After infiltrating #StandingRock, #TigerSwan pitched its ‘#counterinsurgency’ playbook to other oil companies
More than 50,000 pages of newly released documents detail how the security firm targeted #pipeline opponents and tried to profit off its #surveillance tactics.
by Alleen Brown & Naveena Sadasivam
Apr 13, 2023
"The Intercept and Grist contacted TigerSwan, #EnergyTransfer, the National Sheriffs’ Association, as well as Thompson, the group’s executive director. None of them responded to requests for comment.
"To TigerSwan, the emergence of #Indigenous-led social movements to keep oil and gas in the ground represented a business opportunity. Reese anticipated new demand from the #FossilFuel industry for strategies to undermine the network of #activists his company had so carefully gathered information on. In the records, TigerSwan expressed its ambitions to repurpose these detailed records to position themselves as experts in managing pipeline protests. The company created marketing materials pitching work to at least two other energy companies building controversial oil and gas infrastructure, the records show. TigerSwan, which was staffed heavily with former members of military special operations units, branded its tactics as a 'counterinsurgency approach,' drawing directly from its leaders’ experiences fighting the so-called War on Terror abroad.
"TigerSwan did not just work in #NorthDakota. Energy Transfer hired the company to provide security to its #RoverPipeline in #Ohio and #WestVirginia, the documents confirm. By spring 2017, TigerSwan was also assembling intelligence reports on opponents of Energy Transfer and #Sunoco’s #MarinerEast2 Pipeline in #Pennsylvania.
"The documents from the North Dakota security board paint a detailed picture of counterinsurgency-style strategies for defeating opponents of oil and gas development, a War-on-Terror security firm’s aspirations to replicate its deceptive tactics far beyond the Northern Great Plains, and the cozy relationship between businesses linked to the fossil fuel industry and one of the largest law enforcement trade associations in the U.S. The impetus for spying was not simply to keep people safe, but to drum up profits from energy clients and to allow fossil fuels to continue flowing, at the expense of the communities fighting for clean water and a healthy climate.
"'For them, it was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our tribe and our supporters,' said Wasté Win Young, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the one of the plaintiffs in a class action civil rights lawsuit against TigerSwan and local law enforcement. Young’s social media posts repeatedly showed up in the documents. 'We weren’t motivated by money or payoffs or anything like that. We just wanted to protect our homelands.'"
Full article:
https://grist.org/accountability/tigerswan-documents-dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-surveillance/
#ClimateJustice #BigOilAndGas #WaterIsLife #ACAB #StandingRockSioux #StandWithStandingRock #NoDAPL #Activism #ClimateChange
#EnvironmentalJustice
