Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Today, environmental lawyer, Steven Donziger is headed to prison after his appeal for bail was denied yesterday. Following over 800 days of house arrest, he will spend six months locked up on criminal contempt charges. This after denying a federal judge's order to hand over electronic devices containing sensitive communications with his legal clients. The clients include environmentalists and indigenous groups in Ecuador who have fought for decades seeking accountability from oil giant, Chevron. Maybe some of you know about the Ecuador Chevron ongoing battle.

Since the 1970s, the company Texaco Chevron acquired in 2000 illegally dumped crude oil and other drilling waste in parts of the Ecuadorian Amazon, polluting rainforest land. Donziger got involved in the early '90s when he represented a group of local organizations known as the Amazon Defense Coalition in a drawn-out legal battle against Chevron. Following a landmark win in 2013, the company was ordered to pay $9.5 billion for cleanup efforts and protection against future environmental damage, but Chevron never paid up. Instead, the company questioned the trial's legitimacy and countersued Donziger the lawyer and the coalition he represented for bribery and fraud. A second drawn-out legal fight snowballed to Donziger's current criminal charges while his partners in Ecuador remain on polluted land. Joining me now is Nation contributor, James North, who has reported from the Global South for 40 years in addition to closely following Steven Donziger's trial. His latest piece for the Nation, Facing Prison, Steven Donziger Refuses To Be Silenced. James, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

James North: Thank you, Brian. Good morning and thanks for your invitation

Brian: For listeners who've never heard of Steven Donziger until this very moment, tell us more about who he is, what he does, and why he wound up in prison after just being a lawyer for groups in Ecuador.

James: Well, Brian, as I listened to your admirable summary of the case thus far, I could hear that you were having the same problem that I do, which is that there's so much backstory that you start to get out of breath trying to tell it.

Brian: That's right.

James: Before I even launch into trying to add to your admirable summary, I just want to give a shout out to The Nation magazine, because The Nation some years ago when very few, if anyone was covering this story, they have sent me out to report on it seven, eight times. There's a string of articles there is what I'm saying. You referenced the most recent one, which is an interview with Steven from last week just before he goes into prison. Basically, it's a 30-year saga, and to me, the number one culprit here is the Chevron Corporation.

Chevron, as you pointed out acquired Texaco in 2000 and when they acquired Texaco, they acquired an already running lawsuit that Steven Donziger fresh out of Harvard Law School had joined on in the early '90s. The case originally began, again, here I got to catch my breath here, but the case originally began in New York district court in the '90s, and after back and forth sparring for seven, eight years, a New York judge decided to send it to Ecuador arguing that because the alleged infractions or pollution, not alleged but had taken place there, that that was where the judgment should take place.

Chevron agreed to that quite happily because I think they thought that they would have a better chance of winning there. Then when the case started again in 2003, less than another six years and they lost. The fact is that Chevron did not question the legitimacy of the Ecuador situation until they started losing it. Then they came back to New York, again, I'm coming out of breath here. They came back to New York and launched a countersuit, [chuckles] you say the Rico act, which was originally designed to prosecute the mafia in the United States.

They brought a case against Donziger and his Ecuadorian allies, that went on for another few years. He and his allies were found guilty of racketeering. As a consequence of that case, again, I'm losing my breath, Chevron had the judge ask him to turn over some of his recordings with them. He declined on the grounds that it was client privilege. Another case came forward. Donziger has been under house arrest. I was just up in his apartment with him. I also live in New York City.

He's been under house arrest for 800 days and sometime today he's likely to have to turn himself in to go to a federal prison. There's a last-minute move to keep him out on bail, if you can call it bail house arrest so that the larger appeal can go through. Basically, it looks like this man who has devoted 30 years of his life to trying to help people in the Amazon rainforest could be going into a federal prison today.

Brian: By the way, if anything about the intro was admirable as you called it, all credit to producer Max Balton who dug into the history of the Steven Donziger case and the Chevron Ecuador case and put it into digestible form with those paragraphs. Tell us more about why the court wanted Donziger to give up computer and cell phone records of calls with clients. That is not customarily requested.

