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What are the costs of doing business in a war zone? On Nov.18, 2014, FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate the relationship between Firestone and the infamous Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. Based on the inside accounts of Americans who ran the company’s Liberia rubber plantation, and diplomatic cables and court documents, the investigation reveals how Firestone conducted business during the brutal Liberian civil war.
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00:04:00We were one of the largest, if not the largest, employer in Liberia,
00:04:04certainly paying taxes to the government,
00:04:06certainly providing a lot of employment for locals.
00:04:11And we would hope that they would honor that
00:04:13and just leave us alone and let us continue to do what we were doing.
00:04:17Unfortunately, that didn't occur.
00:04:19They'd been through several coups and nothing changed very much.
00:04:22And we just expected to go right back having our good life.
00:04:30They helped run the largest rubber plantation in the world.
00:04:35A multi-million dollar investment stretching over 220 square miles.
00:04:41I don't think you ever realized how big it was.
00:04:46But, yeah, my first impression was, hey, this is a beautiful forest.
00:04:52It's a beautiful country.
00:04:55Oh, very pretty.
00:04:56The trees are all planted in a row and so forth.
00:04:59and a lot of humidity, a lot of rainfall, about 140 inches or more a year.
00:05:04And you can actually smell the, what I would call, must,
00:05:09or decaying materials in the country.
00:05:11And it's something you get used to.
00:05:14The two dozen expat managers who lived there along with their families
00:05:18were in their own world.
00:05:21There's our house boy.
00:05:26Hi, Mom.
00:05:28What are you drinking?
00:05:30This is pure filtered, boiled water from Africa.
00:05:42You really didn't feel any danger other than a few of the rogues
00:05:48who would either break into your house or try and steal your money
00:05:51when you're in town shopping.
00:05:57Nothing seemed unsettled to me.
00:05:59I loved it.
00:06:00It was very, very enjoyable.
00:06:03But outside the plantation's perimeter,
00:06:05a rebellion was brewing.
00:06:10It was 1989.
00:06:12Liberia's president, Samuel Doe, was losing his grip.
00:06:18Doe had cracked down, jailing opponents, eliminating rivals.
00:06:23It all came to a head on Christmas Eve.
00:06:25Christmas Eve, 1989, when a man called Charles Taylor emerged
00:06:32in the northern jungle declaring a revolution against Doe's regime.
00:06:40You're right.
00:06:42You're damn right.
00:06:43This is not a military coup.
00:06:47This is a pure civilian uprising.
00:06:51Here, here, here.
00:06:51If Doe opened Pandora's box just a little bit
00:06:54a tailor, uh, you know, ripped off the lid.
00:06:58Our leader!
00:07:00Our leader!
00:07:02The man behind the revolt was a little-known
00:07:04American-educated, smooth-talking charmer, Charles Taylor.
00:07:09I have told all of these men
00:07:11that we must be able to make a difference.
00:07:15We must be able to bring back what we, you know,
00:07:19what we all wanted.
00:07:20He was very slick, you know, kind of used car salesman slick.
00:07:24Um, and, uh, it not particularly threatening or overbearing, uh, uh, but not the kind of
00:07:35person you'd buy a used car from, either.
00:07:37All I want to do is to bring back some sanity, some fair play in the country.
00:07:47A evil, venal sociopath who was charming, glib.
00:07:54I knew he was a criminal, that he'd absconded with almost a million dollars,
00:07:59that he'd mysteriously escaped from jail in Massachusetts.
00:08:05He was a very unsavory character.
00:08:09At the time of the uprising, Taylor was running from the law, accused of embezzling nearly
00:08:16one million dollars from the Liberian government.
00:08:19To pull together his guerrilla force, he had cozied up to several dictators in Africa, including
00:08:26Muammar Gaddafi.
00:08:27Libya, we knew at the time, was a very pro-revolutionary country under Gaddafi.
00:08:35And they were training Africans to be guerrilla fighters.
00:08:39And we had all sorts of intelligence informing us about that.
00:08:43And, uh, so Taylor and, uh, other Liberians, whom he could recruit, went into training there.
00:08:53Newly trained, Taylor launched his offensive from the north, with a small ragtag army with
00:09:00little to no combat experience.
00:09:08You would have rebels advancing with their AKs held above their heads, just firing randomly
00:09:16down the road.
00:09:17Uh, there wasn't a lot of marksmanship.
00:09:20There was a lot of firing in the air.
00:09:22There was a lot of running away.
00:09:24They were not in army uniforms.
00:09:26They were in, like, casual clothes, you know, wearing wigs on their head.
00:09:30Having some white chalks on their body, claiming there was some protection against bullets.
00:09:35They were weird looking, really.
00:09:37But they were mostly kids.
00:09:39These young fighters wearing fright wigs and, you know, shower caps and women's dresses
00:09:47and bathrobes and shooting wildly and wearing juju, you know, the talismans of Liberian witchcraft.
00:09:55As Taylor's army and masquerade wound its way towards the plantation, Elizabeth Blunt, the
00:10:02BBC's correspondent for West Africa, made a trip to Firestone to find out if the managers
00:10:08were concerned.
