Tea Party-Backed Candidate Steps Into a Political Quagmire Over Remarks on Civil Rights Act Just 24 Hours After Winning Kentucky GOP Senate Primary, While Tea Party Express Leader Mark Williams Ignites a Furor of His Own When He Blasts Proposed Mosque Near New York’s Ground Zero and Says Muslims Worship ‘9/11 Terrorists’ Monkey-God’

When Rand Paul (left), son of Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), won the Kentucky Republican U.S. Senate primary last week, the Tea Party movement-backed candidate, after trouncing the GOP party establishment-backed candidate, Trey Grayson, said on primary night: “I have a message from the Tea Party. A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We have come to take our government back.” But less than 24 hours later, Paul ignited a firestorm of controversy with remarks on civil rights, reinforcing the Tea Party’s negative public image as a radical fringe movement. It didn’t help when Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams (right) touched off a firestorm of his own two days later with remarks that Muslims worship “the 9/11 terrorists’ monkey-god.” Williams has repeatedly refused to apologize for making incendiary remarks about President Obama, calling him a racist, traitor, and a Muslim. (Photos courtesy Politico.com and KTracy.com)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT  Tuesday, May 25, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

What should have been a time of triumph for the Tea Party movement, with Rand Paul’s stunning rout of Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson in last Tuesday’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, has turned within 72 hours into a massive public-relations disaster, further solidifying the Tea Party’s negative public image as a radical fringe movement.

Just 24 hours after triumphantly proclaiming in his victory speech last Tuesday night that “I have a message from the Tea Party. A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We have come to take our government back,” Paul, the 47-year-old son of Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), ignited a firestorm of outrage when, appearing on MSNBC’s “Rachael Maddow Show,” he said that he opposed the anti-discrimination provisions of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act being imposed on private businesses.

And 48 hours after that, a prominent national Tea Party leader touched off a furor of his own by blasting a proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center to be built in New York near Ground Zero, the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed more than 3,000 people.

The New York Daily News, citing a blog posting on his Web site, reported Thursday that Mark Williams, the chairman of the Tea Party Express, branded the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center a “monument” to the 9/11 terrorists and said that Muslims worship “the terrorists’ monkey-god.”

PAUL DUCKS OUT OF ‘MEET THE PRESS’ AMID FIRESTORM

Paul canceled a series of media interviews — including a scheduled appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, becoming only the third guest ever to back out from appearing on the venerable public-affairs program in its 63-year history. The cancellations followed a cascade of criticism over remarks he made on the Maddow show that he opposes Title II of the Civil Rights Act with respect to “public accommodations.”

Title II outlaws discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce. It exempts private clubs, although it does not define the term “private.” Many states have since adopted similar laws of their own.

As the interview with Maddow continued, Paul became increasingly uncomfortable as Maddow pressed him to clarify remarks he made in a previous interview on National Public Radio’s evening news program “All Things Considered” broadcast earlier on Wednesday.

Asked by NPR’s Robert Siegel that, based on his previously-reported remarks that the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act “was an overreach by the federal government” when it came to banning discrimination by private businesses, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was similarly an “overreach,” Paul replied, “I think a lot of things could be handled locally. . . I think when you get to the solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having the federal government make those decisions.”

Asked point-blank by Maddow if he believed “that a private business has a right to say, ‘We don’t serve black people,’” Paul responded that he opposed discrimination in any form and that the government is right to bar discrimination by public institutions, but that it is wrong to impose that non-discriminatory standard on private businesses.

Paul told Maddow the he opposes Title II of the Civil Rights Act, which bans businesses from discriminating on the basis of race. “If we want to harbor in on private businesses and their policies,” he said, “then you have to have the discussion about: do you want to abridge the First Amendment as well. Do you want to say that because people say abhorrent things — you know, we still have this. We’re having all this debate over hate speech and this and that. Can you have a newspaper and say abhorrent things?”

PAUL ALSO OPPOSED FAIR HOUSING ACT

In a blog posting on Thursday, conservative Washington Post blogger David Wiegel noted that Title II of the Civil Rights Act wasn’t the only piece of federal civil rights law the newly-minted Kentucky GOP U.S. Senate nominee opposed.

Wiegel disclosed that Paul, in a 2002 letter to the editor of his hometown newspaper, blasted the paper’s editors for endorsing the Fair Housing Act, which outlaws housing discrimination.

In his letter, published in May 30, 2002 edition of the Bowling Green Daily News (available from the newspaper’s online archives only through a paywall), Paul wrote that “a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.”

He accused the newspaper’s editors — as well as the law itself — of ignoring “the distinction between private and public property. Should it be prohibited for public, taxpayer-financed institutions such as schools to reject someone based on an individual’s beliefs or attributes? Most certainly. Should it be prohibited for private entities such as a church, bed and breakfast or retirement neighborhood that doesn’t want noisy children? Absolutely not.”

