UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA
CORPORATE AFFAIRS
FIVE GATEWAY CENTER
PITTSBURGH, PA 15222

MEMORANDUM
September 25, 1996 
To: George Becker, Bernie Kleiman and Ron Bloom

FROM: Jerry Fernandez

SUBJECT: BFS Liberia Report

 

Attached please find a rather comprehensive report, and by no
means complete, of the complicity of BFS in prolonging the Liberian
civil war. The report presents clear evidence of BFS collaboration
with Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia,
arguably the most vicious of the warlords vying for control of the
country. At one point, BFS referred to them as "freedom fighters".

BFS, in its rush to resume operation of its plantation,
ignored the consequences of its collaboration with Taylor, which
led to slaughter of its workers, their families and other civilians
on the plantation. They knew that the only way the NPFL and Taylor
could fund their war was to maintain strong commercial ties to
Western companies who operated in Liberia. BFS has left a trail of
lies and deceit in its sordid dealings with Taylor. It abandoned
thousands of its loyal employees on the plantation and told the
world that they were evacuated. None other than Yochiro Kaizaki
was directly involved in cutting deals with Charles Taylor and the
NPFL for purely profit motivated reasons.

The investigation of BFS and its role in the Liberian civil
war was conducted by Ed Keyser, Dawn Lamar and myself over a ten?
month period. This included countless interviews and reviewing
thousands of pages of documents. I would like to commend Ed and
Dawn for their dedication to this project. The document is
exhaustive in its source material and all facts and statements are
well documented.

The Corporate Campaign Department proposes that a hard?
hitting, professionally done, pamphlet.be prepared on Bridgestone's
role in Liberia using pictures extracted from video tape in our
possession and others that may be obtainable (some of which are
attached to this memo) for general distribution around the world.

There are a number of significant points that the report makes
that should be elaborated on in any pamphlet for public
distribution. Though there are many more, the following are the
most crucial:

BFS collaborated with Charles Taylor's military and was
its essential partner. BFS transferred at least $2.35
million, that we know of, to Charles Taylor.

BFS, with this collaboration, prolonged the war which
caused additional loss of life, particularly among non-
combatants and untold suffering and terror. Further,
Operation Octopus, an all out attack on peacekeeping
troops, was launched from the BFS plantation while it was
being operated by BFS. Assets of BFS were used in the
assault.

BFS knowingly violated a comprehensive, internationally
recognized economic embargo and sanctions against Taylor
and the NPFL.

Pure and simple, this collaboration, in Kaizaki's words,
was done "so as to obtain some income".

To this day, BFS is continuing to try to gain commercial
advantage from the suffering of the citizens of Liberia
by insisting that the terms of its concession agreement
be renegotiated and drastically altered.

Upon publication of the pamphlet, a strategic distribution
program could be initiated by having a general press conference on
our findings or giving a paper like the New York Times an exclusive
story. The distribution and follow-up would proceed (n1 a plan
designed to be incremental by engaging an ever larger circle of
interested parties. The targets for the distribution would be
divided into three groups with a separate individual representing
the USWA responsible for follow-up with each segment. The three
groups would be U.S. Targets, International Organization Targets
and Foreign Targets.

U.S. TARGETS:

One of the U.S. targets would be private sector consumers of
BFS tires. This would include U.S. auto makers, vehicle fleet
leasing companies, agricultural and commercial vehicle
manufacturers, to name a few. This would be sort of like the
"Bloody Can" aspect of Ravenswood. These rubber products are
made by a company that, literally, has blood on its hands and
you are supporting them.

The second targeted group would be transit authorities, city,
regional and state governments that use or' may ?use BFS
products. The theory would be the same as for the private
sector.

The third group within this target would be the U.S.
Government, including the Departments of Defense, Commerce and
State. We would ask for debarment from government business of
BFS, demand investigations and explanations from.State and any
other government agency that knew or should have known about
the conduct of BFS. We engage the White House and both Houses
of Congress in terms of committee hearings, speeches from the
floor, etc.

The last group would be targeted to accomplish, and be the
engine, that drives the above. This would include labor
unions, consumer groups, civil and human rights groups, ethnic
and groups with geographical interests and religious
organizations. I don't think we need to go into detail on how
this will be played out.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS:

This target group would include the ILO, OECD and TUAC, the
European Commission and Parliament, Amnesty International and
other human rights groups, agencies of the UN, ICFTU and all
of the International Trade Secretariats and, God forbid, the
Socialist International. It would be orchestrated to the
extent that natural constituencies of these organizations
would press for investigations, sanctions etc. This would
include calls for investigation of forced labor on the
plantation and other allegations.

FOREIGN TARGETS:

We would launch information programs in countries that have

significant BFS production assets. These countries would
include Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, Turkey,
Australia, France and Italy; The second tier would be
countries that have demonstrated strong human rights
activities such as Sweden and the Nordic countries. This

would be conducted, on a smaller scale, the same as the U.S.
model and engaging similar groups.

Japan is a special case. A more intensive campaign should be
conducted there engaging as many groups as possible. A
comprehensive media campaign would be developed as well as
working with various human rights groups. This could also be
carried to other countries in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia,
Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea etc. In other words, disrupt some of
their natural markets. The labor movement in each of these
countries would be our primary focus in carrying out any
plans.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:

BFS must be convinced that we have the resources and the will
to carry out the above. They must understand how this will be
played out in terms of impacting their markets, reputation and
sales as well as disrupting their normal business relationships.

So that they understand our resolve on this issue, we should
demand a side agreement or memorandum of understanding that would
permit us to play some role in monitoring BFS/Liberia's compliance

with ILO Conventions 87 and. 98 -- and other ILO Conventions
relating to worker safety and health, and forced labor -- all of
which Liberia has ratified. This would also involve being active

with BFS's Liberian workforce relative to trade union training,
safety and health and generally monitoring the situation. We would
in essence "adopt" the Liberian plantation workers and ask BFS to
pay for it. Obviously, we can't bargain over this issue but it
will accomplish two goals; show how serious we are, and in a non-
confrontational manner, do what we are morally obligated to do for
the Liberian workers.