In this corner, we have a human-rights lawyer representing the interests of indigenous people in the Amazon residing in a remote corner of Ecuador polluted by the by-products of oil exploration; in the opposite corner we have Chevron, a multinational petroleum behemoth with billions of dollars in cash on hand but refusing to part with a dollar in the cause of justice for the beleaguered Ecuadorian tribesmen. It is a testament to the vapidness, incuriosity, and corruption of the intellectual classes, from the editors of Vanity Fair to celebrity activists such as Mr. and Mrs. Sting, that this black-hats/white-hats version of events was sufficient reason for the luminaries of the Left to hitch themselves to what turns out to be almost certainly the largest attempt at extortion in recorded human history.
For those who have not been following the case, and for those who might be familiar with it from reporting in these pages and elsewhere, Bloomberg Businessweek writer Paul M. Barrett offers a thorough account of the episode in this new book. But before digging into Mr. Barrett’s book, readers should treat themselves to the Miami Herald’s account of how Steven Donziger, the “lawyer who’d stop at nothing” of Barrett’s subtitle, corrupted Vanity Fair’s reporting on the case. The author of the Vanity Fair piece, William Langewiesche, was so thoroughly seduced by Mr. Donziger’s human-rights shtick that he literally had the plaintiffs’ attorney script the questions he was submitting to Chevron — and even went so far as to submit copy to Donziger for his approval. E-mails between the two released as part of the legal discovery process find the attorney apologizing to the allegedly independent journalist for being “a little aggressive in the editing.”
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