Jesse Benton, a spokesman for the Paul campaign, said that the candidate’s views on federal anti-discrimination laws should not be interpreted as meaning that he favors repealing them — a point that Paul himself made clear in a statement issued on Friday. “I unequivocally state that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” he said.

GOP CHAIRMAN: PAUL’S VIEWS ‘GOT IN THE WAY OF REALITY’

GOP National Chairman Michael Steele — no stranger to controversy himself — said Sunday that Paul’s libertarian views on the role of government and civil rights were “misplaced in these times” and that they were out of step with the rest of the country.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Steele, the Republican National Committee’s first African-American chairman, noted that “The country litigated the issue of ’separate but equal,’ the country litigated the rights of minority people in this country to access the free-enterprise system in accommodations and all of that. That was crystallized in the Civil Rights Act [of 1964] and the Voting Rights Act [of 1965].”

Steele said that Rand Paul’s philosophy “got in the way of reality, and the reality of it is that was important legislation at the time, put in place important benchmarks for the progress of free people.”

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON? RON PAUL’S OWN CONTROVERSY OVER RACE

Meanwhile, Rand Paul’s father, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, called the criticism of his son’s remarks on civil rights “unfair” and branded the controversy as “contrived” and an attempt by liberals to discredit him.

“I think it’s contrived because he’s done so well and the left has to knock him down,” Ron Paul said Thursday in an interview with the Congressional Quarterly. “It’s not fair.”

Ron Paul said that as a father, it was difficult for him to see his son “pilloried on the national stage” and to see his libertarian views characterized as racist. “Politics can sometimes be nasty and I think there is a lot of resentment because he all of a sudden became a star,” he told the Quarterly.

But Ron Paul has himself been embroiled in a major racially-charged controversy during the 2008 campaign. In January 2008, the elder Paul came under fire after old newsletters bearing his name and containing anonymously-written racist rants were revealed by CNN and The New Republic magazine.

Ron Paul adamantly insisted in s subsequent interview with CNN that he wasn’t the author of the screeds, but within days, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report revealed that the elder Paul, in an interview with a Dallas newspaper in 1996, acknowledged having written them and insisted that his writings were being taken out of context.

In his interview with The Dallas Morning News, published on May 22, 1996, the elder Paul — who at the time was running to regain his House seat that he had given up more than a decade earlier — acknowledged writing in a 1992 issue of his newsletter, The Ron Paul Political Report, that “95 percent of the black men in Washington, D.C., are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”

He defended his writings by insisting that they were being taken out of context by his critics. “It’s typical political demagoguery,” he told the Morning News. “If people are interested in my character … come and talk to my neighbors.”

The elder Paul made his admission after copies of The Ron Paul Political Report were being circulated among Texas Democrats in the heat of the 1996 election campaign, according to the newspaper.

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report and other bloggers also revealed that several prominent white supremacists and other far-right extremists — including former Ku Klux Klan leaders David Duke and Don Black — were openly backing Ron Paul’s run for the White House.

The elder Paul, who adamantly insists that he opposes racism, nonetheless has, to this day, refused to either distance himself from the white supremacists who backed his presidential candidacy or to return their financial contributions to his campaign.

ANOTHER MAJOR HEADACHE FOR THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT: MARK WILLIAMS

For the Tea Party movement, the Rand Paul controversy is a major public-relations disaster. Long accused by liberal critics of doing little to stem overtly racist expressions against President Obama at its rallies in the past year, the movement must decide how to deal with the fallout over Paul’s remarks.

But Rand Paul isn’t the Tea Party movement’s only headache. It also has to deal with an increasingly bellicose, foul-mouthed figure who’s emerged as one of the public faces of the movement — and who ignited a firestorm of his own in New York.

Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, in a blog post on his Web site, MarkTalk.com, denounced as “a monument to the 9/11 terrorists” a proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center to be built near the World Trade Center site.

“The monument would consist of a mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god,” Williams wrote, according to the Daily News.

The 13-story glass-and-steel building, which includes a 500-seat theater and athletic center, would be built just two blocks from the where twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed on September 11, 2001, when two hijacked California-bound jetliners crashed into them and exploded in massive fireballs of jet fuel, killing more than 3,000 people.

Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who helped found the Cordoba Initiative following the 9/11 attacks and whose organization is spearheading the project, said the proposed Islamic center is intended to foster better relations between the West and Muslims and that it would be open to the general public.

WILLIAMS’ ANTI-MUSLIM REMARKS SPARK OUTRAGE

Williams’s anti-Muslim postings sparked outrage from Muslims across the country and a sharp rebuke from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“It would be shocking if such ignorant comments failed to elicit a strong response not only from Tea Party leaders, but from other parties throughout the political spectrum,” Corey Saylor, national legislative director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Daily News.

Ibrahim Hooper, a New York-based spokesman for the Muslim civil-rights group, also told the newspaper that this was the only the latest in an ongoing series of highly inflammatory anti-Muslim comments Williams has written on his Web site. Among them: A remark in which he calls Islam “a seventh-century death cult” and the Prophet Mohammed “a psychotic pedophile.”

