Speaker 1: Zoi. Houstina piaguahe president La Nacia Masoni Guadiana.
Speaker 2: Houstino Pia Guage was born here in the Amazon. His
Speaker 2: father led the Seco Pie nation sometimes referred to as
Speaker 2: the Sequoia, and now that job has fallen to Houstino
Speaker 2: and some of his brothers. The Seco Pie's ancestral home
Speaker 2: was splintered by a war between Peru and Ecuador. If
Speaker 2: you're not super up on your South American geography, Peru
Speaker 2: is on the west coast of South America, ecuadors to
Speaker 2: the north of it, Colombia is north of Ecuador, and
Speaker 2: Venezuela is just around the bend further north. All of
Speaker 2: these countries are to the west of Brazil. A lot
Speaker 2: of times when people hear Amazon, they think Brazil, but
Speaker 2: the Amazon actually crosses into several other countries. There are
Speaker 2: less than seven hundred and fifty people left in Ustino's tribe,
Speaker 2: and they're currently under very serious threat from COVID nineteen.
Speaker 2: Several have sought refuge in the Amazon, but they may
Speaker 2: struggle to find clean water there.
Speaker 1: Rio Aguarico as a Impostexaco.
Speaker 3: With Tiero Petroleo.
Speaker 2: This is a video of Hustino on YouTube. He's standing
Speaker 2: on a bridge over a huge rushing river and he's saying,
Speaker 2: this river, the Aguarico River. Long ago, when they were
Speaker 2: exploring for petroleum, the oil companies dumped thousands of barrels
Speaker 2: of oil into it.
Speaker 3: Bi piero.
Speaker 1: Pianos the aliments.
Speaker 2: They dumped toxic water into this river. He means wastewater
Speaker 2: from oil and gastriline into this river that for thousands
Speaker 2: of years nourished us.
Speaker 1: Joso testigo, the komasido victima, norahente senuer to the cancerdades
Speaker 1: non podido aliment is a emoc and bossy.
Speaker 2: I am a witness to how our people have been victimized.
Speaker 2: They have died of cancer, they have died of disease,
Speaker 2: they have not been able to eat well, and that
Speaker 2: continues today in Latin America.
Speaker 4: Ecuador is seeing one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks,
Speaker 4: with possibly thousands dead.
Speaker 2: But that on top of various ongoing health issues. Ecuador
Speaker 2: has been a global hotspot during the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 2: Some Psycopi elders have already died from the disease. To
Speaker 2: access clean water and avoid further content act with the virus.
Speaker 2: Houstino and his tribe have been venturing further and further
Speaker 2: into their ancestral lands deep in the Amazon. But those
Speaker 2: lands are surrounded on all sides by oil fields, and
Speaker 2: because they've been breathing air polluted by oil and gas
Speaker 2: refineries and of course cars and other factories too for
Speaker 2: the past few decades, these people are more likely to
Speaker 2: die if they do catch the virus. Quarantine looks really different.
Speaker 2: If to really be safe, you have to hide deep
Speaker 2: in the jungle and hope no one dumps oil or
Speaker 2: wastewater into the river you drink from. Meanwhile, three thousand
Speaker 2: miles away in Manhattan, quarantine also looks really different. For
Speaker 2: Steven Donziger, Hey, yeah.
Speaker 3: Can you give me one minute?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, go for it. Donziger is talking to me
Speaker 2: from his two bedroom apartment in Manhattan. We spent May
Speaker 2: and June talking every weekend by zoom him, me and
Speaker 2: my co reporter on this season, Karen Savage.
Speaker 5: Hi, Karen, Hey, how are you.
Speaker 3: I'm good?
Speaker 6: How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm good? Back in Boston? Yep, Sorry about that.
Speaker 2: He liked to leave the video on and would spend
Speaker 2: the majority of our time kind of hanging his head
Speaker 2: out the window trying to get fresh air and sunshine.
Speaker 2: He's got all the clean water he needs, but sun
Speaker 2: and air are hard to come by.
