KinderCare, Frank Doyle Jr., Enron, Kinder Morgan /Building 7 SEC

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LAST WEEK IN AN OAKLAND COURTROOM, A JURY OF 10 citizens found that, yes, the FBI is using the fight against terrorism to shut down political dissent. These jurors were not urban radicals; they were suburbanites from Walnut Creek and Concord, some of them wearing sequined American-flag shirts. They found that six agents of the FBI and the Oakland police twisted a murder attempt against Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, two Earth First! activists working to reform logging practices on California's North Coast, to link them falsely to domestic terrorism and aggressively slander them in the press. Of $4.4 million in damages awarded by the jury, more than 80 percent went for First Amendment violations: The FBI had tried to silence their environmental views.

This is more than just another of many recent black eyes for the FBI. It's strong evidence that the FBI is still in the business of domestic politics, and that the spirit of the 1970s FBI counterintelligence operations that killed off the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement is alive and well today. With one big difference: No jury ever ruled against those FBI tactics.

Bari's case was so overwhelming that it plowed through 11 years of FBI motions even after Bari herself died of breast cancer in 1997. “Ten Americans, once they weren't limited to hearing controlled soundbites, were able to weed through the crap and they got it,” says Bob Bloom, one of the Bari-Cherney attorneys. “The FBI and law enforcement are the private army for the people who run this country.”

On May 24, 1990, Bari and Cherney drove through Oakland in her Subaru on their way to a gig. Bari, then 40, a carpenter and union activist who lived in the Northern California mill town of Willits with her two preteen daughters, expected to play her fiddle and give another of her rousing talks in support of timber reform. Cherney, a few years her junior, was an Earth First! troubadour known for his sardonic tunes like “You Can't Clearcut Your Way to Heaven.” The two helped organize 1990's Redwood Summer, a monthslong series of nonviolent protests in support of Proposition 130, a November ballot initiative that would preserve old-growth redwoods — and cost the timber industry a reported $50 billion. The night before, the pair had just finished Redwood Summer plans with Berkeley-based Seeds of Peace, which would provide kitchens and logistics. Near 34th and Park, Bari stomped on the brakes to keep from making a wrong turn. As she did, a powerful motion-activated pipe bomb exploded beneath her driver's-side seat.

Bari nearly died on the spot. The bomb, wrapped in finishing nails, shattered her pelvis and broke her back. Cherney was cut and bruised and temporarily deafened. The blast made a 2-by-4-foot hole in the car's floorboard. Before losing consciousness, Bari begged a nurse to let her die.

THE FIRST THOUGHT OF MANY THAT DAY, INCLUDING ME, was that this was the timber industry's Karen Silkwood. Like Silkwood, who spoke out about safety lapses in the nuclear-power industry and died under mysterious circumstances, Bari and Cherney had both been under death threats from pro-timber goons. Earth First! had drawn heavy criticism during the 1980s for advocating spiking trees with 60-
penny nails to discourage sawing. Bari had almost single-handedly turned Earth First! away from spiking and monkey-wrenching of equipment, recognizing that such dangerous tactics alienated timber and mill workers. Bari, a former shop steward with the Retail Clerks Union and the Postal Workers Union, dreamed of a green-black coalition between environmentalists and workers.

But hatred for meddling Earth First! hippies ran too deep. Bari had previously been run off the road by a logging-truck driver she knew with her two baby girls in the car. She'd been threatened with death on a Fort Bragg radio station, and in phone calls from the pro-timber Yellow Ribbon Coalition. Bari had a collection of mailed death threats, one featuring her picture in the cross hairs of a rifle scope. Many of these had already been presented to the local sheriff and to the FBI. Authorities found another pile of them in the back seat of her Subaru.

The FBI, however, ignored all this and immediately accused Bari and Cherney of blowing themselves up. The bomb exploded at 11:55 a.m. By 12:20 p.m., when Oakland Police Sergeant Michael Sitterud arrived, FBI agents already blanketed the scene. Sitterud testified that the agents “said that these were the type of individuals who would be involved in transporting explosives. They said that these people, in fact, qualified as terrorists.”