00:10:08We were invited to Sunday lunch, uh, a couple of other journalists and myself.
00:10:14We went off to Firestone and it was, it was beautiful.
00:10:17It was, it was green.
00:10:19It was peaceful.
00:10:19We had lunch in the clubhouse.
00:10:22I think our hosts were working very, very hard to persuade us that everything was normal.
00:10:28I don't think it was as normal as they made it look.
00:10:31And I think they were hoping that if the rebels did come that they might be able to carry on.
00:10:40And for a while at least, they did carry on.
00:10:44It really didn't affect us much until we knew that they were getting closer to Monrovia
00:10:50and therefore obviously closer to us.
00:10:52I was hoping that actually the rebels would go around the plantation, not come onto the
00:10:59plantation, and we would be able to continue to operate.
00:11:03There was a lot of political turmoil.
00:11:05Conditions were pretty good then, even under the circumstances.
00:11:08So, we expected that, uh, uh, if a civil war did get to Liberia or Monrovia, that it would
00:11:15be very quick and things would return to normal.
00:11:18For the expats, life on the plantation was enjoyable.
00:11:23We actually had a nine hole golf course.
00:11:25The greens were oiled sand, um, certainly during the rainy season.
00:11:30The fairways were nicer than they were in the dry season.
00:11:33You would have at least the length of your, of your club to find some grass and
00:11:37in which to put your ball.
00:11:39But, uh, it was, it was nice.
00:11:45We would stay in each other's houses so that all golf teams didn't have anything to worry
00:11:49about.
00:11:51Clubs would be open for the evening for the ones that really liked to party.
00:11:55And there also was a fishing club there that nearly everybody had a boat for.
00:12:07And we'd go deep sea fishing, have fishing tournaments, et cetera.
00:12:13You'd have a boat boy to carry a boat and all that good stuff.
00:12:16And, uh, it was fantastic because off the west coast of Africa, some of the best fishing
00:12:20in the world, um, wahoo, marlin, tuna, uh, sailfish, everything is there, it was fantastic.
00:12:30For Taylor, it also had the makings of a perfect base.
00:12:35The plantation center was in Harbell, named after the company's founder, Harvey Firestone,
00:12:41and his wife, Ida Bell.
00:12:43It was strategically located, only 45 minutes away from the capital of Monrovia, and right
00:12:49next to a key regional airport, Roberts International.
00:12:53They were just such tempting targets.
00:12:56They had everything that a rebel army would want.
00:12:58They had fuel supplies, they had generators, they had communications, they'd food, and they
00:13:04had nice facilities.
00:13:05They had clinics, and they had really nice houses.
00:13:08So it was a very, very good base to operate from.
00:13:13I would say, uh, whoever was going to run Liberia needed Firestone.
00:13:19And I think Taylor felt that he was going to be that man.
00:13:24So yes, he needed Firestone.
00:13:27Let's say we were very influential on, uh, what happened in the country and, uh, what
00:13:33went on in the country.
00:13:40The story of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, begins in 1900.
00:13:48By the Roaring Twenties, the company was a household name.
00:13:51And Harvey Firestone had become one of the top industrialists of that gilded age.
00:13:59There are few people who realize the importance of rubber and what it means to our commerce
00:14:05and welfare.
00:14:06With its auto industry booming, the United States was consuming around 70% of the world's rubber.
00:14:13Most of it imported from British colonies in the Far East.
00:14:18Harvey Firestone was determined to find his very own source of rubber.
00:14:23And I urge upon the United States to get relief by investing in a country under their own control.
00:14:34This can be accomplished in Liberia.
00:14:38Liberia was ideal.
00:14:40The country was an ally of the United States.
00:14:43It had a large untapped labor pool and miles and miles of land for planting rubber trees.
00:14:51The 90,000 acres was divided into 45 divisions.
00:14:56Each division having hundreds of trees about 12 feet apart by 15 feet apart.
00:15:02So you had eight and a half million rubber trees all in rows.
00:15:08In 1926, Liberia offered Firestone a chance to develop up to a million acres of land at six cents an
00:15:17acre.
00:15:18The Liberian negotiators were not knowledgeable about these things.
00:15:25So Firestone got the deal that said they would ranch huge acres of land for small amounts for a long
00:15:35period of time.
00:15:36But I don't think that the original deal was in the very best interest of the country.
00:15:40The deal was controversial from the start.
00:15:43But for the Liberian government, it marked the beginning of a convenient business partnership.
00:15:49Firestone was huge in every way.
00:15:51And the revenues were absolutely crucial.
00:15:54So what would happen would be that the government, when it ran out of money, would anticipate the revenues.
00:15:59They would get Firestone to pay future revenues up front.
00:16:03So the government was always in hock to Firestone.
00:16:10It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
00:16:15I put a spell on you.
00:16:26Firestone eagerly courted Liberia's elites, holding parties like this one, where management invited Nina Simone to sing.
00:16:36That's Harvey Firestone's son, Harvey Jr., on the right, next to the guest of honor, Liberia's long-ruling president, William
00:16:44Tubman.
00:16:45The country had been ruled since the 1930s by a man called William Vicanorak Shadrach Tubman, Jr., who smoked cigars
00:16:55at War Homburgs and appeared at official functions in tales.
