[News] After Spying on Standing Rock, TigerSwan Shopped Anti-Protest “Counterinsurgency” to Other Oil Companies

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theintercept.com
<https://theintercept.com/2023/04/13/standing-rock-tigerswan-protests/>
After Spying on Standing Rock, TigerSwan Shopped Anti-Protest
“Counterinsurgency” to Other Oil Companies
Alleen Brown, Naveena Sadasivam - April 13, 2023
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

*A new business* model for breaking down environmental movements was being
hatched in real time. On Labor Day weekend in 2016, private security dogs
<https://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/4/dakota_access_pipeline_company_attacks_native>
in North Dakota attacked pipeline opponents led by members of the Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe as they approached earth-moving equipment. The tribal
members considered the land sacred, and the heavy equipment was breaking
ground to build the Dakota Access pipeline. With a major public relations
crisis on its hands, the pipeline’s parent company, Energy Transfer, hired
the firm TigerSwan to revamp its security strategy.

By October, TigerSwan — founded by James Reese, a retired commander of the
elite special operations Army unit Delta Force — had established a
military-style pipeline security strategy.

There was one nagging problem that threatened to unravel it all: Reese
hadn’t acquired a security license from the North Dakota Private
Investigation and Security Board. Although Reese claimed TigerSwan wasn’t
conducting security services at all, the state regulator insisted that its
operations were unlawful without a license.

TigerSwan turned to Jonathan Thompson, the head of the National Sheriffs’
Association, a trade group representing sheriffs, for help. The security
board “has a problem understanding and staying within their charter,” Shawn
Sweeney, TigerSwan’s senior vice president, wrote to Thompson
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773115-tigerswan-document-emails-between-nsa-and-tigerswan>.
If he could “discuss possible political measures to apply pressure it will
assist in the entire project success [sic],” the employee appealed.

Thompson was enthused to work with TigerSwan. “We are keen to be a strong
partner where we can help keep the message narrative supportive [sic],” he
wrote back. “[C]all if ever need anything.”
<https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/23773115-tigerswan-document-emails-between-nsa-and-tigerswan>

Despite Thompson’s offer of assistance, TigerSwan continued to operate in
North Dakota with no license for months. The company managed dozens of
on-the-ground security guards, surveilled and infiltrated
<https://theintercept.com/2018/12/30/tigerswan-infiltrator-dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock/>
protesters, and passed along profiles of so-called persons of interest to
one of the largest midstream energy companies in North America.

[image: WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 19: Jonathan Thompson, the Executive Director
and CEO of the National Sheriffs' Association speaks at a press conference
on the introduction of the “Active Shooter Alert Act 2022,” legislation
outside of the U.S. Capitol Building on May 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. The
proposed bipartisan legislation would create a system similar to the AMBER
Alert for law enforcement to alert the public to active shooters in their
community. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)]

Jonathan Thompson, the executive director and CEO of the National Sheriffs’
Association speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on May 19,
2022, in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The revelation of TigerSwan’s close working relationship with the National
Sheriffs’ Association is drawn from more than 50,000 pages of documents
obtained by The Intercept through a public records request to the North
Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board. In 2017, the board sued
TigerSwan
<https://theintercept.com/2017/06/28/tigerswan-faces-lawsuit-over-unlicensed-security-operations-in-north-dakota/>
for providing security services without a license. The state eventually
sought a $2 million fine through the administrative process, but TigerSwan
negotiated a $175,000 fine instead — well below standard fines
<https://theintercept.com/2020/11/15/standing-rock-tigerswan-infiltrator-documents/>
for such activities.

A discovery request filed as part of the case forced thousands of new
internal TigerSwan documents into the public record. Energy Transfer’s
lawyers fought for nearly two years to keep the documents secret, until
North Dakota’s Supreme Court ruled
<https://www.inforum.com/news/north-dakota/north-dakota-supreme-court-says-dapl-security-documents-are-public-record>
in 2022 that the material falls under the state’s open records statute.
Because an arrangement between North Dakota and Energy Transfer allows the
fossil fuel company to weigh in on which documents should be redacted, the
state has yet to release over 9,000 disputed pages containing material that
Energy Transfer is, for now at least, fighting to keep out of the public
eye.

