Showing posts with label Chevron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chevron. Show all posts

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Wikileaks Cables Expose Chevron’s Desperation over $18b Environmental Case

Wikileaks Cables Expose Chevron’s Lobbying of Ecuador Government to Kill $18b Environmental Case


Newly Released Cables Raise Questions About Chevron Ties to U.S. Embassy and Misrepresentations

Amazon Defense Coalition
, 21 September 2011, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE,
 Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or karen@hintoncommunications.com

New York -- Chevron engaged in a clandestine lobbying campaign of Ecuador's government to improperly shut down the historic environmental case brought by thousands of indigenous persons where the oil giant was found to have contaminated the rain forest and ordered to pay $18.2 billion to clean up the damage, according to a series of cables written by U.S. government officials and recently disclosed by Wikileaks.

The diplomatic cables (see here, here, here and here) also reveal that Chevron and U.S. embassy officials in Ecuador enjoyed such a close relationship that the oil giant's lawyers were tipping off U.S. ambassadors about their legal strategy before it would be revealed in court, said Karen Hinton, the U.S. spokesperson for the 30,000 Ecuadorians who recently won an $18.2 billion judgment for clean-up, despite efforts by Chevron to undermine the case.


The Ecuador court found that Chevron, from 1964 to 1992, dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste onto the ancestral lands of indigenous groups, causing an outbreak of cancer and other oil-related diseases.

Ecuador's Constitution prohibits government interference in the judiciary, so Chevron's lobbying in effect was trying to coax Ecuador's President Rafael Correa to violate the country's laws to benefit the oil giant in a private litigation. The company offered to fund "social projects" in exchange for a government agreement to shut down the trial.

"These diplomatic cables reveal a shocking level of misconduct on the part of Chevron's lawyers to undermine the rule of law in Ecuador," said Hinton. "They also demonstrate the company’s extremely close ties to U.S. embassy officials in Ecuador who seemed open to helping Chevron shut down the legal case.”

The Wikileaks cables reveal that Chevron left no stone unturned in its efforts to stop the proceedings, which represented the only hope for indigenous groups and farmer communities to secure a clean-up after decades of stonewalling by the oil giant.

The cables, primarily authored by U.S. Ambassador Linda Jewell or U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges, reveal that:

• In April of 2008 Chevron tipped off U.S. embassy officials that during the ongoing trial it had offered to set up social programs in the Amazon "in exchange for GOE [Government of Ecuador] support for ending the case". Chevron consistently tried to end-run the plaintiffs and settle the case directly with Ecuador's government, despite Ecuadorian laws prohibiting government officials from settling private claims, said Hinton. Chevron convinced Jewell to attempt to intervene on behalf of two Chevron employees who faced a criminal investigation for signing off in 1998 on a sham remediation of oil sites in exchange for a government release from liability. Jewell said the embassy "will consider how it can help Chevron resolve" the case, and that she contacted a former Supreme Court President of Ecuador as part of that strategy. The charges against the two, Richard Reis Veiga and Rodrigo Perez Pallares, were later dismissed on a technicality despite overwhelming evidence of fraud, said Hinton.

• In August of 2009, Chevron lawyer Ricardo Reis Veiga called the then-U.S. ambassador to provide a "heads up" that the company was releasing secret videotapes taken by Chevron contractor Diego Borja that the company claimed implicated the judge in a bribery scandal. The move backfired after it became clear that the tapes did not actually show the judge taking a bribe and after Borja later admitted to being Chevron’s “clandestine operative” in Ecuador, and that Chevron paid him for his work, said Hinton.

• The cables also suggest that Chevron officials were misrepresenting facts about the Lago Agrio case to embassy officials. In a cable written in September 2009 by Ambassador Heather Hodges, Chevron claimed it had not sought the Borja tapes when in fact Borja worked for Chevron and was meeting with Chevron lawyers in the United States about the entrapment of the judge in Ecuador, said Hinton.