00:17:04President Tubman was an American Liberia, a member of Liberia, a member of Liberia's ruling class, many of whom were
00:17:11descendants of the freed American slaves who founded the country in 1847.
00:17:17Liberia was one of the very few parts of Africa that had not been colonized by a European power.
00:17:26It was settled in its more or less modern configuration by freed American slaves, and this group became known as
00:17:36the Americo-Liberians.
00:17:39The Americo-Liberians had established their own brand of servitude, which excluded from power local ethnic tribes like the Pele,
00:17:47the Basa, the Kru.
00:17:49The Americo-Liberians, to some extent, replicated the society that they had left in the United States, but they became
00:17:58the plantation owners, and the Liberians became the workers.
00:18:05Uh, not surprisingly, the workers sort of resented this status.
00:18:13Life in much of Liberia mirrored the plantations of the American South.
00:18:19Some saw echoes of that at Firestone.
00:18:22The entire structure of the work on the plantation was like in the South.
00:18:27That means, uh, you had, uh, laborers, and you had, uh, headmen, you got gang leaders, you have, um, overseers,
00:18:37you know, the same thing that used to operate in the South, to control the workforce.
00:18:41The people at Firestone imported here a lifestyle, uh, and it was a lifestyle that was designed for the Americans
00:18:55who came from the United States to work for Firestone.
00:18:59Officers on the, uh, plantation lived very nicely in, uh, attractive, comfortable, well-furnished homes.
00:19:10You know, their lifestyle was obviously on a plane greatly superior to that of the Liberians who were working with
00:19:18them.
00:19:20The plantation had over 8,000 workers, most of them tappers.
00:19:26I had never seen something like this in my life before.
00:19:30This scene of, uh, the tappers with, uh, uh, the buckets, uh, slinging on their, on their shoulders, moving around,
00:19:41emptying the cups of latex, one after the other, and going to the truck and emptying it there and so
00:19:48forth.
00:19:52Collecting sap was grueling work, sometimes done by entire families for a few dollars a day.
00:19:58It's hard work, it's demeaning, and the pay is very small.
00:20:02If someone tries to complain, even though we were little, but we hear them say, well, if you try to
00:20:06complain,
00:20:07then people tell you, aren't you counting yourself lucky that you have a job?
00:20:11You gotta stop complaining.
00:20:13So people just live with it like that.
00:20:17Liberian middle managers had it a little better.
00:20:20I'm Justin Knuckles.
00:20:22I was hired in Firestone in the year 1973.
00:20:27And I worked for Firestone in inferior position up to 1990.
00:20:32The firehouse I have, what I can say, was terrible because you had to get and go and use the
00:20:39bathroom outside.
00:20:40You had to do everything outside.
00:20:42And a lot of flies, uh, uh, uh, it was terrible.
00:20:48The houses have now changed.
00:20:50But up to 2002, that was the type of housing they had.
00:20:54I mean, no running water, and about 90 percent of the people live in that condition.
00:21:00But in one of the poorest countries in the world, Firestone offered its workers generous benefits.
00:21:06I got a scholarship coming from junior high school, because I was the second in my class.
00:21:11And then, uh, I got a scholarship again to go to college.
00:21:14So they paid my tuition in college.
00:21:17I can say you consider yourself blessed if you were in Liberia working for Firestone,
00:21:21because Firestone has a good educational program.
00:21:24They gave you food.
00:21:27They gave you water.
00:21:28But you didn't make much money.
00:21:30But for men to live, you got to have certain, certain things.
00:21:34And Firestone provides those things.
00:21:37But the Firestone workers were not immune to the resentment that was building across Liberia.
00:21:46After 133 years of Americo-Liberian rule, a young enlisted man from the Kron tribe changed the course of Liberia's
00:21:55history on April 12, 1980.
00:21:59Liberia's president, William Talbert, a descendant of American slaves and a good friend of the U.S.,
00:22:04was assassinated today in a coup led by an army enlisted man who said that they're fed up with the
00:22:09government corruption.
00:22:10The new head of the government is the 28-year-old sergeant named Samuel Doe.
00:22:15Master Sergeant Samuel Doe eviscerated Tolbert in bed, disemboweled him.
00:22:24Doe then invited the world's press to come to Liberia to witness the execution of all the cabinet ministers that
00:22:32he could lay his hands on.
00:22:35It was very shocking, really, because of the way they executed the cabinet, who were old men, who were civilians.
00:22:44I think people would expect them to be locked up after a coup.
00:22:47They wouldn't expect them to be tied on the beach outside town and shot.
00:22:54The execution of the Tolbert cabinet on the beach, broadcast live on Liberian television,
00:23:01sent a pretty clear message that this was his country to control.
00:23:09For the first time since its birth, Liberia was no longer run by these mulatto, lighter-skinned Libero-Americans,
00:23:17but from someone from the interior.
00:23:23Doe gradually filled government posts with members of his Kran tribe,
00:23:28many who were uneducated and ill-prepared to run a country.
00:23:33One of the notable exceptions was Charles Taylor,
00:23:37who had recently returned from Boston,
00:23:39where he had received a degree in economics from Bentley College.