James: Well, let me back up just a bit and then I'll get to your excellent question. I came to this case, not directly to Steven Donziger, but to the fact that as your intro said about me, I've been reporting from the Global South for over 40 years. I first went 10 years ago to the polluted area, which is in Eastern Ecuador. It's a rainforest region where there are indigenous people and small farmers living. I went there and spent a few days. I'm Spanish-speaking. I've been Spanish-speaking since the 1970s. My wife is from Ecuador, although not from that region.

I saw firsthand the environmental crimes that were committed there by Chevron's predecessor company. Now, what's happened more recently is that, Judge Kaplan, the original judge on the racketeering case basically wants to try and get information as to what the financing of this case is going. As a result, what they've tried to do is require Donziger to open the-- Now, Steven Donziger is respectful of the law. He says that he is protecting his client's right to not have their overall strategies revealed to Chevron, but the appeals court says that he doesn't have a case, he will turn over the electronics.

It's basically a stand-on principle and trying to protect attorney-client privilege is what he's doing here. As a result, he's getting the maximum sentence allowed under the law. Another point I would like to make, and again, I got a gasp for breath. Steven Donziger has never faced a jury, never faced the jury. The racketeering case was just before a single judge where the judge had to wait testimony from witnesses who were flown up by Chevron from Ecuador. I don't see how a New York federal judge, a New York person who has never lived overseas considers that he has the right to-- Under the law, it's allowed.

Then the second case, the case that Steven is probably going to prison this afternoon. Again, no jury, because the penalty was kept as a misdemeanor. It was only a six-month equal, I shouldn't say only, a six month. There's no jury in either case. This man has been locked up under house arrest. Oh, and another injustice here. [laughs] I could talk for two hours about this. Another injustice here is that Donziger has been held under house arrest in his Upper West Side apartment for over two years. The judge, in this case, Judge Preska, has argued that he's a potential flight risk. This is preposterous. This is insulting to the intelligence.

This man, they've taken away his passport, he lives on the Upper West Side with his wife and son. The insinuation is that somehow he would flee to Ecuador. Now, believe me, he and I have both been in the rainforest region. He's not going to go and flee there and live there and abandon his-- The fact is he could have been out on bail. His supporters were willing to put up a large amount of bail to guarantee his appearance in court. At every stage, he has appeared in court when he was asked to do so. Again, the string of injustices going on for at least the past 10 years is just absolutely astonishing.

Another point, yet another point, again, let me catch my breath, is that the mainstream media for the most part has so far ignored this case. Back when Donziger was losing the case and being convicted of racketeering, back then, there were articles in the New York Times and in certain other publications. There hasn't been barely a word about this. It's astonishing and people are amazed to learn this. Fortunately, thanks to The Nation, other alternative publications and programs like yours, people are starting to get aware of the fact that an environmentalist human rights attorney was held under house arrest for six months in New York City and is now going to a federal prison. It boggles the mind and I've been following this for 10 years.

Brian: By the way, James, a listener just tweeted, ''Can someone get this guy an oxygen tank? But we'll have to share it based on what we've both been going through in this segment.'' Listeners, we have a few minutes for phone calls. If anyone has either been following the Steven Donziger trial or any of the court cases involving the Amazon Defense Coalition and the original alleged environmental crime by Chevron, how are you reacting to the news that Donziger is supposed to head for prison today after his long stretch of house arrest?

Or anybody with ties to Ecuador or to Chevron, I guess, with thoughts or questions about the underlying issue. 212-433 WNYC. 212-433-9692 if you want to talk to James North who's catching his breath as I give out the phone number after reporting on the trial of Steven Donziger for The Nation and from the Global South on all kinds of issues for 40 years. James, is it possible that Steven Donziger is a lawyer connected to very important and righteous environmental and indigenous rights issues but that he also committed bribery and fraud?

