December 13, 1995

Mr. Thomas J. Egan,
Senior Vice President and
Senior Administrative Deputy
to the Office of the Chairman,
Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold,
1615 Poydras Street,
New Orleans, Louisiana 70151,
Fax 504-582-1611

Dear Mr. Egan,

I was not surprised by your letter of December 6th but I was disappointed that, as usual, your company is more interested in attempts to bully or retaliate against critics rather than engage in any sort of useful discussion or dialogue with them. Your letter states no specific remarks of mine that you find to be false accusations. Perhaps you might tell me then what you are so annoyed about. Otherwise threats of suit are hardly appropriate and do not shed a particularly good light on your company's efforts to clarify its differences with various NGOs, researchers, journalists, and citizens.

Meanwhile, let me assure you that I have not spread nor do I intend to spread anything false or inaccurate about Freeport. I am simply concerned, based on my investigations and conversations, to participate in as full and open and thorough a dialogue as possible concerning the company's environmental and human rights record in West Papua. As you could easily find out, I have had discussions with, and participated in public forum with members of the UT Geology Department in an attempt to understand certain differences of opinion and interpretation. If I was truly "malicious" or "malevolent" there would be no reason why I would engage in and welcome such dialogue. Hence I do not appreciate being cast as either unreasonable or malicious when the overwhelming evidence of my conduct in public and on the University of Texas at Austin campus makes clear that I have been consistently concerned with open discussion and debate, which, after all, is what a university campus is meant to encourage and promote.

I have seen your company's massive PR attempts at convincing the public of your innocence, cleanliness, and altruism. I think it is entirely unfitting and shameful that you have taken this opportunity to attempt retaliation against US AID funding to Indonesian groups participating in democratic discussion in Indonesia. I am also not terribly impressed by your pronouncements about independent environmental and social impact audits. First, such audits only really check your compliance with local regulations; they are not full assessment or in-depth impact studies of the sort the public deserves. Second, contrary to your public misrepresentations, there is absolutely no guarantee on independence to these reports. The firms in question are specifically contracted to you, and you thus presumably have the right to take all of their background material as well as their final report and then edit and release them as you see fit for public consumption. If your editing job on the video of Bishop Munninghoff is any indication of what you intend to do with these reports, it is already clear that they will tell only what you want the public to hear.

It is disappointing that Freeport has not figured out that the public is not stupid. We want raw data, full reports by firms without contract ties and other loyalties to your company, real guarantees of investigative independence, and a real stake in dialogue with you. What you have given us is massive PR, retaliation, and no credit whatsoever for independent research and scrutiny of your record. If you care about your public image it will be necessary to be far more accountable to those who are as skeptical as I am of your attempts to replace investigation with advertisement.

Sincerely,
Steven Feld,
Professor of Anthropology

(new address):
University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
408-459-3614

The threatening letter from Freeport to Feld and Feld's reply, above, were both printed in the Austin American-Statesman, January 16, 1996, p. A9.