00:23:44He worked his connections and became the head of the General Services Agency.
00:23:50Doe, who was a pretty uncultured man at the time,
00:23:53had the, um, had the good sense to put Taylor in charge of the office,
00:23:59which is, uh, which appropriates funds for government purchases.
00:24:04Taylor used the position to gain influence with Doe's staff.
00:24:09He bought new cars for the cabinet,
00:24:11and surprised Doe with a stretch limousine.
00:24:14But as head of procurement, there were other opportunities.
00:24:19As you can imagine, that was a very lucrative job.
00:24:23And he made a lot of money.
00:24:25And nobody really minded until the money he made was President Doe's money.
00:24:29And then he fell out with the president and fled to the United States.
00:24:34Doe accused Taylor of embezzlement, demanding his extradition.
00:24:39Taylor was arrested and locked up, but not for long.
00:24:43Charles Taylor makes a rather dramatic, uh, prison break, uh,
00:24:49from a jail in Massachusetts, along with several other inmates.
00:24:54All of those inmates are eventually captured.
00:24:58Taylor is not.
00:24:59And, uh, regales in the, uh, afterwards that it was the CIA who helped break him out of that prison
00:25:09because he was destined to lead the rebellion to bring down, uh, Samuel Doe.
00:25:16There's all kinds of legend around it.
00:25:18But it seems he had a kind of underground network of people who helped him.
00:25:21He literally disappeared. Nobody knew where he was.
00:25:25We'd heard all the rumors that, uh, he had been to the States and escaped from jail
00:25:29and, uh, was making his way back to Liberia.
00:25:35Four years after the jailbreak, Taylor's forces began their assault,
00:25:40heading towards the Firestone Plantation.
00:25:52Day one, Tuesday, June 5th, 1990.
00:25:57Last evening, 8 p.m., reported rebels crossing river towards factory area.
00:26:04Donald Ensminger was the head of the Firestone Plantation
00:26:07when Taylor's rebels stormed in and seized control.
00:26:12Much of what we know about what happened
00:26:14comes from Ensminger's diary and a phone interview.
00:26:17He declined to appear on camera.
00:26:19I found him to be very genuine, very nice man,
00:26:22and genuinely cared for us as expats
00:26:25and for the rest of the people who work for Liberia.
00:26:28We found Ensminger to be very rude, very uncooperative,
00:26:32and a very arrogant son of whatever.
00:26:38In his diary, Ensminger notes that 8 to 10 rebels
00:26:41burst into the golf club demanding vehicles.
00:26:45Later on, they took fuel, bags of rice,
00:26:48handheld radios, and petty cash,
00:26:51including $40 to the rebel leader, Peter,
00:26:54a hothead and drunk.
00:26:56Ken Gerhart was stationed down the road from the plantation
00:27:00at the Coca-Cola bottling plant,
00:27:02a property of Firestone.
00:27:04He was in constant communication with Ensminger.
00:27:08We still had radio communications, he and I,
00:27:12and, well, they were saying things were heating up
00:27:14because they were getting so many demands from Taylor's army.
00:27:19Money, food, whatever, you know.
00:27:21They wanted whatever they could get.
00:27:23And, unfortunately, when they couldn't get it,
00:27:25they would go out in the villages and take what they wanted,
00:27:27so things were really heating up.
00:27:32They knew we were going to be out for trouble.
00:27:34They'd go into your house if you had a private vehicle,
00:27:36or even a Firestone vehicle packed in your yard.
00:27:38They would take the vehicle, take valuables.
00:27:41I mean, they said that they were at war with mandingos and crowns,
00:27:44so they were looking for mandingos and crowns,
00:27:46and as they identified them, they were killing them.
00:27:50President Doe's forces, the AFL, were mainly Cron.
00:27:55Doe gave the order to push Taylor off the plantation.
00:27:59He ever came in to, you know, got on the scene
00:28:03and targeted people from other places and killed them, you know?
00:28:08This was a kind of a seesaw, you know,
00:28:11a battle that was happening.
00:28:13And it appeared, from my perspective,
00:28:16that it was turning more into a tribal warfare, in essence.
00:28:23Doe, who was a Cron from the Cron tribe,
00:28:26certainly didn't have any love loss between some of the other tribes
00:28:30that were apparently joining in the rebellion with Charles Taylor.
00:28:36And we knew that people were getting killed.
00:28:38We knew that it was very dangerous for them.
00:28:41From my perspective, a little apprehensive
00:28:44to determine what we would have to do,
00:28:47whether it would be safe for us to stay on the plantation
00:28:49or whether we would have to evacuate.
00:28:51The U.S. Embassy had advised U.S. citizens to evacuate,
00:28:56but the managers stayed put.
00:28:59On June 7th, day three,
00:29:02thousands of Firestone workers fled their homes.
00:29:06Steve Ramo took these photos.
00:29:10Many of the workers sought shelter at Ensminger's mansion.
00:29:14We started to see people walk towards the house.
00:29:19And then more, then more.
00:29:22And we estimated somewhere around 1,500 people
00:29:26were standing in front of the general manager's house
00:29:29seeking refuge.