The released documents provide startling new details about how TigerSwan
used social media monitoring, aerial surveillance
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773104-tigerswan-document-daily-intelligence-update-20161014>,
radio eavesdropping
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773106-tigerswan-document-daily-intelligence-update-20161229>
, undercover personnel
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773105-tigerswan-document-daily-intelligence-update-20161217>,
and subscription-based records databases to build watchlists and dossiers
on Indigenous activists and environmental organizations.
<https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/23773105-tigerswan-document-daily-intelligence-update-20161217>

At times, the pipeline security company shared this information with law
enforcement officials
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773109-tigerswan-document-information-summary-20161012>.
In other cases, WhatsApp chats and emails confirm TigerSwan used what it
gathered to follow pipeline opponents
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773107-tigerswan-document-north-dakota-dapl-operations-center-daily-update-brief>
in their cars and develop propaganda campaigns online
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773113-tigerswan-document-presentation-on-anti-protestor-social-media-campaign>.
The documents contain records of TigerSwan attempting to help Energy
Transfer build a legal case
<https://theintercept.com/2017/11/15/dakota-access-pipeline-dapl-tigerswan-energy-transfer-partners-rico-lawsuit/>
against pipeline opponents, known as water protectors, using the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a law that was passed to
prosecute the mob.

The Intercept and Grist contacted TigerSwan, Energy Transfer, the National
Sheriffs’ Association, as well as Thompson, the group’s executive director.
None of them responded to requests for comment.

To TigerSwan, the emergence of Indigenous-led social movements to keep oil
and gas in the ground represented a business opportunity. Reese anticipated
new demand from the fossil fuel industry for strategies to undermine the
network of activists his company had so carefully gathered information on.
In the records, TigerSwan expressed its ambitions to repurpose these
detailed records to position themselves as experts in managing pipeline
protests. The company created marketing materials pitching work to at least
two
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773101-tigerswan-documents-conoco-email>
other energy companies
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773100-tigerswan-document-presentation-for-dominion>building
controversial oil and gas infrastructure, the records show. TigerSwan,
which was staffed heavily with former members of military special
operations units, branded its tactics as a “counterinsurgency approach
<https://theintercept.com/2020/11/15/standing-rock-tigerswan-infiltrator-documents/>,”
drawing directly from its leaders’ experiences fighting the so-called war
on terror abroad.

TigerSwan did not just work in North Dakota. Energy Transfer hired the
company to provide security to its Rover pipeline
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773099-tigerswan-docuemnt-email-from-james-reese-to-atlantic-pipeline-official>,
in Ohio and West Virginia, the documents confirm. By spring 2017, TigerSwan
was also assembling intelligence reports
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773112-tigerswan-document-report-prepared-for-sunoco-logistics>
on opponents of Energy Transfer and Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 pipeline in
Pennsylvania.

The documents from the North Dakota security board paint a detailed picture
of counterinsurgency-style strategies for defeating opponents of oil and
gas development, a war-on-terror security firm’s aspirations to replicate
its deceptive tactics far beyond the Northern Great Plains, and the cozy
relationship
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773095-tigerswan-document-on-so-called-environmental-extremist-groups-in-nov-15-protest>
between businesses linked to the fossil fuel industry and one of the
largest law enforcement trade associations in the U.S. The impetus for
spying was not simply to keep people safe but to drum up profits from
energy clients and to allow fossil fuels to continue flowing, at the
expense of the communities fighting for clean water and a healthy climate.

“For them, it was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our
tribe and our supporters.”

“For them, it was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our
tribe and our supporters,” said Wasté Win Young, a citizen of the Standing
Rock Sioux Tribe and one of the plaintiffs in a class-action civil rights
lawsuit <https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/standing-rock-litigation>
against TigerSwan and local law enforcement. Young’s social media posts
repeatedly showed up in the documents. “We weren’t motivated by money or
payoffs or anything like that. We just wanted to protect our homelands.”

