Greg Palast | |
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 Palast in his New York City office | |
| Born | Gregory Allyn Palast June 26, 1952 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Author, investigative journalist |
| Website | Gregpalast.com |
Gregory Allyn Palast (born June 26, 1952) [1] is an author and a freelance journalist who has often worked for the BBC and The Guardian . His work frequently focuses on corporate malfeasance but he has also worked with labour unions and consumer advocacy groups.
Palast was born in Los Angeles, growing up in the San Fernando Valley community of Sun Valley. Geri Palast is his sister.
Palast said his desire to write about class warfare is rooted in his upbringing in the "ass-end of Los Angeles," a neighborhood wedged between a power plant and a dump. He said that kids in that neighborhood had two choices: Vietnam or the auto plant. "We were the losers," he said. He was saved from the war by a favorable draft number. "A lot of people didn't make it out. Because I made it out, and my sister (Geri, a former Clinton administration assistant secretary of labor) made it out, I feel I have this obligation to tell these stories on behalf of all of those people who didn't make it out." [2]
He attended John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, and transferred to San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge) in 1969 before completing his senior year of high school. Palast said about high school: "Basically they were melting my brain, and I had to save myself. Before I finished high school, I talked my way into college. Before I finished college, I talked my way into graduate school." [1] Palast then attended the University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Chicago, from which he graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and in 1976 with a Master's of Business Administration. Palast majored in economics at Chicago from the advice of a Weather Underground member he met at Berkeley who suggested Palast "familiarize himself with right-wing politics and learn about the 'ruling elite' from 'the inside.'" [1]
Since 2000, Greg Palast has made more than a dozen films for the BBC programme Newsnight with the Investigations Producer Meirion Jones, which have been broadcast in the UK and worldwide. In addition to the films on US elections they have investigated oil companies, the Iraq War, the attempted coup against Hugo Chávez, and the vulture funds which target the poorest countries.
Palast spoke at a Think Twice conference held at Cambridge University [3] and lectured at the University of São Paulo. [4]
Palast's investigation into the Bush family fortunes for his column in The Observer led him to uncover a connection to a company called ChoicePoint. In an October 2008 interview Palast said that before the 2000 election, ChoicePoint "was purging the voter rolls of Florida under a contract with a lady named Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State. They won a contract, a bid contract with the state, with the highest bid." [5] After subsequently noticing a large proportion of African-American voters were claiming their names had disappeared from voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 election, Palast launched a full-scale investigation into election fraud, the results of which were broadcast in the UK by the BBC on their Newsnight [6] show prior to the 2004 election. Palast claimed to have obtained computer discs from Katherine Harris' office, which contained caging lists of "voters matched by race and tagged as felons." [5] Palast appeared in the 2003 documentary film, Florida Fights Back! Resisting the Stolen Election, along with Vincent Bugliosi, former Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney and author of The Betrayal of America . Palast also appeared in the 2004 documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave , which focuses on the hidden mechanics of the media.[ citation needed ]
In May 2007, Palast said he'd received 500 emails that former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove exchanged through an account supplied by the Republican National Committee. Palast says the emails show a plan to target likely Democratic voters with extra scrutiny over their home addresses, and he also believes Rove's plan was a factor in the firing of U.S. Attorneys. [7]
After Palast was invited by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear on his Air America talk show to discuss, among other things, election fraud, the pair teamed up to publish a report in October 2008 in Rolling Stone , concluding that the 2008 election had already been stolen. "If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat John McCain at the polls -- they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering", Palast and Kennedy summarized. [8] To combat the extensive acts of voter suppression that Palast and Kennedy uncovered, the duo launched a campaign called Steal Back Your Vote, [9] which features a website and free downloadable voter guide / adult comic book.
Palast has conducted a multi-year investigation into Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program (commonly referred to as "Crosscheck"). The program utilizes states' voter registration lists to match possible "double voters," using their first and last names and the last four digits of their Social Security number. In 2014, Palast investigated Crosscheck for Al Jazeera America, finding that the program was inherently biased toward removing minority voters from states' voter rolls. In 2016, he followed up with a documentary film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy , along with an article. [10]
In 1988, Palast directed a U.S. civil racketeering investigation into the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station project, under construction by Stone & Webster and Long Island Lighting Company. A jury awarded the plaintiffs US$4.8 billion; however, New York's federal judge Jack B. Weinstein, reversed the verdict, and the case was later settled for $400 million. [11] The racketeering charges stemmed from an accusation that LILCO filed false documents in order to secure rate increases. LILCO sought a dismissal of these charges on the grounds that Suffolk County lacked authority under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and that the allegations of a history of racketeering did not qualify as a continuing criminal enterprise. [12]
Palast has also taken issue with the official story behind the grounding of the Exxon Valdez , claiming the sobriety of the Valdez's captain was not an issue in the accident. According to Palast, the main cause of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 was not human error, but an Exxon decision not to use the ship's radar in order to save money. The Raytheon Raycas radar system would not have detected Bligh Reef itself - as radar, unlike sonar, is incapable of detecting submerged objects. The radar system would have detected the radar reflector, placed on the next rock inland from Bligh Reef for the purpose of keeping vessels on course via radar. [13] Palast points out that the original owners of the land, the local Alaska Natives tribe, took only one dollar in payment for the land with a promise not to pollute it and spoil their fishing and seal hunting grounds. [13]
In An Open Letter to Greg Palast on Peak Oil [14] Richard Heinberg offers friendly criticism of Palast, saying he conflates the "amount of oil left" with "peak (maximal) flow rates" for oil, the latter being key to the Peak Oil concept.