Speaker 3: Everyone goes outside, even with the pandemic and with a
Speaker 3: face mask in New York right now, and they go
Speaker 3: walk in or get exercise or walk in the park.
Speaker 3: But I can't do that.
Speaker 2: Well, we were all calling quarantine lockdown. This year, Donziger
Speaker 2: has literally been on lockdown. He's been on house arrest
Speaker 2: for over a year at this point. To leave his apartment,
Speaker 2: he has to submit a request to the court forty
Speaker 2: eight hours in advance and then provide documentation of where
Speaker 2: he's gone. We'll find out why and what that has
Speaker 2: to do with a river in the Amazon. After this
Speaker 2: quick break, I want to recommend one of my favorite
Speaker 2: podcasts to you, In the Dark. In the Dark investigates
Speaker 2: critical stories that might not otherwise be told. The second
Speaker 2: season covered Curtis Flowers, a black man tried six times
Speaker 2: for the same crime, and Doug Evans, the Mississippi prosecutor
Speaker 2: determined to see him executed. In the Dark's team of
Speaker 2: reporters revealed new facts and evidence which proved pivotal in
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court's decision to hear Flowers's case this past spring. Recently,
Speaker 2: the state of Mississippi announced that it will drop all
Speaker 2: charges and not seek a seventh trial in the case.
Speaker 2: Against incredible odds. Flowers is a free man. You can
Speaker 2: listen to in the dark wherever you listen to podcasts
Speaker 2: him Amy Westervelt. Welcome back to Drilled. This is season five.
Speaker 2: L Lucha and La Humbla The Rumble in the Jungle.
Speaker 4: The judge in Ecuador has ordered the oil company Chevron
Speaker 4: to pay more than nine billion dollars in damages and
Speaker 4: other costs. It's the result of a long running lawsuit
Speaker 4: involving pollution in the Amazon Jungle. The damages are more
Speaker 4: than exon.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty eleven, Stephen Donziger helped win a big
Speaker 2: case against the oil giant Chevron. As a result, Chevron
Speaker 2: was ordered to pay more than nine billion dollars to
Speaker 2: clean up waste pits of oil and refining fluids left
Speaker 2: in the Ecuadorian Amazon by Texico, the company's Chevron acquired
Speaker 2: in two thousand. But the case didn't end there. Back
Speaker 2: in the ub Us, Chevron took Donziger and the other
Speaker 2: lawyers to civil court, finding a racketeering case against them,
Speaker 2: otherwise known as a Rico case, and accusing them of fraud.
Speaker 2: Donziger and the other attorneys lost that case back in
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen. Put in twenty eighteen, the judge that Rico
Speaker 2: case came after him.
Speaker 3: He ordered me to turn over my computer and cell
Speaker 3: phone to Chevron's lawyers in the middle of a litigation.
Speaker 3: And it's sort of like, you know, asking a laurier
Speaker 3: to turn over his or her confidential case file to
Speaker 3: your adversary council right in the middle of a litigation.
Speaker 3: It's obviously a major intrusion into my rights, into the
Speaker 3: rights of my clients who are entitled to have confidentiality
Speaker 3: with their lawyer. And I just felt like it was
Speaker 3: an illegal order. So I told them, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I can't turn this over without violating my ethical duties
Speaker 3: to myself to my clients in Ecuador. So I'm going
Speaker 3: to appeal it.
Speaker 2: Donziger was in the process of filing that appeal when
Speaker 2: he heard from the judge again.
Speaker 3: So what happened was I was up in Toronto working
Speaker 3: with the legal team for the Ecuadorians in Canada, because
Speaker 3: that's the country, where there's a lot of work being
Speaker 3: done to enforce the judgment against Chevron internationally, and over
Speaker 3: my computer, it came a notification that this judge should
Speaker 3: charge me with crimes. I was shocked, to say the least,
Speaker 3: and he had ordered me to appear in court I think.
Speaker 2: A week later, Judge Kaplan charged him with criminal contempt,
Speaker 2: but in conjunction with a civil case. So while the
Speaker 2: original case could result in fines, this one could actually
Speaker 2: land Donziger in jail.
