Freeport-McMoRan created bogus environmental group

[Dover]

In a twist to corporations creating a front group to do its grassroots advocacy, the New York Times reports that the Louisiana-based mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold created a bogus environmental group in Indonesia to capture email account passwords. With many of those signing up to an email list using the same passwords for their own account, Freeport could then tap into environmental activists email accounts.

http://www.prwatch.org/spin

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch

[Ron Green]

1. Wasn't this the same outfit that was in trouble for heedless development

in Austin, Texas?

[Dover]

2. Yes. Heedless is putting it nicely. Here's some more background

from a 1996 article:




March/April 1996 | Content
a fire-breather gets scorched

two newspapers and a mining giant

by Steve Dudley
Dudley is a free-lance writer based in New York.
At midnight last Halloween, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a government agency that provides political-risk insurance for American companies operating abroad, canceled the policy of a Louisiana-based multinational mining company called Freeport-McMoRan. Three days later, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans ran a wire-service story reporting that the cancellation was apparently linked to environmental damage at Freeport's gold mine in the remote Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. Freeport's c.e.o., James Robert (Jim Bob) Moffett, was not happy, and he and three employees marched into the offices of the paper the day the story came out, demanding a correction. They contended that OPIC's decision to cancel Freeport's $100 million insurance policy was based on potential rather than actual harm to the environment. "What they're saying," Moffett told the paper's assembled editors and its publisher, "is that a project of this size is going to be very controversial and might -- might -- create a controversy."

The Times-Picayune listened and quickly began investigating Moffet's claims. But after obtaining OPIC's letter of cancellation, it ran an article refuting much of what Moffett had said. Freeport, the paper reported (quoting OPIC), had "severely degraded the rain forests" in Irian Jaya.

Freeport-McMoRan, which has affiliates in both Indonesia and in Austin, Texas, has constructed a mammoth public relations team and spent a great deal of money and time trying to shape public opinion. But the media in Austin and New Orleans have turned a skeptical eye on a company they see as trying to oversell its virtue.

Freeport-McMoRan's Austin affiliate, FM Properties, develops real estate and the Indonesian affiliate, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, mines the world's largest gold reserve and runs the third-largest copper mine. Since last spring, the company has been dealing with publicity about the murder and torture of indigenous people in Irian Jaya, first nationally publicized by The Nation magazine. Some environmentalists and human rights activists in the area claim that killings perpetrated by the Indonesian military occurred on Freeport property, and may even have involved Freeport security personnel. The company vehemently denies any involvement, and said so in December in a trio of full-page ads in The New York Times.

The story of Freeport's relationship with the media in New Orleans goes back to 1984. It was then that Times-Picayune environmental reporter Mark Schleifstein discovered documents showing that the Environmental Protection Agency was planning to grant the company an exemption to the Clean Water Act allowing it to dump 25 million pounds of gypsum, a byproduct from the production of fertilizer that contains phosphate and a trace of uranium, directly into the Mississippi river. In some places along the river the gypsum had been stacked as high as forty feet.

..snip..

In Austin, Freeport has been under scrutiny for a different reason. Since 1990, the company has been attempting to develop 4,000 acres of land into a residential and commercial area. The development lies upstream from Barton Springs, a large spring-fed swimming pool visited by some 300,000 people a year, and has encountered fierce resistance. In 1992 Austin voted nearly two to one to impose strict development standards in the areas that contribute water to Barton Springs. The company is still trying to move forward with the project.



..cont'd


http://archives.cjr.org/year/96/2/fire.asp

[Kolesar]

3. first link fails--says "FATAL ERROR"