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Beckett Brown Int'l S2i

now defunct

morphed into various

incl http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Annapolis_Group  tossed nader out of dn conv

http://motherjones.com/print/15506

spooky biz

target list: U.S.

Public

Interest

Research

Group,

Friends

of

the

Earth,

National

Environmental

Trust/GE

Food

Alert,

Center

for

Food

Safety,

Environmental

Media

Services,

Environmental

Working

Group,

Institute

for

Global

Communications,

Pesticide

Action

Network.

--

mojo

Black Ops, Green Groups

Why did a private security firm spy on Greenpeace and other environmental outfits?

By James Ridgeway | Fri Apr. 11, 2008 12:00 AM PDT

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 [1] 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.

Supporting Documents

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 [2], 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 [3], 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 [4], 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 [5] 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 [11] 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, a former naval special operations 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 [13], 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 togenetically 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 [6] 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 [9], 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 [8], "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 [10] 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, Greenpeacehas 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 scientistsaiding 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 [11] 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.

Source URL: http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/exclusive-cops-and-former-secret-service-agents-ran-black-ops-green-groups

Links:

[1] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/082098-Operative-Briefing.pdf

[2] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Daron-GP-Work-Report.pdf

[3] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Dioxin-Ketchum-GP-Report.pdf

[4] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Dow-Global-Trends-Tracking-Team.pdf

[5] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Florida-Trash-Fax.pdf

[6] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Glow-In-Dark-Tacos-Emails.pdf

[7] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Handwritten-GP-Door-Codes.pdf

[8] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Internal%20Report-Sat-Surveillance.pdf

[9] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Nestle%20Project.pdf

[10] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Operative-Inquiring.pdf

[11] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Possible%20Sites-Addresses.pdf

[12] http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2008/04/Rakowski-Queen-Dumpster-Diving-Memo.pdf

[13] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/6/40/a15

morphs into:

Chesapeake Strategies Group (CSG) describes itself as "a multinational security and investigative firm comprised of professionals with extensive security experience." Its website lists affiliated offices in Paris, Beijng, Tokyo, Qatar, and Kuwait. [1]

Contents[hide]

Clients

The firm's website states mentions "Bechtel Infrastructure, Exxon Mobil, and high profile executives and entertainment personalities, Al Pacino, Russell Crowe and General Norman Schwartzkopf" among its clients. [1]

CSG "has been active in protecting research facilities from animal-rights activists," reported Mother Jones magazine. [2] A December 2004 news story stated that "Tim Ward of the Maryland-based Chesapeake Strategies Group Inc. ... has worked for eight years with animal research facilities." [3]

In 2002, CSG "won a $ 125,000 contract from the [U.S.] General Services Administration for recreational, hospitality, law enforcement, facilities, industrial and environmental services and products." [4]

CSG "was listed on a 2005 line-up of Defense Department contractors," according to Mother Jones. [2]

Services

CSG lists its areas of expertise as "international intelligence collection, threat assessment, special investigations, due diligence, technical and physical security, event planning and management, security training programs, and executive protection." [1]

Personnel

Contact information

Chesapeake Strategies Group, Inc.

2315-B Forest Drive Suite 17

Annapolis , Maryland 21401

Phone: (410) 643-9200

Fax: (410) 643-9280

Website: http://www.chesapeakegroup.net/

SourceWatch resources

External links

Sources

  2. ↑1.0 1.1 1.2 "Homepage," Chesapeake Strategies Group website, accessed April 2008.
  3. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 James Ridgeway, "Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups", Mother Jones, April 11, 2008.
  4. ↑ Jordan Erin, "Security minimal at animal lab hit by activists," Des Moines Register (Iowa), December 1, 2004.
  5. ↑ " Federal Contract Awards Announced for Maryland, Virginia & Washington, D.C., March 29 - April 4," States News Service, April 9, 2002.

