Greg Palast | |
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| Born | Gregory Allyn Palast (1952-06-26)June 26, 1952 (age 73) Los Angeles,California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Author,investigative journalist |
| Website | Official website |
Gregory Allyn Palast (born June 26, 1952)[1] is an author and a freelancejournalist who has often worked for theBBC andThe Guardian. His work frequently focuses oncorporatemalfeasance. He has also worked withlabor unions andconsumer advocacy groups.
Palast was born inLos Angeles, growing up in theSan Fernando Valley community ofSun Valley.Geri Palast is his sister.
Palast said his desire to write aboutclass warfare is rooted in his upbringing in what he describes as the "ass-end of Los Angeles," a neighborhood wedged between a power plant and a dump. He said that kids in that neighborhood had two choices: Vietnam or the auto plant. "We were the losers," he said. He was saved from the war by a favorable draft number. "A lot of people didn't make it out. Because I made it out, and my sister (Geri, a former Clinton administration assistant secretary of labor) made it out, I feel I have this obligation to tell these stories on behalf of all of those people who didn't make it out."[2]
He attendedJohn H. Francis Polytechnic High School, and transferred to San Fernando Valley State College (nowCalifornia State University, Northridge) in 1969 before completing his senior year of high school. Palast said about high school: "Basically they were melting my brain, and I had to save myself. Before I finished high school, I talked my way into college. Before I finished college, I talked my way into graduate school."[1] Palast then attended theUniversity of California, Los Angeles,University of California, Berkeley, andUniversity of Chicago, from which he graduated in 1974 with aBachelor of Arts ineconomics and in 1976 with aMaster's of Business Administration. Palast majored in economics at Chicago from the advice of aWeather Underground member he met at Berkeley who suggested Palast "familiarize himself withright-wing politics and learn about the 'ruling elite' from 'the inside.'"[1]
Since 2000, Greg Palast has made more than a dozen films for the BBC programNewsnight with the Investigations ProducerMeirion Jones, which have been broadcast in the UK and worldwide. In addition to the films on US elections they have investigatedoil companies, theIraq War, theattempted coup against Hugo Chávez, and the vulture funds which target the poorest countries.
Palast spoke at a Think Twice conference held atCambridge University[3] and lectured at theUniversity of São Paulo.[4]
Palast's investigation into theBush family fortunes for his column inThe Observer led him to uncover a connection to a company calledChoicePoint. In an October 2008 interview Palast said that before the2000 election, ChoicePoint "was purging the voter rolls of Florida under a contract with a lady namedKatherine Harris, theSecretary of State. They won a contract, a bid contract with the state, with the highest bid."[5] After subsequently noticing a large proportion of African-American voters were claiming their names had disappeared fromvoter rolls in Florida in the 2000 election, Palast launched a full-scale investigation into election fraud, the results of which were broadcast in the UK by the BBC on theirNewsnight[6] show prior to the2004 election. Palast claimed to have obtained computer discs from Katherine Harris' office, which containedcaging lists of "voters matched by race and tagged as felons."[5] Palast appeared in the 2003 documentary film,Florida Fights Back! Resisting the Stolen Election, along withVincent Bugliosi, former Los AngelesDeputy District Attorney and author ofThe Betrayal of America. Palast also appeared in the 2004 documentaryOrwell Rolls in His Grave, which focuses on the hidden mechanics of the media.[citation needed]
In May 2007, Palast said he'd received 500emails that formerWhite House Deputy Chief of StaffKarl Rove exchanged through an account supplied by theRepublican National Committee. Palast says the emails show a plan to target likelyDemocratic voters with extra scrutiny over their home addresses, and he also believes Rove's plan was a factor in the firing ofU.S. Attorneys.[7]
After Palast was invited byRobert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear on hisAir America talk show to discuss, among other things,election fraud, the pair teamed up to publish a report in October 2008 inRolling Stone, concluding that the2008 election had already been stolen. "If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beatJohn McCain at the polls -- they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering", Palast and Kennedy summarized.[8] To combat the extensive acts of voter suppression that Palast and Kennedy uncovered, the duo launched a campaign called Steal Back Your Vote,[9] which features a website and free downloadable voter guide / adult comic book.
Palast has conducted a multi-year investigation intoKansasSecretary of StateKris Kobach'sInterstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program (commonly referred to as "Crosscheck"). The program utilizes states' voter registration lists to match possible "double voters," using their first and last names and the last four digits of theirSocial Security number. In 2014, Palastinvestigated Crosscheck forAl Jazeera America, finding that the program was inherently biased toward removing minority voters from states' voter rolls. In 2016, he followed up with a documentary film,The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, along with an article.[10]
In 1988, Palast directed a U.S.civil racketeering investigation into theShoreham Nuclear Power Station project, under construction byStone & Webster andLong Island Lighting Company. Ajury awarded the plaintiffs US$4.8 billion; however,New York's federaljudgeJack B. Weinstein, reversed the verdict, and the case was later settled for $400 million.[11] The racketeering charges stemmed from an accusation that LILCO filed false documents in order to secure rate increases. LILCO sought a dismissal of these charges on the grounds thatSuffolk County lacked authority under theRacketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and that the allegations of a history of racketeering did not qualify as a continuing criminal enterprise.[12]
Palast has also taken issue with the official story behind the grounding of theExxon Valdez, claiming thesobriety of theValdez's captain was not an issue in the accident. According to Palast, the main cause of theExxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 was not human error, but an Exxon decision not to use the ship'sradar in order to save money. TheRaytheon Raycasradar system would not have detectedBligh Reef itself - as radar, unlikesonar, is incapable of detecting submerged objects. The radar system would have detected the radar reflector, placed on the next rock inland from Bligh Reef for the purpose of keeping vessels on course via radar.[13] Palast points out that the original owners of the land, the localAlaska Natives tribe, took only one dollar in payment for the land with a promise not topollute it and spoil their fishing and seal hunting grounds.[13]
InAn Open Letter to Greg Palast on Peak Oil[14]Richard Heinberg offers friendly criticism of Palast, saying he conflates the "amount of oil left" with "peak (maximal) flow rates" for oil, the latter being key to thePeak Oil concept.
