West said he would be willing "to testify under oath and take a lie detector test" to prove that Loeffler told him Tenpas killed the investigation.
"What really irritated me though is that my own management didn't even back me on this one," West said. "Something happened between June of 2007 when Aunnie Steward sent the email talking about serious criminal charges and the meeting I attended in August when the case was killed."
He suspects that federal prosecutors in Alaska had already been negotiating with BP about a plea agreement prior to the August 28, 2007, meeting. DOJ officials familiar with the case said they were unaware whether there was any interference from the Bush White House or senior agency officials that would have led to the decision to shutter the probe.
In a statement issued in November 2008 when he first
went public, the DOJ said West's claims that something "sinister took
place
between June 12 and August 28, 2007" are "not based in fact and simply
not true."
"As with any investigation, there comes a point in time when further investigation is no longer warranted if it does not have a realistic chance of generating useful evidence," the statement said. In this case, the judgment by career prosecutors was that the case had been sufficiently and fully investigated to reach appropriate charging decisions. No further investigation was likely to find evidence that would shed any new light on the essential facts of the case. The investigators from the EPA and FBI agreed with the prosecution's approach."
Naturally, West disagrees.
"I know how this case would have proceeded," he said. "I would have interviewed more people and developed more leads and obtained more documents to look at. That's a guarantee. At the end of the day we would have had a clear understanding of who knew what and when and then we would be able to make appropriate charging decisions. But because the investigation was shut down that was the end of it."
Penalty Phase
West said he believed the DOJ did not appropriately handle the case as it moved into the penalty phase a couple of months later.
"The US Attorney in Alaska, Nelson Cohen, sidestepped the recommendations EPA made for fines against BP," West said. "He said the fine would fall somewhere between $20 to $35 million and that the benchmark he came up with was based on the [1999] Olympic Pipeline" explosion in Bellingham, Washington, that spilled 277,000 gallons of gasoline into nearby creeks, which killed a teenager and two ten-year-old boys.
West said he had a run-in with Cohen in October 2006, when, at the prosecutor's request, he met privately with him in Anchorage to discuss the case. Cohen was one of the recess appointments recommended by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to fill the vacancy in the federal prosecutor's office in Alaska.
West said Cohen asked him "what do you know about me?"
"I said I didn't know anything about him, but I told him I was anticipating the Attorney General to make a recess appointment who would come to Alaska and kill my case against BP. And here you are."
West was, a year later, invited by Cohen to attend the meeting with BP's defense attorney Carol Dinkins and other people representing the company where terms of the plea deal would be hammered.
"I was shocked at what I witnessed," West said. "Cohen opened the settlement negotiations with the lowest dollar figure: $20 million. He said the government's benchmark was between $20 to $35 million and he opened with $20 million. I have never seen such anything like this during my career. Usually you start on the high end and negotiate toward a lower figure."
He said BP's defense team "hemmed and hawed" and then "came back and quickly accepted it. This looked like a big show staged for my benefit."
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
3
2
