BP Ex-Media Enforcer Speaking Out: "They Just Don't Know Who They're Messing With"

[kpete]

"They Just Don't Know Who They're Messing With"

— By Kate Sheppard
| Wed Jul. 14, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

If you've been reading Mother Jones lately, you've heard about BP's stranglehold on media access in the Gulf, which has included preventing reporters from visting oil-soaked public beaches and barring its spill cleanup workers from talking to the press. Now, one of BP's ex-media enforcers is speaking out.

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Adam Dillon:"They screwed up royally when they let me go," he says. "I was down there to do the right thing, to clean up. They just don't know who they're messing with."

But while Dillon says the company is bungling many aspects of the spill response, he notes that it has done a reasonably good job in one area: blocking the media from seeing the worst of the disaster in Grand Isle, a beach on a barrier island off Louisiana's coast. "There was all kinds of stuff they didn't want the media to see," he says, describing areas thick with oil that were off-limits to journalists. "They kept it very strict what they wanted the media not to see, and what they wanted them to see. Where the media was actually given access to really was kind of mundane."

While BP has insisted publicly that it has not prevented spill workers from talking to the press, Dillon says company officials made it perfectly clear to contractors that they would lose their jobs if they spoke to reporters. "There are people down on that beach that are begging to talk to reporters, because they're having pay issues, having problems," says Dillon of the workers in Grand Isle. "Any of those laborers that are down there are being told behind closed doors that if they talk to the media, they'll be fired."

To enforce its media blockade, Dillon says, the company turned to its security force, largely made up of guys like him, ex-military and law enforcement personnel. "They were given orders to herd the media away," he says, and they followed those instructions just like he did. "They didn't know the reason behind it—they were just told keep the media away from (the cleanup workers)." He adds, "That's a First Amendment violation… You can't keep the media away. It's a public beach. We weren't under Martial Law."

more:
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/07/bp-whistleblower-dispersants-adam-dillon

[Angry Dragon]

1. The reason bp is not being treated like a terrorist organization

is because they supply so much oil to the military
and without that we could not fight the illegal wars.

[conscious evolution]

2. Don't we have laws allowing the siezure

of all assets of terrorist organizations?

[Angry Dragon]

3. We do

we also have laws against torture ......... how are those arrests and trials going??

[ck4829]

4. K&R