On October 27, 2010, Palast wrote, "The Petroleum Broadcast System Owes Us an Apology. ...BP has neglected warnings about oil safety for years! ... But so hasPBS. The Petroleum Broadcast System has turned a blind eye to BP perfidy for decades. If the broadcast had come six months before theGulf blow-out, after [major accidentsin 2005 and2006 or afteryears of government fines], I would say, “Damn, thatFrontline sure is courageous.” But six months after the blow-out, PBS has shown us it only has the courage to shoot the wounded. ... The entire hour told us again and again and again, the problem was one company, BP, and its 'management culture.' ... UnlikeShell Oil’s culture which hasturned Nigeria into a toxic cesspool; unlikeExxonMobil’s culture which remains in denial aboutthe horror it heaped on Alaska. And unlikeChevron’s culture, whichI witnessed in the Amazon. Chevron culture leftEcuadoran farmers with pustules all over their bodies and a graveyard of children dead of leukemia.[15]
In 1998, working as an undercover reporter forThe Observer, Palast, posing as an American businessman with ties toEnron, caught on tape two Labour party insiders,Derek Draper andJonathan Mendelsohn, boasting about how they could sell access to government ministers, obtain advance copies of sensitive reports, and create tax breaks for their clients.[16]
Draper denied the allegations.[17] AtPrime Minister's Question Time July 8, 1998BritishPrime MinisterTony Blair claimed that all the specific claims had been investigated and found groundless: "every allegation made inThe Observer has been investigated and found to be untrue".[18]
Starting in 2007 Palast published a series of investigations on what aid groups and investors call "vulture funds". A vulture fund is a private equity or hedge fund where companies or people buy the debt of a poor country and litigate to recover the funds, often at the expense of aid and debt relief. Prime MinisterGordon Brown commented on the practices saying "We particularly condemn the perversity where Vulture Funds purchase debt at a reduced price and make a profit from suing the debtor country to recover the full amount owed - a morally outrageous outcome".[19]
In 2014 Palast detailed the workings of vulture funds during the crisis of the American automotive industry:
Singer, through a brilliantly complex financial manoeuvre, took control ofDelphi Automotive, the sole supplier of most of the auto parts needed by General Motors and Chrysler. Both auto firms were already in bankruptcy. Singer and co-investors demanded theUS Treasury pay them billions, including $350m (£200m) in cash immediately, or – as the Singer consortium threatened – "we'll shut you down" by ending GM's supply of parts. GM and Chrysler, with only a few days' worth of parts in stock, would have shut down and permanently forced into liquidation. Obama's negotiator, Treasury deputySteven Rattner, called the vulture funds' demand "extortion" ... Ultimately, the US Treasury quietly paid the Singer consortium a cool $12.9bn in cash and subsidies from the US Treasury'sauto bailout fund. Singer responded to Obama's largesse by quickly shutting down 25 of Delphi's 29 US auto parts plants, shifting 25,000 jobs to Asia. Singer'sElliott Management pocketed $1.29bn of which Singer personally garnered the lion's share.
— Palast 2014[20]
In January 2025, Palast wrote an article for The Hartmann Report in which he claimed thatDonald Trump lost the2024 United States presidential election.[21] His claims were also repeated on his personal investigative journalism website andThom Hartmann's podcast.[22][23] He asserted that if all legal ballots had been counted inGeorgia,Pennsylvania,Michigan andWisconsin thenKamala Harris would have won the election, attributing her loss tovoter suppression, which he compared toJim Crow, as well as restrictive state voting laws, explaining that the rejection of apostal vote was 400% more likely to occur if the voter was Black.[21]
The methods of voter suppression he outlined included vote purging, a legal process usually used to clean up voter rolls by deleting people from registration lists, voter challenges, the disqualification of ballots for minor clerical errors, the rejection ofprovisional ballots, and the disproportionately high vote rejection rates for Black voters.[24] According to Palast, theElection Assistance Commission stated that 4,776,706 voters were wrongfully purged. He linked the voter challenges to "vigilante" vote-fraud hunters who targeted people to challenge and block the counting of their ballots, claims he previously made in his documentaryVigilantes Inc.[25] He claimed that by August 2024, the rights of 317,886 voters were challenged with over 200,000 challenges occurring in Georgia.
Purged? Check if your voter registration has beencancelled