Articles

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Categories: Private intelligence-gathering firms | Private military corporations | United States | Stubs

Mary Lou Sapone (who sometimes goes by her maiden name, "Mary McFate") is a corporate spy with a long history of infiltrating activist groups. In the 1980s, she worked with "Perceptions International, a private Wackenhut-styled security firm" [1]. In the 1990s, she worked with the Maryland-based security firm Beckett Brown International (BBI). [2] In the late 1990s and early 2000s, she ran her own intelligence-gathering business, which she called Strategic Solutions Group LLC. [1]

Contents[hide]

1990s - 2000s: Infiltrating gun control groups

As Mary McFate (her maiden name), Sapone began volunteered with numerous local and regional gun control groups in the late 1990s. In 2005, she even ran (unsuccessfully) in 2005 for a board position with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. [1]

Sapone was apparently gathering intelligence for the National Rifle Association. "In a 2003 deposition, Tim Ward, who had been president of the Maryland-based security firm Beckett Brown International, said that the NRA had been 'a client' of Sapone's," reported Mother Jones magazine. "Recent emails indicate that in 2007 and 2008 Sapone was working" with Patrick O'Malley, a former NRA staffer then lobbying on behalf of his old employer. Sapone was "well-positioned for many years to provide the NRA -- or any other gun rights groups -- the plans, secrets, and inside gossip of practically the entire gun violence prevention movement." For example, Sapone pushed U.S. groups to take part in a United Nations meeting on gun control in Spring 2008. They did, and "McFate ended up being able to learn what the anti-gun forces were planning for the UN session -- including the delegates they intended to lobby, and the arguments they would highlight." [1]

1990s: Infiltrating environmental groups

In 2008, Mother Jones magazine reported, "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 :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: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." [3]

1980s: Infiltrating animal rights groups

Mary Lou Sapone appears at length in the chapter "Spies for Hire" in the 1995 book Toxic Sludge Is Good For You! [4] by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, in subsection titled "Bombing the Boss," pages 61-64. Here is a very brief excerpt:

"Animal rights activists began to have suspicions about Sapone. Unlike most activists, she seemed to have unlimited time and money. She seemed unusually inquisitive, making a point of getting to know all of the key people in the movement. ... Betsy Swart, chairwoman of a San Francisco-based animal rights group, became so suspicious of Sapone's questions that 'I made up a date and told her there would be a demonstration.' Within days, Swart said, she received a call from a government official asking about the demonstration. Sapone frequently urged others to commit violent or illegal disruptions."(P. 61-62, TSIGFY) [5]

SourceWatch resources

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 James Ridgeway, Daniel Schulman and David Corn, "There's Something About Mary: Unmasking a Gun Lobby Mole," Mother Jones, July 30, 2008.

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Animal-Rights Case: Terror or Entrapment?

By CELESTINE BOHLEN

Published: March 03, 1989

In the early hours of Nov. 11, the police arrested a Queens woman, saying she had planted a bomb at the Norwalk headquarters of the United States Surgical Corporation. The bomb plot - called a protest against the company's use of dogs in surgical training - was quickly condemned by the company as an example of growing fanaticism in the animal-rights movement.

But the crude device placed that night turned out to be a bombshell of a different sort. Subsequently, United States Surgical confirmed that it had been keeping close tabs on the suspect, Fran Stephanie Trutt, since last May, recording her phone calls and observing her movements.

The day before she was arrested, Ms. Trutt was on the telephone three times with an undercover agent working for the company; a second agent drove her from Queens to Norwalk with the bomb in the back of his van.

These revelations have prompted a furious debate that cuts through the volatile issue of animal rights to questions about the propriety of aggressive corporate spying, especially against protest movements.

Was United States Surgical taking sensible measures to protect itself, or did it cross the line into entrapment? Were the two undercover agents heroes, as they themselves maintain? Or were they overzealous amateurs who promoted a crime? The Trutt case is unfolding as animal-rights groups are already drawing national attention with new, aggressive campaign tactics, from spray-painting fur coats to infiltrating medical research laboratories.

Spokesmen for United States Surgical contend that repeated threats by Ms. Trutt against Leon C. Hirsch, the company's president, in more than 30 hours of recorded conversations provide ample justification for their acts.

They say the company and its security consultant,Perceptions International, informed state, Federal and local authorities of the undercover operation when United States Surgical first had evidence of a bomb threat last June. The operation, the spokesmen say, was turned over to the Norwalk police on Nov. 9, as soon as the company's agents realized Ms. Trutt intended to carry out her plans. ''When the facts are out, you will see that everything was done for the protection of myself and my people, with the full cooperation of the police,'' said Mr. Hirsch. ''Don't forget: This lady tried to premeditatively murder me.''

But lawyers for Ms. Trutt, who has been indicted on state and Federal charges, argue that she was set up and that any statements by her about harming Mr. Hirsch or his company were simply the musings of a woman gripped by outrage over what she saw as needless animal abuse.