Thus began the web of lies, which only got deeper. Ten minutes after he arrived, Sitterud made a police-log entry describing Bari and Cherney as “Earth First leaders suspected of Santa Cruz power pole sabotage, linked with federal case of attempted destruction of nuclear power plant lines in Arizona.”

Special Agent Frank Doyle, a 20-year veteran bomb expert with the FBI Terrorist Squad out of San Francisco, oversaw the collection of evidence at the scene. Doyle ran the FBI's “Bomb School,” a law-enforcement event held for years on the property of Louisiana-Pacific Lumber Co., one of the firms that paid millions to defeat Prop. 130. One month earlier, Doyle had shown officers and timber security guards how to build and detonate car bombs identical to the Oakland bomb. Four of the first officers on the scene had participated in that training.

Doyle would later testify that there had been no investigation of Bari and Cherney that would have led him to portray either one as a terrorist, but in fact there were, and famously. Bari's name came up as someone affiliated with Earth First! in government documents about the allegedly “terrorist” downing of power lines in Santa Cruz in April 1990. I'd already written about the 1989 FBI Arizona operation called “THERMCON” (for “Thermite Conspiracy”), in which FBI Agent Michael Fain infiltrated Earth First! and led a sting operation, coaxing activists to use explosives to fell high-tension power lines (which they refused to do). The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show THERMCON was still an active file during the Oakland bombing, and documents from February through May of 1990 were marked “missing from the file.”

THE CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST BARI AND CHERNEY MOVED fast. As Bari underwent emergency surgery hours after the bombing, the police filed papers arresting them on suspicion of possessing explosives. The Oakland police and the FBI issued a series of press releases heralding the arrest, drilling home the Earth First!­bomb connection. This went on for months, with both agencies going public with each shred of evidence against Bari and Cherney, all of which turned out to be false. Local and national papers printed everything they said.

In the meantime, the feds ransacked both Earth First! and the Bay Area environmentalist community. Agents stormed the Seeds of Peace house, as activists sat on the lawn in handcuffs and watched their computers, notes and address books being carted off. Phone records led agents to more than 500 people who had made inquiries into Redwood Summer organizing, including the media.

On the scene of the bombing, the FBI fed Oakland police two false theories that the agencies used to obtain search warrants. One was that Bari had hidden the bomb with her guitar in the rear foot well. The other was that two bags of nails found in the car “matched” those in the bomb. The jury found that the agencies knew both theories to be wrong, leading to illegal warrants and false arrests. The theories were disproved in part by the FBI's own experts, and Doyle, in particular, was shown to be lying. Months after the bombing, FBI agents obtained a second search warrant for Bari's house and found finishing nails that they claimed, in another dramatic press release, had come from the same batch of only “200 to 1,000 nails” found on the bomb. In court, it was revealed that the batch consisted of several million nails and were not a match at all.

WHILE STILL IN THE HOSPITAL, BOTH BARI AND CHERNEY gave the FBI and Oakland police the names of people and a right-wing vigilante group they believed to be behind the death threats. They were never investigated. Seven weeks after the bombing, the Alameda County District Attorney's Office dropped all charges against the pair, citing lack of evidence, and Bari sued.

The FBI, it seems, achieved its purpose long ago: Agents connected Earth First! and Judi Bari with the bombing in the minds of the public. This was later cited as a key to the narrow defeat of Prop. 130. Now, many years later, a jury finds that the FBI violated Bari and Cherney's First Amendment rights by destroying them in the press, and violated the Fourth Amendment by embarking on a course of illegal searches and false arrests. What popular domestic issue will be silenced next — perhaps in the name of homeland security? Judi Bari's bomber remains at large.

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The Enron Connection to the 1989 Bennett v Southern Pacific witness murder the

Enron Lawyers in the Hot Seat

BY RICHARD ACELLO

JUNE 1, 2004, 9:50 PM CDT

In 1989 above attorney was defense counsel in the matter of Bennett versus Southern Pacific he is also one of Alamo first Mormons that is a prime suspect in blowing my truck up and even more likely a prime suspect connected to the Kinder Morgan explosion in Walnut Creek.

FBI agent Frank Doyle Jr pops up everywhere I'm more detailed analysis at forensics R Us dot-com

Mayor Newsom of San Francisco sponsored a $250,000 reward and there was somebody I knew from 1988 her husband wants work for me and most crackheads can't even put a noodle in enough let alone put a bullet between his somebody eyes.

