by Steve Coll
This book would not have been possible without the generosity of the scores of people who agreed to provide interviews, sometimes about sensitive or controversial subjects. Some of those to whom I owe the most cannot be named, but I am grateful for their trust and assistance. None of my sources, researchers, or collaborators should be judged accountable for errors or misjudgments in the text; the responsibility is mine.
Steve LeVine, Susan Murcko, and Ann O’Hanlon provided careful, multiple readings of early drafts, made important suggestions, rescued me from errors, and otherwise made the book better.
S. C. Gwynne contributed biographical insights about Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson early on. Ian Gary generously opened his boxes and files about African oil. Ben Lando conducted interviews and provided insights about Iraq’s oil. Rob McKee and Mike Stinson shared their fascinating diaries and archives about their service as American oil advisers in Baghdad. Chris Goldthwait was equally helpful with his collection of letters from Chad. Dan Freifeld offered valuable insights. Vince Crawley arranged interviews at Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany. Sally Donnelly was a great help at the Pentagon. Miriam Elder contributed energetically from Moscow. Robert Becker provided excellent legal advice about the Freedom of Information Act. I owe gratitude to Angue Ondo for her aid during my travel to Equatorial Guinea. Sam Olukoya and the resourceful Chris Ewokor assisted my travel in Nigeria. Esseme Eyiboh provided hospitality and high spirits during a memorable journey to Akwa Ibom. In Chad, I owe thanks to Besba Tong-pa Raoutouin, Michelle Bonnardeaux, and Celeste Hicks. In Jakarta and Aceh, Miki Salman and Sidney Jones helped greatly. Alan Jeffers at ExxonMobil endured my inquiries cheerfully.
I again enjoyed the fortune of partnership with Ann Godoff, Susan Petersen Kennedy, and the team at Penguin Press. I have now worked with Ann continually for two decades. As ever, she encouraged the most serious, ambitious work possible, and her editing notes were perceptive and important. Thanks as well to Tracy Locke, Lindsay Whalen, Ben Platt, and Deborah Weiss Geline.
Jon Wallace contributed research, organizational skill, and high morale. Thanks also to Christina Satkowski for her skill and reliability, and to Victoria Collins for her excellent work.
Alexandra Coll, Emma Coll, Maxwell Coll, and Rory Steele helped with research, chronologies, and other aspects of the family business, and were inspiring for many other reasons, too.
During the life of this project, I served as president of the New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research institution headquartered in Washington, D.C., with an annual budget of about $16 million. About three fifths of New America’s revenue comes from philanthropic foundations such as the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Macarthur Foundation, the Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the Open Society Institute. Most of the rest of the revenue comes from contributions by individual philanthropists, such as Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Jeffrey and Cal Leonard, Gus and Rita Hauser, David and Katherine Bradley, Chip Kaye, William Gerrity, and Boykin Curry. The foundation also receives government grants and corporate donations. For the latest full year available, each of these sources of revenue provided less than 5 percent of the total. During 2009, my colleague Steve Clemons, while overseeing programs on American foreign policy, solicited and received from ExxonMobil two contributions, of $25,000 and $80,000, respectively, to support conferences he ran. I recused myself from those discussions and activities. A full listing of the foundation’s financial supporters is available at www .newamerica.net.
Colleagues at the New America Foundation contributed to the research and writing of this book in many ways, especially by challenging and refining my understanding of geopolitics, and by generously allowing me the time to travel and interview abroad. Thanks in particular to Simone Frank, Eric Schmidt, and Rachel White; the book would not have been possible without them. Thanks also to Liaquat and Meena Ahmed, Amjad Atallah, Peter Beinart, Peter Bergen, David Bradley, Steve Clemons, Jeannette Clonan, Reid Cramer, Michael Crow, Boykin Curry, Patrick Doherty, James Fallows, Sheri Fink, Brian Fishman, Frank Fukuyama, Joel Garreau, Atul Gawande, Bill Gerrity, Tom Glaisyer, Tim Golden, Eliza Griswold, Lisa Guernsey, Ted Halstead, Rita Hauser, Laurene Powell Jobs, Fred Kaplan, Zachary Karabell, Chip Kaye, Andrew Lebovich, Jeffrey Leonard, Flynt Leverett, Daniel Levy, Michael Lind, Maya MacGuineas, Lisa Margonelli, Andres Martinez, Kati Marton, Danielle Maxwell, MaryEllen McGuire, Walter Russell Meade, Sascha Meinrath, Lenny Mendonca, Evgeny Morozov, Bob Niehaus, Amanda Ripley, Nicholas Schmidle, Troy Schneider, Bernard Schwartz, Sherle Schwenninger, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Katherine Tiedemann, Laura Tyson, Robert Wright, Tim Wu, Dan Yergin, Fareed Zakaria, and Jamie Zimmerman, as well as the many other staff and fellows who saw to my continuing education.