''U.S. Surgical agents scoped Fran Trutt out with considerable care over an extended period of time,'' said John Williams, a New Haven lawyer who is representing her against attempted murder charges in Connecticut. ''It was their operation; that is the centerpiece of our defense.''

Mr. Williams said company agents not only encouraged Ms. Trutt to obtain the bombs, but even provided money to buy them. He says he has further evidence that after Ms. Trutt was in jail, the agents continued to tape conversations with her secretly and even entered her apartment in Brooklyn and seized the contents of her desk.

Finally, Mr. Williams argues, the company's use of double agents went far beyond the requirements of the case and that in its search for violent offenders, the company actually tried to undermine a legitimate movement by sowing misinformation and even deploying agent provocateurs. The Angry Dog Lover And a Harried Company Much in the case turns on the character of Fran Trutt, a 33-year-old science tutor who lived alone in a basement apartment without a phone in Jackson Heights, Queens. She had on-again, off-again jobs at local yeshivas and attended animal-rights protests, but her associates say that much of her emotional life was invested in her ''babies,'' as she called the four dogs she cared for in a nearby garage.

Ms. Trutt's love of dogs led her to United States Surgical, for the last eight years the target of animal-rights advocates protesting its use of dogs to give surgeons experience in the operation of its patented surgical stapler. Friends of Animals, a Norwalk-based organization that has spearheaded the protests since 1981, has said Ms. Trutt, otherwise unknown to them, attended one protest outside the company in 1986.

''I remembered her because she was the one trampling the azaleas,'' said Priscilla Feral, president of the organization.

But there was another side to Fran Trutt. The police said a search of her apartment after her arrest turned up more weapons - two pipe bombs in an attache case under a sink, a sawed-off shotgun and a pipe gun.

Two young men from Queens - Darrell Benvenuto, 20, and Marc Anagnos, 21 - have been charged with supplying Ms. Trutt with three bombs, including the one transported to Norwalk. The two men have not yet been indicted.

It is not clear when Ms. Trutt began to focus on United States Surgical and Leon Hirsch. The first the company knew of her enmity was at a demonstration in May 1988, when she volunteered to one of the company's agents that she intended to kill Mr. Hirsch, as well as a former lover who had jilted her. People who have heard the tapes say Ms. Trutt's desire for revenge in her personal life predated and seemed to take precedence over her intentions against Mr. Hirsch.

In the years since animal-rights protesters fastened on his company, Mr. Hirsch has received a number of threats, some personal, vitriolic and anti-Semitic. The company's public-relations office keeps color snapshots of vociferous demonstrators, their placards and slogans, like one in 1982 scrawled in red paint across the company driveway: ''Kill Hirsch.'' The Company Agents Who Acted as Informers ''You have to take stuff like this seriously,'' Mr. Hirsch said in a recent interview, accompanied by John Scanlon, a New York media consultant he had hired to help weather the storm of publicity. ''We have felt since the early 1980's that the animal-rights movement was edging toward violence, and to protect our property and our people, we started developing surveillance systems,'' he said. ''If you know someone wants to kill you, any prudent person has to take steps. Look, I would not be sitting here talking tonight if it were not for Mary Lou Sapone.''

Mary Lou Sapone, 42, who lives in Ridgefield, Conn., and has worked for Perceptions International within the animal-rights movement since June 1987, was the agent who met Ms. Trutt at the demonstration in 1988 and reported the threat to Mr. Hirsch. Ms. Sapone said Ms. Trutt struck her then as ''persistent and focused.''

In the next seven months, the two women met twice, both times in Queens near La Guardia Airport. Most of their contact was through phone calls made by Ms. Trutt from several phone booths.

In September, two months before the reputed bombing attempt, another agent - Marcus Mead, owner of a window-washing company in Westport, Conn. - was dispatched by Perceptions to befriend Ms. Trutt, according to an interview Mr. Mead gave to The Westport News in January in which he blew the cover of the secret operation. Mr. Mead's lawyer, Richard Meehan Sr., has since barred his client from talking to the press.

Again, dogs provided the link, as Mr. Mead, approaching Ms. Trutt in a pizzeria, asked for advice about his dog's puppies. According to the printed account, Ms. Trutt told Mr. Mead on Nov. 8 that she planned to attack Mr. Hirsch.