00:29:32They were crying, they were afraid, and they wanted refuge.
00:29:36Many of the expats, too, gathered at the main house.
00:29:40We would, during the day, kind of try and keep ourselves occupied.
00:29:44So I still played golf.
00:29:46Some of the other guys did, too.
00:29:49And we just watched to see what would occur.
00:29:52We were hoping that once they had had this initial battle
00:29:56that things would move off the plantation.
00:29:59That was my hope, anyway.
00:30:02As the battle raged,
00:30:04Firestone workers continued to seek refuge at the main house.
00:30:09But Ensminger says he had no other choice
00:30:11but to turn them away.
00:30:13They told us that we cannot.
00:30:15He cannot take us in
00:30:18because we are the ones who will be protecting him,
00:30:21not he protecting us.
00:30:23He said, it's Liberians that are coming.
00:30:27You are going to be safe among your own people.
00:30:28You don't need to come in.
00:30:30So only the experts, only the expats can come in,
00:30:33not the Liberian staff.
00:30:34It made me feel very bad
00:30:36that that present management did not care
00:30:39about the well-being of the black staff.
00:30:41You know, hell was breaking loose,
00:30:43and they didn't care for them.
00:30:47We were concerned about them
00:30:48because certainly being a part of the tribe
00:30:51that Doe was a part of,
00:30:53we knew that they were going to be targeted.
00:30:55But as far as being able to protect them,
00:30:57we had no way to do that.
00:30:59It was a very emotional moment
00:31:02to say to all these people,
00:31:04I'm sorry.
00:31:05We cannot help you.
00:31:07We cannot protect you.
00:31:08I felt like crying.
00:31:10It was sad, very sad.
00:31:12In fact, I get choked up,
00:31:14like I'm nearly getting choked up now
00:31:16each time I tell this story.
00:31:20and it was very emotional.
00:31:24BBC World Service at 18...
00:31:25Another entry in the diary says
00:31:27that the workers were fed rice
00:31:28and told to leave.
00:31:31We can't offer them protection
00:31:33from either soldiers or FF.
00:31:36FF, Freedom Fighters,
00:31:38a reference to Taylor's forces.
00:31:43By day four, heavy fighting erupted
00:31:46between Taylor's rebels and Doe's army.
00:31:51Like many workers on the plantation,
00:31:54Mary Polly had no place to go.
00:31:57I started working in FF soon.
00:32:00My husband and myself were murdered.
00:32:03Only Division I.
00:32:05She recalls the day Doe's forces barged into her house,
00:32:08looking for Taylor rebels.
00:32:38He only lived in her brief.
00:32:42They carried him.
00:32:44For me.
00:32:46I'm crying.
00:32:47They're kicking me.
00:32:51They killed my husband.
00:32:53Way behind, they burned her.
00:32:56They killed my husband.
00:32:57I never laid my eye on the body.
00:33:00They pinned back on me.
00:33:02They raped me.
00:33:07They wanted to kill me and my children.
00:33:10The next morning,
00:33:12day nine,
00:33:12it was three o'clock in the morning.
00:33:15I left with my children.
00:33:17I jumped in the bush.
00:33:24Day nine.
00:33:25We are totally helpless.
00:33:28The final blow was when they came to his house
00:33:30where he had assembled most of the managers
00:33:33so that they could be together.
00:33:35And one of them threatened to shoot him with an RPG
00:33:38if he was there the next day.
00:33:41And then we got them all out.
00:33:44Out and left the country.
00:33:49After 10 days, Ensminger ended his diary with these words.
00:33:56But for the Firestone employees on the plantation,
00:33:59the ordeal was just beginning.
00:34:02Justin Knuckles awoke to find a note from management on his door.
00:34:07We're sorry we're going to stay.
00:34:09We hope to return when things improve.
00:34:14And how did that make you feel?
00:34:15Huh.
00:34:17Very, very insecure.
00:34:21Because we had a belief,
00:34:23as long as the Americans are on the plantation,
00:34:25we had a little hope.
00:34:26But now the Americans are gone.
00:34:29What's going to happen to us?
00:34:32Over the course of the next several months,
00:34:34the killing continued.
00:34:38Well, if they were the right tribe, they survived.
00:34:40If they weren't, they didn't.
00:34:44Gerhardt's employees at the Coca-Cola bottling plant were not spared.
00:34:48I had approximately 300, 350 people.
00:34:53And 17% of them had been killed.
00:34:56My driver, my secretary.
00:34:59The story that bothered me the most was my driver.
00:35:02First time he was beaten.
00:35:04Second time they cut the soles off his feet.
00:35:07Third time they shot him.
00:35:09They cut the soles off of his feet?
00:35:11Right.
00:35:13With a machete.
00:35:15It changed my whole perspective of what was happening in the country.
00:35:19No longer did any of us feel that it was going to be a swift coup and so forth,
00:35:24and human rights would be, you know, adhered to, but they were not.
00:35:30It had pretty much got really out of hand then.
00:35:39Over the following months, competing factions fought for control of the country.
00:35:46It was a civil war marked by atrocities on all sides.
00:35:53After months of bloodletting, Taylor and his NPFL gained the upper hand.
