Copyright Robert Heard, 1996
Jan. 29, 1996

More Elsewhere

On Dec. 14, one day after Thomas J. Egan, senior vice president of Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., threatened to take legal action against three UT professors, two environmentalists and three journalists (one of whom may not exist), chancellor William Cunningham resigned his seat on Freeport's board of directors. Cunningham said the letters had no influence on his decision to resign. God, he must think people are incredibly dumb. Egan sent letters to the seven individuals saying the company might have to "seek legal recourse" for what the company called "false and damaging" accusations that it is involved in human-rights violations in Indonesia. The threatened professors are Steven Feld, Alan Cline and Robert S. Boyer. Feld, an anthropologist and winner of a MacArthur Foundation grant of $260,000 to pursue his interests, the so-called genius award, has resigned his post at UT in protest of its ties to Freeport. He moved to the University of California at Santa Cruz. Cline is a professor of philosophy and mathematics. Boyer, a professor of philosophy, mathematics and computer science, has led a fight to stop the naming of a new molecular biology building for Jim Bob Moffett (Freeport CEO) and his wife Louise. The Moffetts donated $2 million toward the construction of the $26 million facility, and Freeport gave another $1 million. Zoology professor Mark Kirkpatrick and Boyer have lobbied for the school to name the building after Hermann J. Muller, who Boyer said is the only person to do Nobel-caliber work while at Texas. A politically naivé leftist in the 1930s, Muller won Julian Huxley's praise as "the greatest living geneticist," and in 1946, while at Indiana University, captured the Nobel for discovering at UT in 1926 that x-rays could cause 150 times more mutations in flies than nature produces. He also pioneered blood plasma transfusions, which saved tens of thousands of lives in World War II. Muller's work introduced conceptual and empirical foundations for the later revolution in molecular biology. Hereafter, the building will be referred to by me and many others as the Muller Building.

The environmentalists are Lori Udall, Washington director of the International Rivers Network, and Bill Bunch, a lawyer for Save Our Springs Legal Defense Fund in Austin, a group opposing Freeport's development of more than 4,000 acres in the hills west of Barton Springs, which environmentalists say threatens the springs. The journalists are Robert Bryce, Daryl Slusher of the Austin Chronicle. and the "editor" of the Freeport Watch Bulletin, a newsletter in New Orleans, Freeport's headquarters city, does not exist, according to others in a coalition of environmentalists and human-rights activists who work on the newsletter. They say no one person is in charge. Bryce's cover-page story last Nov. 10 said Cunningham's connection with Freeport constituted a conflict of interest. Bryce's editorial called for Cunningham's immediate resignation from the Freeport board. Cline, by the way, received a Jan. 9 letter from Cunningham in which the latter said he supports "the principal [sic] of academic freedom." It makes all of us proud that the chancellor of the august University of Texas System -- second only to the University of California System -- can be just another good ol' boy who does not know the difference between principal and principle. And spell-check didn't help him because the wrong word also is a word. Poor "Business School Bill." He just lost another 10 points in his futile effort to win the respect of real academicians.

Among materials Boyer distributed on campus is a report last April by the Australian Council for Overseas Aid, a private group, which purported to quote eyewitnesses who charged Freeport security personnel had fired on civilians near the Grasberg Mine, thought to hold mineral reserves, especially gold, worth $50 billion. Thousands of natives have been removed by Indonesia military forces from highland homes near the 13,000-foot mine and relocated in mosquito-infected lowlands, where many reportedly have died. Apparently, Freeport requested protection from the military after the November 1994 shooting by unknown assailants of a Freeport employee working on a road maintenance crew. Indonesian dictator Suharto gets 10 percent of the production of the mine. Supposedly, the natives agreed to the development of the mine in return for Freeport's donations to things like clinics and schools but without knowing their sacred mountain would be ravaged. (A ghasly, two-page color photo of what Freeport has done to the mountain is on Pages 20-21 of the current National Geographic.) On Oct. 10, the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a federal agency, canceled Freeport's $100 million insurance policy, designed to protect the firm from political insurrection. OPIC said it took the action because of "unreasonable or major environmental, health or safety hazards." Freeport has challenged the cancellation under a provision for mandatory arbitration. But if Freeport is telling the truth -- that the tribes people agreed to mine development that lopped off the top of their sacred mountain, that no pollution is occurring and that Freeport security personnel have not participated in the military's murders and torture -- then it has nothing to fear from insurgents. So why is it fighting so hard to preserve the insurance? It's hard to swallow Freeport's claim of no pollution when one considers it is displacing more than 100 tons of tailings into three rivers every day.