• Another cable from March of 2006, written by Charge d'Affairs Jefferson Brown, said that Chevron executive Jamie Varela told embassy officials that "Chevron had not had any real complaints about the judge” or the "administration of the case" in Lago Agrio. Chevron later argued before various U.S. courts that Ecuador's judicial system was unfair at that time, contradicting these private statements to the embassy, said Hinton.

• Varela also tipped off Brown that Chevron was planning on filing an international arbitration case against the Government of Ecuador in a move to gain leverage over the Lago Agrio case, according to the cables. Varela also indicated that Chevron would not publicly disclose the filing for fear the plaintiffs would use it against the company.

• Additionally, Brown wrote that U.S. embassy officials were "surprised" that Varela did not ask for U.S. government "intervention in the case" to help Chevron, as had other Chevron officials. Nevertheless, Brown wrote that the embassy "will continue to raise the [Chevron] matter with [Ecuador's government] when we discuss other commercial disputes" but he also concluded that Chevron's complaints were "being fairly and adequately addressed in the courts or in arbitration and require no direct [U.S. government] action at this time."

"Chevron was sharing intimate details of its supposedly private legal strategy with the U.S. embassy," said Hinton. "Chevron lawyers clearly felt that embassy officials were part of their team. We find it disturbing that U.S. embassy officials in Ecuador were willing to do the bidding of an American oil company that committed environmental crimes that have literally decimated the lives of thousands of people," said Hinton.

The U.S. State Department should make it clear that no U.S. embassy official should interfere with ongoing private lawsuits brought by local residents against American corporations that commit environmental or human rights abuses in their countries. Hinton said such actions "have the effect of undermining a primary objective of U.S. foreign policy which is to support the development of democratic institutions and the strengthening of civil society."

The trial against Chevron in Ecuador began in 2003 in the town of Lago Agrio and ended in February of this year with the judgment, which both sides are appealing. Chevron had heaped lavish praise on Ecuador's court system to move the case to Ecuador out of federal court in New York, where the action was filed in 1993.

During the Ecuador trial and in recent legal efforts in the U.S. to stop enforcement of the judgment, Chevron has characterized meetings between the Ecuadorian citizens suing Chevron and their government officials as a “criminal conspiracy” even though the newly released cables and other memos prove that Chevron also met repeatedly with numerous Ecuadorian government officials to pressure them to illegally intervene in the lawsuit.

On multiple occasions since 2006, Chevron has tried to interfere with the environmental case by using its Washington lobbyists to try to press the Bush and then Obama Administrations to cancel Ecuador's trade preferences in retaliation for the lawsuit, even though Chevron wanted the case to be held in Ecuador.

Chevron’s efforts to undermine the case were extraordinary, Hinton added. During the nine years of litigation in Ecuador, Chevron also sought to recuse every judge who presided over the case, threatened judges with jail time if they did not rule in favor of the company, and took out paid newspaper advertisements criticizing judicial officers and adversary counsel.

Two Chevron lawyers were also sanctioned for filing frivolous motions, including 18 in one 30-minute period in 2010.

In recent years the company has stripped all assets from Ecuador, forcing the plaintiffs to consider lawfully enforcing their judgment in the many countries around the world where the oil giant operates. On Monday, a U.S. federal appeals court in New York lifted an injunction barring Americans from enforcing the Ecuador judgment, clearing the way for collection actions to commence if the Ecuador appellate court affirms the trial court judgment.

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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

President Barack Obama Has Balls, But Nigerian Presidents Have None


"We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused," Obama said in an 18-minute speech. "And we will do whatever necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy." President Barack Obama said authoritatively.


I have only one simple illustration from a book to show that the brave President Barack Obama of the United States of America has balls, but Nigerian Presidents have none in addressing emergencies.

The failure of the Nigerian government to check the excesses of Chevron, Shell and other oil companies have made them to disregard their rules of engagement, because these oil companies spill more oil into the Niger Delta each year than was spilled as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster that devastated the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. President Barack Obama did not waste time to address the emergency and compelled the BP to pay.

"We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused," Obama said in an 18-minute speech. "And we will do whatever necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy." President Barack Obama said authoritatively.