00:35:59By the fall of 1990, Taylor had seized most of Liberia, with the exception of Monrovia.
00:36:07The capital was still up for grabs, contested to reign.
00:36:15And President Doe became the most prominent casualty.
00:36:20He was captured and stripped to his underwear by a former Taylor commander, the warlord Prince Johnson.
00:36:31Elizabeth Blunt was trying to set up an interview when gunfire erupted.
00:36:37I was stuck in the press officer's office, with a gun battle going on all around me.
00:36:45While I'd been lying there with my eyes shut, I heard the president's voice,
00:36:50which must have been when they were taking him away,
00:36:52and I heard what I was sure was the president's voice going,
00:36:55Please, I beg you, I beg you.
00:36:57And I knew his voice.
00:36:59He was bleeding very heavily.
00:37:00I think he probably just died from loss of blood, but they were trying to interrogate him.
00:37:06He died sometime during the night.
00:37:09It's hard to process sometimes.
00:37:11Certainly, evil was taking reign in Liberia.
00:37:14When evil is given opportunity to reign freely,
00:37:19these things occur, and we experience them.
00:37:35In the late 80s, 40% of the latex used in America came from Firestone's plantation in Liberia.
00:37:44In the industry, Firestone's product was considered some of the highest quality latex in the world.
00:37:52At company headquarters, top managers were under pressure to get the Liberia operation back up and running.
00:38:00When you can't produce latex, can't produce block rubber, can't get it sent out to the end users,
00:38:06I would assume we were losing lots of money.
00:38:08It was a big deal because it was their own source of rubber for the tires.
00:38:13And it was the largest plantation in the world, and they had a market established over many, many years,
00:38:19so it was very important to them.
00:38:22Firestone had been bought by the Japanese conglomerate Bridgestone in 1988,
00:38:27and the corporation had been losing money.
00:38:34Executives in Akron began to plot their return.
00:38:37Firestone's intent was to make money.
00:38:41Always has and always will.
00:38:43We're in the business to make money.
00:38:46So if it's not making money, let's make it so it does.
00:38:50Why did we go back? Because we felt sorry for the people that were there? Probably not.
00:38:55We wanted to get the investment earning money again.
00:38:59One of the first things management did was hire a Liberian attorney based in the U.S.
00:39:05The meetings actually took place in Akron in 1990, at the old, big Firestone headquarters, a big building there in
00:39:12Akron.
00:39:13The discussions focused on what to do next.
00:39:18Would you have to deal with Charles Taylor? Could you do that?
00:39:21There was tremendous worry about the safety of their employees,
00:39:27most particularly the eight, nine, ten thousand Liberians that they employed.
00:39:33So how can we help these people? What do we do next?
00:39:37So it was a real dilemma for the company and a lot of, I would say, soul searching and really
00:39:46tough, tough decision making that had to be done.
00:39:53Much of what we know from the era comes from corporate records that until now were buried in a long
00:39:58forgotten court file.
00:40:00And hundreds of State Department cables obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
00:40:10One of the earliest documents we found was a letter signed by Donald Enslinger on October 3, 1990.
00:40:17It's addressed to Commander in Chief Charles Taylor, requesting a meeting.
00:40:25The second one, sent a week later.
00:40:28All sides need to recognize that Firestone continues to incur major losses as a result of hostilities.
00:40:40Then, three months later, one of Taylor's aides sent a letter back to Akron.
00:40:48President Taylor has directed us to inform you that your team should come to Harbell to make the necessary assessment
00:40:54of the plantation.
00:40:58A few weeks later, a small group of Firestone managers headed back to Monrovia.
00:41:04We were each given a survival kit. That's your responsibility.
00:41:08The mission is to go back and start the plantation, start up the plantation.
00:41:15The managers had been away from Liberia for eight months.
00:41:18They were shocked by the country they found.
00:41:21It's a disaster completely.
00:41:24I saw very few dogs left. Everything had been eaten.
00:41:28All the palm trees had been cut down for the cabbage on top because everybody was starving to death.
00:41:34No cats.
00:41:35And if you saw a rat, he was big because he'd been well fed.
00:41:39On the streets, when I started driving around, you would be driving over human bones on the streets.
00:41:45You couldn't miss them.
00:41:48The managers found it hard to get to the plantation.
00:41:52Taylor was making life difficult for them.
00:41:54The rebels were on the plantation and up to the suburbs of Monrovia.
00:42:01The higher management was talking about getting back onto the plantation.
00:42:07But I think we realized that somebody didn't want us to go back to the plantation.
00:42:15So they waited.
00:42:17In Monrovia, there was an uneasy peace.
00:42:20The city was in the hands of an interim government.
00:42:23But the interim president was president in name only.
00:42:28The U.S. had abandoned us.
00:42:30The United States government officials were very clear that there was not to be the nature of the intervention that
00:42:40many Liberians expected.
00:42:43The concern I had was that there was an interim government without any constitutional basis.
00:42:49There was Charles Taylor who, by force of arms, had taken most of the country.
00:42:54And these two different governments from a legal or constitutional aspect had no legitimacy, if you will.