##########$#$$

Southern Pacific Union Pacific Santa Fe pipeline Partners BNSF and Ron and Kinder Morgan bunch of relabeled terrorist

Once ranked as the seventh-largest corporation in the world, energy trader Enron Corp. was a high-flying success story of the bubble economy of the late 1990s.

The bubble burst in 2001, when Enron revealed it would incur losses of at least $1 billion and would restate its financial results. Soon, Enron’s stock lost nearly all its value, and in December 2001 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Now the finger-pointing and lawsuits are under way, and among the targets of criticism are some of the lawyers who worked for Enron, both in-house and on retainer. Those looking for new details about their work need look no further than the four reports totaling 4,500 pages produced last fall by court-appointed bankruptcy examiner Neal Batson.

Appointed in May 2002 by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern Dis­trict of New York, Batson outlines possible causes of action against lawyers and law firms for legal malpractice and for aiding and abetting of­ficers’ wrongful conduct. The lawyers and firms provided services and advice relating to Enron’s so-called special purpose entities, known as SPEs, which were allegedly used along with aggressive accounting techniques to manipulate Enron’s financial statements.

Batson was appointed to investigate and report on En­ron’s use of SPEs and the roles of Enron’s officers, directors, accountants, attorneys and financial institutions.

Outside law firms named in the reports include two Texas law firms: Austin-based Vinson & Elkins, Enron’s primary law firm; and Houston-based Andrews & Kurth, Enron’s firm of choice for legal work in connection with so-called FAS 140 transactions. Enron used these structured finance transactions to transfer illiquid assets to special purpose entities while retaining control of the assets and assuming liability for the debt incurred.

Among the in-house attorneys mentioned were Enron general counsel James V. Derrick and associate general counsel Rex Rogers, the in-house lawyer primarily responsible for disclosures in Enron’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

MOUNTAINS OF EVIDENCE

During the 18-month investigation, Batson and roughly 100 cohorts at the Atlanta law firm of Alston & Bird produced more than 40 million pages of documentary evidence and testimony from about 300 witnesses. By Bat­son’s reckoning, $10 billion in potential claims for the estate has been identified, and $500 million in settlements has already been approved by the court. Alston & Bird billed about $75 million for the reports and incurred roughly $20 million in expenses.

To date, the bankruptcy court has filed no claim against either Enron’s in-house or outside attorneys, but it is supervising Enron’s reorganization under Chapter 11.

Batson does not go so far as to conclude the lawyers committed malpractice, a point emphasized by Vinson & Elkins’ counsel, John Villa of the Washington, D.C., law firm Williams & Connolly.

“In fact, the examiner was careful to make clear that he was not reaching any such con­­clusion,” Villa says.

“Instead, as the examiner explained, he was merely iden­­ti­fying possible claims for which he found sufficient evidence—ignoring any evidence to the contrary—that the claims would be submitted to a jury for decision, rath­er than being dismissed before trial on a defense motion for summary judgment … or dismissed by the court as a matter of law at the end of the plaintiff’s case.”

Meanwhile, Vinson & Elkins has been named in a shareholder class action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston on April 8, 2002, by Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, led by partner Bill Lerach. The complaint alleges that “Vinson & Elkins engaged and participated in … contrivances and manipulations to help inflate Enron’s reported financial results.” The law firm has denied wrongdoing.

Lerach told the ABA Journal that he needed to receive clearance to discuss the case, but he had not called back at deadline.

Derrick was named as a defendant in an action brought by Enron’s unsecured creditor’s committee filed in Au­gust 2002 in Texas state court. According to lead coun­sel Charles Cunningham of the Dallas firm of McKool Smith, the case has been removed to the U.S. District Court in Houston. Cunningham says the case is in discovery, and he expects depositions to begin this month.

The reports by the bankruptcy examiner note that the attorneys and law firms deny knowledge of wrongful conduct by the company’s officers. Lack of knowledge is one of several legal and factual defenses the lawyers could raise, the reports say. They also may argue that Enron’s board approved many of the suspect transactions, and that the company had considered concerns and made an appropriate business decision.