Daniel Squadron, a New York state senator whose district includes lower Manhattan, also denounced Williams. “To be clear, religious intolerance, demagoguery, and fearmongering have no place in the discussion about development on and around the World Trade Center site,” Squadron said in a statement to The New York Times on Wednesday.

A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg called Williams’ screed “appalling” and noted that the proposed mosque is perfectly legal. The land that the mosque would be built on is private and is zoned by the city for various uses, including a house of worship.

Plans call for the mosque to be completed in time for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in 2011. When completed, the mosque could house as many as 2,000 people for Friday prayers.

WILLIAMS A FLAME-THROWER WHEN IT COMES TO RACE AND RELIGION

The virulence of Williams’ anti-Muslim attacks have gotten him into trouble before. He’s also come under fire for making racially-charged remarks against President Obama.

And through it all, Williams — who hosts a conservative talk-radio show in California — has steadfastly refused to apologize for them.

He has referred to the president as an “enemy of America,” lumping him with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — despite the Obama administration’s increasingly get-tough policy toward Iran’s nuclear program — the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and even former President Jimmy Carter, whose recent book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, has come under sharp criticism by supporters of Israel as being biased in favor of the Palestinians.

Williams has also referred to Obama as “an Indonesian Muslim-turned-welfare thug and a racist-in-chief . . . Two things you can always count on: I will defend my record on race to no one, under any circumstances and I will call out any racist, any time without regard to who they are . . . and that includes our half-white, racist president.”

If the Tea Party movement is to be taken seriously as a legitimate mainstream political movement, then it has to do something about off-the-wall people in its midst like Rand Paul and Mark Williams, for the more negative attention they draw to themselves, the more Americans are likely to dismiss the Tea Party movement as being way out on the radical fringe.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

It’s the Best of Times for One Paper and the the Worst of Times for the Other as The Washington Blade Makes a Triumphant Return Five Months After Former Parent Company’s Bankruptcy Shut it Down, While The Washington Times Totters on the Brink of Extinction After Church Cuts Off its $35 Million-a-Year Subsidy and is Now on the Selling Block

GOING IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS — Five months after it was abruptly shut down in late November when its former parent company declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy, The Washington Blade resumed publishing on April 30 under the ownership of a new company formed by longtime staffers of the 40-year-old LGBT community weekly. Across town, The Washington Times is tottering on the brink of folding. The conservative daily last fall lost its $35 million annual subsidy from the Unification Church — which owns the Times’ parent company — forcing massive layoffs, the elimination of its local news and sports sections and the firings of top editors and executives. Now the Times is up for sale, but it has never made a profit in its 28-year history. It loses a reported $80 million a year and its circulation has plunged dramatically since the crisis began. (Left Photo: Joe Tresh Photography; Right Photo: National Press Photographers Association)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, May 11, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

In recent months, the nation’s capital has borne witness to a tale of two of its newspapers worthy of one of Charles Dickens’ most famous novels.

Call it “A Tale of Two Newspapers.”

With apologies to the 19th century British author, what’s been happening to the two newspapers can best be described by the opening paragraph of Dickens’ novel about events that transpired in London and Paris during the French Revolution.

For one paper, it is the best of times. For the other, it is the worst of times.

WASHINGTON BLADE MAKES A COMEBACK FIVE MONTHS AFTER SHUTDOWN. . .

On April 30, The Washington Blade, the capital’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community weekly that had been the nation’s LGBT newspaper of record for 40 years before it was abruptly shut down last November when its former parent company filed for bankruptcy, made a triumphant return to Washington-area newsstands and vending boxes on April 30, with a new look and a new slogan — “Still Sharp After 40 Years.”

A group of longtime Blade staffers formed a new, locally-based company to publish a new weekly newspaper for the city’s LGBT community immediately after Atlanta-based Window Media, the Blade’s parent company, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and shut down all of its newspapers, including the Blade. The new newspaper published under the name DC Agenda.

The new company, Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc., was founded by Blade Publisher Lynne Brown, Editor Kevin Naff, sales executive Brian Pitts and other longtime Blade employees.

. . .WHILE WASHINGTON TIMES TOTTERS ON BRINK OF FOLDING

Meanwhile, across town, Washington’s longtime conservative daily newspaper, The Washington Times, is tottering on the brink of extinction following months of turmoil after the Unification Church, which owns News World Communications Inc., the Times’ parent company, cut off its $35 million-a-year subsidy to the newspaper, amid a bitter feud among the children of the church’s 90-year-old founder, Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

After sinking more than $3 billion into the newspaper it launched in 1982, the Unification Church has put the Times up for sale. But the paper has never turned a profit in its 28-year history and loses upwards of $80 million a year.

Moreover, the Times’ paid circulation, which posted an anemic 67,000 in its last report to the Audit Bureau of Circulations last September — compared to the rival Washington Post’s 702,000 — plunged dramatically since the crisis began to 42,000, with only 25,000 home subscribers, according to Times sources who spoke to The ‘Skeeter Bites Report on condition of anonymity.

