phone records.
The 56-page lawsuit alleges that Beckett agents infiltrated a Louisiana community group concerned about the plant’s activities and conducted “surveillance and intrusion” against employees at the plant, as well as community members.
Greenpeace’s claims
The security firm’s agents also allegedly obtained Greenpeace activists’ phone records and sorted through their rubbish.
Greenpeace claims off-duty police officers and former American National Security Agency computer security experts stole thousands of confidential documents from the activists, including campaign plans.
Greenpeace claims Beckett’s billing records show that it spent hundreds of hours spying on it.
“Beckett Brown International identifies Greenpeace as a ‘target’ and, in a 1998 memorandum describing its activities to monitor ‘environmental activist groups’, stated that the information being obtained by Beckett ‘provides insight into the scheduling of environmental protests and actions of the group, corporate targets, the tracking of maritime cargo by the group and internal political issues of the group’,” court papers say.
Philip Radford, executive director of Greenpeace, wrote in his blog that the first purpose of the lawsuit was “to put a dent in the arrogance of these corporate renegades who have for too long believed that ethics do not apply to their pursuit of ever-higher profits”.
“Second, we believe it is every citizen’s right to stand up for the health of their children and community without fearing retribution, an invasion of privacy, conspiracy against them or theft of their belongings.
“We believe Dow and Sasol conspired to do this to Greenpeace; we aim to stop this before it happens to you.”
Greenpeace claims that the public relations firms involved — including Nichols-Dezenhall and Ketchum — acted as middlemen between the chemical companies and Beckett.
Greenpeace apparently smelled a rat when an investigative piece in American magazine Mother Jones in 2008 hinted that Beckett was spying on activists in Louisiana.
The article lifted the lid on the company’s far-flung activities, including work for Walmart, Halliburton and Monsanto. Beckett has since been disbanded.
The state intelligence agency and the military came under fire Thursday after it became known that they did not take due measures although the agency detected signs of a possible North Korean attack on the five border islands in the West Sea in August.
National Intelligence Service director Won Sei-hoon told a parliamentary intelligence committee Wednesday that the agency confirmed the possibility of a North Korean attack on the islands through wiretapping, according to lawmakers who attended the closed-door session.
Won, however, was quoted by the lawmakers as saying, “(The agency) did not expect the North to launch an attack on civilians as it has routinely shown menacing words and behaviors. The military authorities judged that the North could mount an attack just south of the maritime border.”
The lawmakers said the content of the wiretapping was that the North instructed its artillery units in the west coastal region to be ready for firing.
The Nov. 23 artillery shelling on Yeonpyeong Island near the Northern Limit Line, a de facto sea border which the North does not recognize and claims should be redrawn further south, killed four South Koreans including two civilians.
Public criticism has been rising as the military and the intelligence agency were not properly preparing troops on the islands even when the North has recently ramped up its level of provocations and belligerent verbal threats.
The North fired its coastal artillery shells in the West Sea in January, none of which fell in waters south of the NLL.
However, when the North fired its artillery rounds in August, some of them fell south of the NLL, hinting at the possibility that it could mount an attack on the civilian-inhabited islands.
The communist state has repeatedly warned of “physical retaliatory strikes” in a series of official statements, underscoring that their warnings were “by no means empty talks.”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, which holds peacetime operational control, denied what the spy chief said.
“(The NIS) obtained the intelligence on North Korea instructing its coastal artillery unit to be prepared to fire back in response to our troops’ plan to stage a live-fire exercise in August,” said JCS spokesperson Col. Lee Bung-woo in a press briefing, denying that the North was preparing for an “attack on the five border islands.”
The Marine unit on Yeonpyeong Island conducted live-fire exercises with K9 self-propelled howitzers on Aug. 6 and Aug. 8.
The North fired around 110 coastal artillery shells on Aug. 9. About 10 of the shells landed south of the NLL.
Some critics also expressed concern that there might be problems with the spy agency’s analysis of the hard-earned intelligence, saying that the agency appears to have been “lax” in drawing conclusions based on its intelligence.
During Wednesday’s session at the National Assembly, Won also said that the satellite imagery showed that out of the 80 shells the South Korean military fired back, only 45 shells were confirmed to have fallen on North Korean land ? 15 shells in Mudo and 30 shells in Gaemeori.
After the artillery attack began, the South Korean military fired 50 rounds at Mudo and 30 rounds at Gaemeori.
Strategic Forecasting, Inc., a global intelligence company better known as STRATFOR, revealed a satellite imagery showing that many of the K9 shells fell on paddy fields in the North rather than on military facilities.
On the imagery posted on its website, 14 shells were seen to have landed in paddy fields in Gaemeori. It said that imagery was taken on Nov. 26 by the Digital Globe, a satellite picture firm.
This has called into question the capability of the indigenous K9 howitzer, which the military has touted for its strong firepower although some claimed that soldiers performed quite well with the howitzers without adequate intelligence gathering equipment in the emergency situation.
“We were briefed that the K9 howitzer could devastate objects within a radius of 50 meters, but (the satellite imagery) shows just little things were strewn along paddy fields. The NIS chief should scrutinize the case and report it to the president,” said Rep. Kim Moo-sung, floor leader of the ruling Grand National Party, during the party’s Supreme Council meeting.
“I was happy to hear that our military could fire back with K9 howitzers within five minutes of the North firing and was capable of devastating North Korean artillery positions … The public should know the current situation in the military and I hope this serves as an opportunity for military reform.”
During his opening remarks at the parliamentary session, Won said there is a high possibility of North Korea making additional provocations.