Speaker 3: Basically, there's no statute for it. You know. It's not
Speaker 3: like assault or a burglary or a murder. It's basically,
Speaker 3: if a judge decides that a person, a lawyer who
Speaker 3: practicing before him, treats the court with disrespect or somehow
Speaker 3: doesn't comply with an order that the judge feels is
Speaker 3: in a sufficient kind of way, the judge can actually
Speaker 3: take that, on his or her own relition, with no
Speaker 3: check on his or her power, can charge a lawyer
Speaker 3: with a crime. That's an awesome, enormous power that is
Speaker 3: easily subject, in my view, to abuse.
Speaker 2: Caplin, a senior US district judge for the Southern District
Speaker 2: of New York, has charged Donziger with contempt for refusing
Speaker 2: to hand over his files and for a few other
Speaker 2: things that we'll get to in future episodes. When he
Speaker 2: got back from Canada a few days after this trip
Speaker 2: he was on, Donziger headed to court intending to ask
Speaker 2: for a couple of weeks to give him time to
Speaker 2: hire a lawyer. He thought it would be a pretty straightforward,
Speaker 2: administrative thing. His wife and a couple of friends came
Speaker 2: with him.
Speaker 3: The first day. I walked into court in August six
Speaker 3: with my wife and a couple of friends, and I
Speaker 3: was like, you know, this is going to be like
Speaker 3: no problem. I mean, you know, I've been coming to
Speaker 3: court for ten years in this courthouse, and I'm a lawyer,
Speaker 3: and you know I've never committed a crime, and you
Speaker 3: know they're just gonna I'm just gonna ask for two
Speaker 3: weeks so I can figure out how to hire a lawyer,
Speaker 3: and then we'll come back and we'll figure out what
Speaker 3: we're going to do instead. I realized pretty quickly there
Speaker 3: was like this thing in the air, the hostility of
Speaker 3: like the judge and her clerks and the court personnel.
Speaker 2: So when a judge like Caplin charges a lawyer with
Speaker 2: criminal contempt. They're not allowed to oversee that case themselves. Instead,
Speaker 2: another judge is supposed to be selected at random. This
Speaker 2: is to cut down on any personal animals or bias
Speaker 2: a judge might have against a lawyer who has disrespected
Speaker 2: him or his court. Donziger has accused Caplain of hand
Speaker 2: picking the judge for his case. Her name is Loretta Presca.
Speaker 2: She's a fellow of the Federalist Society, just like Kaplin
Speaker 2: and Donziger thinks it's all suspicious. Here he is again.
Speaker 3: They subjected me to an interview with what's called a
Speaker 3: pretrial Services officer, which is an office and office in
Speaker 3: the courthouse that interviews are people charged with crimes to
Speaker 3: determine what their conditions or release and any should be.
Speaker 3: And they assess your financial assets and your likelihood that
Speaker 3: you're going to flee. And they were treating me like
Speaker 3: I was just like a criminal. They require me to
Speaker 3: give up my passport and like, did you have your
Speaker 3: passport on you or did you No? No, I didn't,
Speaker 3: I didn't They They what they do is they give
Speaker 3: you a few days to comply, with the threat of
Speaker 3: jail hanging over you if you don't comply. And I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously I'm going to give up my passport a order
Speaker 3: by the court. And also I had no lawyer. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not a criminal defense lawyer, and just because you're
Speaker 3: a lawyer doesn't mean you're a good lawyer for every
Speaker 3: situation by any means. And I needed a lawyer, and
Speaker 3: I told the judge I really don't want to do
Speaker 3: anything without a lawyer. So she found a lawyer for
Speaker 3: me in the courthouse who agreed to represent me just
Speaker 3: for purposes of part of this what's called an arraignment.
Speaker 3: So I had to wait for him to show up.
Speaker 2: So this is all happening behind the scenes in the
Speaker 2: offices of the courthouse. Meanwhile, Donziger's wife and friends are
Speaker 2: waiting for him, and time is passing and everyone is
Speaker 2: just starting to get really worried.
