California - (Ass Mess): Legal documents released today show that oil giant Chevron dumped US Secretary of State Condo Sleaze Rice from its board of directors after hiring private investigators to probe an internal blackmail scam of some of its largest institutional shareholders in the run-up period to the 2000 White House presidential election.
So worried was Chevron's executive management committee at reports that Rice had spied upon, smeared and eventually blackmailed the company's most important stockholders that a covert private probe was initiated to track her every movement.
News of the legal papers was leaked today in an unrelated legal suit where UK energy giant BP is being sued for gross negligence in the California courts following a spate of disasters affecting the welfare and safety of its employees.
Some reports have alleged that BP's CEO Lord Browne had hired Rice to conduct the smear and blackmail campaign after worries that his connections to Russian organised crime cartels were bubbling very close to the surface in a press probe linked to price fixing in the European Union.
Chevron has made no comment about today's news and has declined to publish a full and open detailed list of all its shareholders.
And at the State Department Ms Rice's officials were also saying nothing, perhaps still too traumatised from recent developments that added the hideous burden of now having to work with ex-US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton after his unceremonious dumping last week.
