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Richard Berman Secretly Recorded Telling Fossil Fuel Industry To Wage ‘Endless War’ On Critics

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(Part of  Berman’s “Big Green Radicals” Ad Campaign)

Richard Berman, a lobbyist nicknamed “Dr. Evil”, has made a career out of trying to thwart labor, public health and environmental groups. His specialty is known as “astroturfing”, a tactic he pioneered and has been paid to do from a good slice of Corporate America. Berman sets up front organizations with benign sounding names like the “Center for Consumer Freedom” or the “Employment Policies Institute” to promote interests like the tobacco industry and union busting under pretense of providing the public with information – hiding the company’s financial contributions through a series of non-profits to keep their hands looking clean.

Recently he gave a speech in Colorado Springs to a group of energy executives who are looking for ways to stop environmental regulation, especially as related to climate change. The speech discussed an “endless war” with environmentalists that relied on more than astroturfing. Berman told the executives they would have to play dirty if they wanted to protect their profits.

If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded.

The blunt advice from the consultant, Richard Berman, the founder and chief executive of the Washington-based Berman and Company consulting firm, came as Mr. Berman solicited up to $3 million from oil and gas industry executives to finance an advertising and public relations campaign dubbed Big Green Radicals.

Berman said the energy executives will have to exploit “fear, greed, and anger” and personally destroy progressive activists in order to protect themselves from new regulations on drilling and carbon emissions.

The event was sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance which includes major names in the energy industry such as Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum. Many of the firms are involved in fracking which has come under recent scrutiny. Berman told the firms he could use his vast network of non-profits to hide their contributions so no one would know they were funding the campaign called “Big Green Radicals.”

At least one executive in the room was offended by the concept of playing dirty and took notes on the speech which he turned over to The New York Times. But how many decided to give Berman the money?


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