Speaker 3: And I remember we went back to this to the
Speaker 3: jury room, which was empty so we could have some privacy,
Speaker 3: and he looked at me and he goes, he goes,
Speaker 3: You're living a nightmare. And you know, when I walked
Speaker 3: back to that jury room, I passed my wife who
Speaker 3: was sitting in the gallery, you know, completely flipped out,
Speaker 3: and she was with a good friend of mine Karen Hinton,
Speaker 3: and I mouthed to them, I said, I think they're
Speaker 3: going to try to put me in jail today.
Speaker 2: At this point, Donziger's memory of this day starts to
Speaker 2: get a little hazy, the way your memory does when
Speaker 2: you're in an incredibly stressful situation. He doesn't remember much
Speaker 2: about standing in front of the judge, but he does
Speaker 2: remember the prosecutor.
Speaker 3: There was a prosecutor. There actually three of them. And
Speaker 3: this was another very bizarre feature, I think unprecedented, was
Speaker 3: the judge Caplan's criminal charges, who first took them to
Speaker 3: the US Attorney's Office in New York. That's the office
Speaker 3: that was the regular prosecutor, and they looked at the
Speaker 3: charges and refused to prosecute the charges, you know, which
Speaker 3: I think speaks volumes about whether they're worthy. Instead, he
Speaker 3: appointed a private law firm, that is, he went to
Speaker 3: a corporate law firm and said, you'd be the prosecutor.
Speaker 3: I'll use my inherent power as a US judge to
Speaker 3: let you act as the US government. The firm was
Speaker 3: called Seward and Kissel.
Speaker 2: By the time he left that courtroom, Donziger was terrified
Speaker 2: and in a daze.
Speaker 3: Basically, they said I had to put up an eight
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars bomb, give up my passport, and wear
Speaker 3: an ankle bracelet twenty four to seven and not leave
Speaker 3: my apartment. I was so freaked out. Like by the
Speaker 3: time I walked out of court to go get my
Speaker 3: ankle bracelet, I almost was just relieved to be going home, right,
Speaker 3: And they could have put me in handcuffs, ankle bracelet
Speaker 3: and shacks, and like I would have been in a
Speaker 3: weird way relief to just go to my house. Man,
Speaker 3: I needed to get the hell out of there and
Speaker 3: get home and just regroup and get a lawyer and
Speaker 3: figure out my next step. So you know, I then
Speaker 3: had to go to this office and I had to
Speaker 3: wait around and I got fitted with an ankle bracelet
Speaker 3: and fingerprinted.
Speaker 2: Then he had to go straight home, no lunch, no
Speaker 2: stops along the way.
Speaker 3: You know. We finally got out of there like two
Speaker 3: hours later. You know, the hearing had been at ten am,
Speaker 3: so you know, he finally maybe left the court at
Speaker 3: one o'clock. And from that point on I had not
Speaker 3: been a free man, Like I couldn't go grab lunch.
Speaker 3: I had to go right to the subway. I had
Speaker 3: to sort of be that person with an ankle bracelet,
Speaker 3: so you're always aware of the subway whether your pants
Speaker 3: are covering your bracelet, which is the bottom of your leg.
Speaker 3: People were good at funny.
Speaker 2: That relief he felt to be going home was pretty
Speaker 2: quickly replaced by a panic. He still had to come
Speaker 2: up with eight hundred thousand dollars or he'd be put
Speaker 2: in jail, and the judge had given him one week
Speaker 2: to come up with that money. He decided to put
Speaker 2: his apartment up as the bond, and the court accepted that,
Speaker 2: so he was in the clear.
