Coming out of the woodwork 'Whistleblowers'
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Hamel, who is on the board of the Project on Government Oversight and formerly worked as an oil trader, has a long history with BP -- the company was forced to pay more than $1 billion in safety-related improvements to the 800-mile Alaska pipeline as a result of investigations prompted by Hamel.

Alyeska Pipeline, the company which

Whistleblower
EXCERPT:
Charles Hamel and the Trans Alaska Pipeline Whistleblowers(7)(8)(9)

The Alyeska Pipeline Service is the company that operates the Trans Alaska Pipeline. It is owned by a consortium of oil companies including Exxon, British Petroleum and Atlantic Richfield. In the early 1980's, Charles Hamel, an oil broker, got involved in a business dispute with Alyeska. Hamel felt he had been cheated and as a result began leaking information about Alyeska's environmental wrongdoing.
Sympathetic workers at Alyeska, who were disturbed by their employer's harmful environmental practices but were fearful of their jobs, began passing incriminating internal Alyeska documents to Hamel who, in turn, passed them on to regulators and Congress. Eventually Hamel accumulated a sizable network of fifteen whistleblowers within Alyeska and its member companies who had access to information which was not available to government inspectors and environmental enforcement officials.
This network provided Hamel with information about violations of the Clean Water Act by Exxon and British Petroleum that resulted in citations by EPA. They revealed air pollution violations at the Valdez terminal. They supplied Hamel with documents which showed that the system for detecting leaks in the Trans Alaska Pipeline was faulty, that the pipeline was severely corroded, and that neither federal nor state regulators were adequately monitoring its operations. This material was used in a report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. Hamel also exposed oil discoveries which industry was trying to keep secret in order to convince Congress of the need to drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
The network's revelations cost the oil companies millions of dollars in fines and more millions to correct the environmental problems. Hamel appeared frequently on television and in Congressional hearings and his charges were reported in the press all over the world.
In 1990, in an effort to stop the leaks, Alyeska hired the Wackenhut security agency to spy on Hamel. Wackenhut set up a bogus environmental organization called Ecolit which offered to help Hamel pursue litigation against the oil industry, but the real purpose was to find out who was leaking the documents. Wackenhut agents watched Hamel's home, picked through his trash, used sophisticated electronic eavesdropping devices, and obtained his credit, banking and telephone records, as well as personal information about his family. They even hired women to entice Hamel into revealing his sources.
However, with information supplied by disgusted Wackenhut agents at great personal risk, Hamel sued Alyeska, Wackenhut and Exxon for invasion-of-privacy and in December of 1993, they settled with Charles Hamel for an undisclosed amount, which is reported to be in the millions. While Charles Hamel may not have been primarily motivated by a moral desire to prevent Alyeska's defilement of the Alaskan environment, his anonymous sources clearly were so motivated and Hamel earned their and our gratitude by protecting those sources from Alyeska's wrath at great risk to himself.

The man who knew too much: Alyeska plugs a leaky pipeline w/its own private FBI

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The man who knew too much: Alyeska plugs a leaky pipeline with its own private FBI
Sierra, March-April, 1992 by Paul Rauber
123Next ..Alyeska plugs a leaky pipeline with its own private FBI

Oil-industry gadfly Charles Hamel was sitting in Fletcher's Bar in Anchorage late one night when a "lovely young lady" attracted his attention. As he later told 60 Minutes, she was "pretty, blonde, tanned, and if I recall, I think her blouse was rather transparent." This struck him as odd attire for Anchorage in March; still, he was charmed when, a few days later, she turned up in the seat next to his on a flight out of town. The woman told Hamel she worked for a well-funded environmental legal group called Eco-Lit--which just happened to be in a position to help him out in his long-running battle with Alyeska, the consortium formed by Exxon, Arco, and British Petroleum to build and operate the Alaska pipeline. Broke and beleaguered, Hamel failed to recognize a situation too good to be true, and accepted EcoLit's offer to help. The trap snapped shut.

