When the Standing Rock Sioux led protests against the Dakota Access pipeline beginning in 2016, they were attacked with dogs, tear gas, and rubber bullets.
TigerSwan, the private firm hired by the oil company Energy Transfer, played a leading role in these vicious assaults. But documents uncovered by The Intercept reveal horrifying new evidence of how TigerSwan also coordinated directly with law enforcement agencies.
These revelations came after The Intercept fought an expensive and grueling legal battle to obtain 60,000 pages of documents that the state of North Dakota and Energy Transfer fought to keep hidden — and we’re not done digging for the truth.
But analyzing these documents is a major reporting effort requiring time and money. We’ve already spent over $100,000 in legal costs, and as a nonprofit news outlet, we’re counting on donations from readers to help support our investigation.
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The Intercept’s latest reporting finds that the National Sheriffs’ Association talked routinely with Energy Tranfer’s private security firm throughout the protests, working hand in hand to craft pro-pipeline messaging — at one point even proposing that a fake news crew be sent to “report” on the protests and pollute the public’s perception of the Standing Rock Sioux.
The documents The Intercept obtained also show that TigerSwan provided law enforcement support with helicopter flights, medics, and security guards. The private security firm pushed for the purchase, by Energy Transfer, of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of radios for the cops as well as a catalog of so-called less-lethal weapons for police use, including tear gas.
Meanwhile, communications firms working for Energy Transfer and the National Sheriffs’ Association worked together to write newsletters, plant pro-pipeline articles in the media, and circulate “wanted”-style posters of particular protesters.
This investigation has been one of the largest — and most expensive — that we’ve ever taken on, and there’s still more material to go through.
