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David Pakman: Greg Palast is joining us again. www.GregPalast.com is the website, he's an
investigative journalist. The new book, of course, is called "Vultures' Picnic". And
Greg, first of all, congratulations on the book, it is fantastic. I looked at it over
the weekend.
Greg Palast: Yeah, thank you. It was fun writing it.
David: Yeah, so I mean, I can't even imagine, the action kind of begins with the Deepwater
Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, and the story, which is written almost like a
thriller, goes through a number of different places all over the world. And my number one
question that I don't... I would love to hear from you is, in which of these places did
you most worry about your personal safety and well-being?
Palast: New York, because Miss Badpenny has a terrible right hook. My Chief Investigatrix,
and when she gets mad, it can be very violent, as you can see from the first chapter.
So I do worry about that, but actually, when I was arrested in Azerbaijan by the... by
the very fashionable dictatorship there, you know, it was a little bit worrisome, to say
the least.
But I figured that, you know... by the way, for those listening who don't know where Azerbaijan
is, in "Vultures' Picnic", I'm investigating Deepwater Horizon by going to this nation
that was pooped out by the Soviet Union when it collapsed called Azerbaijan. You don't
have to worry about it until the 82nd Airborne arrives there, that's how we learn geography
in America.
David: Yeah, so describe the arrest, though.
Palast: Yeah. Well, I was... so first of all, I'm in Vegas and speaking to an attorney who
represents rig workers, and this is completely... it had nothing to do with Deepwater Horizon,
because it was April 20th, Hitler's birthday, my ex-wife's birthday. And suddenly we see
he's grim, and he says I just got a call from the Coast Guard that a rig, Deepwater Horizon,
where my clients were, had exploded, and there's a safety capsule floating in the Gulf.
And he wanted... the Coast Guard wanted permission to open it up, because they thought that these
guys were inside the safety capsule, which is, in case there's a fire, they go inside
it, that they were cooked alive, and they wanted to open it up. But they weren't in
there, in fact, they were vaporized in the explosion.
So, but I knew when I heard it was BP that this is... I don't think it's an accident.
And so I set off, first of all, I immediately knew that the answers, that the documents
I needed would be in Alaska. That's a different matter, that's a different chapter. But first
I got a cable, a message, saying, "This is not the first time," about the Deepwater Horizon.
Click. I can't... "I can't speak on these systems."
It's from a ship floating in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan, so I fly there, and... for
BBC. If it were Anderson Cooper, of course, he wouldn't be able to get his makeup man
over there, so forget it. But...
David: You use a local makeup guy, right?
Palast: [Laughs] Yeah, the police, you'd be surprised what a good job they do on your
face.
So the... so I take off for Azerbaijan, not easy to get into, harder to get out of, and
I... and I take off across the... I want to find out, was there really another blowout
on another BP rig? So I go off to BP's terminal in this oily nation, and I get arrest stopped,
you know, I went... because I went offroad straight across the desert like Rommel. Didn't
work out well for Rommel, either.
And we got arrested. Secret police, all the bigshots from internal security in this nation,
the torturers-in-chief show up, which kind of like, a bit nerve-wracking, why was I so
honored?
But they had... obviously they got a tip that I was looking out for what really happened
with BP. It's an Islamic republic, called The Islamic Republic of BP, because they pray
to British Petroleum five times a day. And I knew I was in a bit of trouble.
So the first thing they did is say, "Give us your film," in Azeri, but we knew exactly
what they were saying. So of course we give them the film, because, can't be impolite
to heavily-armed people with cattle prods.
David: And do you use any of these methods some people will use where, for example, they
keep blank tapes in the camera and actuall are taping to cards, and then you hand them
the tape but you've got all the footage? Do you use any of those methods?
Palast: We certainly do, and they know that, too.
David: All right.
Palast: So they took the blank ones. What they didn't do is take my pen, right?
David: Right.
Palast: Yeah. There, can you see it? I've got one of these Austin Powers pens that Miss
Badpenny, my Chief Investigatrix, had given me before I boarded for Baku, the capital.
So...
David: It looks like a hell of a pen. But so what's the containment like?
Palast: I got stuff on the... I got inside this little Austin Powers pen camera, and
I got all the material on the pen camera. So we brought... in fact, if you go to www.VulturesPicnic.org,
you can actually see some of the film I took with the pen camera while under arrest, and
to get it out of the country, which still wasn't so easy in the end, because, you know,
also, I mean, you have to understand that the dictatorship is run by a guy... by Baba,
Grandpa, everyone has to call him Baba, which means Grandpa, or they're, you know, or else,
if you don't call him Baba.
And his wife is the sexiest Islamic woman on the planet. That's official. There was
a vote, no kidding, on "Esquire" Magazine, sexiest Islamist... Islamic woman. She ought
to be, because God knows how much they spent on surgery. According to State Department
cables, she had so much surgery on her face that she is incapable of expression. Though
I don't know what expression she would have, like what, compassion? I don't get it.
So this is this miserable oil state which basically was created by British Petroleum,
but we came out with the evidence there was another blowout identical to the Deepwater
Horizon situation where it was British Petroleum, Transocean rig, and they're using crap cement,
cheapo cement stuff, that they used, and made by Halliburton, which they used in the Gulf,
which failed.
Same thing, two years before the Deepwater Horizon. They covered it up. They covered
it up by beatings, by bribery, by babes, all of these in BP. So that's part of the investigation,
is getting through this material and getting it out there, getting the inside stuff from
witnesses who were scared to death, of course, just scared to death, and kind of the... you
know, for me, I know, look, I'm a reporter for BBC Television, despite being American,
in the end they're going to let me go, but they're going to... you know, they're going
to pull out the fingernails of all the people I talked to.
I was really scared to death because I had, on my little pen, I had also, I ripped out
all the pages of my notebook which had any source information, but then as I'm leaving
the airport, there's like four checkpoints, and there's the X-ray machine. I stupidly
throw the... I lose a James Bond award every week, by the way. I lose a James Bond award
by throwing the pen in my... amongst my underwear instead of just sticking it among other pens
where it might not be noticed. By separating it and putting it in among my clothes, so
on an X-ray machine, it kind of, and it looks like I have either a *** or a gun silencer.
David: Right.
Palast: So the guy finds it, I go, "Oh, shoot." I don't think I said shoot, but whatever it
is in Azeri for well, I'll be spending the next six months looking for diplomatic help.
And in the end, though, and I was worried about my sources, but he said, "I know," you
know, through a translator, someone who speaks English, he says, "I know what this is, and
they're going to get you at the next checkpoint."
David: No, it's incredible, and you know, the... I recommend people look at the book.
That's just one story. Also, there's questions of chewing whale meat, and there's just so
much that people really need to look at. I wish we had more time, but we've been speaking
with Greg Palast, the book is "Vultures' Picnic", www.VulturesPicnic.org is the website.
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