According to United States Surgical, the Norwalk police took control of the operation a day later, instructing Mr. Mead to drive Ms. Trutt and the bomb to Connecticut on Nov. 10. The Chief of the Norwalk police, Carl La Bianca, declined to comment on the case.

Ms. Trutt - now in jail in Connecticut, her bail set at $500,000 - has contended since her arrest that she was set up, but her suspicions about Mary Lou Sapone were apparently late in coming. Ms. Trutt's lawyers say she continued to talk to Ms. Sapone after her arrest, even trusting the informer to look after her beloved dogs.

''I would say she trusted me - on certain levels,'' Ms. Sapone said in an interview last week in Mr. Scanlon's office, where she was accompanied by a company spokeswoman and lawyer. ''At other times she did not. She never told me where she lived. She told me she had two bombs, but she didn't say where.

''I felt from that first day she was serious, and as we talked that summer, I knew she was serious about killing at least two people.''

Since Ms. Sapone's role in the case became public, animal-rights campaigners across the country have been retracing her activities in the animal-rights movement.

''She was at every meeting of at least three people, always milking people for information,'' said Wayne Pacelle, now executive director in Boston of the Fund for Animals. ''She spared no expense, no amount of boredom to keep up.''

Although most of her activities were in Connecticut, Ms. Sapone also attended demonstrations in Washington and pursued groups on the West Coast.

Ms. Sapone insists she remained passive in all of her contacts, but others remember it differently. ''She served not only as an informant,'' Mr. Pacelle recalled, ''but as a provocateur, often suggesting illegal activities.'' Questions About Roles Of Police and Company The growing strength of the animal-rights movement has been an undercurrent in the Trutt case, although no one has argued that Ms. Trutt was acting on behalf of any group. The bitterness on both sides has given the debate another dimension, both personal and ideological.

Ms. Feral, who argues that Friends of Animals has been a target of infiltrators and has been bugged by microphones planted by United States Surgical, thinks that an early attempt by people who opposed the animal-rights movement to capitalize on the attempted bombing has backfired.

''They want to be the victims and make out that we are the violent fringe,'' she said.

The police role in the Trutt case has also raised questions - in particular whether law-enforcement agents should not have stepped in earlier. The Norwalk Police Department is examining how officers handled the information from Perceptions International, based in Stratford, Conn. The Federal Bureau of Investigation last week declined to comment on the case. Now the Protesters Are Being Watched Mr. Hirsch says other companies that have become targets of animal-rights protesters have applauded his handling of the case.

Tom Riley, vice president of the Fur Retailers Information Council, which keeps track of animal-rights protests for the fur industry, said the council routinely supplied the Justice Department with photographs of demonstrators outside fur shops. The demonstrators, he argued, ''may be the same people who slash fur coats with razor blades or shoot at shop windows.''

But he said the council has never used informers.

The president of Perceptions International, Jan Reber, argues that his work is not investigative but ''information gathering,'' which is why he has not sought a private investigator's license from the State of Connecticut.

Speaking in an office heavily decorated with animal skins, imitation elephant tusks and African artifacts -many gifts from an earlier career as a security adviser in Africa - Mr. Reber stressed that he kept his distance from law-enforcement agencies.

''We are not a front for the government,'' he said. He described his concern's specialty as ''social issues that have a coercive element.'' The animal-rights movement, he said, is not the major focus of his company.

But that field appears to be growing. Late last year another concern headed by Mr. Reber, Perceptions Press, came out with a controversial newsletter, The Animal Rights Reporter, which covers government regulations on medical research but also highlights the potential threat posed by animal-rights groups.

In an article in the December issue, before the revelations about the activities of Perceptions' employees, the newsletter said:

''Just as the shooting down of a civilian Rhodesian airline by a local terrorist group in the 1970's created an environment in which murderous attacks like the Achille Lauro incident could be conceived and implemented, so might Trutt's action stand as a milestone for the animal-rights movement.''

f/u

Greenpeace Sues Chemical and PR Firms for "Unlawful" Spying

MoJo blew the lid off corporate ops against green groups. Now one of the targets is fighting back.

By James Ridgeway and Daniel Schulman | Mon Nov. 29, 2010 12:38 PM PST

  • * *

More than two years ago, Mother Jones exposed [1] a private security firm run by former Secret Service agents that had spied on an array of environmental groups on behalf of corporate clients, in some cases infiltrating unsuspecting organizations with operatives posing as activists. Now, one of the targets of this corporate espionage is fighting back.