Speaker 3: About a week later, Chevron, as I said, their lawyers
Speaker 3: were in court and monitoring my criminal case. So on
Speaker 3: the civil reco case, they had convinced Catherine to impose
Speaker 3: court costs on me to cover some of their costs. So,
Speaker 3: in addition trying to destroy my reputation, trying to take
Speaker 3: all my money, freeze my bank accounts, and then ultimately
Speaker 3: deprive me of my liberty. So it's part of the
Speaker 3: financial feature of the attack. Chevron had prior to my
Speaker 3: appearance in the criminal contempt case, they had gotten a
Speaker 3: eight hundred thousand dollars cost order against me from Judge
Speaker 3: kaplan to pay some of their court costs in any event,
Speaker 3: when I hosted the bond secured by my apartment, suddenly
Speaker 3: the prosecutor showed up with a new letter saying we're
Speaker 3: concerned about it because Chevron has some sort of notice
Speaker 3: of lean on his apartment because of this eight hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars cost order that Capitain had issued against me
Speaker 3: like a year or two before. And they said that
Speaker 3: as a result, that apartment is not unencumbered and it's
Speaker 3: it's not adequate to post the bond because Chevron has
Speaker 3: a claim on my apartment. So the judge get appointed
Speaker 3: by Kapitla immediately issues in order agreeing with the prostitute
Speaker 3: are giving me forty eight hours to find a substitute bond.
Speaker 2: This stressed me out when Donziger told me about it,
Speaker 2: and it stresses me out again just listening to it.
Speaker 2: If you've ever worried about how you're going to pay
Speaker 2: rent or a medical bill or grocery bill, the idea
Speaker 2: of having forty eight hours to come up with eight
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars or you're going to jail. Wow. And
Speaker 2: just a note here that of course, this happens all
Speaker 2: throughout our criminal justice system. There are people sitting in
Speaker 2: jails all over the country right now because they couldn't
Speaker 2: afford a bond. Whether it's eight hundred dollars or eight
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars, it's a terrible situation to be in.
Speaker 2: So at this point, Donziger is having a full blown
Speaker 2: panic attack.
Speaker 3: I wrote an email and based we put it out
Speaker 3: there and explain the exact situation, and I sent it
Speaker 3: out to five people. It's probably eight o'clock at night,
Speaker 3: and the most bizarre thing happened. I got a phone
Speaker 3: call ten minutes later. Wow, from a man who lives
Speaker 3: in San Francisco that I've known for twenty twenty five years.
Speaker 3: He's probably before this happened. He was one of the
Speaker 3: people I admire most in the world. He's done a
Speaker 3: lot of work in equital for indigenous peoples. And he
Speaker 3: called me up and with like literally no questions asked,
Speaker 3: he says, I'll do it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I mean, honestly, just thinking about it, you know, it
Speaker 3: brings tears to my eyes because well, it's sort of
Speaker 3: hard to explain, like when you're really down, yeah, and
Speaker 3: you put out a plea to the world, and it
Speaker 3: just kind of reinforces your faith because you know, most
Speaker 3: people give a shit, they really care.
Speaker 2: So he avoided jail, but he can't set foot outside
Speaker 2: his apartment door without his ankle bracelet going off. And
Speaker 2: like I said before, if he wants to leave the apartment,
Speaker 2: he has to request permission forty eight hours in advance,
Speaker 2: and it might not be granted. It's not an automatic thing.
Speaker 3: I'm tracked twenty four to seven even around my own apartment.
Speaker 3: My ankle bracelet, which kind of is very big and
Speaker 3: feels like a garage door opener, you know, on my ankle.
Speaker 3: I call it the black claw. It talks to me
Speaker 3: sometimes wakes me and my wife up in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night when the battery runs low. It says
Speaker 3: this weird kind of Caucasian male voice that's taped comes
Speaker 3: on and it says, uh, something like I've heard it
Speaker 3: so many times. I getected exactly right now, but it
Speaker 3: says something like battery low recharge unit, battery low recharge unit.
Speaker 3: And it just keeps repeating it over and over, so
Speaker 3: you know, I have to get up and go. There's
Speaker 3: a base where the battery the other batteries charging it
Speaker 3: have to change the battery in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: But the crazy part about that, I mean, you know
Speaker 3: that might happen once every couple of weeks when I
Speaker 3: don't get the timing right or the battery didn't charge right.
Speaker 3: But like literally every night I go to bed like
Speaker 3: worried it's going to happen again.