The Intercept published the first detailed descriptions
<https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security-firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline-insurgencies/>
of TigerSwan’s tactics in 2017, based on internal documents leaked by a
TigerSwan contractor. Nearly six years later, there have been no public
indications that the security company obtained major new fossil fuel
company contracts. Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists spurred the passage
of so-called
critical infrastructure laws widely understood to stifle fossil fuel
protests in 19 states
<https://grist.org/protest/utah-critical-infrastructure-law-felony/> across
the U.S. Collaborations
<https://theintercept.com/series/policing-the-pipeline/> between
corporations and law enforcement against environmental defenders have
proliferated, from Minnesota’s lake country
<https://grist.org/protest/enbridge-line-3-pipeline-minnesota-public-safety-escrow-account-invoices/>
to the urban forests
<https://theintercept.com/2023/03/08/atlanta-cop-city-protesters/> of
Atlanta <https://grist.org/protest/atlanta-cop-city-terrorism/>.

No significant regulatory reforms have been enacted to prevent firms from
repeating counterinsurgency-style tactics. And TigerSwan is far from the
only firm to use invasive surveillance strategies. The North Dakota
documents show that at least one other private security firm
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773119-tigerswan-document-dapl-intelligence-operations-cell-intelligence-analysis-and-assessment>
at Standing Rock appears to have utilized similar schemes against pipeline
opponents.

“We need to always be very clear that the industry knows what a risk the
climate movement is,” said May Boeve, the executive director of 350.org, a
climate nonprofit that was repeatedly mentioned
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773093-tigerswan-document-background-investigation-350org>
in TigerSwan’s marketing
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773117-tigerswan-document-pipeline-opposition-model-powerpoint>
and surveillance material. “They’re going to keep using these kinds of
strategies, but they’ll think of other things as well.”

[image: Sections of pipe sit near a farm at an Energy Transfer Partners LP
construction site for the Sunoco Inc. Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids
pipeline project near Morgantown, Pennsylvania, U.S. on Aug. 4, 2017. The
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has issued four notices
of violation after "inadvertent" spills of drilling fluids associated with
horizontal directional drilling for the project. Photographer: Charles
Mostoller/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

Sections of pipe sit near a farm at a construction site for Sunoco and
Energy Transfer’s Mariner East 2 pipeline project near Morgantown, Pa., on
Aug. 4, 2017.

Photo: Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg via Getty Images
TigerSwan’s Surveillance Gospel

“Gentlemen, as you are aware there has been a shift in environmentalist and
‘First Nations’ groups regarding the tactics being used to prevent, deter,
or interrupt the oil and gas industry,” said a February 2017 email
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773101-tigerswan-documents-conoco-email>
drafted by TigerSwan
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773103-tigerswan-document-conoco-emails-2>
employees
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773103-tigerswan-document-conoco-emails-2>
to a regional official at ConocoPhillips, a major oil and gas producer —
and a potential TigerSwan client.

“Recently in our area the situation has become extremely tense with
‘protestors’ using terrorist style tactics which are well beyond simple
civil disobedience,” the email continued. “If steps have not already been
taken to prevent and plans to mitigate [sic] an event or events like these
to Conoco I may be able to suggest some solutions.”

TigerSwan’s marketing materials read like a playbook for undermining
grassroots resistance. ConocoPhillips was just one of the companies the
private security firm had in its sights.

In another case, a PowerPoint presentation drafted for Dominion
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773100-tigerswan-document-presentation-for-dominion>,
which was building the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline through three
mid-Atlantic states, offered detailed profiles of local anti-pipeline
groups and individuals identified as “threat actors.” (The planned pipeline
was canceled in 2020.) TigerSwan laid out the types of services it could
provide, including a “Law Enforcement Liaison” and access to GuardianAngel,
its GPS and mapping tool. (Neither ConocoPhillips nor Dominion responded to
questions about whether they hired the security firm.)
<https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/23773100-tigerswan-document-presentation-for-dominion>

In January 2017, a TigerSwan deputy program manager emailed a presentation
titled “Pipeline Opposition Model
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773117-tigerswan-document-pipeline-opposition-model-powerpoint>”
to Reese and others, explaining
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773116-tigerswan-document-email-with-pipeline-opposition-model-powerpoint-attached>
that it was meant to serve as a business development tool and a “working
concept to discuss the problem.” The presentation claimed external forces
had helped drive the Standing Rock movement and pointed to outside tribes,
climate nonprofits like 350.org, and even billionaires like Bill Gates and
Warren Buffett, who had a “vested interest in DAPL failure” because of
their investments in the rail industry.

