| Gregory Allyn Palast | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 26, 1952 Los Angeles, California |
| Occupation | Author, journalist |
| Website | |
| GregPalast.com | |
Gregory Allyn Palast (born June 26, 1952[1]) is a New York Times-bestselling author[2] and a freelance journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation[3] as well as the British newspaper The Observer.[4] His work frequently focuses on corporate malfeasance but has also been known to work with labor unions and consumer advocacy groups. Notably, he has claimed to have uncovered evidence that Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and Florida Elections Unit Chief Clay Roberts, along with the ChoicePoint corporation, rigged the ballots during the US Presidential Election of 2000 and again in 2004 when, he argued, the problems and machinations from 2000 continued, and that challenger John Kerry actually would have won if not for disproportional "spoilage" of Democratic votes.[5]
Palast spoke at a Think Twice conference held at Cambridge University[6] and lectured at the University of São Paulo.[7] He lives in New York City. Palast is originally from Los Angeles, and was educated at the University of Chicago,[8] and eventually earned an MBA.
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Palast's investigation into the Bush family fortunes for his column in The Observer led him to uncover a connection to a company called ChoicePoint. In an October 2008 interview Palast said that before the 2000 Election ChoicePoint "was purging the voter rolls of Florida under a contract with a lady named Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State. They won a contract, a bid contract with the state, with the highest bid."[9]
After subsequently noticing a large proportion of African-American voters were claiming their names had disappeared from voter rolls in Florida in the 2000 election, Palast launched a full-scale investigation into voter fraud, the results of which were broadcast in the UK by the BBC on their Newsnight[10] show prior to the 2004 Election. Palast claimed to have obtained computer discs from Katherine Harris' office, which contained caging lists of "voters matched by race and tagged as felons.[9] "
Palast appeared in the 2003 documentary film, Florida Fights Back! Resisting the Stolen Election, along with Vincent Bugliosi, Former L.A. Deputy D.A. & Author of " The Betrayal of America", and including footage from the 2001 Washington D.C. Voter Rights March[11] with founder Lou Posner. Palast also appeared in the 2004 documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave, which focuses on the hidden mechanics of the media.
Palast alleges that Andrés Manuel López Obrador — and not Felipe Calderón — won Mexico's last presidential election.[12]
In May 2007, Palast said he'd received 500 emails that former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove exchanged through an account supplied by the Republican National Committee. Palast says the emails show a plan to target likely Democratic voters with extra scrutiny over their home addresses, and he also believes Rove's plan was a factor in the firing of U.S. Attorneys.[13]
After Palast was invited by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to appear on his Air America talk show to discuss, among other things, election fraud, the pair teamed up to find out if democracy was in a better state in 2008. In their report, which was published in October 2008 in Rolling Stone, they concluded that the 2008 Election had already been stolen. "If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat John McCain at the polls -- they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering", Palast and Kennedy summarized.[14]
To combat the extensive acts of voter suppression that Palast and Kennedy uncovered, the duo launched a campaign called Steal Back Your Vote,[15] which features a website and free downloadable voter guide / adult comic book.
In 1988, Palast directed a U.S. civil racketeering investigation into the nuclear power plant builder Long Island Lighting Company. A jury awarded the plaintiffs US$4.8 billion; however, New York's chief federal judge reversed the verdict. The racketeering charges stemmed from an accusation that LILCO filed false documents in order to secure rate increases. LILCO sought a dismissal of these charges on the grounds that Suffolk County lacked authority under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and that the allegations of a history of racketeering did not qualify as a continuing criminal enterprise.[16]
Palast has also taken issue with the official story behind the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, claiming the sobriety of the Valdez's captain was not an issue in the accident. According to Palast the main cause of the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 was not human error, but an Exxon decision not to fix the ship's radar in order to save money. The Raytheon Raycas radar system would not have detected Bligh Reef itself - as radar, unlike sonar, is incapable of detecting objects under the waterline of a ship. However the radar system would have detected the "radar reflector", placed on the next rock inland from Bligh Reef for the purpose of keeping boats on course via radar.
Palast argues the original owners of the land, the local Alaska Natives tribe, took only one dollar in payment for the land other than a promise not to pollute it and spoil their fishing ground.
In 1998, working as an undercover reporter for The Observer, Palast, posing as a US businessman with ties to Enron, caught on tape two Labour party insiders, Derek Draper and Jonathan Mendelsohn, boasting about how they could sell access to government ministers, obtain advance copies of sensitive reports, and create tax breaks for their clients.[17]
Draper denied the allegations.[18] At Prime Minister's Question Time July 8, 1998 British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that all the specific claims had been investigated and found groundless "every allegation made in The Observer has been investigated and found to be untrue".[19]
Starting in 2007 Palast published a series of investigations on what aid groups and investors call "vulture funds." Vulture funds are a private equity or hedge funds where companies or people buy the debt of poor countries and sue in courts to recover the funds, often at the expense of aid and debt relief. Prime Minister Gordon Brown commented on the practices saying "We particularly condemn the perversity where Vulture Funds purchase debt at a reduced price and make a profit from suing the debtor country to recover the full amount owed - a morally outrageous outcome".[20]
In 2011, the UK made permanent the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act 2010, which severely restricts the activities of vulture funds in the UK.[21]
Since 2000, Greg Palast has made more than a dozen films for the BBC programme Newsnight with the Investigations Producer Meirion Jones, which have been broadcast in the UK and worldwide. In addition to the films on US elections they have investigated oil companies, the Iraq War, the coup against Hugo Chávez, and the vulture funds which target the poorest countries.
In An Open Letter to Greg Palast on Peak Oil[22] Richard Heinberg offers friendly criticism of Palast who conflates the "amount of oil left" with "peak (maximal) flow rates" for oil, the latter being key to Peak Oil.
Left-wing former MP George Galloway also criticised Palast by claiming he "conflates meetings, truths and half-truths, statements taken out of context to produce a toxic smear which would be actionable in the country he claims to work in" [23]