BP set up a $20bn compensation fund after the Deepwater Horizon disaster and has so far paid out 19,000 claims totalling more than $240m and BP's bill for containing and cleaning up the oil spill has reached nearly $10bn (£6.4bn).

President Obama did not need to commission the United Nations Environment Protection (UNEP) and did not pay for any assessment or disaster management report before compelling BP to pay for the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

"The oil industry has been a key sector of the Nigerian economy for over 50 years, but many Nigerians have paid a high price, as this assessment underlines," said Achim Steiner, U.N. under-secretary general and the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, which carried out the report.

Yet, our inept and incompetent government failed to prosecute the indicted Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Chevron and other

multinational oil companies to pay for the collateral damages they have been doing in the Niger Delta for decades.

The failures of the government and the impunity of the multinational oil companies provoked the rise of insurgency in the Niger Delta.




Saturday, August 13, 2011

Two Motions In Chevron's One-Sided Show Trial

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan continues to slide in Chevron's farcical "declaratory judgment" trial currently scheduled for November 14, 2011.

We have provided the copies of two important motions that were filed in the SDNY before Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.

The motions demonstrate how Judge Kaplan is failing to provide a fair trial which comports with basic notions of due process or fairness. The first motion, filed by the Ecuadorian plaintiffs who recently won an $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron for systematically poisoning Ecuador's Amazon, systematically demonstrates how Judge Kaplan's expedited schedule for the trial is not only "unfair to the Ecuadorian plaintiffs but would also not be consistent with procedures compatible with due process." The motion asks Judge Kaplan to continue the trial so that the Ecuadorian plaintiffs will have a reasonable amount of time to prepare a proper defense to Chevron's baseless allegations.


THE FIRST MOTION.

THE SECOND MOTION


The second motion, filed by lawyers for Steven Donziger, a lawyer who has represented the Ecuadorian plaintiffs for the entire 18-year history of the case and the primary target of Chevron's allegations, asks Kaplan for the third time to let Donziger fully participate in the November trial. The motion argues that Chevron now seeks, with Kaplan's tacit approval, a "do over" of the trial they lost in Ecuador and seeks to make Donziger the principal focus of their trial where, due to Kaplan's decisions, he has no right to defend himself. Today's motion is unambiguous on the impact of Kaplan's rulings to date: "Unless the Court rethinks some of its decisions about who can defend, and how and when that defense should happen, the 'do over' will be a one-sided show trial without any semblance of fairness or due process or concern for the merits."


Contact:

Hinton Communications
1215 19th Street,NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 703-798-3109
Fax: 480-275-3554
E-mail: Karen@hintoncommunications.com


Related Reports:

Judge Rules That Filmmaker Must Give Footage to Chevron



A federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday granted a petition by Chevron to issue a subpoena for hundreds of hours of footage from a documentary about the pollution of the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador and the oil company’s involvement.




Friday, August 12, 2011

Is The Nigerian Government Scared Of Multinational Oil Companies?



Every administration of the Nigerian government has failed to prosecute the multinational oil companies destroying the communities of oil producing states in the Niger Delta.

The Nigerian Navy has failed to stop oil thieves from overseas who have been engaged in illegal bunkering and stealing hundreds of thousands of barrels of our crude oil. And multinational oil companies have not been paying all the required taxes. Chevron Nigeria Limited has been indicted for tax evasion and the mainstream news media compromised the ethics of the press by not publishing the scandalous impunity of Chevron and other multinational oil companies in Nigeria. Even when I wanted to pay for an advert on their crimes, the mainstream newspapers asked me not to identify them, because they did not want to lose the patronage of Chevron and other multinational oil companies.

See CHEVRON IN $10.8 BILLION TAX FRAUD IN NIGERIA
http://nigeriantimes.blogspot.com/2005/08/chevron-in-18-billion-tax-fraud-in.html

We have become the accomplices of the foreign powers plundering the Niger Delta?
Once they settle us, we will not report their evils.

President Barack Obama did not spare BP over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed for three months in 2010.