Water protectors used an elaborate set of social movement theories to
advance their cause, another slide hypothesized, including “Lone Wolf
terror tactics.” Specifically, TigerSwan speculated that pipeline opponents
could be using the “hero cycle” narrative, a storytelling archetype, to
recruit new movement members on social media and energize them to take
action — a strategy, the presentation said, also used by ISIS recruiters
<https://abc7chicago.com/iteam-isis-abu-muslim-videos-and-hollywood/1194173/>
.

Anyone whose work had touched the Standing Rock movement could become a
villain in TigerSwan’s sales pitches. One PowerPoint
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773100-tigerswan-document-presentation-for-dominion>
presentation
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773100-tigerswan-document-presentation-for-dominion>
included biographical details about Zahra Hirji, a journalist who worked at
the time for Inside Climate News. Another included
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773117-tigerswan-document-pipeline-opposition-model-powerpoint>
a photo of a water protector’s former professor and her course list.

As a remedy, the company offered up a suite of “TigerSwan Solutions
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773117-tigerswan-document-pipeline-opposition-model-powerpoint>.”
To the security firm, keeping the fossil fuel industry safe didn’t just
mean drones, social media monitoring, HUMINT (short for human intelligence,
such as from undercover personnel), and liaising with law enforcement
officials and agencies — all included on its list — it also meant local
community engagement, counter-protesters, building a “pipeline narrative,”
and partnering with university oil and gas programs.

“Win the populace, and you win the fight,” the presentation stated,
repeating a key principle of counterinsurgency strategy.

Reese approved: “I’d like to have these cleaned up and branded so I can
use,” he wrote back.

Reese used similar material to shore up his relationship with existing
clients. In December 2016, he requested a copy of a presentation titled
“Strategic Overview,” which he hoped to send to Energy Transfer supervisors
working on building the Rover natural gas pipeline. The presentation, a
version
<https://theintercept.com/2017/11/15/dakota-access-pipeline-dapl-tigerswan-energy-transfer-partners-rico-lawsuit/>
of which The Intercept previously published, draws heavily from a 2014
report
<https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases-republican?ID=53280DCB-9F2C-2E3A-7092-10CF6D8D08DF>
by the Republican minority staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and
Public Works, claiming that a “club” of billionaires control the
environmental movement.

In a memo
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773121-tigerswan-document-memo-about-the-so-called-standing-rock-effect>
called “The Standing Rock Effect
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773122-tigerswan-document-powerpoint-slides-about-the-standing-rock-effect>,”
TigerSwan lays out a set of seven criteria the company had developed for
identifying anti-pipeline camps sprouting up across the country.
“TigerSwan’s full suite of security offerings offsets the risk these camps
pose to a company’s bottom line,” the company concluded.

TigerSwan utilized its promotional materials to target both energy
companies and states with oil and gas resources. In April 2017, the
security firm and the National Sheriffs’ Association planned to brief more
than 50 state employees in Nebraska, including staffers in the governor’s
office, the state Emergency Management Agency, and the State Patrol, on the
“lessons learned” from the Dakota Access pipeline protests. A contractor
for the National Sheriffs’ Association wrote that the briefing
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773114-tigerswan-document-nsa-emails-to-nebraska-state-employees>
was in part “to prepare the state of Nebraska for the Keystone Pipeline
issues coming in months ahead.”