UT president Bob Berdahl continued to take the stand (beginning in the Dec. 12 Statesman and later) that UT must remain "neutral" as to the origin of gifts, noting the assessment of the ethics of multinational corporations would be a "morass [without] any consistency or any meaning." No one wonders what he would do with a $3 million gift from the Ku Klux Klan. What about a gift from Suddam Hussein? From the Bosnian Serbs? He probably would reject those. What about a gift from OPEC? Getting a little tougher? Or from the National Rifle Association? The Michigan Militia? Timothy McVeigh? Gosh, this neutrality stance can get dicey. This wouldn't have anything to do with the size of the gift, would it? Suppose Freeport offered $1,000 on condition it be publicized? Is this like the joke about the guy who propositioned a woman, offering $1 million, then $20? She accepted the first but said of the second, "What do you think I am?" "We know what you are; now we're haggling over price."

The controversy remains a heated one on campus, despite the confirmation to the American-Statesman Jan. 19 by the U.S. Embassy in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta that the embassy could find no evidence Freeport employees participated in human-rights abuses. And Freeport continued its campaign of innocence by running another full-page ad in the Jan. 19 Daily Texan that said, among other things, "Nothing is more basic than the right to a full life. With the help of health services supported by Freeport, life expectancy is up, infant mortality is down and the deadly incidence of malaria has been reduced dramatically." This is probably true, unless you insist on counting the estimated (by various sources) 4,000 tribe members who died of malaria after being forcibly removed by the military from their highland homes to mosquito-infested lowlands. The ad quotes John Cutts, identified as "a missionary who grew up and spent most of his life working with the people of Irian Jaya (West Papua) and now works with Freeport," as praising Freeport. But in another part of the ad, it identifies Cutts as one not working with Freeport but as one who "works for Freeport (emphasis supplied)." So Cutts isn't an independent collaborator but an employee. Some people might be so crass as to suggest Cutts is an Uncle Tom. Freeport also ran another full-page ad in the American-Statesman Jan. 21 in which it patted itself on the back by saying it implemented three years ago "a $30 million retrofit program to reduce discharges from its fertilizer plants despite the fact that the discharges posed no health hazard nor environmental danger and were fully examined and permitted by the Environmental Protection Agency [Ed. note: This conveniently omits Freeport's designation by the EPA as the nation's No. 1 polluter -- twice as bad as No. 2]." The ad continues: "The retrofit program resulted in an 87% reduction in discharges and set an unofficial national record." Let's see if I've got this right. Freeport cut 87 percent from something that posed no health hazard in the first place. What is 87 percent of nothing? If there are internal revelations like this in Freeport's own ads, how bad must the real situation be? Could the truth be so shocking that even in Freeport's two ads seeking to cover it up some of the truth leaks out inadvertently? The ad in the Statesman also touts Freeport's "more than $42 million in charitable contributions." Included in that are donations to various projects in East Austin, which is good. Excellent PR for Freeport. I tip my hat to them for having the sense to appear kindhearted in an effort to counter all the bad pub they have received. The problem here is that if they had given 10 times that amount to charity, $420 million, it would have amounted to less than 1 percent of the mineral reserves of just one Freeport property, the Indonesian gold mine. So this self-praise by Freeport actually involves less than 1/10th of one percent of one project. Not exactly the biblical tithe.

Who really knows whether Freeport security personnel participated in the atrocities? Only Freeport and a dictator who stands to make $5 billion from the operation of the mine have unescorted and unscheduled access to the property. Suppose for the sake of argument the abuses are even worse than the allegations say they are. In that case, even if Freeport and Suharto allowed unescorted and unscheduled access to an unbiased outsider -- which they have not done, by the way -- how many tribes people would talk freely to a stranger who would be there for one day, never to be seen by them again?

Here's the point: It is one thing for Freeport to blame Indonesian military, which we hear is very young and poorly trained, for human-rights abuses on and near mine property. It is another to say Freeport owes no obligation to tell Suharto it cannot condone those actions. It should have asked for a reduction of, or even the removal of, those military forces and insist that no human-rights abuses be inflicted on that property. Instead, Freeport acknowledges abuses are occurring but washes its hands of any responsibility.