00:43:04The task of keeping law and order was delegated to a West African peacekeeping force that went by the acronym
00:43:11ECOMOG.
00:43:12The acronym got converted by Liberians into every car or movable object gone because these West African peacekeepers spent most
00:43:24of their time stealing things and looting the country and shipping it back, in most cases, to Nigeria.
00:43:30For Taylor, they were foreigners, war tourists, posing for pictures.
00:43:37Without a foothold in Monrovia, Taylor set up a parallel government in what he called Greater Liberia, with a new
00:43:45capital in the town of Banga.
00:43:48Taylor called himself president.
00:43:50He called his wife of the time, the first lady.
00:43:53He called his house in Banga, the executive mansion, but it was a house, it wasn't an executive mansion.
00:44:00The minister of communications, basically, was the guy who carried the satellite telephone.
00:44:05He wasn't a minister of communications.
00:44:07The only thing he's interested in is absolute power, and he has it nearly out in the areas he controls,
00:44:15not only by the land mass, but because that's where Liberia's riches are.
00:44:20That's where the rubber is, that's where the timber is, that's where the diamonds are.
00:44:24Why come to Monrovia? There's nothing there to exploit.
00:44:31As Taylor's ambition for money and territory grew, he expanded his reach to neighboring Sierra Leone.
00:44:39He recruited thousands of new fighters, many of them children.
00:44:45For his own presidential guard, Taylor created a special division of young boys.
00:44:51They were formerly called the small boys unit.
00:44:54They were very young boys, very often orphans, that somehow became like his sons, and they would do anything for
00:45:01him.
00:45:01And they manned these roadblocks across the country, wherever the front lines were.
00:45:10They adopted horrifying names like General Me Quick, Dead Body Bones.
00:45:19Got to the point where they would bet, if a pregnant woman was walking towards the roadblock, they would lay
00:45:26bets on what sex the fetus was.
00:45:29And they would open her up with a bayonet to see.
00:45:33And they would just dump the bodies right there.
00:45:37Mr. Taylor seemed quite proud of his SBU small boy unit.
00:45:42All of them were the Taylor shock troops.
00:45:47There was also a lot of drugs that were circulating and probably administered or encouraged by the MPFL.
00:45:59So it was a pretty, in some ways, disorganized, crazy, but also terrifying kind of a phenomenon to be rushed
00:46:10by a lot of folks pretty much out of their heads.
00:46:14Who had to claim it to be our leader?
00:46:18During this war, we picked these kids up in villages, in towns, on highway.
00:46:24Just there. Seven, eight, nine-year-old kids.
00:46:27You put them in the pickup, you take them home.
00:46:29You feed them, you give them a bath, you tell them, okay, you are my SBU.
00:46:34Everybody wanted to be a soldier.
00:46:38This war was ugly.
00:46:41I saw skulls.
00:46:43I saw dogs eating bodies.
00:46:46I saw bloated bodies.
00:46:48I saw exploding bodies.
00:46:51I saw women dead.
00:46:53I saw children dead.
00:46:54I saw babies dead.
00:46:59I saw war.
00:47:04I can't apologize for war.
00:47:08Everybody has had a war.
00:47:12There was widespread killing and torture.
00:47:16Two-thirds of the Kron, Doe's tribe, fled the country.
00:47:20He didn't do all of that firsthand himself.
00:47:24I mean, he let his boy soldiers do that because there was no control of them.
00:47:30He knew what was going on, but he didn't know who was doing what, when, or where.
00:47:35We knew there had been, you know, there had been fighting, there had been killing, and there had been some
00:47:43ethnic reprisal killings.
00:47:45But at that time, from the information available to me, and I think to Firestone, Taylor did not appear to
00:47:56be conducting genocidal activities or war criminal or anything of that kind.
00:48:01And indeed, the United States government had not discouraged Firestone from contacting Taylor and seeing what could be done.
00:48:11But Donald Ensminger told us Firestone was getting reports about the atrocities being committed.
00:48:18Human Rights Watch had warned publicly that the Kron tribe was at risk of genocide.
00:48:24And in reports, even the State Department had said Taylor's NPFL forces had been killing civilians, primarily based on ethnic
00:48:32considerations.
00:48:36Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission would later collect data on the violations committed by the NPFL during the Civil War.
00:48:46ProPublica tallied the numbers for the first year of the invasion.
00:49:05The U.S. did not recognize Taylor's self declared government, but U.S. diplomats had tried to engage with him.
00:49:15Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen, who was the top ranking official in the State Department for Africa, had in
00:49:22earlier months made a trip behind rebel lines to meet with Taylor.
00:49:27It was rather frightening because his compound was surrounded by young boys, I would say ages 12 to 14, all
00:49:35carrying heavy weapons.
00:49:37We go inside and Charles Taylor is sitting there on a kind of a throne, it looked like a throne,
00:49:42and the first thing that struck me is he had a, behind him was hanging a large picture of President
00:49:49John F. Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy.
00:49:53It was up there.
00:49:54So he saw himself like that.
00:49:56He saw himself as a great leader who would bring Liberia to the modern age, you see.
00:50:03And he said to me, you know, if you want to stop this war, just send in a battalion of
00:50:08Marines.