Thanks, at the New Yorker, to David Remnick, Dorothy Wickenden, Nicholas Thompson, Virginia Cannon, Amy Davidson, Pam McCarthy, Nandi Rodrigio, Seema Gauhar, Tim Farrington, Jane Mayer, and Larry Wright, as well as many other terrific colleagues. Thanks as well to Susan Glasser at Foreign Policy, David Plotz and Jacob Weisberg at Slate, Carlos Lozada at the Washington Post, and Robert Silvers at the New York Review of Books.
Melanie Jackson, my literary agent for the past twenty-seven years, again made it all work.
Michael Abramowitz, Luke Albee, Rick Atkinson, Jane Atkinson, Dean Baquet, Phil Bennett, Eric Cohen, Dan Coll, Geoffrey Coll, Steve Fierson, David Finkel, Bart Gellman, Jane Getter, Bradley Graham, the Greenhouses, John Harris, Adam Holzman, Monica Klien-Samanez, Dylan Landis, Dafna Linzer, David Maraniss, Linda Maraniss, the Morrises, Lissa Muscatine, Janice Nittoli, Ama Nkrumah, the Reisses, Joanne Reynolds, Anthony Spaeth, Valerie Strauss, the Tulchins, and Alexandra Viets provided friendship, hospitality, entertainment, and other support to the Colls during the long life of this project. Thanks as well to Robert and Shirley Coll, and to John, Joan, Marian, and Mel. I owe it all again to Susan; her enthusiasm for this work did much to bring the book to the finish.
Notes
Private Empire is based primarily on interviews with more than 450 people in the United States and abroad; some agreed to be interviewed multiple times. The interview subjects included current and former ExxonMobil executives, executives at competing corporations, lobbyists, scientists, lawyers, diplomats, military officers, intelligence officers and analysts, government policymakers, former guerrilla leaders, congressional staff, Wall Street analysts, energy industry consultants, environmentalists, and social activists. The narrative also benefited from the release of about eight hundred pages of documents—mainly State Department cables—that were provided to me in response to Freedom of Information Act requests concerning ExxonMobil’s recent activities in Indonesia, Russia, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, and elsewhere in West Africa. The full release of Wikileaks’ collection of State Department cables from 2003 to early 2010 provided additional valuable insights and details, particularly about ExxonMobil’s activity in Chad, Nigeria, and Venezuela. Wikileaks cables—as opposed to those released in response to my F.O.I.A. requests—are indicated below by (W). Court records and trial and deposition transcripts from Exxon Valdez litigation in Alaska; the Jacksonville, Maryland, gasoline spill case Jeff Alban et al. v. Exxon Mobil Corp.; the litigation concerning the corporation’s involvement in the Aceh conflict, John Doe I et al. v. ExxonMobil et al.; and ExxonMobil’s court hearings concerning its operations in Venezuela provided much additional, valuable testimony by ExxonMobil executives, as well as excerpts from corporate documents and e-mails. Documents and diaries shared by former American oil advisers to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq were very helpful. Researchers at the Center for Responsive Politics provided guidance and support for analysis of the center’s important data sets on campaign contributions and lobbying. Investigative files on Equatorial Guinea produced by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs of the Unite
d States Senate provided unique banking and financial records. The extensive investigations into climate science policy carried out by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee brought forward numerous internal government records. The Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace, and other environmentalist investigators have also obtained and published important government and industry documents on climate policy, from which I was able to draw. Oxfam, Global Witness, Catholic Relief Services, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Coventry Cathedral, and the International Crisis Group have published valuable investigations of conflicts and corporate responsibility issues in Africa and Asia that I sought to explore. Securities and Exchange Commission filings provided extensive data about ExxonMobil’s oil and gas production, reserves, and financial reporting. I am in great debt to the published work of many other reporters, scholars, and international affairs analysts, as the notes that follow reflect.