EcoLit was a sham, a phony organization set up by the Wackenhut Corporation, a Florida-based security firm; the woman in the see-through blouse was a Wackenhut agent. The company was under contract to Alyeska to snoop on Hamel, a former oil broker who was making life for the consortium both miserable and very, very expensive.

Hamel has been Alyeska's bete noire since 1980, when the company allegedly cheated him by selling him water-contaminated oil. Eager for revenge, he became a conduit for whistleblowers, and the information funneled through him cost Alyeska a fortune in fines. (One case alone, regarding air pollution at Alyeska's Valdez terminal, resulted in $30 million in penalties.) Hamel was also a major source for last August's alarming General Accounting Office report on the likelihood of a catastrophic oil leak along the pipeline. Alyeska was desperate to plug its leaks--not in the pipeline, but to Hamel. In February 1990, Alyeska President James Hermiller hired Wackenhut to do the job.

Exxon Valdez renamed SeaRiver Mediterranean
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SeaRiver Mediterranean

Exxon Valdez was the original name of an oil tanker owned by the Exxon oil company. The ship was renamed to SeaRiver Mediterranean after the March 24, 1989 oil spill in which the tanker hit Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef; this was the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
The vessel has an all steel construction, built by National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego. It was delivered to Exxon in December, 1986. The tanker is 300 m (987 ft) long, 50 m (166 ft) wide and 27 m (88 ft) in depth, weighing 30,000 tons empty and powered by a 31,650 s.h.p. diesel engine. The vessel could transport a maximum of 1.48 million barrels at a sustained speed of 16.25 knots and was employed to transport crude oil from the Alyeska consortium's pipeline terminal in Valdez, Alaska to the lower 48 states of the United States.

Veco Corp. Wikipedia
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Exxon Valdez oil spill
On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef, spilling eleven million gallons of crude oil into the waters of Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez oil spill was the largest in United States history.

VECO was responsible for large parts of the spill's clean up, hiring 2,500 workers to clean up the environmental disaster.

CH2M Hill bribe scandal CH2M Hill was VECO Corp
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The troubled East Cleveland Water Department figured prominently in the bribery cases of former East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor and businessman Nate Gray, both of whom are in prison.

A 2005 federal indictment accused Gray of bribing Onunwor in connection with a no-bid, $3.9 million contract with Denver-based CH2M Hill, which managed the water and sewer systems in East Cleveland.

According to federal prosecutors, CH2M Hill provided as much as $10,000 a month in consulting fees to Cleveland engineer Ralph Tyler, who carried the money to Gray, who used it for bribes. Attorneys for CH2M Hill and Tyler said at the time that their clients did not know the money was used for bribes.

Ted Stevens and his bridge to nowhere
EXCERPT:
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 21, 2005

Republicans in Congress say they are serious about cutting spending, but they learned yesterday to keep their hands off the "Bridge to Nowhere."


VECO Corp. Ted Stevens and the Exxon Valdez Scandal
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Alaska: The Senator and the Oil Man
This Week: Alaska: The Senator and the Oil Man | Inside the Scandal | Big Oil, Big Influence | Timeline: Alaska Corruption Scandal | Transcript

Video: Alaska: The Senator and the Oil ManAlaska Senator Ted Stevens has been indicted for failing to disclose gifts he received from VECO Corporation, an Alaska-based oil services company. But his indictment is only the latest news - and perhaps the tip of the iceberg - in an ongoing political scandal that's rocking the state and Congress.

This week, NOW goes behind the breaking headlines to shine a bright light on the scandalous connection between VECO and Alaska's old-boy political network. Three state legislators have already been convicted in Federal court for accepting bribes from VECO, and the FBI has video and audio evidence that reveal VECO executives shockingly handing out cash to those legislators in exchange for promises to roll back a tax on the oil industry. And more lawmakers - including Senator Stevens' own son, former Alaska State Senate President Ben Stevens - are being eyed in the growing scandal.

NOW continues its ongoing investigation into the bribes, the connections to big oil and the payoffs to obtain friendly tax policies.