Read the report on 50 years of oil spills in Nigeria on http://www.naijafeed.com/naijafeed/2010/7/26/video-50-years-of-oil-spill-in-nigeria.html.

See the Full text of President Obama's BP Oil Spill speech


The following is the CATALOGUE OF PETROLEUM OIL SPILLS IN NIGERIA'S NIGER DELTA






The Nigerian government has failed to support the Ogoni people in their quest to make Shell pay for the collateral damages done to their environment. What we have is a government of political hypocrisy in the masquerade of democracy.


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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Scholars Ask Appellate Court to Dissolve Order of Judge Lewis A. Kaplan

International Law Scholars Say Attempt by U.S. Judge to Block $18 Billion Court Judgment Against Chevron “Unlawful” and “Futile”

Scholars Ask Appellate Court to Dissolve Order of Judge Lewis A. Kaplan


New York, New York (June 13, 2011) – A group of 16 international law scholars have asked a federal appeals court in New York to overturn what they say is a U.S. trial court’s “futile” and unlawful injunction that purports to prohibit foreign citizens from Ecuador from collecting an $18 billion judgment against Chevron in courts around the world.

The scholars described the injunction, issued by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, as a “futile act” that “is much more likely to antagonize the courts of other states” than be treated as persuasive authority, as Kaplan has claimed. They also described the injunction as “breathtaking in its attempts to arrogate a world-wide and exclusive jurisdiction in this case” to a U.S. court without any legal authority to back it up.

The scholars filed an amicus brief with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (http://chevrontoxico.com/assets/docs/2011-amicus-16-legal-experts.pdf) asserting that Kaplan’s injunction “constitutes an internationally unlawful attempt to intervene in the domestic legal affairs of Ecuador.” The scholars asked the Second Circuit -- which is expediting an appeal of Kaplan’s order -- to dissolve the injunction.

“The preliminary injunction directly intrudes into the external administration of Ecuadorian justice because recognition and enforcement of Ecuadorian judgments are issues each state is permitted to decide freely,” argued the law scholars, who are led by Donald K. Anton of the Australian National University College of Law in Canberra.

Those signing include public international scholars from South Africa, Spain, Finland, Italy and the United States. All made it clear they were not taking a position on the merits of underlying case.

The law scholars wrote that Kaplan’s injunction violates international law, interferes in the foreign relations of the U.S., would potentially expose the U.S. to legal claims from Ecuador, and would be impossible to enforce.

The scholars also argued that neither Kaplan nor Chevron “has cited any statute, rule, case or treaty” that would authorize the injunction.

Besides Anton of the Australian National University College of Law, the brief was signed by Professor Werner Scholtz of South Africa; Professor Belen Olmos Giupponi of Spain; Professor Timo Koivurova of Finland; Professor Laura Westra of the University of Milan; and several U.S. scholars, including Professor James D. Wilets, Chair of the Inter-American Center for Human Rights at Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale.

The Ecuadorians, members of 80 indigenous and farmer communities, recently won the judgment after an eight-year trial in Ecuador. They originally filed the case in U.S. federal court in 1993, but in 2002 a judge granted Chevron’s request to shift the case to Ecuador after the oil giant praised that country’s courts as fair and transparent.

The Ecuador trial court in February found Chevron liable for dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the waterways of the Amazon, poisoning an area the size of Rhode Island and decimating indigenous groups with oil-related diseases such as cancer. The company operated in Ecuador from 1964 to 1992.

Chevron began to attack Ecuador’s courts in 2004 after the scientific evidence in the trial pointed to its culpability. As a judgment in Ecuador was imminent, Chevron convinced Kaplan to issue the injunction without conducting an evidentiary hearing and after rejecting attempts by the Ecuadorians and their counsel to submit evidence.

While presiding over the case, Kaplan seemed to mock the Ecuadorian indigenous groups in his comments from the bench. He speculated that the lawsuit was part of a “game” brought about by “the imagination of American lawyers” trying to solve the balance of payments deficit of the U.S.

