Stick Your Damn Hand In It:
20th Birthday of the Exxon Valdez Lie
Monday, March 23, 2009
"Gail, Please! Stick your hand in it!"
The petite Eskimo-Chugach woman gave me that you-dumb-ass-white-boy look.
"Gail, Gail. STICK YOUR GOODDAMN HAND IN IT!"
She stuck it in, under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay, her village's fishing ground. Gail's hand came up dripping with black, sickening goo. It could make you vomit. Oil from the Exxon Valdez.
Native dancers, Nanwalek, Prince William Sound, Alaska, center of spill damage.
It was already two years after the spill and Exxon had crowed that Mother Nature had happily cleaned up their stinking oil mess for them. It was a lie. But the media wouldn't question the bald-faced bullshit. And who the hell was going to investigate Exxon's claim way out in some godforsaken Native village in the Prince William Sound?
So I convinced the Natives to fly the lazy-ass reporters out to Sleepy Bay on rented float planes to see the oil that Exxon said wasn't there.
The reporters looked, but didn't see it, because it was three inches under their feet, under the shingle rock of the icy beach. Gail pulled out her hand and now the whole place smelled like a gas station. The network crews wanted to puke. And now, with their eyes open, they saw the oil, the vile feces-colored smear across the glaciated ridge faces, the poisonous "bathtub ring" that ran for miles and miles at the high tide level.
And it's still there. Less for sure. But twenty years later. IT'S STILL THERE, GODDAMNIT. And I want YOU, dear reader, to stick your hand in it. I want YOU, President Obama, to stick your hand in it before you blithely fulfill your Palin-esque campaign promise for a little more offshore drilling.
***
Tuesday marks the 20th Anniversary of the Exxon Valdez grounding and the smearing of 1,200 miles of Alaska's coastline with its oil.
Oil still being cleaned up seven years after the spillIt also marks the 20th Anniversary of a lie. Lots of lies: catalogued in a four-volume investigation of the disaster; four volumes you'll never see. I wrote that report, with my team of investigators working with the Natives preparing fraud and racketeering charges against Exxon. You'll never see the report because Exxon lawyers threatened the Natives, "Mention the f-word [fraud] and you'll never get a dime" of compensation to clean up the villages. The Natives agreed to drop the fraud charge -- and Exxon stiffed them on the money. You're surprised, right?
***
Doubtless, for the 20th Anniversary of the Great Spill, the media will schlep out that old story that the tanker ran aground because its captain was drunk at the wheel. Bullshit.
Yes, the captain was "three sheets to the wind" -- but sleeping it off below-decks. The ship was in the hands of the third mate who was driving blind. That is, the Exxon Valdez' Raycas radar system was turned off; turned off because it was busted and had been busted since its maiden voyage. Exxon didn't want to spend the cash to fix it. So the man at the helm, electronically blindfolded, drove it up onto the reef.
So why the story of the drunken skipper? Because it lets Exxon off the hook: Calling it a case of "drunk driving" turns the disaster into a case of human error, not corporate penny-pinching greed.
Investigator Palast flies over Exxon Valdez spill site.
Indeed, the "human error" tale was the hook used by the Bush-stacked Supreme Court to slash the punitive damages awarded against Exxon by 90%, from $5 billion, to half a billion for 30,000 Natives and fishermen. Chief Justice John Roberts erased almost all of the payment due with the la-dee-dah comment, "What more can a corporation do?"
Well, here's what they could have done: Besides fix the radar, Exxon could have set out equipment to contain the spill. Containing a spill is actually quite simple. Stick a rubber skirt around the oil slick and suck it back up. The law requires it and Exxon promised it.
So, when the tanker hit, where was the rubber skirt and where was the sucker? Answer: The rubber skirt, called "boom" -- was a fiction. Exxon promised to have it sitting right there near the Native village at Bligh Reef. The oil company fulfilled that promised the cheap way: they lied.
And the lie was engineered at the very top. After the spill, we got our hands on a series of memos describing a secret meeting of chief executives of Exxon and its oil company partners, including ARCO, a unit of British Petroleum. In a meeting of these oil chieftains held in April 1988, ten months before the spill, Exxon rejected a plea from T.L. Polasek, the Vice-President of its Alaska shipping operations, to provide the oil spill containment equipment required by law. Polasek warned the CEOs it was "not possible" to contain a spill in the mid-Sound without the emergency set-up.
Alaska Native Henry Makarka: "If I had a machine gun, I kill those white sons-of-bitches."
Exxon angrily vetoed ARCO's suggestion that the oil companies supply the rubber skirts and other materiel that would have prevented the spill from spreading, virtually eliminating the spill's damage.
Regulations state that no tanker may leave the Alaska port of Valdez without the "sucker" equipment, called a "containment barge," at the ready. Exxon signed off on the barge's readiness. But, that night twenty years ago, the barge was in dry-dock with its pumps locked up under arctic ice. By the time it arrived at the tanker, half a day after the spill, the oil was well along its thousand-mile killing path.
