Ten years ago, April 20, 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon were incinerated when the BP/Transocean oil rig blew out and exploded.

“Accident”?

Here’s what I reported after a four-continent investigation for Britain’s Channel 4 TV and Europe’s ARTE channel:

Just 17 months before the Deepwater Horizon destroyed 600 miles of Gulf Coast, BP covered up a nearly identical blowout in the Caspian Sea.

Watch this 12-minute film—taken from my feature-length documentary seen in Europe, banned in the USA.

click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=491e47c065&e=e0e58c267e

A BP insider who witnessed that first blowout tipped me off –his life in peril. No joke. The military police who arrested me, said with pride that, “BP runs this nation,” a badge of honor in the oil- and blood-soaked autocracy of Azerbaijan.

Yes, I was busted—as captured on the hidden camera in my pen—then released. The torture was saved for those who tried to tip me off to BP’s environmental murder spree.

Image

If BP had not covered up the prior blowout in the Caspian Sea, the Deepwater Horizon would never have been allowed to drill in a dangerous zone in the Gulf. The Interior Department tried to block the drilling, but pressure from Congress allowed BP to go ahead after BP, Chevron and Exxon executives testified to Congress, just 9 months before the blowout, that there had neverbeen a problem with its deep water drilling.

click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=ba06559723&e=e0e58c267eBesides my insider in Azerbaijan, I received secret cables from inside the State Department which proved that BP, Chevron, Exxon and the State Department knew about the earlier blowout—and chose to cover it up rather than notify the US Department of Interior, as required by law.

The Secretary of State who covered up the prior blowout? Condoleezza Rice. Chevron named an oil tanker after her, the VLCC Condoleezza.

And I salute you, Chelsea Manning, for those cables you shared with The Guardian. You and my other insiders who faced prison, torture, financial and physical ruin to get these facts and documents to me.

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, now out as major motion non-fiction movie: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election, now available on Amazon and Amazon Prime.

On June 2, 2020, Palast will release his new book How Trump Stole 2020