Kaplan also seemed to question the existence of the plaintiffs by using the modifier “so-called” when writing about them in his decisions. The Ecuadorians have requested that the appellate court order Kaplan off the case because of his “deep-seated antagonism” toward their lawsuit (http://chevrontoxico.com/assets/docs/2011-petition-writ-mandamus.pdf).

The Ecuadorians have rejected Kaplan’s jurisdiction and say they will seek lawful enforcement of their judgment in countries where Chevron has assets, said Karen Hinton, the spokesperson for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs.

A three-judge panel in New York is expected to hear argument on Kaplan’s injunction in late July or early August. An Ecuador appellate panel is also reviewing the Ecuador trial judge’s decision, which was challenged by both parties.

The international law scholars submitted one of five amicus briefs asking the appellate court to dissolve Kaplan’s injunction. Others were submitted by the government of Ecuador; Professor Bert Neuborne of New York University School of Law; Earth Rights International; and the Environmental Defender Law Center.

#

Contact

Amazon Defense Coalition
13 June 2011 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or Karen@hintoncommunications.com



Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Chevron continues to use desperate tactics to escape $18 Billion Court Judgment

Alex Thorne: Husband of Chevron Employee Poses as “Journalist” to Undermine Environmental Group Critical of Oil Giant’s Ecuador Catastrophe

Oil Giant Continues To Use Cover of Independent Journalism To Escape $18 Billion Court Judgment


Amazon Defense Coalition

30 May 2011 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


San Francisco, CA – Alex Thorne, the husband of a senior-level Chevron employee, has been posing as an independent “journalist” to send e-mails designed to intimidate funders of a small environmental organization that has been critical of Chevron’s management for refusing to pay the company’s court-ordered $18 billion liability in Ecuador.

The stunning revelation about Thorne’s e-mails comes just days after several large Chevron shareholders blasted Chevron CEO John Watson for displaying "poor judgment" in Ecuador which “has led investors to question whether [Chevron’s] leadership can properly manage the array of environmental challenges and risks that it faces. The investors critical of Watson manage a combined $156 billion in assets and include New York’s pension fund, the nation’s third largest.

Thorne recently sent e-mails to several funders of the U.S.-based environmental group Amazon Watch in which he claimed to be working on an “article” for a publication he refused to specify. The e-mails then asked the funders “if it is time” to “reevaluate” their support for Amazon Watch in light of Chevron’s oft-criticized claim that the 18-year legal case is part of an extortion racket.

Thorne is married to Kristen Thorne, Chevron’s senior policy advisor on environment and energy issues. Alex Thorne did not disclose in the emails to Amazon Watch’s funders that he is married to a high-level Chevron employee or that he has operated a pro-Chevron website critical of the leaders of the Ecuador lawsuit.

“Alex Thorne’s phony emails are part of Chevron’s Karl Rove-style campaign designed to intimidate American citizens who are trying to hold Chevron accountable for committing environmental crimes and fraud in Ecuador,” said Karen Hinton, the spokesperson for the Ecuadorian communities who brought the lawsuit.

In one email to the Moriah Fund, which was forwarded to Amazon Watch, Alex Thorne says: “I’m writing an article highlighting Amazon Watch’s top donors which will include mentioning the Moriah Fund… My article highlights organizations such as yours and questions whether it is time to reevaluate your support for Amazon Watch.”


When confronted by telephone about his phony emails, Thorne confirmed to Hinton he had written them and said: “I am just a bored, stay-at-home Dad with nothing better to do.”

Representatives of the Amazon communities have long charged that Chevron committed environmental crimes in Ecuador and that its “extortion” claim is nothing more than a last-ditch ploy to mislead shareholders. Two Chevron employees are currently under criminal indictment in Ecuador for lying about the results of a purported environmental cleanup that the plaintiffs say was a clear case of fraud.

Amazon Watch, which is based in San Francisco near Chevron headquarters, has a handful of staff members and a $950,000 annual budget. In contrast, Chevron has 62,000 employees and grossed $204 billion last year, or an amount roughly 200,000 times more than Amazon Watch’s annual expenditures.