James: No. Is it possible? I suppose it's possible, but it's not true. Again, this would take me five hours to go through all the counter-evidence, and your program, excellent as it is, it doesn't have enough time for this but the fact is no. No, it's preposterous. Insinuation from Chevron and its supporters all along has been that Steven Donziger is basically a sophisticated version of an ambulance chaser. That he has gone to the rainforest, that he has bamboozled these local people into bringing a case that he hopes to win an enormous amount of money. Some of the articles, for instance, the Wall Street Journal did a brief article a few months ago that basically said how much money he stands to get personally because the case is brought on contingency.

The whole point of it is if Donziger, he's not like that, but even if he were like that, he would've given up long ago. This is a legal saga that's taken him from his early 30s, he's now 60 years old. If he were purely interested in money, he would've dropped this case years ago and gone on and found a different money-making proposition. That's not at all what he's like. Second of all, the fact is that it's not as though the individual-- He's representing 30,000 plaintiffs in the impacted region. Five or so scientific peer-reviewed studies show that the incidence of cancer in this area is higher than in comparable regions. When you go there, you can see the oil floating on the streams and rivers in certain spots.

If you dig down enough another three or four feet, you can see the oil is underground. Boiling the water doesn't do any good. If the contamination were bacteriological or biological, that would make the water safe but it's not, so boiling doesn't do any good. Steven personally knows of 10 or so people who have died from cancer at younger ages, so this is an ongoing crisis. What's more, if Chevron ever does pay the settlement that they were adjudicated in the courts down there, it's not going to be individual checks. What's going to happen is that an organization as you referenced at the beginning, the Amazon Defense Coalition is going to pay collectively for basically broadly speaking two things.

Huge amount of scouring of earth, cleaning up what should have happened back in the '90s and didn't when Texaco left. Second of all, they're going to pay for the construction of hospitals to treat these medical issues including cancer. This is a fairly remote region. To get from where the region is to the nearest decent hospital is in Quito, which is eight hours away by bus. Believe me, I've taken that bus trip. It's a long trip over the mountains and people there can't afford it so they continue to die. Chevron continues to basically insinuate that Donziger's after the money. No, basically there's no fraud here. What's more, again, I'll get back to my original point about a trial by a jury.

Living in New York, I have served on juries as so many of us have. I've been impressed by the quality of jurisprudence, these weren't big cases that I was on, and by the honesty and integrity of my fellow jurors. The fact is that Donziger has not been allowed this opportunity because if he were, he would never have been convicted of any of the things that he's been convicted of.

Brian: Let's take a phone call from a listener who wants to point up one of the oddities about this case that we haven't touched on yet that I know you've written about. Vidra in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Vidra.

Vidra: Hi, Brian. It's been a long time since we've played softball.

Brian: Oh, you're my softball friend. Yes, I defected from our pickup game to the WNYC Team but good to hear from you. Go ahead on this case.

Vidra: And people, Brian hits a mean line drive. What I wanted to ask because I've heard this repeatedly that in the contempt case, federal prosecutors had no interest in taking up that case and that the prosecutor in that case was a private lawyer who works for a law firm that deals with Chevron. It was actually a private prosecutor that the judge allowed to prosecute Donziger when the federal government had no interest. Is that true?

James: Yes, Vidra. That's an excellent question and here I'm about to start gasping again. What basically happened was that Chevron complained that Donziger hadn't furnished the information to them that it wanted. They approached Judge Kaplan who found him guilty of racketeering and Kaplan went to the US attorney for the Southern District of New York and said, "Will you prosecute Donziger for criminal contempt in this case?" The Southern district said, "No, this is not a public--" There was no announcement as to why this happened. They said no.

What Kaplan then did was he appointed a private prosecutor. He picked an attorney from a private law firm, which later turned out to have done business with Chevron in the past.

Basically she, Rita Glavin is her name, she brought the case for criminal contempt and Steven has an enormous number of lawyers who have worked for him for basically nothing who are just shocked. Marty Garbus, for example, is a legend in the human rights field. He's been working for Steven. Plenty of other lawyers have.