On Monday, Greenpeace filed suit [2] in federal district court in Washington, DC, against the Dow Chemical Company and Sasol North America, charging that the two multinational chemical manufacturers sought to thwart its environmental campaigns against genetically engineered foods and chemical pollution through elaborate undercover operations. Also named in the suit are Dezenhall Resources and Ketchum, public relations firms hired by Sasol and Dow respectively, and four ex-employees of that now-defunct security firm, Beckett Brown International (BBI).

The suit charges that between 1998 and 2000 the chemical companies, the PR firms, and BBI "conspired to and did surveil, infiltrate and steal confidential information from Greenpeace with the intention of preempting, blunting or thwarting its environmental campaigns. These unlawful activities included trespassing on the property of Greenpeace, infiltrating its offices, meetings and electronic communications under false pretenses and/or by force, and by these means, stealing confidential documents, data and trade secrets from Greenpeace." Greenpeace is seeking an injunction against further trespass and thefts of trade secrets, as well as compensatory and punitive damages.

The lawsuit stems from an April 2008 Mother Jones article that detailed a series of black ops carried out by BBI against Greenpeace and other environmental groups. The story was based largely on internal BBI records made available to the magazine by John Dodd, a principal investor and officer of BBI. At the time, Dodd said he decided to come forward after discovering that BBI's employees had defrauded him and engaged in unscrupulous snooping on activist groups and other targets.

Mother Jones reporters sifted through thousands of pages of internal documents that included billing records, surveillance reports, and email correspondence from undercover operatives in Washington and Lake Charles, Louisiana. Contained in the trove were a variety of internal Greenpeace records, including strategy memos, campaign plans, donor lists, and documents that included credit card information and the social security numbers of Greenpeace employees. Also unearthed were similar records belonging to other organizations, including Friends of the Earth, GE Food Alert, the Center for Food Safety, and Fenton Communications, a PR firm that represents various environmental groups.

Following Mother Jones' story, Greenpeace officials were granted access to Dodd's BBI archive, where they eventually recovered more than 1000 pages of internal Greenpeace records. The complaint charges that: "The vast majority of Greenpeace’s internal documents that were ultimately recovered from BBI were in pristine condition, giving rise to the inference that these documents were not taken from trash dumpsters, but rather from recycling receptacles and/or…from inside Greenpeace’s office."

BBI's operations included clandestine night-time dumpster diving sorties into Greenpeace’s trash and recycling bins in the alleys of downtown Washington. The firm's operatives were assisted by at least one active duty Washington police officer, who may have used his badge to gain entrance into Greenpeace's gated trash area, the environmental group alleges. Between July 1998 and October 2000, BBI operatives stole internal Greenpeace records on at least 100 occasions, the group claims.

According to the complaint, internal BBI documents show that "BBI employees or contractors tested multiple three- and four-digit codes and documented whether each code was successful in granting access" to Greenpeace's Washington headquarters. The suit also charges that BBI "appears to have broken into the offices" of a Louisiana law firm engaged in litigation against the Condea Vista [3] chemical company (now Sasol North America).

Undercover operatives employed by BBI organized an elaborate system to penetrate Greenpeace, sending at least one contractor posing volunteer to surveil Greenpeace's Washington offices, the complaint states. Meanwhile, other BBI employees and contractors spied on Greenpeace employees and other activists in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where environmentalists were engaged in a fierce campaign against Condea Vista.

Condea Vista employed BBI directly and through its PR firm, Dezenhall-Nichols (now Dezenhall Resources). From October 1998 until July 1999, Dezenhall paid BBI about $150,000 to work on the "U Street Project"—a reference to Greenpeace's then-headquarters on Washington's U Street. Dezenhall's chemical company client was particularly interested in campaigns targeting the manufacture and sale of plastics containing the polymer polyvinyl chloride. The objectives of the U Street operation, according to the complaint and internal BBI records, "explicitly included obtaining financial information about Greenpeace: 'funding'; '[d]onors: corporate political, private'; and 'money trails.'"