Despite their lack of resources, Amazon Watch’s staff members have had an outsized impact on Chevron. They have infuriated Chevron’s management by filing complaints against the oil giant with the Securities and Exchange Commission, by confronting the company’s Board of Directors during shareholder meetings, and by organizing protests outside the luxurious home of Chevron CEO Watson.

Just last week at Chevron’s annual meeting, Amazon Watch Executive Director Atossa Soltani accused Watson of having a personal conflict of interest over the Ecuador issue while several Chevron Board members looked on in stunned silence.

Along with lawyers for the Ecuadorians, Amazon Watch also has raised the possibility that Chevron violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Ecuador (the FCPA prohibits the bribing of foreign officials). Some of Chevron’s potential FCPA violations – which would expose the company to criminal liability in the U.S. -- have been summarized in the sworn affidavit of Ecuador attorney Juan Pablo Saenz, available here.


Chevron’s larger problem is that an Ecuador court in February imposed a cleanup tab of $18 billion for the deliberate discharge of billions of gallons of toxic waste into streams and rivers of the Amazon rainforest, where the company operated (via predecessor company Texaco) from 1964 to 1992. Chevron’s substandard operational practices in Ecuador – admitted to by the company at trial -- decimated indigenous groups and caused an outbreak of cancer and other oil-related diseases that will haunt tens of thousands of people for decades without a comprehensive remediation, according to evidence submitted by the plaintiffs.

For most of 2009, Alex Thorne maintained a website where he regularly attacked the leaders of the Ecuador lawsuit and Hinton.

After Hinton wrote in a press release about his wife’s participation in a “green technology” panel discussion that failed to mention Chevron’s environmental disaster in Ecuador, Alex Thorne created a separate website called “Hinton Communications Watch” that was designed to intimidate Hinton into stopping her work for the Ecuadorian indigenous communities, said Hinton. Alex Thorne later took down the websites and at the time apologized to Hinton.

This is not Chevron’s first attempt to use the image of independent journalists as cover for its campaign to undermine the legal claims of the impoverished Ecuadorian communities, said Hinton.

Last year, Chevron was caught trying to pay American free lance journalist Mary Cudahee $20,000 to spy on the plaintiffs in Ecuador by pretending she was conducting research for an article. Cudahee exposed the effort in The Atlantic.

In 2009, just days before a 60 Minutes segment critical of Chevron’s misconduct in Ecuador was slated to air, the company posted on the internet a pro-Chevron corporate video on Ecuador narrated by former CNN correspondent Gene Randall that was designed to look like a legitimate news broadcast. Chevron hid its role in paying for the production of Randall’s video until it was exposed by The New York Times.

Nor is Chevron shy about pushing the envelope when trying to intimidate its many vocal critics on the Ecuador issue.

Chevron CEO Watson ordered the arrest of five shareholder critics at the company’s 2010 annual meeting; Chevron took out newspaper advertisements attacking the U.S.-based Goldman Foundation for awarding its prestigious environmental prize to advocates for the Ecuadorian victims of Chevron’s human rights abuses; and Chevron recently filed a racketeering lawsuit in the U.S. federal court against 47 Ecuadorian villagers and their lawyers that named Amazon Watch as a “co-conspirator”.

Hinton noted that Chevron uses CRC Public Relations, which is known for launching vicious attacks against critics of its corporate and political clients. CRC, which has close ties to the right wing of the Republican Party, is infamous for designing the Swift Boat attacks ads that targeted 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry.

CRC is one of at least six public relations firms and four corporate law firms used by Chevron General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate to deal with negative fallout from the Ecuador judgment, apparently the largest environmental liability in history other than the BP Gulf spill, said Hinton. Pate is a former high-level political appointee in the U.S. Department of Justice under President George W. Bush and the mastermind of Chevron’s Ecuador litigation strategy, she added.

A Chevron spokesman recently said Chevron will not pay the Ecuador judgment and that the company plans to fight the Ecuadorian indigenous communities “until hell freezes over.”


#

Contact:
Karen Hinton
Hinton Communications
1215 19th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Karen@hintoncommunications.com
703-798-3109, cellular
480-275-3554, fax by email

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