They also could assert that the wrongful acts committed by Enron’s officers should be imputed to the corporation. In that case, they could argue that Enron’s wrongful conduct was greater than their wrongful conduct, and therefore claims by Enron should be barred or reduced under comparative fault rules.

Batson’s extensive reports delve into many complicated financial transactions. According to the reports, the SPE structures were complex, but Enron’s objectives were simple: to borrow money without recording debt, and to record the loan proceeds as cash flow from operating activities.

In many instances, outside law firms provided legal opinions that were used to support Enron’s aggressive accounting techniques. “An attorney’s willingness to provide certain legal opinions was, as a practical matter, crucial to Enron’s ability to complete the FAS 140 transactions,” says one of the reports.

TRUTH IN LETTERS

The documents allege that Vinson & Elkins sometimes supplied “true issuance” opinion letters despite questions about whether they could be used to support beneficial accounting treatment. These were used in place of more rigorous “true sale” opinion letters, which verify that the transfer of assets includes a surrender of control that is sufficient to satisfy accounting standards.

The reports cite other Vinson & Elkins activities that could possibly support liability, including its representation of Enron in transactions with names such as “Rhythms” and “Raptors” that had no rational business purpose except to manipulate Enron’s revenue. Other alleged activities include:

• Rendering tax opinions that helped Enron generate accounting income from projections of future tax savings.

• Giving a true sale opinion that enabled Enron to book a $20 million gain in a transaction involving the company’s forest products business, even though there was no valid business purpose for the transaction.

• Investigating allegations by Enron whistle-blower Sherron Watkins without making full disclosure about its role in some of the transactions being investigated.

Andrews & Kurth rendered at least 24 opinions regarding the FAS 140 transactions. The reports say a fact-finder could possibly determine the law firm knew that Enron as a practical matter retained control of assets transferred in many of the transactions, and that Enron was engaging in the transfers to produce misleading financial statements.

‘CRITICISMS ARE UNFOUNDED’

Andrews & Kurth’s attorney, Paul Coggins, a principal at Fish & Rich­ard­son in Dallas, defends his client’s work. “A fact-finder will find that the work Andrews & Kurth performed for Enron was exceptional work performed by nationally recognized lawyers,” he says. “An­drews & Kurth cooperated fully with the examiner. The examiner’s criticisms are unfounded and fall well short of proof.”

The reports also say Derrick, the general counsel, apparently failed to educate himself and Enron’s board about suspect transactions. According to the reports, Derrick viewed his principal role as that of administrator of the law department, relying on the general counsel of each business unit to manage transactions.

“Few issues relating to the SPE transactions appear to have been [elevated] to him,” says one of the reports. “In those instances when issues came to his attention, however, the evidence suggests that Derrick did not fully analyze the issue but rather accepted the conclusions of others with­out probing or testing them.”

In an e-mail statement, Derrick’s lawyer, Cliff Gunter of the Houston-based firm of Bracewell & Patterson, says, “The evidence is clear that Mr. Derrick fulfilled his duties to Enron and the board of directors. … We are pleased that the examiner found no grounds to attribute any intentional wrongdoing to Mr. Derrick and believe that the evidence, considered as a whole, will clear Mr. Derrick of any criticism.”

The reports also suggest that Rog­ers, Enron’s chief securities counsel, may have failed to inform himself properly. “A fact-finder could conclude that Rogers failed to discharge his responsibilities to advise Enron with respect to the disclosure issues surrounding the SPE transactions. Al­though Rogers testified that he took some steps to understand several of Enron’s most frequently used SPE transactions, … he said he found them ‘complex.’

“While it is true that many of the transactions were exceedingly complicated in their structure, the reason that certain Enron officers used them —to manipulate En­ron’s financial statements—was not. If in fact Rog­ers was unable to understand these transactions, he could not properly advise Enron regarding the necessary disclosures.”

Rogers’ lawyer, Michael Rauh of the Washington, D.C., law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, disputes the reports’ conclusions. “Mr. Rogers would strenuously contend that Mr. Batson is just plain, flat-out wrong.” He declines to elaborate.