Meanwhile, BBI also launched a similar operation in Louisiana dubbed the "Lake Charles Project" to collect internal information on campaigns by Greenpeace and other environmental groups. For the Lake Charles operation, BBI relied heavily on a freelance "research consultant" named Mary Lou Sapone [4]. She recruited a school teacher to infiltrate a local environmental groups, where he eventually become a board member. The Greenpeace complaint alleges that Sapone also "cased Greenpeace’s U Street Office while masquerading as a prospective campaign volunteer." In July 2008, Mother Jones revealed [5] that Sapone, using her maiden name, McFate, had for more than a decade infiltrated the gun control groups on behalf of the National Rifle Association.

While BBI was working for Condea Vista, it alsotargeted Greenpeace on behalf of Dow. At the time, Greenpeace was aggressively campaigning against the spread of genetic engineered foods and was pushing to get the federal government to impose strict regulations on the industry. (Dow is a major player in this field.) The suit alleges that Dow hired the public relations firm Ketchum to keep tabs on the plans of its critics; the PR firm in turn employed BBI to spy on Greenpeace.

The complaint describes a July 1999 meeting in which representative of BBI, Ketchum, and Dow convened at an Annapolis, Maryland, hotel “to discuss the surveillance of Greenpeace and other environmental organizations critical of, or likely to criticize Dow Chemical." There, the BBI team "delivered a power-point presentation about Greenpeace which included confidential, prospective budget information and campaign plans." According to the complaint [6], Ketchum paid BBI more than $125,000 for confidential information on Greenpeace.

Dow Chemical, Ketchum, and Dezenhall Resources did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Informed of the law suit by Mother Jones, a Sasol North America spokeswoman said, "Wow." She then directed a reporter to a past statement by the company saying it had no comment on matters that occurred prior to Sasol taking ownership of Condea Vista in 2001.

On Monday, Greenpeace posted a "SpyGate" page [2] on its website devoted to the lawsuit. "The purpose of this lawsuit is twofold," the group explained [7] on its site. "First, we aim 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."

  • * *

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2010/11/greenpeace-sues-dow-sasol-dezenhall-ketchum-spying

Links:

[1] http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/exclusive-cops-and-former-secret-service-agents-ran-black-ops-green-groups

[2] http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/spygate

[3] http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/05/environmental-espionage-inside-chemical-companys-louisiana-spy-op

[4] http://motherjones.com/mojo/2008/07/mary-lou-sapone-runner-olbermanns-worlds-worst-person

[5] http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/theres-something-about-mary-unmasking-gun-lobby-mole

[6] http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/planet3/PDFs/SpyGate/GP%20Complaint,%20final%20revised%2010%2029%2010.pdf

[7] http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/greenpeace-sues-dow-sasol-dezenhall-for-corpo/blog/29168

http://www.motherjones.com/print/89001

Greenpeace Says Dow Chemical Used Watergate-Style Spy Tactics

By RYAN ABBOTT

WASHINGTON (CN) - Dow Chemical and its public relations firm hired a firm of ex-CIA snoops to spy on Greenpeace, steal documents from Dumpsters, hack into computers and tap phones, "infiltrating its offices, meetings and electronic communications under false pretense and/or by force," and follow its employees, Greenpeace claims in a federal RICO complaint. It claims the conspirators also spied on other environmental groups, "to anticipate Greenpeace's public education and direct-action campaigns, fundraising campaigns and otherwise undermine Greenpeace's business."

Greenpeace sued Dow Chemical Co., Sasol North American, Dezenhall Resources Ltd., Ketchum Inc., and four members of Beckett Brown International, a private security firm. It accuses them of RICO violations, trespassing and conversion

Greenpeace claims the defendants used the Watergate-style tactics from 1998 to 2000.

Sasol is a chemical company that made vinyl chloride and other dangerous chemicals in Lake Charles, La., during the time period.

Ketchum is one of the biggest and oldest public relations firms in the country; Dezenhall is another PR firm.

Defendants Timothy Ward, Jay Arthur Bly, Michael Mika and George Ferris were all managerial level employees at Beckett Brown. Beckett Brown itself is not named as a defendant.

Greenpeace claims the defendant chemical companies hired Beckett Brown International (BBI) to do the dirty work, and that "most of the key executives and employees at BBI were former officers of the Secret Service and the Central Intelligence Agency." BBI changed its name to S2I Corp. in or around April 2000.

BBI agents spent "hundreds of hours" infiltrating Greenpeace to get information on its fund-raising plans and environmental campaigns, including campaigns against Sasol, "which emitted toxic chemicals into the Lake Charles region of Louisiana," and Dow Chemical's "manufacturing activities, which create dioxin, and the development and sale of products containing genetically modified organisms," according to the complaint.