On October 27, 2010, Palast wrote, "The Petroleum Broadcast System Owes Us an Apology. ... BP has neglected warnings about oil safety for years! ... But so has PBS. The Petroleum Broadcast System has turned a blind eye to BP perfidy for decades. If the broadcast had come six months before the Gulf blow-out, after [major accidents in 2005 and 2006 or after years of government fines], I would say, “Damn, that Frontline sure is courageous.” But six months after the blow-out, PBS has shown us it only has the courage to shoot the wounded. ... The entire hour told us again and again and again, the problem was one company, BP, and its 'management culture.' ... Unlike Shell Oil’s culture which has turned Nigeria into a toxic cesspool; unlike ExxonMobil’s culture which remains in denial about the horror it heaped on Alaska. And unlike Chevron’s culture, which I witnessed in the Amazon. Chevron culture left Ecuadoran farmers with pustules all over their bodies and a graveyard of children dead of leukemia. [15]
In 1998, working as an undercover reporter for The Observer, Palast, posing as a US businessman with ties to Enron, caught on tape two Labour party insiders, Derek Draper and Jonathan Mendelsohn, boasting about how they could sell access to government ministers, obtain advance copies of sensitive reports, and create tax breaks for their clients. [16]
Draper denied the allegations. [17] At Prime Minister's Question Time July 8, 1998 British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that all the specific claims had been investigated and found groundless: "every allegation made in The Observer has been investigated and found to be untrue". [18]
Starting in 2007 Palast published a series of investigations on what aid groups and investors call "vulture funds". A vulture fund is a private equity or hedge fund where companies or people buy the debt of a poor country and litigate to recover the funds, often at the expense of aid and debt relief. Prime Minister Gordon Brown commented on the practices saying "We particularly condemn the perversity where Vulture Funds purchase debt at a reduced price and make a profit from suing the debtor country to recover the full amount owed - a morally outrageous outcome". [19]
In 2014 Palast detailed the workings of vulture funds during the crisis of the American automotive industry:
Singer, through a brilliantly complex financial manoeuvre, took control of Delphi Automotive, the sole supplier of most of the auto parts needed by General Motors and Chrysler. Both auto firms were already in bankruptcy. Singer and co-investors demanded the US Treasury pay them billions, including $350m (£200m) in cash immediately, or – as the Singer consortium threatened – "we'll shut you down" by ending GM's supply of parts. GM and Chrysler, with only a few days' worth of parts in stock, would have shut down and permanently forced into liquidation. Obama's negotiator, Treasury deputy Steven Rattner, called the vulture funds' demand "extortion" ... Ultimately, the US Treasury quietly paid the Singer consortium a cool $12.9bn in cash and subsidies from the US Treasury's auto bailout fund. Singer responded to Obama's largesse by quickly shutting down 25 of Delphi's 29 US auto parts plants, shifting 25,000 jobs to Asia. Singer's Elliott Management pocketed $1.29bn of which Singer personally garnered the lion's share.
— Palast 2014 [20]
The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster that made worldwide headlines in the spring of 1989 and occurred in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. The tanker spilled approximately 10.8 million US gallons (260,000 bbl) of crude oil over the next few days.
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth about Globalization, Corporate Cons, and High Finance Fraudsters is a 2002 book by investigative journalist Greg Palast. It is about corporate corruption, global capitalism, environmental destruction, third world exploitation, freedom of speech and political corruption, and the United States presidential election of 2000. Palast used the book as the basis for his 2004 documentary film Bush Family Fortunes.
Philip J. Carroll, Jr. (1937–2014) was an American businessman who was active in a variety of corporate and government roles. Carroll earned a Bachelor of Science in physics from Loyola University New Orleans in 1958 and a M.S. in physics from Tulane University in 1961, after which he joined the Shell Oil company as an engineer. He died in Houston, Texas, on October 6, 2014.
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is an Equatoguinean politician and former military officer who has served as the second president of Equatorial Guinea since 3 August 1979. As of 2024, he is the second-longest consecutively serving current non-royal national leader in the world.
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as the McCain–Feingold Act or BCRA, is a United States federal law that amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which regulates the financing of political campaigns. Its chief sponsors were senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ). The law became effective on 6 November 2002, and the new legal limits became effective on January 1, 2003.