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FBI Agent Frank Doyle Jr. - he was in Walnut Creek during March - he was face to face with me on Locust

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The Lies of Oracle

Larry Ellison's CEO like other CEO's is dead like CEO'S

During June of 2007 Oracle spokesman Robert Hoffman and Pete Bennett appeared on the same PBS segment.

Ellison has a long relationship with Michael Milken Who provided the funds to take over Palco Lumber which is one of the reasons Judi Bari was blown up

Yes I know FBI agent Frank Doyle Jr he was in my cabinet shop in 1989 when my witness was murdered in the matter of Bennett versus Southern Pacific.

It is the same window that a police officer was killed in Walnut Creek and the same window that current Contra Costa County legal counsel Sharon Anderson was also in litigation with Southern Pacific.

Oracle security threw me out of Oracle world and today I'm still homeless on the street I was desperately trying to get back to work.

I'm positive the orders to kick me out of Oracle world came from the top.

When I called the SEC whistleblower in 2014 I was unaware of the connections of Southern Pacific and Kinder Morgan leading into Enron and then Enron leading into World Trade 7 building that came down during the 9/11 attacks.

The man in the middle of the Southern Pacific logo is the attorney from Southern Pacific in 1988 and 89 that I took today I know killed my witness I've been in his officers I've done my depositions in San Francisco at the former landmark building owned by Southern Pacific.

Someone killed my witness and today I have a US attorney that actually worked at the Contra Costa County District Attorney's office when somebody inside that office covered up my witness murder.

• Elon Musk Praises Oracle Billionaire Larry Ellison's Hawaiian Island Laboratory, Which Is Home To A Wellness Spa And Tesla Solar-Powered Greenhouses, As 'Cool' And 'Like A Microcosm For The World'

Elon Musk praises Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison's Hawaiian island laboratory, which is home to a wellness spa and Tesla solar-powered greenhouses, as 'cool' and 'like a microcosm for the world'

Business Insider | Apr 2, 2020, 18:32 IST

Stephen Lam/Reuters; Mike Blake/Reuters

• Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison has the support of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as he builds out his sustainability and wellness laboratory on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, according to a new interview in Forbes.
• Ellison has built a wellness spa and hydroponic greenhouses on the island, which are powered by Tesla solar panels.
• "It's cool; it's like a microcosm for the world," Musk told Forbes.
• The two billionaires have a well-documented friendship. Ellison who is on Tesla's board, has described Musk as a close friend, and Musk told Forbes Ellison is "one of the best engineers I've met."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison have a well-documented friendship, so it's unsurprising that Musk is supportive of Ellison's plans to turn the Hawaiian island of Lanai into a sustainable wellness laboratory.
In a new interview with Forbes, Ellison discussed his interest in sustainability, health, and wellness, which includes his plans for Lanai as well as his work with the US government to help find a treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

On Lanai, Ellison is working on three separate issues through his wellness company, Sensei: global food supply, nutrition, and sustainability. The island has a spa and two 20,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouses, which have sensors and cameras that track data about the farms, including water usage and airflow and are powered by 1,600 Tesla solar panels, according to Forbes.
Now, Ellison is in talks with Hawaiian Electric Co. to purchase the power plant and electric grid on Lanai, with the plan being to transition the island away from fossil fuels toward 100% renewable energy.
"It's cool; it's like a microcosm for the world," Musk told Forbes.

A long-standing friendship

Ellison has been a Tesla board member since 2018. When he was named to Tesla's board of directions, he highlighted his relationship with Musk.
"I think Tesla has a lot of upside," Ellison said at the time. "I am not sure how many people know, but I'm very close friends with Elon Musk, and I'm a big investor in Tesla."
Ellison went to the mat for Musk again that same year, defending him from critics by highlighting the work Musk has done with SpaceX.
"This guy is landing rockets. You know, he's landing rockets on robot drone rafts in the ocean. And you're saying he doesn't know what he's doing," Ellison said at a meeting with financial analysts in 2018. "Well, who else is landing rockets? You ever land a rocket on a robot drone? Who are you?"
The compliments have gone both ways.
"He's really one of the best engineers I've met," Musk said in the Forbes interview. "When we engage on a technical subject, he understands it very quickly, even when it's out of his normal arena, not software."

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