BLADE’S REVERSAL OF FORTUNE IS RARE GOOD NEWS FOR A BATTERED NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY

For the Blade, its phoenix-like rise from the ashes of Window Media’s bankruptcy is a rare instance of good fortune in an industry that has suffered — and continues to suffer — staggering losses. Figures released in April by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which monitors newspaper sales to the public, found average weekday circulation fell 8.7 percent in the six months that ended March 31, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Circulation of Sunday newspapers also fell, by 6.5 percent. Even free-circulation newspapers, most of them weeklies, have seen declines in both circulation and advertising revenues. The Blade was no exception to this trend, but has remained financially healthy, according to publisher Lynn Brown.

Over its 40 years, the Blade built a reputation as the newspaper of record if you wanted to know the latest news of the LGBT community in the nation’s capital and around the world.

With its straightforward, no-nonsense, in-depth style of reporting, the Blade became known as “The New York Times of the gay press” — the one LGBT newspaper that the mainstream media — and much of Washington’s heterosexual society — took seriously.

SUDDEN SHUTDOWN OF BLADE LAST NOVEMBER CAME AS A SHOCK

On November 15 — just weeks after it celebrated its 40th anniversary in October — the Blade’s nearly two-dozen employees arrived for work at the newspaper’s offices in the National Press Building in downtown Washington and were stunned to be told by an executive of parent company Window Media that the company had filed for liquidation under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Act and was shutting down all of its publications.

Staffers had until 3 p.m. that afternoon to clear out their desks.

BLADE ITSELF WAS FINANCIALLY HEALTHY, BUT ITS PARENT COMPANY WAS MIRED IN DEBT

The Atlanta-based Window Media, which purchased the Blade for a reported $2 million in 2001, was also closing the Southern Voice of Atlanta, the Houston Voice, the South Florida Blade of Miami and several magazines.

The Blade’s Web site, washingtonblade.com, was also shut down.

A Window Media spokesman did not disclose a reason for the sudden shutdown, but it had been known for months that the company was saddled with major debts. Ironically, the Blade itself was financially healthy, with a weekly circulation reported at about 25,000 and its average 80-to-100-page issues thick with advertising. Its Web site was even more successful, drawing about a million visitors a month.

Founded in October 1969, just four months after the Stonewall Riots in New York’s Greenwich Village that is credited as the beginning of the modern gay rights movement, the Blade — originally named The Gay Blade — first rolled off a mimeograph machine as a four-page newsletter.

BLADE STAFF RALLIES, LAUNCHES NEW PAPER TO REPLACE BLADE

Determined to preserve the Blade’s 40-year legacy, a group of Blade employees, led by Brown and executive editor Kevin Naff — with the backing of many businesses and LGBT community organizations — launched DC Agenda to fill the void left by the Blade’s sudden demise. Without missing a week, on November 20, the first issue of DC Agenda hit the streets on what would have been the first Friday without the Blade.

The newspaper’s staff formed Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia Inc. to buy the rights and assets of the Blade. They succeeded in late February, when the fledgling company purchased the newspaper’s name, copyrights, trademarks, 40-year-old archives, computers and office furniture under the auspices of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Atlanta for $15,000.

On April 30, 25,000 copies of a new, redesigned 56-page Blade rolled off the presses. “A lot of people really have an emotional connection to the Blade and the outpouring since it closed was overwhelming and was really what led us to carry on,” Naff told The Washington Post..

“We’ll be a leaner publication and we’ll grow as we can afford to grow,” Naff continued. “But [this first] issue is 56 pages — which is remarkable considering [that] DC Agenda launched with just eight pages.”

WHILE BLADE SOARS, TIMES CRASHES

It’s a totally different story at The Washington Times offices on New York Avenue in northeast Washington. On the very same day that the Blade made its return, it was announced that the Times was up for sale.

Nicholas Chiaia, a member of the conservative daily’s two-person board of directors, announced the sale just as Times president and publisher Jonathan Slevin was shown the door — the second chief executive of the newspaper to be fired in five months.

Slevin was named the Times’ president and publisher last November after his predecessor, Thomas McDevitt, along with longtime chief financial officer Keith Cooperrider and board chairman Dong Moon Joo, were fired personally by Preston Moon, president of parent company News World Communications Inc. and the youngest son of the company’s founder, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

CRISIS AT TIMES TRACED TO BITTER FEUD BETWEEN SONS OF REVEREND MOON

The chaos at the Times began in October, when the Unification Church announced that the 90-year-old Reverend Moon, who founded the church in 1954, was essentially retiring, turning over control of the church and his global business empire to his three American-born sons.

Hyung-jin Moon, 30, was put in charge of the church itself. Kook-jin (Justin) Moon, 39, was tapped to run the church’s businesses ventures in South Korea. Hyun-jin (Preston) Moon, 40, runs the church’s overseas businesses — including News World Communications.