The Florida Central Voter File was an internal list of legally eligible voters used by the US Florida Department of State Division of Elections to monitor the official voter lists maintained by the 67 county governments in the State of Florida between 1998 and January 1, 2006. The exclusion of eligible voters from the file was a central part of the controversy surrounding the US presidential elections in 2000, which hinged on results in Florida. The 'Florida Central Voter File' was replaced by the Florida Voter Registration System on January 1, 2006, when a new federal law, the Help America Vote Act, came into effect.
Voter caging involves challenging the registration status of voters and calling into question the legality of allowing them to vote. Usually it involves sending mail directly to registered voters and compiling a list from mail returned undelivered. Undeliverable mail is seen as proof that the person no longer resides at the address on their voter registration. The resultant list is then used by election officials to purge names from the voter registration rolls or to challenge voters' eligibility to vote on the grounds that the voters no longer reside at their registered addresses.
A publicly funded election is an election funded with money collected through income tax donations or taxes as opposed to private or corporate funded campaigns. It is a policy initially instituted after Nixon for candidates to opt into publicly funded presidential campaigns via optional donations from tax returns. It is an attempt to move toward a one voice, one vote democracy, and remove undue corporate and private entity dominance.
Distressed securities are securities over companies or government entities that are experiencing financial or operational distress, default, or are under bankruptcy. As far as debt securities, this is called distressed debt. Purchasing or holding such distressed-debt creates significant risk due to the possibility that bankruptcy may render such securities worthless.
A vulture fund is a hedge fund, private-equity fund or distressed debt fund, that invests in debt considered to be very weak or in default, known as distressed securities. Investors in the fund profit by buying debt at a discounted price on a secondary market and then using numerous methods to subsequently sell the debt for a larger amount than the purchasing price. Debtors include companies, countries, and individuals.
United States–Venezuela relations have traditionally been characterized by an important trade and investment relationship as well as cooperation in combating the production and transit of illegal drugs.
Bush Pioneers are people who gathered $100,000 for George W. Bush's 2000 or 2004 presidential campaign. Two new levels, Bush Rangers and Super Rangers, were bestowed upon supporters who gathered $200,000+ or $300,000+, respectively, for the 2004 campaign, after the 2002 McCain–Feingold campaign finance law raised hard money contribution limits. This was done through the practice of "bundling" contributions. There were 221 Rangers and 327 Pioneers in the 2004 campaign and 241 Pioneers in the 2000 campaign. A fourth level, Bush Mavericks, was used to identify fundraisers under 40 years of age who bundled more than $50,000.
Since 2 February 1999, Venezuela saw sweeping and radical shifts in social policy, moving away from the last government's officially embracing a free-market economy and liberalization reform principles and towards income redistribution and social welfare programs.
Hans Anatol von Spakovsky is an American attorney and a former member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). He is the manager of The Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He is an advocate for more restrictive voting laws. He has been described as playing an influential role in making concern about voter fraud mainstream in the Republican Party.
Paul Elliott Singer is an American hedge fund manager, activist investor, and the founder, president, and co-CEO of Elliott Management. As of March 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$6.1 billion. Fortune described Singer as one of the "smartest and toughest money managers" in the hedge fund industry. A number of sources have branded him a vulture capitalist, largely on account of his role at Elliott Management, which is a vulture fund. The Independent has described him as "a pioneer in the business of buying up sovereign bonds on the cheap, and then going after countries for unpaid debts".
George Pabey is a former mayor of East Chicago, Indiana, United States. He was elected into office in an October 2004 special election, and assumed office in January 2005. On September 24, 2010 he was removed from office after being found guilty in a federal court of conspiracy and theft of government funds.
The fossil fuels lobby includes paid representatives of corporations involved in the fossil fuel industry, as well as related industries like chemicals, plastics, aviation and other transportation. Because of their wealth and the importance of energy, transport and chemical industries to local, national and international economies, these lobbies have the capacity and money to attempt to have outsized influence on governmental policy. In particular, the lobbies have been known to obstruct policy related to environmental protection, environmental health and climate action.
Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is a 2004 documentary film directed by Steven Grandison and Greg Palast. The film, which examines various aspects of the presidency of George W. Bush, including the 2000 US presidential election and the Iraq War, is adapted from the 2003 BBC production Bush Family Fortunes and based on the 2002 book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by investigative journalist Palast, who had spent years tracking the Bush family for the BBC and The Guardian newspaper. The research for the original BBC film, which claims to have exposed the George W. Bush military service controversy, was also drawn upon by Michael Moore for Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and footage was used by Robert Greenwald in Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2002).
Meirion Jones is a Welsh journalist. He worked for the BBC from 1988 until 2015 and is now the editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman described Jones as "a dogged journalist with that obsessional, slightly nutty commitment that marks out all successful investigative reporters".
From the 1980s to mid 2000s, ExxonMobil was a leader in climate change denial, opposing regulations to curtail global warming. For example, ExxonMobil was a significant influence in preventing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the United States. ExxonMobil funded organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and seeking to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Of the major oil corporations, ExxonMobil has been the most active in the debate surrounding climate change. According to a 2007 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the company used many of the same strategies, tactics, organizations, and personnel the tobacco industry used in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking.
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