[image: WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 15: LaDonna Brave Bull Allard (C) of
Cannon Ball, North Dakota, talks with Maj. Gen. Donald Jackson of the Army
Corps of Engineers during a demonstration against the proposed Dakota
Access Pipeline outside the Corps headquarters November 15, 2016 in
Washington, DC. Allard's father and son are both buried on a hillside
overlooking the confluence of the Cannon Ball and Missouri rivers and she
asked Jackson to block the proposed pipeline. Organizers held a national
day of action to call on President Barack Obama and the Army Corps of
Engineers to permanently reject the pipeline before President-elect Donald
Trump takes office. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)]

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard of Cannon Ball, N.D., talks with Maj. Gen. Donald
Jackson of the Army Corps of Engineers during a demonstration against the
proposed Dakota Access pipeline outside the Corps headquarters on Nov. 15,
2016, in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Target: Water Protectors

TigerSwan’s obsessive tracking of environmental activists is laid out in
detail in the North Dakota documents. Assisted at times by National
Sheriffs’ Association personnel, the company targeted little-known water
protectors, national nonprofits, and even legal workers.

The first page of a template for intelligence sharing
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773110-tigerswan-document-intel-huddle>
encouraged TigerSwan employees to enter information about any “New Person
of Interest.” TigerSwan personnel routinely referred to its targets as
“EREs,” short for environmental rights extremists
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773123-tigerswan-document-strategic-focus-memo>,
apparently a version of the Department of Homeland Security’s classification
<https://theintercept.com/2023/04/11/how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-movie/> of
“Animal Rights/Environmental Violent Extremist” as one of five domestic
terrorism
<https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/>
threat categories.

A document labeled “Background Investigation: 350.org
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773093-tigerswan-document-background-investigation-350org>”
helps explain why the company kept tabs on a national environmental
organization with little visible presence on the ground at Standing Rock.
Using an “Influence Rating Matrix,” TigerSwan ranked 350.org’s “formal
position in organization/movement” and its “criminal history” as 0 — but
gave its highest rating of 5 to the group’s size, funding, online presence,
and history with similar movements.
<https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/23773093-tigerswan-document-background-investigation-350org>

TigerSwan also attempted to dig up dirt on legal workers with the Water
Protector Legal Collective, which represented pipeline opponents. The
security company used the CLEAR database, which is only available to select
entities like law enforcement and licensed private security companies, to
dig up information on attorney Chad Nodland. The company concluded that
Nodland was also representing a regional electric cooperative that
generates some of its power through wind — apparently considered a rival
energy source to the oil the Dakota Access pipeline would carry. (Nodland
told The Intercept and Grist he never worked for the cooperative.)
TigerSwan also put together a whole PowerPoint presentation on Joseph
Haythorn, who also worked for the legal collective and submitted bail money
for clients to be released.

At the same time, the National Sheriffs’ Association was building its own
profiles
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773095-tigerswan-document-on-so-called-environmental-extremist-groups-in-nov-15-protest>
and sharing them with TigerSwan. In one instance, a contractor for the
sheriffs’ group passed along a six-page backgrounder on LaDonna Brave Bull
Allard
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773111-tigerswan-document-backgrounder-on-ladonna-allard-water-protector-and-leader-of-dapl-protests>,
a prominent Dakota Access pipeline opponent and historian, to TigerSwan.
The document included statements Allard made to the press, her public
appearances, social media posts, and details about tax liens filed against
her and her husband.

Targeting individual pipeline opponents like Allard seems to have been part
of TigerSwan’s strategy particularly when it needed to have something to
show its client, Energy Transfer Partners. In one exchange with employees,
Reese suggested digging up more intelligence on a pipeline opponent who
goes by the mononym Tawasi.

“We need to start going after Tawasi as fast as we can over the next couple
weeks so we can show some more stuff to ETP.”

“We need to start going after Tawasi as fast as we can over the next couple
weeks so we can show some more stuff to ETP,” Reese wrote, using an
abbreviation for the company’s old name, Energy Transfer Partners. The
documents show that TigerSwan kept close tabs on Tawasi, reporting his
movements in daily situation reports
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3940252-Internal-TigerSwan-Situation-Report-2017-03-19>,
monitoring his social media, and at one point noting that he had gotten a
haircut.