“The North is trying to neutralize the NLL and make the five border islands a disputed region. By ratcheting up tensions, the North is taking great pains to secure allegiance for Kim Jong-un (the heir apparent) and support from China,” Won said.
“There is a high possibility of more provocations and (the North) is seeking to divide public opinion (in the South).”
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US and British officials clashed over the use of a Cyprus air base for US spying missions in 2008, with London worried about complicity in potential rights abuses, leaked cables showed.
The government was particularly concerned about U2 spy plane missions to track militants in Lebanon, Turkey and northern Iraq that provided intelligence to Lebanese and Turkish authorities.
The newly-disclosed spat between the two close allies is the latest in a series of revelations stemming from the release of a trove of secret US embassy cables by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.
The cables describe how British officials demanded to be kept better informed about covert missions out of Akrotiri air base and whether other governments were involved, so they could decide if the operations might carry legal or other risks, according to the cables.
The acrimonious discussions, during former president George W. Bush’s administration, led a US diplomat to write that an element of “distrust” had emerged in relations between the traditional allies, according to the 2008 documents, first reported in The Guardian.
Under political pressure at home over Britain’s role in secret CIA flights to transfer terror suspects, officials ordered the Americans to provide in writing more details about planned spying flights out of the base to ensure London was not a party to “unlawful” operations, the cables said.
A British letter to Washington on April 18, 2008, said “recent U2 flights over Turkey/Northern Iraq, and the Lebanon, have highlighted important legal and political issues which require much more careful consideration by HMG.”
Britain believed “it is important for us to be satisfied that HMG is not indirectly aiding the commission of unlawful acts by those governments on the basis of the information gathered through the assistance we provide to the US,” said the letter, quoted in the cable.
London was also concerned about “sensitivities” with the government in Cyprus, to avoid operations that might anger the local government and lead to losing access to the air base, the letter said.
London’s requests angered the Americans, who saw the requirements as hampering counter-terrorism efforts.
“Embassy London is concerned by HMG?s piling on of concerns and conditions, which portend a burdensome process for getting the rest of our intel flights approved,” a cable said.
While the United States shared Britain’s human rights concerns, “we cannot take a risk-avoidance approach to CT (counter-terrorism) in which the fear of potentially violating human rights allows terrorism to proliferate in Lebanon,” the US embassy in London wrote.
London’s concerns were due to an earlier revelation that the US government had transferred captured terror suspects through the British territory of Diego Garcia “without UK permission” and London’s “need to ensure it is not similarly blindsided in the future,” the US embassy wrote.
The embassy urged a high-level US diplomat to intervene after a British official said his government expected Washington to “ensure” any detainees captured in Lebanon with the help of spy flights would be “treated lawfully” by Lebanese authorities, the cables said.
A senior administration official then met with the Foreign Office’s head of defense and intelligence, who appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone.
The foreign office official said the discussions over spy flights were “unnecessarily confrontational” and backed away from demands over detainees captured as a result of the Lebanon spy flights, the embassy wrote.
But the official said Washington had gotten “sloppy” in its use of the Cyprus base, and that the Americans need to fully inform Britain about operations involving third countries, the cable said.
Despite US objections, the official insisted that requests for future flights be made through the US embassy in London and between both governments instead of only going through military channels, it said.
The official said the then foreign secretary David Miliband believed that “policymakers needed to get control of the military.”
It was with great interest that I read your report (Foreign fighters in the shadows, 25 November) on how spy planes have been patrolling British skies trying to pick up voice signatures of British citizens suspected of travelling to Afghanistan to fight against Nato forces, after Yorkshire and Birmingham accents were detected by RAF spy planes in Helmand.
If this is true, it raises a number of serious questions. First, how often have these flights been taking place and under what authority? Second, which areas have these spy planes been operating over? One can only presume that they would be targeting Muslim majority areas in Yorkshire and Birmingham. If so, it makes a mockery of the apology offered by the West Midlands chief constable, Chris Simms, after a secret police operation to place thousands of Muslims in Birmingham under secret camera surveillance was uncovered (Report, 1 October). If spy planes are indeed also operating over Muslim areas in Britain, it once again highlights how little the government really cares about the dignity of its Muslim citizens.
Third, how is the information gathered from such surveillance being used by the authorities? Is it being used as “secret evidence” against terror suspects brought before draconian Special Immigration Appeals Commission courts, where they are unable to see or challenge the allegations against them? One of the justifications often put forward in support of the use of “secret evidence” is that to disclose it to the accused would be to compromise the intelligence services and their methods and strategies. If this is indeed one of those methods, it is understandable why the government is fighting to keep it secret. For were it to become public knowledge, it would further underline the fact that Muslims in Britain are being deliberately targeted by the authorities as a suspect community and treated as second-class citizens.
Police looked at funding for the cameras in 2007, the report said
More than 200 so-called “spy” cameras put up in largely Muslim areas of Birmingham will be removed.
West Midlands Police Authority said Project Champion will be withdrawn and all cameras and poles removed at an estimated cost of £630,000.
The cameras, some of which were hidden, were paid for with £3m of government money earmarked for tackling terrorism.
The decision was rubber-stamped at a routine authority meeting some weeks after the force said they should go.
‘Lack of consultation’
They were erected in the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook areas of the city and members of the community said they were angry about a lack of consultation.
A recent independent report into the project was highly critical of the scheme and the police.
The chief constable of West Midlands Police, Chris Sims, said last month at the last authority meeting that he agreed the cameras should be removed.
All the hidden cameras were removed some months ago and the remainder that were clearly in view were covered with bags.
The police have made assurances that none of them have ever been switched on.
It is not known when the poles and remaining cameras will start to be removed following the authority’s approval.