Speaker 2: Donziger has still not had a trial. The charge against
Speaker 2: him is a mist to mean. He's been on house
Speaker 2: arrest for more than a year. I spoke with him
Speaker 2: just a few days before his trial is supposed to happen.
Speaker 2: He's been asking for it to be postponed again because
Speaker 2: the COVID restrictions make it impossible for his lawyers to
Speaker 2: show up. There's been a hole back and forth. The
Speaker 2: court seems to be pretty intent on pushing the trial forward,
Speaker 2: and Donziger is really really worried that their whole goal
Speaker 2: is to just put him in jail.
Speaker 6: Oh right now, it's the week before labor d eight, twenty.
Speaker 5: Twenty, and I have my criminal contempt trial without a jury,
Speaker 5: without my lawyers because they were just disqualified as scheduled
Speaker 5: for six days from now, and the judge is trying
Speaker 5: to force.
Speaker 6: Me into trial, taking extraordinary measures to put me on trial,
Speaker 6: in my opinions, so they can incarcerate me and basically
Speaker 6: a proceeding that would be totally unfair and unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: When we spoke before about this possible ability, he said
Speaker 2: he's worried about what might happen to him there. It's
Speaker 2: not just about being locked up, especially during a pandemic
Speaker 2: when COVID rates are quite high in prisons. This past
Speaker 2: year has not been good for his mental health.
Speaker 3: I have an adolescent son, of thirteen year old son,
Speaker 3: a wife and a family and very uncertain future. It's
Speaker 3: enormously stressful.
Speaker 5: YEA.
Speaker 3: It affects your sleep, It affects your outlook, it affects
Speaker 3: everything about life. It's very psychologically destabilizing, and I would
Speaker 3: argue it's designed to be. I mean, that's why they're doing.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 2: We know how dons that are wound up with an
Speaker 2: ankle bracelet under house arrest in his Manhattan apartment. But
Speaker 2: you might still be wondering why why would an oil company,
Speaker 2: as Donziger alleges, go to this much trouble to shut
Speaker 2: him down. On our next episode, we're going to get
Speaker 2: into all of that and how the heck this all happened.
Speaker 2: This is a story with a lot of different sides,
Speaker 2: and sometimes even people who seem like they'd be on
Speaker 2: the same team don't see eye to eye in any
Speaker 2: way at all. Ultimately, after reading thousands and thousands of
Speaker 2: pages of court documents and spending dozens of hours talking
Speaker 2: to people involved in the case, I think I probably
Speaker 2: agree most with this guy. Okay, yeah, that's Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 2: Somehow he wound up involved in this case too.
Speaker 3: There's only one issue that needs to be discussed here,
Speaker 3: and that is what is the right thing to do
Speaker 3: on behalf of the ecuador And people.
Speaker 2: Of course, not everyone agrees on what exactly the right
Speaker 2: thing to do for the Ecuadorians is. Either to try
Speaker 2: to suss all of that out, we'll head back to
Speaker 2: Ecuador and back in time, all the way to the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, come back for that. Drilled is an original
Speaker 2: production of the Critical Frequency podcast Network. It's reported and
Speaker 2: produced by me Amy Westerveldt. My co reporter on this
Speaker 2: season is Karen Savage. Our editor is Julia Ritchie. Mixing
Speaker 2: and mastering by Mark Busch. Additional reporting from Emily Gertz,
Speaker 2: additional production help from Sarah Ventry. Original score was composed
Speaker 2: by b Beeman. Matt Fleming created our beautiful artwork for
Speaker 2: this season. Our fact checker is wood On Yon, our
Speaker 2: First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton, and the First Amendment
Speaker 2: Project Maggie Taylor is our marketing director. You can find
Speaker 2: supplement stories, documents, photos, and interviews on our website at
Speaker 2: drillednews dot com. If you're a Patreon subscriber, thank you.
Speaker 2: Your membership is paying for this podcast right now. Patreon
Speaker 2: subscribers get access to an ad free podcast feed, and
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Speaker 2: that's it for this time, Thanks for listening, and we'll
Speaker 2: see you soon.