Many of the interviews for this book were conducted on the record. Where an interview subject spoke on condition that he or she would not be named, the notes provide as much information as possible, consistent with these agreements. On-the-record interviews conducted by researchers who worked with me on the book are indicated by the presence of the researcher’s initials in parentheses following the source information. To conduct interviews and field research, I traveled to Alaska and throughout the United States, as well as to Indonesia, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Nigeria, Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere abroad. Other international interviews were carried out by telephone and by local researchers contracted for the purpose.
ExxonMobil authorized eight current executives and managers to provide background interviews and briefings, which were helpful but limited in scope. None of those interview subjects agreed to be quoted by name. The corporation declined other requests for interviews in the United States and abroad. The corporation’s chief executive, Rex Tillerson, declined several requests for interviews. The corporation did provide credentials so that I could attend a number of events where Tillerson spoke and took questions. His predecessor, Lee Raymond, agreed to be interviewed. More than four dozen other current and former ExxonMobil executives, directors, managers, employees, consultants, and contractors also provided interviews. Some of these people spoke without authorization or addressed sensitive subjects and therefore requested anonymity, as the notes reflect.
After the manuscript was substantially drafted, with researcher Haley Cohen, I attempted to fact-check material about current ExxonMobil executives and the corporation by submitting memoranda totaling more than one hundred pages to ExxonMobil’s public affairs department. Two current executives responded initially to fact-checking questions, but ultimately, spokesman Alan Jeffers said ExxonMobil would offer no additional response to the fact-checking questions. The corporation was the only party of the dozens reached during the fact-checking process that declined to participate. I also submitted to ExxonMobil for formal comment sixteen questions concerning controversies, lawsuits, and other matters. The corporation declined to reply to all of these questions except one, concerning 2008 contributions by ExxonMobil executives to the campaign committee of Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas), as is reflected in chapter 22.
The chapter-by-chapter notes below provide the sources for quotations, numbers, and narrative incidents recounted in this book.
PROLOGUE: “I’M GOING TO THE WHITE HOUSE ON THIS”
1. Joseph Hazelwood descended: Keeble, Out of the Channel, p. 41. Yearbook motto, I.Q. score, Stonewall Jackson, and Oscar Wilde: Coyle, Outside, October 1997. Coyle’s extraordinary profile of Hazelwood is the best single published source on the former captain’s life and on the impact of the grounding on him; Hazelwood’s trial testimony is also bracingly direct.
2. “midlife crisis”: Joseph Hazelwood’s trial testimony, Baker v. Exxon, No. 04.35182, United States Court of Appeals, May 10, 1994. “detected . . . take care of it”: Ibid. Ordering beer: John Donvan et al., Turning Point, ABC News, June 15, 1994. The ABC News documentary is an exceptional work of television journalism. Also, Deposition of Lee R. Raymond, United States District Court for the District of Alaska, A-89-095, November 19, 1992. Two or three vodkas: Coyle, op. cit. When Coyle interviewed Joseph Hazelwood extensively in 1997, Hazelwood was employed at a maritime marine insurer in New York and said he had given up alcohol. In 1994, he testified at trial that “the last drink I recall having is March 23, 1989.”
3. Salary: Joseph Hazelwood trial testimony, Baker v. Exxon, May 11, 1994. B.P. field party: Roderick, Crude Dreams, p. 124. July 28, 1977: Ibid., p. 417.
4. 1,264,155 barrels: There are several published estimates of the ship’s load, all within a fairly narrow range. This is the number published by the Alaska Resources Library and Information Services. More than one hundred times: ABC News, op. cit.
5. Author’s visit to Prince William Sound, June 2010. Every four seconds: Coyle, op. cit. “Judging . . . over”: ABC News, op. cit.
6. Coffee break: Ibid. Radar, blood tests: Keeble, op. cit., p. 43.
7. Quotations from Gregory Cousins’s trial testimony: Keeble, ibid., p. 44.
8. “Wasn’t a compelling reason”: Coyle, op. cit.
9. For a thorough reconstruction of what occurred on the bridge, drawn from trial testimony and testimony before the National Transportation Safety Board, see Keeble, op. cit., pp. 45–47. “Serious trouble”: From Cousins’s testimony, Coyle, op. cit.