There have been numerous reports — most notably on TalkingPointsMemo.com — of a bitter feud between Preston and the rest of the Moon family.

IS POLITICAL SPLIT ROOT OF MOON FAMILY FEUD?

The reason for the feud is not known, but according to a Wikipedia page about the new Unification Church leader, Hyung-jin Moon is said to have broken from his family’s longtime support for conservative Republicans to back President Obama.

“I am very proud as an American to have a black president,” he is quoted by Wikipedia as saying. “I was born and raised in America. I am a part of a minority. To see a minority representative being the president of the United States of America is extremely inspiring. It’s just miraculous.”

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report was unable to independently confirm the quote.

Whatever reason for the feud, it apparently led Hyung-jin Moon in October to cut off the church’s subsidy to keep the Times afloat — a hefty $35 million a year. In its entire 28-year history, the Times has never made a profit and, according to Times sources, loses between $75 million and $80 million a year.

TIMES QUICKLY WITHERS AFTER CHURCH’S MONEY CUTOFF

The results have been disastrous for the paper. With the church’s largesse — which reportedly totals $3 billion since the Times was founded in 1982 — now dried up, on top of sharply declining advertising and circulation that has plagued newspapers from coast to coast, Preston Moon was forced to drastically cut costs in a desperate attempt to keep the conservative daily alive.

In quick succession, more than 60 percent of the Times’ staff was laid off — far more than previously reported. The paper stopped publishing on Sundays, becoming a Monday-through-Friday daily only, much like USA Today.

But the most radical cutback, however, was one that Times readers noticed right away: It ceased to be a full-service daily, eliminating its metropolitan news and sports sections.

In particular, the end of the Times’ highly-regarded sports section — it published for the last time on December 27 — might have been the final straw with readers: Circulation plummeted, from 67,000 last September to 42,000 now, according to Times sources. Home-delivery subscriptions nosedived to 25,000. Even the Times’ Web site saw a dramatic decline in visitors.

The capital’s conservative community — the paper’s core readership base, as well as many of the paper’s longtime conservative columnists — abandoned the Times in droves, with many switching to the Washington Examiner, the city’s other conservative daily owned by billionaire Phillip Anschutz’s Clarity Media.

Now, the Times is up for sale. But given the fact that it’s never made a profit in its 28-year history; it loses up to $80 million a year; its circulation has dropped like a stone; and the economic climate for daily newspapers appears to get worse by the month, who in their right business mind is going to buy it?

Certainly not Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns a highly profitable television station in Washington (WTTG Fox Channel 5) and FCC cross-ownership rules would bar a purchase of the newspaper without selling off the station.

Besides, Murdoch already owns a money-losing newspaper — the New York Post — which hasn’t made a profit in 36 years and loses an estimated $55 million to $60 million a year. Murdoch can’t really afford to subsidize two money-losing dailies. Unlike Reverend Moon, Murdoch has News Corporation shareholders he has to answer to — and they would not likely be happy with such a purchase.

The Times’, for all intents and purposes, is in a coma. It would be very surprising if the paper isn’t gone by September, if not sooner.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Internal BP E-Mails and Other Company Documents Reveal Claims By Former Contractor That the British Oil Giant Violated Federal Workplace Safety Laws and Its Own Internal Policies by Failing to Keep Critical Safety Data On Its Other Offshore Oil Rigs in the Gulf of Mexico

“GREEN” IMAGE DESTROYED — Oil giant BP Plc, formerly known as British Petroleum, has for the past several years engaged in a public-relations campaign to create an environmentally-friendly image of itself, even adopting a play on its initials with the slogan “Beyond Petroleum.” But a disastrous explosion and fire April 20 that destroyed an offshore rig leased by BP in the Gulf of Mexico — the latest in a series of workplace disasters to hit the company — threatens to escalate into the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in American history. Internal company e-mails and other documents reveal that BP failed to maintain critical safety procedures for its other rigs in the gulf. (Photo courtesy World News Network)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, May 4, 2010)

===============
SPECIAL REPORT
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By JASON LEOPOLD
Truthout
(Republished under a Creative Commons license)

A former contractor who worked for BP Plc claims the British oil conglomerate broke federal workplace-safety laws and violated its own internal procedures by failing to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firm’s other deep-water production projects in the Gulf of Mexico, according to internal e-mails and other documents obtained by the online news service Truthout.

The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at his request because the contractor still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world’s largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008.

It was then that the whistleblower, who was hired to oversee the company’s databases that housed documents related to its BP Atlantis project, discovered that the drilling platform had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving the platform vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began April 20 following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig.

BP Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

BP CEO BLAMES RIG OWNER FOR EXPLOSION, LEAK

Confronted with the staggering cost of cleaning up the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico — as well the likelihood of multi-million-dollar lawsuits — the head of BP insisted Monday that the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and sank April 20 is responsible for the failure of a device that was designed to prevent such a catastrophe.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, BP Group CEO Tony Hayward said that while BP was taking responsibility for cleaning up the leak, the accident that triggered the disaster was the fault of the rig’s owner, Transocean.