Lawyers and legal scholars are astonished by this because the idea that you could be prosecuted by someone who doesn't actually under the supervision of the Attorney General in the US Justice Department, that's an element of the appeal that's going on now. Yes, basically that's yet another element of this case that's so astonishing that the Southern district for whatever reason said, "We're not going to prosecute." Maybe they didn't think they could win, they didn't think it was important. Who knows? We can't speculate but the fact is normally when that happens, there is no case. Judge Kaplan went beyond that. Judge Kaplan pushed by Chevron at every stage went beyond that.

Brian: Did you say the name of the lawyer who is this private lawyer and you [crosstalk] have prosecutor is Rita Glavin?

James: Yes. I have no opinion on this, she's now emerged. She's the attorney for ex-governor Cuomo.

Brian: She was the lead face for Cuomo over the last few months in defending Cuomo against the sexual harassment charges detailed in the Attorney General's report. It's the same Rita Glavin who's defending Cuomo on sexual harassment who's prosecuted Steven Donziger in this unusual way?

James: That's correct. That's right.

Brian: Just putting those dots together. Now that my eyes popped out of my head when you said it was Rita Glavin. Laura in Brooklyn wants to talk about the underlying case, the pollution in Ecuador, and Laura, you're on WNYC. Laura, are you there? Yes, it's you.

Laura: Oh, hi. Sorry. Hi, thanks for taking my call. I do remember reading about this case and being struck by it by a long article in The New Yorker years ago. I was shocked to get an email this week from friends of Steven Donziger. I'm on a lot of email listings. I was like, what is happening? Then it's great to have the extra information today so thank you for covering this case. Why is it and what is the fault of the mainstream media that they're not covering this especially in light of COP26 coming up. The interrelation of what was happening there, the power of the fossil fuels, the need for us to get off of fossil fuels to have earth to live on for our grandchildren. I'm curious about that, and then regarding the Rita Glavin comment because my thoughts was like, "Why hasn't someone super high profiled that?'' The world media could not ignore Amal Clooney representing Donziger.

Brian: Great question. Can you answer? I assume, James, that you like I cannot speak for other media and what they're not doing. Though if you have a theory on that, you're certainly welcome to explore it, but what about Laura's interesting question on why there isn't a high-profile attorney for Donziger bringing press attention to this case?

James: Well, thank you, Laura. The two questions are actually connected, I think. I have an opinion on just about every element of this case, but I really admit to being stumped and stupefied by the fact that the New York Times which is after all Steven's hometown newspaper has not covered this. There was a brief article a few months ago but has not basically covered it since 2014. Now, when he was losing the racketeering case before Judge Kaplan, then there was coverage, but for some reason, the paper has gone quiet. I haven't seen anything on the Washington Post.

The Wall Street Journal did have a long article which left a lot to be desired, but at least they covered it, and again, I think that was probably about six months ago, so I really do not know what's going on here. I can't explain that. As far as the lawyers, in addition to Martin Garbus, Steven has gotten high-profile lawyers. Yes, maybe not Amal Clooney, but he's gotten distinguished people. I could go on for the people who have defended him in various elements of this case. The fact is that the mainstream media has still ignored it. I agree with you entirely. It's astonishing.

Let's hope that now that he's heading off to prison that there is a story in tomorrow's New York Times and Wall Street Journal, that CNN gets on top of it. Steven on top of everything else, Steven Donziger is an extraordinarily articulate man. He knows how to present his case. He's good at it. He's interesting. At the same time, let Chevron and the people who support it, let's hear from them too. We're not talking censorship here. It's just that here's a man sitting under house arrest for over two years in New York City and barely a peep out of his hometown newspaper. I'm stupefied by it, really.

Brian: James North from The Nation. His latest piece there, Facing Prison, Steven Donziger Refuses To Be Silent. James, so do you. Thank you very much for joining us.

James: Thank you, Brian.

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