Tawasi, who had a large social media following but was not a prominent
leader of the anti-pipeline movement, was bewildered that he had been so
closely monitored. “They didn’t have anything at all,” he told The
Intercept and Grist. “And they picked me as somebody that they thought they
could make something out of.”

“It makes me feel unsafe,” he said, “because the same contractors could be
working for a different company, still following me around under a
different contract from the next oil company down the line.”

Prairie McLaughlin, Allard’s daughter, said records of TigerSwan’s
activities remain important, even six years later. “It matters because it
gives somebody a handbook on what could happen — what might happen.”

[image: An activist stands alone in silent protest by a police barricade on
a bridge near Oceti Sakowin Camp on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux
Reservation on December 4, 2016 outside Cannon Ball, North Dakota.Native
Americans and activists from around the country gather at the camp trying
to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. / AFP / JIM WATSON
(Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)]

An activist stands alone in silent protest by a police barricade on a
bridge near Oceti Sakowin Camp on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux
Reservation on Dec. 4, 2016, outside Cannon Ball, N.D.

Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Not a “Mercenary Organization”

After The Intercept published its first set
<https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-reveal-security-firms-counterterrorism-tactics-at-standing-rock-to-defeat-pipeline-insurgencies/>
of leaked TigerSwan documents in 2017, the company attempted to downplay
the impact of the revelations. In a memo, TigerSwan shrugged off the
story’s importance
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773123-tigerswan-document-strategic-focus-memo>.
“The near-term impact of the article is positive for the company,”
TigerSwan claimed. The revelations had caused water protectors to limit
their social media activity, rendering them “incapable of effectively
recruiting members, raising operational funding, or proselytizing,”
TigerSwan wrote.

The company intended to use “information operations” to maintain the
paranoia: “This looking over-their-shoulder behavior will continue for
several months because of internal suspicions and targeted information
operations.”

Internally, the company scrambled
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773124-tigerswan-document-background-memo-on-how-to-counter-intercept-stories>
to mount a public relations response, calling on help from Chris LaCivita,
a Republican political consultant now reportedly
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/25/trump-campaign-lacivita/>
being considered for a senior role in Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential
campaign. A memo
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773118-tigerswan-document-plan-for-response-to-the-intercepts-tigerswan-reporting>
emailed to LaCivita by TigerSwan’s external affairs director said that, as
a defensive strategy, the company would assert on background that
“TigerSwan is not a ‘mercenary organization.’” It was a point that must
never be made on the record, the document says, because it “would be like
saying ‘no I don’t beat my wife.’” (LaCivita did not immediately respond to
a request for comment.)

TigerSwan’s offensive strategy primarily consisted of trying to marshal
evidence showing that water protectors were violent lawbreakers,
professional protesters, un-American, and not even very Indigenous. The
document author advised TigerSwan to locate “Any visuals, video of
demonstrators waving flags or using insignia of an enemy of the United
States.” Another suggested talking point said, “Upon our arrival, we
quickly learned that a vast majority of the protestors were not indigenous
not [sic] part of the peaceful water movement.”
<https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/23773108-tigerswan-document-pipeline-camp-master-list-email-from-tigerswan-intelligence-analyst>

In a final act of law enforcement collaboration, the memo
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773118-tigerswan-document-plan-for-response-to-the-intercepts-tigerswan-reporting>
advised TigerSwan to identify one local and one federal law enforcement
source who could defend them — but only off the record.

Outside the public relations strategy, TigerSwan didn’t dramatically shift
its tactics in response to the story, the documents suggest. In an email
dated June 20, 2017
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773108-tigerswan-document-pipeline-camp-master-list-email-from-tigerswan-intelligence-analyst>,
nearly a month after The Intercept’s first exposé, an intelligence analyst
distributed a list of anti-pipeline camps across South Dakota, where the
Keystone XL pipeline was supposed to be built.

“Maybe your folks can take a look at the list, check the social media for
the sites, and figure out if A) you can get in and B) if there’s value to
being inside and C) do you have the creds you need to get in. If you figure
out that you need to attend some more events to build cred and access we
can do that,” he said. “That should feed the beast until the next shiny
thing.”
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