“It wasn’t our accident, but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up, and that’s what we intend to do,” Hayward said. “That rig was run by their [Transocean's] people, their processes.”

Transocean refused to comment on Hayward’s allegations. Guy Cantwell, a Transocean spokesman, said that his company “will await all the facts before drawing conclusions and we will not speculate.”

E-MAILS SHOW BP OFFICIALS KNEW OF DANGER TO ITS GULF RIGS

BP’s own internal communications show that company officials were made aware of the issue and feared that the document shortfalls related to Atlantis “could lead to catastrophic operator error” and must be addressed.

Indeed, according to an August 15, 2008, e-mail sent to BP officials by Barry Duff, a member of BP’s deep-water Gulf of Mexico Atlantis subsea team, the piping and instrument diagrams (PIDs) for the Atlantis subsea components “are not complete” and “there are hundreds if not thousands of subsea documents that have never been finalized, yet the facilities have been” up and running.

PID documents form the foundation of a hazards analysis BP is required under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act to undertake as part of its safety and environmental management program related to its offshore drilling operations. The drawings provide the schematic details of the project’s piping and process flows, valves and safety critical instrumentation.

‘CATASTROPHIC OPERATOR ERRORS’ LIKELY

Duff’s e-mail to company officials Bill Naseman and William Broman warned that “The risk in turning over drawings that are not complete are [that] the operator will assume the drawings are accurate and up to date. This could lead to catastrophic operator errors due to their assuming the drawing is correct.

“Turning over incomplete drawings to the operator for their use,” the e-mail continued, “is a fundamental violation of basic document control, [internal standards] and process safety regulations.”

BP officials did not respond to repeated requests by Truthout for comment. Despite the claims that BP did not maintain proper documentation related to Atlantis, federal regulators authorized an expansion of the drilling project.

REVIEW BY OUTSIDE CONSULTANT IN 2009 FINDS MOST PROCEDURES WERE UNAPPROVED

A year ago, Mike Sawyer, a Texas-based engineer who works for Apex Safety Consultants, voluntarily agreed to evaluate BP’s Atlantis subsea document database and the whistleblower’s allegations regarding BP’s engineering document shortfall related to Atlantis.

Sawyer concluded that of the 2,108 PIDs BP maintained that dealt specifically with the subsea components of its Atlantis production project, 85 percent did not receive engineer approval.

Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis’ subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one triggered by the April 20 explosion on Deepwater Horizon.

In a report Sawyer prepared after his review, he said BP’s “widespread pattern of unapproved design, testing and inspection documentation on the Atlantis subsea project creates a risk of a catastrophic incident threatening the [Gulf of Mexico] deep-water environment and the safety of platform workers.” Moreover, “the extent of documentation discrepancies creates a substantial risk that a catastrophic event could occur at any time.”

‘SUBSTANTIAL RISK OF LARGE-SCALE DAMAGE’ TO ENVIRONMENT DUE TO ‘BP’S RECKLESSNESS’

“There is no valid engineering justification for these violations and shortcuts,” he added.

Sawyer explained that the documents in question — welding records, inspections and safety shutdown logic materials — are “extremely critical to the safe operation of the platform and its subsea components.” He said the safety shutdown logic drawings on BP Atlantis, a complex computerized system that, during emergencies, is supposed to send a signal to automatically shut down the flow of oil, were listed as “requiring update.”

“BP’s recklessness in regards to the Atlantis project is a clear example of how the company has a pattern of failing to comply with minimum industry standards for worker and environmental safety,” Sawyer said.

The oil spill now blanketing roughly 4,000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers was exacerbated, preliminary reports suggest, by the failure of a blowout preventer to shut off the flow of oil on the drilling rig and the lack of a backup safety measure, known as a remote-control acoustic shut-off switch, to operate the blowout preventer.

Representative Henry Waxman (D-California), chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent a letter Thursday to BP Chairman and President Lamar McKay seeking documents related to inspections on Deepwater Horizon conducted this year and BP’s policy on using acoustic shut off switches in the Gulf of Mexico.

The circumstances behind the spill are now the subject of a federal investigation.

GULF RIG EXPLOSION IS LATEST IN LONG HISTORY OF BP DISASTERS

Whether it’s the multiple oil spills that emanated from BP’s Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska’s North Slope or the March 2005 explosion at the company’s Texas City, Texas refinery that killed 15 employees and injured 170 people, BP’s critics have long accused the company of having consistently put profits ahead of safety.

On October 25, 2007, BP pleaded guilty to a criminal violation of the Clean Water Act and paid a $20 million fine related to two separate oil spills that occurred in Alaska’s North Slope in March and August of 2006, the result of a severely corroded pipeline and a safety valve failure.

BP formally entered a guilty plea in federal court on November 29, 2007. U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Beistline sentenced BP to three years probation and said oil spills were a “serious crime” that could have been prevented if BP had spent more time and funds investing in pipeline upgrades and a “little less emphasis on profit.”

Also on October 25, 2007, BP paid a $50 million fine and pleaded guilty to a felony in the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion. An investigation into that incident concluded that a warning system was not working and that BP sidestepped its own internal regulations for operating the tower. Moreover, BP has a prior felony conviction for improperly disposing of hazardous waste.

BP REPEATEDLY FINED FOR VIOLATIONS OF SAFETY PROCEDURES

In 2007, the federal Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency that monitors offshore drilling practices, fined BP $41,000 for not properly training employees in well-control management related to a near-blowout due to a rise in gas pressure on the Ocean King Rig in the Mediterranean off the coast of Croatia five years earlier that forced the evacuation of all 65 workers for two days and halted drilling for a week.

According to the MMS, Diamond Offshore Drilling, the Houston-based owner-operator of the rig, and BP did not know that the critical safety procedures they employed to try and stop the increase in gas pressure on the Ocean King Rig could also have caused a blowout.

The environmental publication Clean Skies [which erroneously located the Ocean King Rig in the Gulf of Mexico] reported that the MMS “cited BP for what it called ‘no formal procedures’ and ‘no written guideline’ to follow in case of an emergency. The MMS also cited BP and contract workers in the incident for what they said was a ‘lack of knowledge of the system, and lack of pre-event planning and procedures.’”

In separate incidents, “BP was also fined $75,000 in 2003 for not having adequate water pressure on one rig’s fire protection system as well as another $80,000 fine for bypassing safety alarms that could have indicated dangerously high pressure, similar to what caused the near-blowout in 2002,” according to MMS data cited by Clean Skies in a recent report.

BP IGNORED REPEATED WARNINGS OF SAFETY VIOLATIONS SINCE 1999

The incident involving Deepwater Horizon may end up being the latest example of BP’s safety practices run amok.

The issues related to the repeated spills in Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere were revealed by more than 100 whistleblowers who, since as far back as 1999, said the company failed to take seriously their warnings about shoddy safety practices and instead retaliated against whistleblowers who registered complaints with their superiors.

In September 2006, days before BP executives were scheduled to testify before Congress about an oil spill from a ruptured pipeline that forced the company to shutdown its Prudhoe Bay operations, BP announced that it had tapped Stanley Sporkin, a former federal judge, to serve as an ombudsman and take complaints from employees about the company’s operations.

It was Sporkin to whom the whistleblower complained via e-mail about issues related to BP’s Atlantis operations in March 2009, a month after his contract was abruptly terminated. The whistleblower believes his termination was directly related to his complaints to management about BP’s failure to obtain the engineering documents on Atlantis and to his defense of “a female employee who was being discriminated against and harassed.”

WHISTLEBLOWER: BP DIDN’T WANT TO SPEND $2M TO SECURE SAFETY DOCUMENTS

The whistleblower alleged that the $2 million price tag was the primary reason BP did not follow through with a plan formulated months earlier to secure the documents.

“We prepared a plan to remedy this situation but it met much resistance and complaints from the above lead engineers on the project,” the whistleblower wrote in a March 4, 2009, e-mail to Pasha Eatedali of the BP ombudsman’s office.

Additionally, the whistleblower hired an attorney and contacted both the Interior Department’s inspector general and the MMS, telling officials there that BP lacked the required engineer-certified documents related to the major components of the Atlantis subsea gas and oil operation.

In 2007, the MMS had approved the construction of an additional well and another drilling center on Atlantis. But the whistleblower alleged in his March 4, 2009, e-mail to Eatedali that documents related to this project needed to ensure operational safety were missing and that amounted to a violation of federal law as well as a breach of BP’s Atlantis Project execution plan. The ombudsman’s office agreed to investigate.

BP ACCUSED OF NOT FULLY COOPERATING WITH FEDERAL PROBE

The MMS, acting on the whistleblower’s complaints, contacted BP on June 30, 2009, seeking specific engineering related documents. BP complied with the request three weeks later.

On July 9, 2009, the MMS requested that BP turn over certification documents for its subsurface safety valves and surface-controlled subsea safety valves for all operational wells in the Atlantis field. MMS officials flew out to the platform on the same day and secured the documents, according to an internal letter written by Karen Westall, the managing attorney on BP’s Gulf of Mexico legal team.

But according to the public advocacy group Food & Water Watch, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit, which became involved in the case last July, BP did not turn over a complete set of materials to the MMS.

“BP only turned over ‘as-built’ drawings for [Atlantis'] topsides and hull, despite the fact that the whistleblower’s allegations have always been about whether BP maintains complete and accurate engineer-approved documents for its subsea components,” Food & Water Watch said in a 19-page letter it sent to William Hauser, the head of the MMS’ regulations and standards branch.

