Mention the name of the corporation BP to Scott West and two words immediately come to mind: Beyond Prosecution.
West was the special agent-in-charge at the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division who had been probing alleged crimes committed by BP and the company's senior officials in connection with a March 2006 pipeline rupture at the company's Prudhoe Bay operations on Alaska's North Slope that spilled more than 200,000 gallons of oil across two acres of frozen tundra - the second largest spill in Alaska's history - which went undetected for nearly a week.
West was confident that the thousands of hours he invested into the criminal investigation would result in felony charges against BP and the company's senior executives who received advanced warnings from dozens of employees who worked at its Prudhoe Bay facility that unless immediate steps were taken to repair the severely corroded pipeline, a disaster on par with that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was only a matter of time.
Click here to listen to Scott West discuss this report on Democracy Now!
In fact, West, who spent nearly two decades at the EPA's criminal division, was also told the pipeline was going to rupture - about six months before it happened.
In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, West described how the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down his investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a "slap on the wrist" for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail.
He first aired his frustrations after he retired from the agency in 2008. But he said his story is ripe for retelling because the same questions about BP's record are being raised again after a catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface spewing 200,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf waters for a month.
Read on.
Remember the lawsuit between former GAO comptroller David Walker vs. then Vice President Dick Cheney?:
Scholars believe, however, that the GAO’s authority could be undermined in the wake of a landmark case, Walker vs. Cheney. This Federal lawsuit pertained to a GAO investigation into the Bush Administration’s Energy Task Force. Vice President Richard Cheney refused to disclose which individuals and groups met with the Task Force, prompting Walker to sue for the information in Federal court. In December 2002, the court ruled for Cheney.
Congressional pressure persuaded Walker to abandon appeals. Having vowed to "go to the mat," he originally planned to pursue the case further. But according to OMBWatch, "Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, met with GAO Comptroller General David Walker earlier in the year, and sources have reported that sharp cuts in the GAO $440 million budget were threatened if the lawsuit was pursued further".
The GAO was designed to be independent, and Walker cites several factors insulating his agency from political pressure. In a Roll Call op-ed, he remarks, "To begin with, our location in the legislative branch gives us some distance from the executive branches we audit and oversee. Moreover, the head of GAO serves a 15-year term, which gives the agency a continuity of leadership that is rare in the federal government. . . . GAO’s independence is further safeguarded by the fact that its workforce consists of career civil servants hired on the basis of their knowledge, skill, and ability".
However, the GAO, like all federal agencies, is subject to Congress’ budgetary power. According to The Hill, "Walker did say . . . that several lawmakers have threatened in the past year to cut agency funding if it persisted with the controversial lawsuit. He also said the budget threat was among a number of factors that tipped his Feb. 7 decision to halt litigation"
Let me add that Justice Scalia was asked to recused himself from the case because he went duck hunting with Cheney which Walker felt that could cloud Scalia's judgement. Scalia refused to recuse himself.
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