Watch the video below, it is quite something. Amazing that they were stupid enough to tape themselves saying this much less turn it into a documentary!
UPDATE: The legal pleading has been added, link below, quite a read.
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Excerpt From Wizbang: Environmental Scientist Caught Agreeing To Ignore Her Own Data, Make Up New Claims
Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality.
Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light as a result of a lawsuit. From The New York Times:
An environmental consulting firm named as a defendant in a racketeering suit filed by Chevron Corp. over a landmark pollution lawsuit in Ecuador is continuing to work on another blockbuster case: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill investigation.
Boulder, Colo.-based Stratus Consulting, a long-term contractor with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies, is gathering and analyzing data concerning the Gulf of Mexico spill.
Chevron is suing those behind the Ecuadorian case including: the lead attorney Steven Donziger; Stratus Consulting; and Maest. As part of their lawsuit, Chevron obtained through discovery, outtakes from a documentary called “Crude” that show Donziger and Maest colluding ignore their own findings and make up some new unsubstantiated claims. Watch this:
from the YouTube description:
The following is an outtake from Joe Berlinger’s movie Crude. At the March 4, 2007, lunch meeting between plaintiffs’ lead U.S. lawyer Steven Donziger and plaintiffs’ U.S. consultants Charles Champ, Ann Maest and Richard Kamp, they reveal the truth about plaintiffs’ lack of evidence and their intent to manipulate the Ecuadorian court. Maest tells Donziger that they need evidence of groundwater contamination, because plaintiffs did not submit any. Maest admits that, “Right now all the reports are saying it’s just at the pits and the stations, and nothing has spread anywhere at all.” Donziger responds, “Hold on a second, you know, this is Ecuador. … You can say whatever you want, and at the end of the day, there’s a thousand people around the courthouse. You’re going to get what you want. Sorry, but it’s true.” Donziger continues, “Because at the end of the day, this is all for the court just a bunch of smoke and mirrors and bulls**t. It really is. We have enough, to get money, to win.” View more outtakes at YouTube.com/TexacoEcuador. For more information about the Ecuador lawsuit, visit Chevron.com/Ecuador
Read the whole thing at Wizbang: Environmental Scientist Caught Agreeing To Ignore Her Own Data, Make Up New Claims
Here’s the legal pleading, quite a read h/t to Steve
http://www.chevron.com/documents/pdf/ecuador/StampedComplaint.pdf
Gail Combs says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:22 am
Alan Watt says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:20 pm
OK. I read the entire complaint….
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Thanks for the excellent summary.
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Thanks Gail. I enjoy your posts as well. I do have to make one correction however. The actual judgement from the Ecuadoran court was $18.2 billion, not the $27 billion I stated. In the course of the action, Donziger & company kept upping the claims, and the plan all along was to get a judgement that was less than they were demanding, so as to appear like a “bargain”. The initial Cabrera report (from the “indepdendent expert” actually acting under total direction from Donziger) recommended $6 billion. The “review” (also allegedly suborned by the defendants), upped that to $27 billion. A later round of “reviews” ended up at over $100 billion.
In addition to the dreary repetition of the charges, much of this complaint is concerned with establishing (1) the jurisdiction of the court over the named defendants, and (2) the applicability of the RICO statue to the alleged actions of the defendants. As I said, the essence of the charges could be clearly stated in 20 pages max, rather than the 161 pages the complaint used. If the courts are as considerate of time as their are of efficient prose, it could be 5 years before the case actually comes to trial.
Hardy Cross says:
December 15, 2011 at 2:33 am
I read the whole thing. I reads like a great detective story. Couldn’t put it down. …
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I worry about you.
What amazes me is that these people videoed it all like some street punks email phone videos of their acts to each other.
I thought that all went out with Watergate (The Nixon scandal).
It’s not on film, but there’s a transcript of a meeting of the EPA’s advisory board in which a scientist is pretty much directly pressured to alter his findings to bolster the EPA’s agenda in proving the dangers of secondhand smoke in its 1993 report. See “The Politicized Science of Tobacco Policy”, Martha Perske, Regulation, No. 3, 1995,