"BBI relied upon a network of subcontractors, including off-duty police officers in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, to carry out its work," the complaint states. Greenpeace says that though it was the primary target of the illegal spying, "there is considerable evidence that these tactics were also directed at other nonprofit organization, including the Center for Food Safety, Friends of the Earth, GE Food Alert, Fenton Communications, the National Environmental Trust, and the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, as well as individual activists and scientists. Although it is now evident that these unlawful activities continued for years, because of their clandestine nature, and actions by BBI to 'sterilize' its records and destroy documents, the full scope and duration of these activities is not known."

The defendants called their theft of documents "D-Lines," according to the complaint. The D-Lines included stealing documents from Dumpsters and recycling bins, and "acquisition of documents stolen from Greenpeace's offices or obtained by BBI's employees and/or subcontractors who obtained access to Greenpeace's documents through false pretenses."

Greenpeace claims the four BBI defendants - Ward, Bly, Mika and Ferris - "personally directed and/or conducted D-Lines at Greenpeace's offices in Washington, D.C. They hired subcontractors, including a police officer for the District of Columbia, James Daron, to assist with the collection of the material at Greenpeace's offices in the District of Columbia. Daron was expected to use his official police badge to gain access to Dumpsters that were enclosed by a locked fence. Between July 13, 1998 and July 18, 200, Defendants Ward, Bly, Mika, and Ferris, or their agents, conducted more than 120 documented D-Lines at Greenpeace's offices. They used Daron in connection with at least 55 of these D-Lines."

BBI also hired a woman named Mary Lou Sapone to infiltrate it by "masquerading as a prospective campaign volunteer," Greenpeace says. Citing a 2008 story from Mother Jones magazine, Greenpeace claims Sapone is "a mole with a history of infiltrating public interest advocacy organizations on behalf of corporate clients; Mother Jones reported in 2008 that Sapone worked her way into the top of Ceasefire Pennsylvania and ran for a position on the board of the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence all while actually working on behalf of the National Rifle Association."

 Greenpeace claims Sapone hired another mole, a retired teacher named Dick Rogers, to infiltrate an allied environmental group in Louisiana. Rogers began as a volunteer and worked his way up until he was on the board of the Calcasieu League for Environmental Action Now. Abusing his position in the group, Rogers sent confidential correspondence, memos and reports, and "regular reports of the groups' activities to Sapone," who sent it along to BBI, according to the complaint.

   Greenpeace says BBI also hired NetSafe, "a company that specialized in computer intrusion and electronic surveillance, for work on Greenpeace projects." It adds: "Most of NetSafe's top executives were former National Security Agency employees, including Joe Panatella," who allegedly was paid thousands of dollars for his work.

Greenpeace claims BBI and the chemical companies it worked for stole and used for their own purposes "confidential, internal, Greenpeace documents, including: campaign planning documents; confidential donor letters and records of contributions; internal communications; confidential legal memoranda; privileged attorney-client communications; financial reports, balance sheets and budgets; passwords for private electronic mailing lists; Greenpeace credit card account numbers; and highly sensitive personal information about Greenpeace employees such as Social Security numbers, personal bank account statements and employment agreements."

The complaint adds: "Many of the documents that defendants unlawfully obtained from Greenpeace contain confidential strategy information regarding environmental campaigns against toxic chemicals, global warming, nuclear energy, genetic engineering and the pollution of fisheries and oceans."

Greenpeace says the chemical companies paid BBI hundreds of thousands of dollars to spy on it and steal documents and other things from its offices, including a Taco Bell taco made with bioengineered corn, which a BBI agent referred to as a "glow in the dark taco."

"Dow Chemical and its public relations company, Ketchum ... conspired with BBI and the individual defendants to secure confidential records from Greenpeace by unlawful means, took significant steps in furtherance of these activities and the conspiracy," the complaint states.

The language and allegations throughout the 57-page complaint are redolent of Watergate-era spooks and sneaks, cutouts, "targets," "surveillance" and imposters, and, in the end, Greenpeace's efforts to watch its watchers.

Greenpeace demands compensatory, treble and punitive damages for racketeering, trespass, intrusion, conversion, misappropriation of trade secrets and racketeering. It also seeks disgorgement of any money the defendants made by selling documents they stole from Greenpeace.

Its lead counsel is Victoria Nugent with Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll.