This is part one of a seven-part series produced in partnership with 

as a companion to the SLAPP’d season of the Drilled podcast. You can see all seven pieces together in a beautiful layout over 

, where you’ll also find other great climate stories. 

In March 2025, a jury ordered the environmental giant Greenpeace to pay $666 million to the companies behind the Dakota Access pipeline.

The companies argued that Greenpeace was responsible for protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation nearly a decade ago that drew thousands.

But Indigenous leaders, water protectors, activists, and court records agree: Greenpeace played a bit part in the Standing Rock movement, at best.

“They're trying to point the finger at Greenpeace," said Honorata Defender, a Standing Rock Sioux tribal member who helped start the movement. "Because God forbid some Indians think for themselves and make a decision to stand up for themselves and their water and their land.”

They called themselves “water protectors” and 

 on the side of a highway near where construction was approaching the river. Most were Oceti Sakowin — Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples. It was the early days of the #NoDAPL movement, in August 2016, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had just granted 

 for the Dakota Access pipeline to go under the Missouri River.

The company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer, had 

 building it upstream of the twin cities of Bismarck and Mandan in North Dakota, which are mostly populated by white people. But the Army Corps of Engineers rejected that route, in part because it had the 

potential to harm the cities' drinking water

 supply. Instead, the pipeline was re-routed to cross the river just north of the Standing Rock reservation’s own drinking water intake.

To Dave Archambault, then-chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, this was a case of 

. He and other tribal leaders were worried, too, that culturally important sites located along the pipeline route could be destroyed.

It was also a matter of sovereignty. Two days after the Army Corps issued that key permit to Energy Transfer for the new route, the tribe sued. They argued that the Army Corps should not allow construction to continue without a deeper review of the route and substantial consultation — 

 that recognizes the nation-to-nation relationship between tribal governments and the United States.

When small protests began, the corps had still not issued an easement, a legal right that would allow Energy Transfer to build under the river on land that belonged to the U.S. government. However, there was nothing stopping Energy Transfer from building on private land. That’s when the trouble started.

Chairman Archambault was one of more than a dozen people 

 for attempting to block Dakota Access pipeline construction, but there was little attention paid by journalists. Online, however, in Indigenous digital spaces, protests were becoming very visible, very quickly. Facebook Live had launched that spring, and water protectors were broadcasting their actions on social media in real time for the world to see and 

 from around the country to stand with Standing Rock.

As more and more water protectors made their way to North Dakota, Achambault realized he would need help. He put out a 

, asking people to stand with Standing Rock. He also called Nick Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota organizer who had helped found a collective called the Indigenous Peoples Power Project, or IP3, which offered nonviolent, direct-action trainings to Indigenous peoples working to protect their communities, including from unwanted industrial development.

“The training that we're talking about is not some crazy training,” said Tilsen, who saw the protests as an extension of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. “Some people think that Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks just one day sat on a bus and launched a movement. But the reality is, they went through training. And that training helped them be disciplined and helped them be effective and helped them change the course of history.”

With protests underway, Tilsen worked with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to develop a set of principles for nonviolent direct action — protest actions and 

 meant to disrupt activities. At times, nonviolent direct action involves trespassing or disregarding police orders. The principles were hand-painted on a sign that hung prominently in the growing camp. Among them: “We are nonviolent,” and “Property damage does not get us closer to our goals.”

Tilsen was close with a Greenpeace employee named Cy Wagoner who is Diné and also a member of IP3, and Tilsen said he invited Wagoner to bring Greenpeace to Standing Rock. “We asked them to help train people,” Tilsen recalled. Around the same time, Tom Goldtooth, who is Diné and Dakota, was also urging Greenpeace to come. The executive director of the nonprofit Indigenous Environmental Network, Goldtooth was watching as tensions between police, private security, and water protectors intensified throughout the month. “I’m afraid of escalation,” recalled Goldtooth. “They’re waiting for someone, you know, to wink.”

Like Tilsen, Goldtooth hoped that Greenpeace would reinforce trainings already in progress, and send support for water protectors, such as a solar trailer that could power laptops and cell phones so that broadcasts could continue across social media.

Wagoner put together a proposal and a budget request for Greenpeace, which was approved: About $15,000 would pay for five people from IP3 to go to Standing Rock for two to three weeks. Greenpeace agreed to pay the cohort $125 a day, plus expenses, to conduct trainings, while Wagoner went on his usual Greenpeace salary. They began arriving around the beginning of September.

Meanwhile, the week before Labor Day, Tim Mentz — Standing Rock’s former 

 and one of the people responsible for reviewing federal projects that may impact historic areas, burial sites, and religious places — began a survey of an area Energy Transfer planned to bulldoze. He was looking to see if there were culturally important sites along the pipeline path.

Mentz is a highly respected elder, and the first tribal historic preservation officer in the U.S. thanks to his tireless work to amend the 

 that created the role — one that is now used by over 

As part of Standing Rock’s lawsuit against the Army Corps filed in July, Mentz had already submitted a statement to the court saying that “destruction of these sites will eventually destroy generations of family connections to these areas of spiritual power.” He added that protecting those sites wasn’t just about the past: It was about the future of the Oceti Sakowin.

“Steps taken to preserve sites like this are important to the survival and recovery of our spiritual traditions," he wrote. "These sites still retain the ability to mend our people.”

On a hot, bright day, with permission from the landowner, Mentz and his team drove onto the privately-owned buffalo ranch that included access to the area where Energy Transfer wanted to drill under the river, and Mentz got to work. Over the course of a few days, they documented 27 burial sites and 82 stone features — arranged in circles and other patterns for ceremonial purposes — all along a 2-mile corridor that Energy Transfer planned to dig up.

On the Friday before Labor Day, he wrote up what he found, including a cluster of stones shaped like the Big Dipper, with a grave site attached to the cup, indicating an important leader. “This is one of the most significant archaeological finds in North Dakota in many years,” he wrote. The tribe’s attorney, who worked for a nonprofit public interest law organization called Earthjustice, filed the coordinates Mentz identified with a North Dakota Court.

The next morning, the Saturday before Labor Day, bulldozers were spotted at the sites Mentz had identified and that the tribe had filed in court. Water protectors rushed to stop them but private security guards stood waiting, and 

Despite their attempts, Energy Transfer graded the 2-mile corridor Mentz surveyed, digging a foot deep into the earth. “A significant portion of the site we’d surveyed had been cleared,” Mentz wrote in another declaration to court. “I do not believe that the timing of this construction was an accident or coincidence.”

A judge ruled soon after that he didn’t have the power to stop the company from continuing to build on private land.

 transformed the movement. Recorded by nonprofit news organization Democracy Now!, the 

. People poured in, mushrooming new resistance camps across the prairie and filling them with Indigenous peoples, longtime environmental organizers, and everyday activists moved by the social feeds coming out of Standing Rock. Church members, community groups, and individuals donated money and supplies to keep the camps afloat. 

 for families with children and kitchens opened to feed the growing number of water protectors.

Nonprofits began to join the fight too, including Tom Goldtooth’s Indigenous Environmental Network, 350.org, Bold Alliance, and Greenpeace.

The story of Standing Rock is relatively well-known from here: The governor of North Dakota 

, which joined law enforcement officers from 

 hired by the pipeline company in an effort to disperse protests. For more than six months, water protectors 

 against military-grade armored vehicles, surveillance drones, at least one sniper, police with semi-automatic rifles, a surface-to-air missile launcher, tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, and water cannons deployed in sub-freezing weather.

While a vast majority of water protectors, including Greenpeace employees, abided by the nonviolent, direct-action principles IP3 and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe posted in camp, not all agreed. Some pipeline opponents 

. Some fought back against police, throwing rocks, logs, water bottles, and even Molotov cocktails.

In February 2017, soon after Donald Trump’s first presidential inauguration, the Army Corps 

 for Energy Transfer to begin drilling under the river. By late February, security forces 

 water protectors camped near Standing Rock. Energy Transfer bored a hole underneath the Missouri River for the pipeline to be pushed through, effectively ending the fight.

, or find the podcast and other related stories 

The Kill Step, Part One: “They’re Waiting for Someone to Wink”

By the final day of testimony in the Energy Transfer vs Greenpeace trial, it's March 13 and an 

 has melted the snow.  Kelcy Warren is called as a witness. He's Energy Transfer's board chair and largest shareholder — and he was CEO when the Dakota Access Pipeline was being built.

Energy Transfer has spent a whole a lot of time trying to keep Kelcy Warren's testimony out of the courtroom. Their lawyers tried to claim that Kelcy didn't have any useful information about his own company's famously controversial pipeline.

In interviews Kelcy's made it clear he has strong feelings about the Standing Rock movement. Here he is on CNBC right after the original Greenpeace lawsuit was filed in 2017.

 What happened to us was tragic. I mean, uh, that lies were being told, tens of millions of dollars were being raised by Greenpeace and others based on these lies

In addition to his island in Honduras and his collection of exotic animals, he also owns a record label and writes his own tender songs on the guitar. Jackson Browne is his idol

Kelcy has a reputation for using the legal system to lash out when he feels his company is unfairly being attacked. Which is exactly what he thought was happening with the Standing Rock movement. It couldn't have helped that his hero Jackson Browne publicly denounced Kelcy's company's pipeline. Jackson even gave a benefit concert in honor of the water protectors.

 We've got to do something. It's, it's, it's, everybody's afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that it may look wrong if you, if you fight back with these people.

But what they did to us is wrong and they're going to pay for it.

 At the Morton County Courthouse, Kelcy's face appears on the flatscreen tvs around the courtroom. It's a pre-recorded video deposition. He has a shock of white hair and his eyebrows are furrowed, like he's concerned.

The lawyer goes over how Donald Trump's executive order in 2017 told the Army Corps to approve the Dakota Access Pipeline's easement. And about midway through his testimony Kelcy drops his first surprise.

That executive order that allowed Energy Transfer to start drilling: Energy Transfer actually drafted it.

Energy Transfer's lawyers turn back to the question at the heart of the case.

“Do you have any personal knowledge about anything Greenpeace did at all in relation to the protests?” a lawyer asks from off-camera.

But then the lawyer asks about a different nonprofit called EarthJustice. It's the public interest law organization that represented the Standing Rock tribe in the early days of its legal fight to stop the pipeline. At the name EarthJustice, Kelcy perks up... and I can start to see why Energy Transfer might not have wanted him to testify.

“They're scumbags,” Kelcy says of Earthjustice. To be clear, Earthjustice is not Greenpeace. It's NOT the organization this suit is against.

“Why do you say that, sir?” the lawyer replies.

By way of explanation, Kelcy begins to describe a meeting he had in December 2016, with the Standing Rock Sioux Chairman  Dave Archambault [Ar SHAM bow].

“I went there with the intention of working out a financial transaction with the chairman,” he says .

Kelcy starts talking about how he tried to make a deal with the Standing Rock Sioux chairman to end the protests— as if the tribe, not Greenpeace, was the one leading the protests.

Kelcy goes on: “I said, ‘David, I'm here to make a deal with you. Do you want cash? What do you want?’ I said, ‘We own this land up there,’ Kelcy says he offered the chairman the ranch that the pipeline company bought, the one that held the sacred sites and the drill pad. “We could build you a whole new school on your reservation. Let's make a deal,’” he says.

“He made it very clear," Kelcy says of the chairman,"that he could not accept any offer from me that involved them backing down.”

Again  Kelcy is implying that it was the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe – not Greenpeace – that had the power to end the uprising.

And he has a surprising theory about why Chairman Dave Archambault refused. “It was clear to me that he had struck a deal with the devil,” Kelcy says.

“And devil being Earthjustice?” the lawyer replies.

Kelcy Warren apparently believes that the thing that stopped Standing Rock's chairman Dave Archambault from accepting Energy Transfer’s deal must have been another, competing, deal. With EarthJustice. “I read between the lines, and I believe that they made aI deal, and Archambault couldn't make a deal with me,” he says.

I asked Dave Archambault about this. He told me he did meet to discuss safety with Kelcy Warren, but he said he was not there to negotiate ending the protests.

Back in court, the lawyer asks,“Nothing was said about Greenpeace during that meeting, was it?”

We're at the finale of the trial, and Energy Transfer's board chair has just given us a whole new theory of the case, which completely contradicts his company's lawsuit.

After three and half weeks of testimony, and months of my own reporting, this case is full of holes. To summarize, we've seen that Greenpeace donations and fundraising at Standing Rock only amounted to  a small fraction of the millions in donations that poured into the movement from around the world.

Only six employees from Greenpeace Inc visited Standing Rock out of well over ten thousand people who showed up -- and no one from Greenpeace International or Greenpeace Fund ever went.

The whole time this was all going on, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Indigenous nations were very publicly fighting the pipeline in court. The pipeline company had no ability to drill under the river during the protests, because they had NO permission from the US Army Corps of Engineers to do that.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace's allegedly defamatory statements -- including that police used violence against nonviolent demonstrators, that the pipeline passes through tribal land, and that Energy Transfer deliberately destroyed sacred sites -- are assertions that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and many others stand by to this day.

Now, today, on the last day of testimony, Energy Transfer's own board chair has a whole other story of the movement.

This season of Drilled we bring you SLAPP’d. The story of an Indigenous nation fighting for its water, an environmental nonprofit facing extinction, and an energy giant using the courts to punish protestors. I'm Alleen Brown.

The Monday after Kelcy Warren's testimony, Energy Transfer's lawyer Trey Cox steps in front of the jury for his closing statement.

Trey tells the jurors that Greenpeace employees are "master manipulators" and "deceptive to the core." The volume on the courtroom drama has been turned way up.

"Think about the Mafia," he suggests. "I got to see a guy about a thing -- did you get the package? Sleeps with the fishes. These are the type of words that people in conspiracies use as code words to communicate other things."

He says that Greenpeace relies on similar code words to trick people. Like

Campfire. Nonviolent. Art tent. Solidarity--.

"Now, solidarity and indigenous leadership, these are some of the most deceptive words that they use. And when they stand up here and they try to use those words, I want you to call them out as code words."

Trey starts to get into the damages -- what Energy Transfer wants Greenpeace to pay them. And he reveals that Energy Transfer isn't JUST looking for the over $266 million the company claims they spent on countering the protests. They want triple that total, including massive "exemplary damages" -- extra money meant to make an example out of Greenpeace.

He tells the jury that ruling in Energy Transfer's favor is about more than just this case.

"It needs to be done for Morton County. It needs to be done for Morton County's law enforcement. And more importantly, [00:09:00] it needs to be done for the next community where Greenpeace exploits an opportunity to push its agenda at any cost. And I don't know whether that's going to be in Louisiana or Texas or Oklahoma or Ohio, but you have the responsibility of protecting those others."

The Greenpeace organizations present their closing statements -- a detailed outline of all the inconsistencies and holes in Energy Transfer's lawsuit. And Judge Gion sends the jury to begin their deliberations.

And now, all there is to do, is wait. A decision could come in a few hours or even a few weeks.

Even at this point, I was not really sure what was going to happen. But I figured the best way to get a sense of how this might go was to talk to some people who are from here.  After all, this case was in the hands of Morton County community members.

As I was driving into Mandan awhile back, I had noticed a digital sign advertising community events. "Testicle Festival,"  at the Moose Lodge, it flashed in neon red. I knew what I had to do.

 These are, uh, uh, Rocky Mountain oysters. Mm-hmm. Do I need to tell herJim, what they're actually made out of? Yeah. Do. Mm-hmm. Well, I already know, but tell me anyway.

Okay. Well, they, they're, they're, uh, uh, mature bulls. Mm-hmm. You know, herford, Angus, whatever you want to call it. And they're big nuts.

 he just made the, uh, shape like bigger than his head.

 Well, not quite that big, but anyways, then they slice 'em all right in a little, alright, I need some sauce.

 Mandan's Moose Lodge is packed. The space is half dive bar, half events hall. And tonight, there's a line of people waiting to order bison burgers and Rocky Mountain oysters. A bunch of tables and chairs are set up for people to eat.

Dale, who doesn't want to use his last name, is a retired rancher. Alongside oil and gas, cattle ranching is one of Morton County's biggest industries. And the testicle festival takes place every year during calving season. After the bull calves are castrated, their balls are breaded and deep fried. These ones come from adult bulls, so they're not traditional.

I mean, it's not terrible. It tastes like, um, like a fried thing, you know?

 I want to know what people here thought about the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. So I'm working my way around the room. I start chatting with Helena Riehl and Betty Thompson. Both of them grew up on farms.

 I got my first bite of a rocky Mountain oyster.

Uh, I'm from the Twin Cities originally. I grew up in St. Paul and now I'm, I'm based in Brooklyn, 

 Mandan’s good. Mandans a small community that, um, sticks up for it's fellow man. I mean, that's what we do, right?

  what was it like when those protests were going on for this community?

 All the protesting and then, then they closed the roads. You couldn't go anywhere. Then they come to Manan, they're marching down Main Street with dead pigs. Really? Who does that?

 I'm wondering what Betty and Helena think about Greenpeace's argument that people from here are too biased to be neutral jurors.

 Part of the reason I want to talk to people in Mandan is because one of the things they're trying to argue is that the trial should not be held here because there, it's, it would be impossible to find someone who's totally unbiased on the subject I agree with.

 Helena says there's another guy I should talk to. She introduces me to a rancher named Jim, who also doesn't want to use his last name. His family has a ranch, not far from where the anti-pipeline camps were located. And he says he and his neighbors felt unsafe.

 I was repeatedly, I. Threatened, chased up and down the highway. They'd follow me from our ranch, 30 miles south all the way to town, follow me around town until I would stop to confront 'em.

Then they'd take off. They would, I was spied on, threatened in the middle of the night, they'd be in our yard..and I'd catch 'em

 Jim says he's convinced that what he experienced didn't come from people from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

 When they say it was outsiders, stirring things up, that was our view of it, because there was never, we never had issues with anybody that we knew locally when you had issues.

And when I got, you know, you'd catch people in my yard sneaking in there, it was always people from Where are you from? Oh, I come up from Nebraska. Or I, you know, it was never local people.

 Dale is listening in. He shares who he thinks those 

 They, Greenpeace was behind it. You know, they always take that anonymous thing, you know, right across the world. Right. Jim? They take that anonymous, they always stand in the backgrounds and they, and they agitate is what they do.

 What, I mean, what did you, what makes you think that?

 Well, because they, their name came up many times during the protest. Greenpeace did. It came up right? Oh yeah. Yeah. That's why I believe they were behind it, but they were behind a lot of protests.

I ask Dale and his friend what they think of the damage claims.

 They're trying to get Greenpeace to pay for everything, and

 they should to the point where they're broke.

 The people I'm talking to are convinced that outsiders drove these protests, but it's also clear that what happened continues to impact relationships among people who are from here. For example, Dale says he doesn't go to Standing Rock's Prairie Knights Casino anymore.

That tension is still there, eight years later — especially between white and Native people, according to Dale.

 It's just right under the surface right now, you know?

 Our conversation meanders. And we start talking about what Morton County is like. I ask Dale about the oil boom that began in the mid 2000s.

Oh man, it was crazy. I mean, they came from all over. I mean, I'd never seen hookers walking on the street before. 

Transcription

The verdict comes through, more than doubling the damages, at a time when repression of protest is accelerating in the U.S., but somehow Energy Transfer's lawyers claim it is a victory for free speech. As the trial and our season wrap up, we take a look at what this verdict means for Indigenous rights, climate activists, and the decline of individual free speech rights in the U.S. as corporate free speech rights expand. 

SLAPP’d Episode 6 | The SLAPP Heard ‘Round the World

SLAPP’d

Carbon Bros

Information Pollution

The Real Free Speech Threat

This is part two of a seven-part series produced in partnership with 

, where you’ll also find other great climate stories.

In February 2017, as security forces prepared to evict water protectors from their camps, TigerSwan — 

 contracted by Energy Transfer — began emailing with the law firm Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher.

The firm had been representing Energy Transfer as it attempted to convince a federal court to dismiss the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s claims against the Army Corps. Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher would eventually declare victory against Greenpeace in the $666 million lawsuit.

 by monitoring social media feeds, listening in on radio communications, flying drones, and monitoring camps by helicopter. It 

 — people pretending to be water protectors — into the anti-pipeline camps to gather information. 

 by a former commander of an elite special operations unit known as Delta Force, TigerSwan’s security contractors had 

 during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At Standing Rock, it brought those “war-on-terror” tactics home.

 obtained through a public records request reveal that TigerSwan was not only providing the intelligence it collected to law enforcement, but it was also preparing to provide some of the information it gathered on water protectors to the law firm Gibson Dunn, including a set of 

 listing crowdfunding pages, how much each had raised, and who was involved, as well as spreadsheets matching protest actions with individual water protectors, labeled “named conspirators.” The company asked 

 to identify what groups pipeline opponents belonged to. And it asked another contractor to send over the makes and models of vehicles that showed up at certain protests.

 also revealed a purpose of the communications between TigerSwan and Gibson Dunn: a RICO lawsuit. Gibson Dunn was considering using the 

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act

, or RICO — a law originally developed to go after the mafia — to target anti-pipeline activists and organizers, and had turned to Energy Transfer’s mercenary private security firm, TigerSwan, to help. TigerSwan did not respond to a request for comment.

Months later, in August of 2017, Deepa Padmanabha, the senior legal advisor for Greenpeace in the U.S., learned that Energy Transfer was 

 the environmental organization in federal court, alleging violations of the RICO Act. “This one came as a very big surprise just because the Greenpeace entities had such little involvement with anything associated with Standing Rock,” she said.

Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation

 — which is designed not necessarily to win, but to drain opponents of resources and discourage them from speaking out. SLAPP suits are meant to set an example, and when successful they can be extremely effective.

Gibson Dunn is known to excel at aggressive lawsuits. The firm also has 

 avoid accountability for harming the environment or undermining Indigenous peoples' rights — including arguing to gut the 

In 2007, banana workers in Nicaragua won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in the U.S. against the Dole fruit company for 

poisoning them with a pesticide called DCBP

. To combat the win, Dole hired Gibson Dunn. They alleged a vast conspiracy in which the banana workers’ attorney had recruited fake banana workers to go after the fruit company. There were 

, but to the American judge who presided over the conspiracy case, it didn’t matter: The money awarded to the workers was 

Dole’s general counsel at the time gave the strategy a name: the “

The kill step worked by not only targeting the plaintiffs, but also going after their lawyers, supporters, and media. It destroyed the story being told and replaced it with a new one. Perhaps the most well-known application of the kill step by the law firm was for Chevron. In Ecuador, the homelands of several tribes, including the Cofan, Secoya, and Kichwa, had 

been contaminated by abandoned pits of oil waste

, and in 2011, they won an $18-billion lawsuit, holding the oil giant Chevron accountable. The settlement was reduced by the Ecuadorean Supreme Court to $9.5 billion in 2013. Chevron, in turn, filed a RICO complaint in the U.S. against the lawyers who argued the case, including attorney 

, claiming that they had contaminated witnesses, behaved unethically, and maybe even bribed a judge.

 with Chevron’s case, but the company won. Over the next few years, Chevron and Gibson Dunn kept 

. He ended up on house arrest for two years and in jail for 45 days for a contempt of court charge. Meanwhile, the oil is still contaminating water in the Ecuadorian Amazon — and, like the banana workers in Nicaragua, the Ecuadorians still 

When Padmanabha got word Greenpeace was being sued, she wasn’t just confused as to why the organization was being sued, she was also confused by the timing. Oil was 

 through the Dakota Access pipeline — the company had gotten what it wanted. But there was a clue: “We were already dealing with another massive SLAPP suit filed in federal court.”

In 2016, before Standing Rock, a law firm called Kasowitz Benson Torres had filed a 

 against Greenpeace on behalf of a timber company called Resolute Forest Products. The lawsuit claimed that Greenpeace Canada’s anti-logging campaign, which targeted Resolute, amounted to racketeering, defamation, and tortious interference. In 2017, the Kasowitz law firm filed a 

 against Greenpeace, this time on behalf of Energy Transfer.

“The complaints looked very similar,” said Padmanabha. “It was the same allegations of a RICO conspiracy, and it was the same attempt to scare us into silence and bankrupt us.”

Ultimately, the RICO suit didn’t live long. A federal judge 

 in the winter of 2019, writing: “This is far short of what is needed to establish a RICO enterprise.” But Energy Transfer quickly filed 

 of the lawsuit in North Dakota state court, using local conspiracy law to tie the claims together.

Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher would eventually 

. In a statement, a spokesperson for Kasowitz, Shannon O'Reilly, wrote: “The firm spearheaded Energy Transfer’s suits against those who wrongfully targeted these projects, and we are gratified that Energy Transfer ultimately achieved such a successful result.”

 were Greenpeace, two individual pipeline opponents named Cody Hall and Krystal Two Bulls, and a group called the Red Warrior Society. All were accused of conspiring together to propel the anti-pipeline movement. The company also alleged that the conspiracy was spread throughout Greenpeace-affiliated organizations, including Greenpeace Inc., which carries out U.S. based campaigns; Greenpeace Fund, also based in the U.S., which raises money for certain Greenpeace efforts; and Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International, which licenses out the Greenpeace name to independently operated nonprofits around the world and coordinates some of their activities.

The lawsuit included three buckets of claims. There were on-the-ground, protest-related damages for things like trespassing and destruction of construction equipment. There were defamation claims, alleging that Greenpeace and the other defendants lied by accusing Energy Transfer of deliberately desecrating sacred sites and putting the pipeline on tribal lands, and accusing police and private security of being violent toward nonviolent water protectors. And finally, Energy Transfer alleged tortious interference — essentially, that those defamatory statements damaged the company’s relationship with banks.

Those accused weren’t the only ones impacted by the lawsuit. Subpoenas went out demanding people and organizations hand over documents or testify in front of lawyers. Energy Transfer subpoenaed Water Protectors Legal Collective, a group that provided legal support to pipeline opponents, and Unicorn Riot, a media collective that broadcast hours of footage of police violence. It also subpoenaed Standing Rock’s former tribal historic preservation officer Tim Mentz. Across the water protector community, fear began to spread that anyone and everyone could be dragged into the lawsuit.

However, two people at the heart of the case — Greenpeace’s alleged co-conspirators Cody Hall and Krystal Two Bulls — never received official notification of the lawsuit. Months went by, then years. In legal filings, Energy Transfer said they’d attempted to serve Hall at a home in South Dakota where his parents lived briefly a decade before, but the knock Hall expected at his door didn't come. At one point, Hall got so stressed about it he called Energy Transfer. “I said, ‘You guys say you can’t serve me. I’m sitting here at home. Serve my ass. So what the hell is this bullshit?’” A receptionist took his number but he never heard back.

The Kill Step, Part Two: “What the hell is this bullshit?

This is part three of a seven-part series produced in partnership with 

 just as the contemporary environmental movement was taking off in the 1970s. What set the organization apart from others at the time was dramatic protest actions at sea: Greenpeace activists zoomed little boats in between whaling ships and harpoons, risking their lives to 

. From the very beginning, Greenpeace was ardently opposed to any kind of violence. Still, governments and companies began to label its activities as ecoterrorism.

“I don't think there's any credible examples of anything remotely like something you could describe as ecoterrorism in Greenpeace's history,” said Frank Zelko, a historian at the University of Hawai‘i who wrote a book on the organization called 

. “Unless you reframe ecoterrorism as a bunch of people just blocking bulldozers or hanging a banner between a couple of chimneys.”

It’s important to note that Greenpeace’s efforts to save wildlife at times took aim at Indigenous peoples and practices. For example, an anti-seal-hunting campaign Greenpeace launched in the 1970s 

 for a number of Indigenous communities and a major income stream for many Indigenous nations. By the 1990s, activities like those began to get pushback.

“We challenged the white organizations back in the early 1990s with environmental racism,” said Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Greenpeace stepped up.”

In 2017, when the RICO lawsuit hit Greenpeace, Goldtooth was in touch with the organization again. “We said: ‘Hey man, this is mucked up. We’ll stand with you. You’re going to fight this.’” But by 2024, as the lawsuit looked like it would go to trial, it became less and less clear that Greenpeace actually would fight Energy Transfer.

The Kill Step, Part One: “They’re Waiting for Someone to Wink”

The Kill Step, Part Two: “What the hell is this bullshit?

The Kill Step, Part Three: “You’re Going to Fight This.”

The Kill Step, Part Four: “How many of you feel the same way?”

The Kill Step, Part Five: “It’s part of the treaty.”

SLAPP’d

Carbon Bros

Information Pollution

The Real Free Speech Threat

SLAPP’d Episode 6 | The SLAPP Heard ‘Round the World

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

The Kill Step, Part One: “They’re Waiting for Someone to Wink”

The Kill Step, Part Two: “What the hell is this bullshit?

The Kill Step, Part Three: “You’re Going to Fight This.”

The Kill Step, Part Four: “How many of you feel the same way?”

The Kill Step, Part Five: “It’s part of the treaty.”

SLAPP’d

Carbon Bros

Information Pollution

The Real Free Speech Threat

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SLAPP’d Episode 6 | The SLAPP Heard ‘Round the World

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

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