CHAPTER 19: Hit Send

“Ride to the mill?” Jackson offered over breakfast at the Armstrong house outside Silvercreek.

“I have calls to make, work,” said Grace. “OK to hole up in your father’s office?”

“Fine,” said Jackson. He got up and placed his mug in the sink and stared out the window. Grace focused on her toast. Hmmm, thought Sara, studying them as Jackson said his goodbyes and left. What’s going on there?

Tom had a doctor’s appointment in Seattle so he, Sara and Billy left shortly after, and the house was quiet. In the office, Grace sat at the big desk, Scout curled at her feet. She made a few phone calls, gathered more info, reviewed her editor Chase Stanford’s notes. A jay squawked outside the window as she took a deep breath and began writing.

Washington State’s timber communities are in decline since 1993 when the Clinton administration chose a forest management plan, Option 9. What was billed as a path to a sustainable future, balancing environmental and economic interests, ensured little in the way of long-term viability for the mill towns and small businesses once scattered throughout the region.

In response to Option 9, the locals mailed funeral wreaths to the White House, a lament for people and jobs lost in the battle over preserving the environment. They stacked coffins painted with the names of small logging towns and set them ablaze, pyres symbolizing communities that would be lost to government policies locking up the forest. Decades later, with fires raging through the region on a regular basis, many see those views as more prescient than reactionary.

Has this battle to save ecosystems and critical habitat for endangered species morphed into consolidation in and capture by the best-capitalized and largest multi-nationals of one of the world’s richest wood producing regions?

Dozens of small independent mills—dependent on a shrinking timber supply from federal lands to augment their own holdings—have closed. With uncertain deliveries of raw logs caused by ever-changing regulations, efficient operation of what remains is difficult. Mills close and with each closure, multi-nationals gobble up their privately-owned lands in a game of real-life monopoly. In just a few decades, Masters’ Logging, now a publicly traded REIT, a Real Estate Investment Trust, has quadrupled its private land holdings in the Northwest while its labor costs per board foot have plummeted.

With automation combined with a steady stream of litigation, Seattle’s software and legal firms have benefitted. Fire fighting budgets, paid for by tax dollars, have soared as have costs for the displaced.

“For the vast majority of skilled loggers and millworkers, wages and benefits have dropped fully 30%. Many have left the state or even the country, never to return,” said Marshall Maxwell of Local 330 in Silvercreek. “It’s a skills and brain drain.”

Grace wrote on for an hour, made notes:

Questions:

Foundations: aware of what funding accomplishes?

Environmental movement: benefits to big business? Quotes?

Loggers, Yellow Ribbon Alliance: quotes?

Chevron Decision implications? Interview Prof. Philip Hamburger, Colombia Law.

Funding from foundations to major preservation groups to small, extremist groups?

DNA studies indicate spotted owls and barred owls are genetically distinct species of wood owls, but what about the use of discredited Principal Component Analyses in these studies? EXPLORE: “We conclude that PCA may have a biasing role in genetic investigations and that 32,000-216,000 genetic studies should be reevaluated.”

Is the spotted owl losing the evolutionary competition to its cousins or will it be saved by its genes, inter-breeding? Will hybrid sparred owls save it or extinct it (spotted + barred = sparred owls)? Per Audubon: “Hybridization is surprisingly common in birds. Up to ten percent of birds are suspected to hybridize with other species…”

Are plumage changes in barred owls (causing them to be confused with hybrids) an evolutionary adaption to settling in western spotted owl territory, i.e. camouflage (think Darwin’s finches), triggered by barred owls’ greater genetic diversity, 14x greater nucleotide diversity than spotted owls?

In an email to her editor Chase Stanford she typed:

Chase: Am thick into research and will give you a solid first draft in a few days. Would like to stay for at least part of next week, do companion pieces on the director of the Yellow Ribbon Alliance and loggers who engaged in civil disobedience. Am staying at a house near Silvercreek, no cost. Grace.

Grace didn’t hit the send button, kept writing, filled in the outline with statistics and quotes from her recordings. She copied and pasted charts, with their sources, that added to the story. By noon, she felt she had a sound working framework about what had happened to Silvercreek, despite a building list of questions. She sighed and decided to break for lunch.

Grace wandered through the front rooms of the Armstrong house. She picked up a smooth black river stone that shone against the waxy surface of a birch hall table. She put it back and studied a wall shelf that showcased a collection of rough children’s carvings of deer, elk, a bulky moose, a tiny star, an awkward whale.

The living room mantle displayed elegantly-carved pieces of different woods. Grace chose a smooth oblong of rosewood, cradled it in her hands. The wood felt warm and alive under her fingers as they slowly caressed its sensuous curves. She gently set the carving back and went into the kitchen.

After making a sandwich and a cup of tea, she carried her lunch and a blanket out to an Adirondack chair on the back porch. She could hear water running, the wind in the trees, the sweet call of black capped chickadees, pushy jays, woodpeckers hard at work. Nuthatches ran up and down tree trunks like acrobats.

Grace looked up to a gray sky where eagles soared against thunderheads. Rain. Again, she thought.

She could see, barely through the mist, the forested mountains around her. There was something menacing about them but also something lonely and beautiful. A shiver ran down her spine and she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

Grace thought of all the press releases and articles she’d read about mill towns. She thought about the simplistic way the issue was presented, the people like caricatures.

None of those words ever captured this place, she thought.

She remembered the loggers cutting trees, the sweat pouring off them as they labored to provide wood for a public that had long forgotten physical labor and dangerous jobs. Manufacturing, mining and resource extraction jobs had been exported offshore, to distant people in distant lands. No one really looks at those places, thought Grace as she considered all the victims of shifting policies scattered around the planet. No one really looks at those costs, or worries about those people. Silvercreek loggers are just outside Seattle and no one looks at them—but then, Seattle has its own problems.

Grace relived the terror she felt when the helicopter failed. The others had been scared too, but they didn’t panic. They did what had to be done and went on.

What was that phrase Jackson used? she thought. Something about lives so real they draw blood. She wondered, For those typing away by the glow of computer monitors in home offices and cubicles inside controlled environments, the biggest risk is what? A car crash? Fast food?

She thought about the Yellow Ribbon Alliance meeting and the closeness of the people, their anger, their futile search for hope. In spite of all the lawsuits, all the protests, all the vandalism and hatred directed at the timber people, they too did what had to be done and went on.

She thought of Tom, his frustration at his weakness, of Jackson and his strength.

This is about more than trees in these forests, she thought. It’s about subjugation, control, power, fortunes. Globally.

Grace sighed, picked up her dishes and walked back to the kitchen where she rinsed and dried them, put them away.

She pulled off the Band-Aid she’d put on her finger in L.A. just a few days ago, remembering, with shame, the fuss she’d made over that paper cut. She tossed it in the bin under the sink.

She settled into the office and called Lauri Brown, her researcher at The Tribune. “Lauri,” said Grace, opening a new file on her computer. “Whatcha got for me?”

Lauri scanned her notes, “Let’s see, so this Robert Patton/Shamus Boyle’s a pilot, right? He’s a renter. His Brentwood address is a townhouse owned by Marston & Miller of Boston which is owned by Jameson Corporation, a Florida corporation. Warren Jonah, Michael Thompson and John Jameson listed as officers, New York address, New York phone number, picked up by voicemail for ‘The Rockefeller Charitable Trust’. The Trust is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(4) located at 65 Water Street, White Plains, New York. Same phone number as the one listed on the Jameson Corporation filing. 65 Water Street is a postal box. Checked the corporate filings. Bingo. The officers for the Trust are the same names as listed on the filing for the Jameson Corporation: Jonah, Thompson and Jameson. Same White Plains phone number leading to the same machine with the same recording. I’m going in circles.”

Lauri sighed. “Oddly, no tax filings for the Trust, but I did find an old fax number in New York. So, I sent a fax, got a readout when it connected. It forwarded to a number in Vienna.”

“As in Virginia?” asked Grace.

“Nope,” said Lauri. “As in Austria. So, I dial an old fax number in New York and it’s forwarded to Europe? Maybe just a wrong number? It is an old number. What do you think, Grace?”

“I don’t know,” said Grace.

“So, I emailed our EU researcher in London, Ian MacAllister. He said the Vienna number was listed eight years ago to a Christian Hochman, one of the grandsons of Hochman & Sons, at Suite 2 Rue Fountain, Vienna. It’s a brokerage and investment banking firm specializing in oil futures, minerals, natural resources. Works primarily with Montreux Global and Montreux Trading International, says Ian. Ian called Christian Hochman for comment on the Rockefeller Charitable Trust. Got the run around, but was finally directed to Montreux Trading International’s Geneva office. Ian called them. ‘Professional, polite,’ he said. Said someone would get back to him. Never did.”

