Black Ops Spy On Green Groups

Security Company Seeks Information On Environmental Organizations

Ever have the feeling you are being followed? Maybe you have been because you’re green.

Becket Brown International (BBI), a former private security company, was spying on Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other reputable environmental organization from the late 1990s to at least 2000.

The groups rifled through trash bins, collected phone records, financial statements, internal records like donor lists and staff’s Social Security numbers, planted undercover operatives within the groups and tried to obtain information during confidential meetings. These were compiled to produce intelligence reports for PR firms and corporations involved in environmental issues with green groups.

Companies That Spied on Green Groups

BBI apparently collected information, conducted background checks and generally provided services for Allied Waste, the Carlyle Group, the National Rifle Association, Nichols-Dezenhall Communications, the Louis Dreyfus Group, Wal-Mart, Ketchum, Mary Kay, Halliburton and many others.

The PR firms that hired BBI were working for companies fighting environmental organizations, such as Dezenhall whose clients included Condea Vista, a chemical manufacturing company that leaked 47 million pounds of toxic carcinogens in a Louisiana river. Ketchum, a PR firm whose client roster includes Kraft and Kellogg, hired BBI to look into one group’s potential expose on Taco Bell serving bio-engineered corn not “suitable for human consumption.”

How BBI Infiltrated Green Groups

BBI records indicate that the firm repeatedly dug through trash for intelligence. Greenpeace was one of the more intricately detailed plans — as Greenpeace was trying to expose Kellogg and Kraft for exporting genetically modified foods, BBI was “dumpster diving,” burglarizing, obtaining financial records and posing as students looking work.

Most of the company employees were made up of former law enforcement, especially those in previous spy positions like the U.S. Secret Service. Former CIA officer Phil Giraldi said as he learned what was really going on at his company, “it was not a happy company…I have worked for a number of security companies. Some are ethical, some are not. Beckett Brown was not especially so.”

Check out the rest of BBI’s snooping and startling revelations here.




Copyright 2008 Matty Byloos

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