Natives watched as the now-unstoppable oil overwhelmed their islands. Eyak Native elder Henry Makarka saw an otter rip out its own eyes burning from oil residue. Henry, pointing down a waterside dead-zone, told me, in a mix of Alutiiq and English, "If I had a machine gun, I'd shoot every one of those white sons-of-bitches."
***
Exxon promised -- promised -- to pay the Natives and other fishermen for all their losses. The Chief of the Natives at Nanwalek lost his boat to bankruptcy. His village, like other villages, Native and non-Native, decayed into alcoholism. The Mayor of fishing port Cordova killed himself, citing Exxon in his suicide note.
On the island village of Chenega, Gail Evanoff's uncle Paul Kompkoff was hungry. Until the spill, he had lived on seal meat, razor clams and salmon Chenegans would catch, and on deer they hunted. The clams and salmon were declared deadly and the deer, not able to read the government warning signs, ate the poisoned vegetation and died.
The President of Exxon, Lee Raymond, helicoptered into Chenega for a photo op. He promised to compensate the Natives and all fishermen for their losses, and Exxon would thoroughly clean the beaches.
Uncle Paul told the Exxon chief of his hunger. The oil company, sensing PR disaster, shipped in seal meat to the isolated village. The cans were marked, "NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION." Uncle Paul said, "Zoo food."
Paul didn't want a seal in a can. He wanted a boat to go fishing, to bring the village back to life.
Two years after the spill, Otto Harrison, General Manager of Exxon USA, told Evanoff and me to forget about a fishing boat for Uncle Paul. Exxon was immortal and Natives were not. The company would litigate for 20 years.
They did. Only now, two decades on, Exxon has finally begun its payout of the court award -- but only ten cents on the dollar. And Uncle Paul's boat? No matter. Paul's dead. So are a third of the fishermen owed the money.
***
Lee Raymond, President of Exxon at the time of the spill -- and its President when the company made the secret decision to do without oil spill equipment, retired in April 2006. The company awarded him a $400 million retirement bonus, more than double the bonuses received by all AIG executives combined.
***
Gail's oily hand never made it to national television. The networks were distracted with another oil story.
After sailing back to Chenega from Sleepy Bay, I sat with Uncle Paul, watching the smart bombs explode over Baghdad. Gulf War I had begun.
Uncle Paul was silent a long time. The generals on CNN pointed to the burning oil fields near Basra. Paul said, "I guess we're all some kind of Native now."
************
Greg Palast investigated fraud and racketeering claims for the Chugach Natives of Alaska. Now a journalist whose work appears on BBC Television Newsnight, Palast is the author of the New York Times bestselling books The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. Visit GregPalast.com for more.
Check out the YouTube clip of Greg Palast on Air America's 'Ring of Fire' with Mike Papantonio on the Exxon Valdez and on the death of investigative reporting in America. Listen in this weekend on your Air America station.
And get ready: This Friday - the launch of GREG PALAST INVESTIGATES - On the Trail with investigative reporter Palast - with three of his latest ass-kicking BBC Television reports.
Palast is looking for co-producers for the film's DVD release. Support the team behind the work that the Chicago Tribune calls, "Stories so relevant, they threaten to alter history." Pre-order the DVD today.
Palast is a Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting.
Alaska photos by James Macalpine for the Palast Investigative Fund, a 501c3 not-for-profit educational foundation.
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great read. thanks very much, Mr. Palast. I put it on my Facebook page--not that, as I said on my page, the fat, lazy, stupid Americans will give a shit about or read.
Thank you. Finally, someone speaks the TRUTH about this disaster and the lies... never ending lies. I was in Alaska when the Valdez spilled its guts. I was on the beach with every towel we owned trying to wipe off the rocks, the birds, the seals... all of it seemed hopeless and the toxic sludge as never-ending as the lies that continue to be told.
From all the Native people, I thank you.
Bluejay
Thank you so much for your story. My ex-husband and I went through the entire spill in Kodiak, Alaska-it drifted out into the Gulf of Alaska and spread oil that washed up on collector beaches alomost 500 miles away-both sides of Kodiak Island were hit due to the gyer-currents. HIs salmon fishing season was cancelled and you're sooo right-for 20 years they fought paying punitive damages, waiting to get a Supreme Court that tipped to the right-and in the end they got it-under bush the pretender....
I checked several homepages for mass media outlets. The only one that contained the word "Exxon" was the Wall St Journal, referencing the current stock price.
20 more years and this issue will be dead as the deer of Prince William Sound.
Riki Ott was on Democracy Now today - mentioned something called the 28th Amendment; a push to end corporate personhood
Ultimatecivics.com
What does Investigator Palast and the readers of his site think--does this have legs?
It makes me want blow up a few of those money grubbing bastards. $400 million dollar bonus for Raymond and next too dick-all for a proper clean-up - unbelievable - the pay check for fucking over the planet is pretty damn good. I am amazed that you didn't kidnap the bastard when you had the chance and drown him in his own shit.
Hello all!
How did exxon get away with this? I have a "big" bill we don't want to pay!