“So, who are they?” asked Grace.

“Ian says Montreux Trading International is controlled by the Trinity family, one of the richest in Europe,” said Lauri. “Also one of the most private. They go back centuries. Makes old US money look positively nouveau riche, penny ante. Grace, who is this Patton/Boyle guy?”

“Probably nobody. He just rents a place owned by a US company with a tenuous link to an old fax machine forwarding to Europe. Anyway, tell me about this Trinity family.”

“Ian says it’s led by a Frédéric Laurent Trinité, with an accent on that last e. Businessman/philanthropist.”

“No such beast,” said Grace.

Lauri laughed. “Ian says they have vast investments, but given their privacy obsession, hard to pin down—holding companies, subsidiaries, layers of shell corporations that vanish into the netherworld. Heavy on public-private partnerships. Ian says they focus on growth and stability of sectors on a global scale. Multi-billion-dollar endeavors, long-term development, sovereign debt. Anyway, that’s how Ian sees it. He says he’ll email you and can connect you with someone who follows the family closely.” Lauri sighed. “Grace, maybe you should hand this over to the financial reporters? It’s got nothing to do with the environment. It’s business.”

“Maybe,” said Grace. “It’s a tenuous link from a Cali car registration to Europe. Interesting but nothing solid. Email me your notes? Ian’s too? As always, thanks. Great work, Lauri.” Grace ended the call, reviewed what Lauri sent and then Ian MacAllister’s email.

Hi, Grace. Lauri tells me you’re on an interesting trail. Over here, we’ve traced Frédéric Laurent Trinité’s lineage through France and Switzerland to Prussia—Friedrich Wilhelm in the 1600s to Albert of Prussia in the 1400s—and all the way back to Bonn, Germany a Roman outpost established in 1 BC. The Trinité family and its various entities, have engaged in endeavors of note including the East India Company, Lloyds of London. They’re big into sovereign debt restructuring/conversions including pre and post-war negotiations.

Grace leaned in and read the rest of Ian’s email.

Obviously, Trinité and his colleagues support harmonization of global trade through UN treaties, the WTO—the World Trade Organization—and the World Bank. They have a portfolio of land around the planet, some productive, but often they modify its use or acquire it for mineral or water rights, tax benefits, carbon trading.

With regulations ironed out across borders long ago, their commodity trading biz boomed—timber, oil, gas, minerals. That keeps Trinité and company busy with geopolitics and treaties: energy, climate, biodiversity, health, tech, etc.

Policy changes triggered by treaties are built on advocacy work by NGOs and sovereign debt terms—debt for equity, debt for development, debt for nature which led to allegiance to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs. They’ve moved on to the chemical industry’s Big Pharma division’s deals with debt for health tied to the UN’s World Health Organization.

An army of green and blue pawns, tax exempt non-governmental organizations, supply the advocacy component, but I would think you’re very familiar with this NGO world, correct? Frédéric Trinité’s father is involved in the assurance industry which oversees certification bodies (BTW, I liked your articles on green seals).

All rolled together, it’s a strategy that delivers well-laid trade barriers, enormous profits, and remarkably good press.

If you haven’t read it, I recommend Jack Farchy and Javier Blas’ primer on cross border trade, The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources. It’s also a very good read. Then there is Silent Coup by Claire Provost and Matt Kennard who detailed the mess these guys leave behind: accusations of fraud and theft of the natural resources in developing countries, pollution, debt, loss of national sovereignty—all visible in cross-border litigation heard primarily here in the UK courts.

Happy to help if you want to dive deeper, Grace. Should you need them, I can offer you access to a sovereign debt whiz, an expert on the Trinité family, a few other brains in my network.

At your disposal, Ian MacAllister

Grace sent him a quick thank you, ordered the two books he recommended and turned to researching US charitable foundations on the internet, checking the Rockefeller listings. There was a Rockefeller Fund, a Rockefeller Foundation and other variations on this theme. No listing for a Rockefeller Charitable Trust. Nothing Rockefeller at that Water Street address or phone number.

Grace re-read her notes. At the end, she added a few more questions, including:

Robert Patton/Seamus Boyle, pilot? Rockefeller Charitable Trust? Montreux Global and Montreux Trading International? Frédéric Laurent Trinité?

Sovereign debt?

Barred Owl Management Plan, interview EPA re: toxins

It began raining again. Grace saved and attached the document to the email to Chase Stanford and hit Send.