During two visits to the Atlantis drilling platform last August and September, MMS inspectors reviewed BP’s blowout preventer records. Food & Water Watch said they believe MMS inspectors reviewed the test records and failed to look into the whistleblower’s charges that engineering documents were missing. The blowout preventer, however, is an issue at the center of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

An MMS spokesperson did not return calls for comment.

Last October, Food & Water Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request for expedited processing, seeking documents from the MMS that indicate BP “has in its possession a complete and accurate set of ‘as-built’ drawings … for its entire Atlantis Project, including the subsea sector.”

“As-built” means lead engineers on a specific project have to make sure updated technical documents match the “as-built” condition of equipment before its used.

The MMS denied the FOIA request. In a response letter dated October 30, 2009, the agency wrote that it “does not agree with your assessment of the potential for imminent danger to individuals or the environment, for which you premise your argument [for expedited response]. After a thorough review of these allegations, the MMS, with concurrence of the Solicitor’s Office, concludes your claims are not supported by the facts or the law.”

The MMS said that although some of its regulatory requirements governing offshore oil and gas operations do require “as-built” drawings, they need not be complete or accurate and, furthermore, are irrelevant to a hazard analysis BP was required to complete.

Unsatisfied with the MMS’ response, Food & Water Watch contacted Representative Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources and chairman of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, about the issues revolving around BP’s Atlantis operations and provided his office with details of its own investigation into the matter.

BP ATTORNEY: ALLEGATIONS AGAINST COMPANY ‘UNSUBSTANTIATED’

On January 15, Westall, the BP attorney, wrote a letter to Deborah Lanzone, the staff director with the House Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals, to address the allegations leveled by Food & Water Watch as well as indirect claims made by the whistleblower.

Westall said BP “reviewed the allegations” related to “noncompliant documentation of the Atlantis project … and found them to be unsubstantiated.”

Westall noted in her letter that “all eight BP-operated Gulf of Mexico production facilities” received safety awards from MMS in 2009.

“Maintenance and general housekeeping were rated outstanding and personnel were most cooperative in assisting in the inspection activities,” MMS said about BP’s Gulf of Mexico drilling facilities. “Platform records were readily available for review and maintained to reflect current conditions.”

Westall maintained that the whistleblower as well as Food & Water Watch had it all wrong. Their charges about missing documents has nothing to do with Atlantis’ operational safety. Rather, Westall seemed to characterize their complaints as a clerical issue.

Westall said in her letter to Lanzone. “The [August 15, 2008] e-mail [written by Duff] which was provided to you to support [Food & Water Watch's] allegations relates to the status of efforts to utilize a particular document management system to house and maintain the Atlantis documents. The document database includes engineering drawings for future phases, as well as components or systems which may have been modified, replaced, or not used.”

ATTORNEY’S RESPONSE CONTRADICTS BP’S OWN OMBUDSMAN

But Westall’s response directly contradicts the findings of Billie Pirner Garde, BP’s deputy ombudsman, who wrote in an April 13 e-mail to the whistleblower that his claims that BP failed to maintain proper documentation related to Atlantis “were substantiated” and “addressed by a BP Management of Change document.”

Garde did not say when that change occurred. But he added that the whistleblower’s complaints weren’t “unique” and had been raised by other employees “before you worked there, while you were there and after you left.”

CONGRESSMAN UNIMPRESSED WITH BP AND DEMANDS ANSWERS

Congressman Grijalva was not swayed by Westall’s denials. He continued to press the issue with the MMS, and in February, he and 18 other lawmakers signed a letter calling on the MMS to probe whether BP “is operating its Atlantis offshore oil platform … without professionally approved safety documents.”

Grijalva wrote that the MMS has not “done enough so far to ensure worker and environmental safety at the site, in part because it has interpreted the relevant laws too loosely.”

“[C]ommunications between [the] MMS and congressional staff have suggested that while the company by law must maintain ‘as-built’ documents, there is no requirement that such documents be complete or accurate,” Grijalva wrote.

“This statement, if an accurate interpretation of MMS authorities, raises serious concerns” and requires “a thorough review at the agency level, the legal level and the corporate level,” Grijalva continued. “The world’s largest oil rig cannot continue to operate without safety documentation. The situation is unacceptable and deserves immediate scrutiny.

“We also request that [the] MMS describe how a regulation that requires offshore operators to maintain certain engineering documents, but does not require that those documents be complete or accurate, is appropriately protective of human health and the environment,” the letter concluded.

On March 26, the MMS launched a formal investigation and is expected to file a report detailing its findings next month.

Zach Corrigan, a senior attorney with Food & Water Watch, said in an interview with Truthout on Thursday that he hopes MMS “will perform a real investigation” and if the agency fails to do so, Congress should immediately hold oversight hearings “and ensure that the explosion and mishap of the Horizon platform is not replicated.”

“MMS didn’t act on this for nearly a year,” Corrigan said. “They seemed to think it wasn’t a regulatory or an important safety issue. Atlantis is a real vulnerability.”

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Special Report Copyright 2010, Truthout. Republished under a Creative Commons license.
The ‘Skeeter Bites Report Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.