Exxon executives should have a huge crate of dead fish and animals who died as a result of the spill sat down in front of them on each of their desks every anniversary of the disaster. It's outrageous that this company got off as easy as it did and then stiffed the Alaskan Natives by refusing to properly compensate them for damages.
God, maybe all that time and money would've been better spent getting Henry a machine gun.
Thanks Greg for all your great work in trying to awaken the people of the USSA (United Sleepwalking States of America)
Glad to find out that you were in there helping during the spill. In referring to Arco though, it could be inferred BP may have been a good guy in this all,not true. ARCO did not become part of BP until many years later when BP tried, unsuccessfully to get a monopoly on Alaska's north slope. I've worked for both companies and there is a big difference in their attitude. BP has always and continues to be about green wash, lies, minimal upkeep and preparedness. There is a TV doc. "Slick Operators" that was made by Scottish Eye public television that makes the point quite well. I got a copy from Rikki Ott a few months after the spill. Its' point was that while they were doing all the right things at their oil terminal in Slullom Voe Scotland, BP was saying that they were impossible and fighting them in Alaska and successful in keeping them from being implemented. ARCO was always better about trying to do the right thing.
I volunteered at one of the Otter rescue centers during the spill. The efforts made there were sincere and good research was done but in my opinion it was Mostly about PR for Big Oil. Most of the USers did not get it though I spent many an evening discussing with some international vols how the tens of thousands of dollars that was being spent per "saved" otter might be used to feed the worlds starving children.
Thanks, Greg. And thanks for the photo of you in the plane...you were wearing soppy hats back then as well!
I enjoyed this article a lot. Is there documentation somewhere of your allegation that the radar was broken?
thanks
Excellent article, I have just watched the program shown on the BBC to mark the 20th aniversary. I am old enough to remember the spill made easier by the day being my birthday. The article above highlights details not made in the documentary. I am not a 'green fanatic' and neither am I a 'corporate star' BUT i do believe after taking a balanced look at the 'facts' in the public domain that two things stand out:
The ability of the US justice system and sheer audacity (although predictable action by Exxon) to allow retrial after retrial to happen, yes i know all the facts have to be allowed for but as time goes by the truth and memory recall sinks into history with the end result that'it wasn't that bad'!
The area is still damaged 'to an extent', it is not as before the spill, that is fact. Mother nature is a wonderful thing but even she cannot work wonders. The images of the animals is haunting and the image of the Exxon president claims that 'we did our best' is nauseating.
Yes it was an accident, accidents do not just happen, they are a series of events that contribute to an outcome of risk that could be prevented with suitable actions to safeguard these events occuring in the first place.
From this day on I will never knowingly purchase or buy an 'Exxon' product; although this is difficult I will try my very best, it will never bother Exxon in the slightest but come the day of reckoning I can say 'i tried'.
Thank you for this story.
this is gross behavior,we are definitely headed for a second noah's arc style flood, greg, please tell us, what can i do right now to stop this type of behavior,
i cannot beleive i live in a world where this is exceptable,and tolerated-
We have a similar problem here in Spokane. After the Hillyard Oil Refinery of 70 years was closed they built businesses on the property along the street and put a tank farm connected to a underground pipeline behind it. The site is a filthy Superfund site and continues to pollute at night under a darkness order. In the morning a former grocery store turned Community College on this site is the school home for several hundred HeadStart kids and several hundred other Community College students. Staff doesn't last too long there. Lots get MS and arthritis. But fortunately for the oil company these diseases are easily blamed on other things. The tank farm carries no sign and the address, not displayed, is on an invisible wisp of dirt road. It took me years to track down the research on this place with no names or addresses to work with. Finally did it though. This site is a bonafide Superfund site with lead, cadmium, chromium 3 & 6, and arsenic. And apparently it's legal to plop a daycare and school right in it. I worked there and figured out what was going on when i got a rash from hell that got worse over a 3 year period. I know how that otter feels because I scratched every inch of my skin to bloody shreds before I put this all together.
Our leaders are not taking care of its people. We must continue to demand a clean environment and the likes of Exxon to be responsible for the damage they do. This is a disgrace and a crime against humanity. If our lawmakers don't even care about kids in daycare we have proof positive that they are not good people. Anyone voting to allow this kind of poisoning of innocent people will never get my vote. Poisoning is one of the most vicious things that can be done to another person or creature. If anyone is doing this knowingly, they're monsters and criminals period.
According to the crude oil field records from the Texas oil
commission, there is a Bush-Exxon lease for oil that produced.
The information is from Texas Railroad Commission
Bush-Exxon Oil Lease # 28758, District 08 (Ward)
webapps.rrc.state.tx.us/PDQ/quickLeaseReportBuilderAction.do
There's also a website that has samples of this
crude oil at http://www.texasrawcrude.com
Man I remember watching all this on ABC nightly news as a kid.
pure shea butter
Cant believe this.. so stupid. i remember watching this on ABC one night, i still cant believe that a jury awarded such a small amount of money to pay off everybodys debt and to make it even a little bit worthwhile..