10. “Vessel . . . fucked”: Keeble, op. cit., p. 48. Vomited, “breadbasket . . . an end”: Joseph Hazelwood’s trial testimony, Baker v. Exxon, op. cit. “We fetched up . . . a while”: ABC News, op. cit.
11. “I’ve got . . . heart attack”: Steve McCall oral history, in Bushell and Jones, The Spill, p. 47. “You could . . . the crew”: Mark Delozier oral history, ibid., p. 29.
12. “may have . . . with it”: Steve Cowper oral history, ibid., p. 41. “The game rules . . . previously”: Keeble, op. cit., p. 51. Exxon employment cuts: New York Times, April 2, 1989. Profits per employee in 1987: BusinessWeek, July 18, 1988. For N.T.S.B.’s assessment of Exxon’s culpability, see the letter of its chairman, James Kolstad, to Exxon’s chairman, Lawrence Rawl, September 18, 1990. The N.T.S.B. found that Cousins was working on too little sleep because of crew scheduling and that “evidence indicated that watch-keeping safeguards . . . had been compromised because of the manning level” aboard the tanker. See also, “Grounding of U.S. Tankship Exxon Valdez on Bligh Reef, Prince William Sound Near Valdez, AK, March 24, 1989,” N.T.S.B. Report no. MAR-90-04.
13. “It was hard . . . unmanageable”: Don Cornett oral history, in Bushnell and Jones, op. cit., p. 98. Transcripts of telephone recordings from the Alyeska Emergency Center, from 4:57 a.m. on March 24, 1989, and on March 26, 1989: Transcribed by the Alaska Resources Library and Information Services. Cornett worked on Exxon’s public relations challenges stemming from the spill for the next seven years. Despite his initial enthusiasm for the Valdez media battle, he later reflected that “this was not a job that any sane person would ever seek.”
14. “Chagrined . . . for Exxon”: Trial testimony of Lee Raymond, In Re Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, August 25, 1994.
15. Dennis Kelso oral history, in Bushnell and Jones, op. cit., p. 62.
16. Senior Coast Guard officer: Interview with Admiral Paul Yost. “a lot of cleanup equipment . . . oil spill specialist”: New York Times, April 2, 1989. “There is . . . opposed”: Raymond deposition testimony, op. cit., November 19, 1992.
17. Ibid.
18. All quotations from Admiral Paul Yost oral history, Bushnell and Jones in op. cit., pp. 124–127, and from an interview with Yost.
19. Transcript, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, July 27, 1989.
20. “didn’t get along . . . Go ahead”: Admiral Paul Yost oral history, in Bushnell and Jones, op. cit.
21. Ibid.
22. Keeble, op. cit., p. 186.
23. “no matter . . . envisioned”: Lee Raymond depositio
n testimony, op. cit.
24. All John Browne quotations and biography citations: Browne, Beyond Business. Valdez episode, Browne’s flight and reflections: Ibid., p. 39. “That oil company was now Exxon”: Ibid., p. 40.
25. “A Conversation with Lee Raymond,” Charlie Rose PBS, May 6, 2004.
CHAPTER ONE: “ONE RIGHT ANSWER”
1. Associated Press, April 30, 1992; New York Times, May 1, 1992.
2. United States of America v. Arthur D. Seale and United States of America v. Irene J. Seale, findings of the United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, 20 F.3d 1279 decided April 7, 1994. “This tragic allegation”: New York Times, May 8, 1992.
3. “Wherever he is”: New York Times, May 11, 1992. “If you interfere . . . soldiers in war”: New York Times, July 24, 1992.
4. New York Times, June 20, 1992. United States v. Arthur D. Seale, op. cit.
5. Interview with Lee Raymond.
6. Arthur and Irene Seale biography: New York Times, June 21, 1992; June 28, 1992; and July 1, 1992.
7. Surveillance, kidnapping, shooting: United States v. Arthur D. Seale, op. cit. “More like a closet”: Arthur Seale’s interview with ABC News, released November 12, 1992.
8. Deposition of Lee Raymond, United States District Court for the District of Alaska, A-89-095, November 19, 1992.
9. Interview with Lee Raymond.
10. New safety regime, Raymond Rule: Ibid. Joseph R. Carlon: Interview with a former Exxon manager involved with corporate security.