"More than 50,000 pages of documents were recently made public after the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline lost a court case to keep them secret."
"Leaked documents and public records reveal a troubling fusion of private security, public law enforcement, and corporate money in the fight over the Dakota Access pipeline."
"A new business model for breaking down environmental movements was being hatched in real time. On Labor Day weekend in 2016, private security dogs in North Dakota attacked pipeline opponents led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as they approached earth-moving equipment. The tribal members considered the land sacred, and the heavy equipment was breaking ground to build the Dakota Access pipeline. With a major public relations crisis on its hands, the pipeline’s parent company, Energy Transfer, hired the firm TigerSwan to revamp its security strategy.
By October, TigerSwan — founded by James Reese, a retired commander of the elite special operations Army unit Delta Force — had established a military-style pipeline security strategy.
There was one nagging problem that threatened to unravel it all: Reese hadn’t acquired a security license from the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board. Although Reese claimed TigerSwan wasn’t conducting security services at all, the state regulator insisted that its operations were unlawful without a license."
Alleen Brown and Naveena Sadasivam report for The Intercept April 13, 2023.
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