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LONDON (AP) -- He gets colonic irrigations, Botox injections and vitamin drips, and insists on black toilet paper in his home....

LONDON (AP) -- He gets colonic irrigations, Botox injections and vitamin drips, and insists on black toilet paper in his home....

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) -- Bahraini opposition groups claimed Saturday that a man was killed during clashes with security forces, threatening to sharply escalate the Gulf nation's unrest as officials struggle under the world spotlight as hosts of the Formula One Grand Prix. Authorities opened an investigation in a bid to defuse tensions....

MILAN (AP) -- Salvage work to remove the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship from its rocky perch off Tuscany, where 32 people died, will begin early next month and is expected to take a year, the Italian owner announced Saturday....

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- NATO forces say two international service members have been killed in a bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan....

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan said Saturday it will forgive about 300 billion yen ($3.7 billion) of Myanmar's debt and resume development aid as a way to support the country's democratic and economic reforms....

BEIJING (AP) -- Her head was ringing from the blows. Once, twice, three times, her husband slammed her face into the living room floor....

BEIJING (AP) -- Her head was ringing from the blows. Once, twice, three times, her husband slammed her face into the living room floor....

BEIJING (AP) -- Her head was ringing from the blows. Once, twice, three times, her husband slammed her face into the living room floor....

PARIS (AP) -- Like Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy swept to power on a wave of hope for change. Sarkozy's wave crashed on the global financial crisis and his own failings. On Sunday, the French leader faces a tough fight against nine challengers in presidential elections awash in fear and anger....

BANGKOK (AP) -- The increasingly enthusiastic love affair between Myanmar and the West is about to heat up further with the European Union's expected announcement that it is easing sanctions on the Southeast Asian nation. But not everyone is caught up in the euphoria....

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- Emergency workers with flashlights searched the smoldering wreckage of a passenger jet carrying 127 people that crashed into a muddy wheat field Friday while trying to land in a violent thunderstorm at Islamabad's main airport....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The International Monetary Fund says it has raised more than $430 billion in an effort to assure finance markets that it has sufficient firepower to handle any new problems from Europe's prolonged debt crisis....

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) -- Anti-government protesters flooded a main highway in a march stretching for miles and security forces fired tear gas in breakaway clashes Friday as Bahrain's leaders struggled to contain opposition anger while under the world's spotlight as the island nation hosts the Formula One Grand Prix....

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Treated to a hero's welcome, Turkey's prime minister met Syrian refugees Sunday for the first time since his country opened its doors to tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing their government's crackdown on a popular uprising....

XALITZINTLA, Mexico (AP) -- A 17,886-foot (5,450-meter) volcano outside Mexico City exhaled dozens of towering plumes of ash and shot fragments of glowing rock down its slopes Friday morning, frightening the residents of surrounding villages with hours of low-pitched roaring not heard in a decade....

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Norwegians who lost loved ones on Utoya island gasped and sobbed Friday as far-right fanatic Anders Behring Breivik described in harrowing detail how he gunned down teenagers as they fled in panic or froze before him, paralyzed with fear....

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- History is littered with murderers inspired by art: Charles Manson believed the lyrics to the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" were a prophecy that ignited a killing spree. John Lennon assassin Mark David Chapman was obsessed with the book "Catcher in the Rye."...

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) -- Sudan said Friday its forces drove South Sudanese troops from a contested oil town near the countries' ill-defined border border while the south tried to put a good face on events, saying it was withdrawing....

by Greg Palast - Exclusive for EcoWatch.org
Friday, 20. April, 2012

Evidence now implicates top BP executives as well as its partners Chevron and Exxon and the Bush Administration in the deadly cover-up –– which included falsifying a report to the Securities Exchange Commission.

Yesterday, Ecowatch.org revealed that, in September 2008, nearly two years before the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP rig had blown out in the Caspian Sea––which BP concealed from U.S. regulators and Congress.

Had BP, Chevron, Exxon or the Bush State Department revealed the facts of the earlier blow-out, it is likely that the Deepwater Horizon disaster would have been prevented.

Days after the Deepwater Horizon blow-out, a message came in to our offices in New York from an industry insider floating on a ship in the Caspian Sea. He stated there had been a blow-out, just like the one in the Gulf, and BP had covered it up.

To confirm this shocking accusation, I flew with my team to the Islamic republic of Azerbaijan.  Outside the capital, Baku, near the giant BP terminal, we found workers, though too frightened to give their names, who did confirm that they were evacuated from the BP offshore platform as it filled with explosive methane gas.

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Before we could get them on camera, my crew and I were arrested and the witnesses disappeared.

Expelled from Azerbaijan, we still obtained the ultimate corroboration: a secret cable from the U.S. Embassy to the State Department in Washington laying out the whole story of the 2008 Caspian blow-out.

The source of the cable, classified "SECRET," was a disaffected US soldier, Private Bradley Manning who, through WikiLeaks provided hot smoking guns to The Guardian. The information found in the U.S. embassy cables is a block-buster.

The cables confirmed what BP will not admit to this day: there was a serious blow-out and its cause was the same as in the Gulf disaster two years later: the cement ("mud") used to cap the well had failed. Bill Schrader, President of BP-Azerbaijan, revealed the truth to our embassy about the Caspian disaster:

“Schrader said that the September 17th shutdown of the Central Azeri (CA) platform… was the largest such emergency evacuation in BP’s history. Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition. … Due to the blowout of a gas-injection well there was ‘a lot of mud’ on the platform.”

From other sources, we discovered the cement which failed  had been mixed with nitrogen as a way to speed up drying, a risky process that was repeated on the Deepwater Horizon.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president Waterkeeper Alliance and senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council, calls the concealment of this information, "criminal. We have laws that make it illegal to hide this."

The cables also reveal that BP's oil-company partners knew about the blow-out but they too concealed the information from Congress, regulators and the Securities Exchange Commission.

BP's major US partners in the Caspian Sea drilling operation were Chevron and Exxon. The State Department got involved in the matter because BP’s U.S. partners and the Azerbaijani government were losing over $50 million per day due to the platform’s shutdown.  The Embassy cabled Washington:

“BP’s ACG partners are similarly upset with BP’s performance in this episode, as they claim BP has sought to limit information flow about this event even to its ACG partners.”

Kennedy is concerned about the silent collusion of Chevron, Exxon and the Azerbaijani government.  “The only reason the public doesn’t know about it is because the Azerbaijani government conspired with them to disappear the people who saw it happen and then to act in concert, in collusion, in cahoots with BP, with Exxon, with Chevron to conceal this event from the American public.” – To read the full story go to EcoWatch.org – Check out the Youtube video

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Re-prints permitted with credit to EcoWatch.org and the author.

Greg Palast is the author of Vultures’ Picnic (Penguin 2011), which centers on his investigation of BP, bribery and corruption in the oil industry. Palast, whose reports are seen on BBC-TV and Britain’s Channel 4, will be providing investigative reports for EcoWatch.org.

You can read Vultures' Picnic, "Chapter 1: Goldfinger," or download it, at no charge: click here.

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