00:50:08We'll all surrender, he said.
00:50:10We'll all surrender.
00:50:11U.S. Marines, we all surrender.
00:50:14Around that time, the U.S. was embroiled in the Gulf War.
00:50:19Military intervention here was not an option.
00:50:22I sent word back to Washington and then word quickly came back,
00:50:27Secretary Cohen, you are under instructions not to take charge of this war, so please do not do that.
00:50:33So I just went, I said okay, and I went about my business.
00:50:43After months of waiting, the Firestone managers were growing restless.
00:50:48They were holed up in a compound in Monrovia, unable to work on a plantation.
00:50:54We asked, can we go to a plantation, talk to the rebel forces there, and we want to start the
00:51:03plantation again.
00:51:05We thought that would be enough incentive for them to say, yeah, yeah, come back.
00:51:11But that wasn't the case.
00:51:16Taylor was ignoring Firestone.
00:51:19He may also have taken offense to the tone in Ensminger's letters.
00:51:23They were not fawning.
00:51:25They were all business.
00:51:27They didn't even address him as president.
00:51:34Looking for a breakthrough, Ensminger decided to visit Taylor in Banga.
00:51:39He asked Ken Gerhardt to come along.
00:51:42Well, we were hopeful that we were going to get a little more latitude on what we wanted to do
00:51:46on the plantation.
00:51:47That was our hopes of going up there.
00:51:54But it didn't happen.
00:51:56He did not meet with us.
00:51:59He wouldn't meet with us.
00:52:01We slept on the hard floor all night from one room he gave us and went back the next day.
00:52:07From the cables, we know that some U.S. diplomats were discouraging Firestone from dealing with Taylor.
00:52:14One cable from January 1991 reads,
00:52:17We would recommend that Firestone wait until the plantation area comes under ECOMOG control.
00:52:24In my personal opinion, not the U.S. government's opinion,
00:52:28I did not feel that Firestone was operating in the best interest of what I saw as our best interest
00:52:36in Liberia.
00:52:37Their choice of becoming closer to Taylor was not the appropriate way that I would want to see them do
00:52:47business,
00:52:48but I'm not in the rubber business.
00:52:53Other diplomats accepted Firestone's attempts to talk with Taylor.
00:52:57I think that it's fair to say that we recognized that the most likely outcome was that Taylor was going
00:53:03to continue to control that territory.
00:53:05You can't close down a plantation.
00:53:08You can't wrap up, you know, five million trees and take them away.
00:53:12So you want to preserve what you can, and so you have to make deals.
00:53:17At least one ambassador, Peter John DeVos, encouraged Firestone to work with Taylor,
00:53:23and even secured a meeting in Banga,
00:53:28which included a delegation of diplomats and a surprise guest.
00:53:33Fourth in line was Donald Ensminger.
00:53:36Mr. Ensminger?
00:53:37Director General Firestone.
00:53:39Oh, he works for the embassy now?
00:53:40Well, America works for him.
00:53:42America works for Firestone.
00:53:47Taylor was blunt, accusing Firestone of negligence.
00:53:50There are thousands of people out there that have put their whole lives into Firestone, 20, 30 years.
00:53:56And there's a little war, and then you run off, and there's no food, no medicine, there's complete breakdown.
00:54:03That's inexcusable. I don't think Firestone should do such a thing.
00:54:07After the meeting, an official at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia wrote back to State.
00:54:13The cable notes that Ensminger was scolded by Taylor in front of the entire press corps.
00:54:20After that meeting, Taylor refused to deal with Ensminger.
00:54:26After Ensminger's first mistake when he came to Banga, it was very demanding.
00:54:33They just wanted what's for Firestone to be for Firestone.
00:54:37And after the talks broke off, we insisted that they have to send someone we can work with.
00:54:44Naturally, Taylor wants everything his way, and Don didn't. He wanted it Firestone's way.
00:54:48So it's probably two guys butting heads.
00:54:54Firestone sent Ensminger's boss in Akram, John Schremp, to get things back on track.
00:55:00John Schremp and it was another guy.
00:55:02They came, they met with Taylor, and Taylor said,
00:55:05Look, you abandoned your people. What about them?
00:55:07When you come back, what can you do for them? What are you going to give them back pay? What?
00:55:13Charles Taylor insisted on a number of conditions.
00:55:16Among them would be that the Firestone would recognize that he had a de facto government,
00:55:26and that if Firestone came back, it would treat his government as the Liberian government,
00:55:33and the government that it must deal with.
00:55:36Besides those demands, Taylor made one more ultimatum. Ensminger had to go.
00:55:43Did Firestone essentially acquiesce to Taylor's demands?
00:55:48Yes, absolutely. It was clear that without that, you would not be able to put a management team on the
00:55:54ground.
00:55:56Soon after, Ensminger was dismissed.
00:55:59In an email to ProPublica and Frontline, Ensminger wrote that he disagreed with Firestone's direction, saying,
00:56:06I felt then, as I do now, that their approach pushed to the very limits, legality and morality.
00:56:20It had been a year and a half since Taylor took over the plantation.
00:56:26Firestone was losing money, and it was worried about reports that the plantation was being ransacked.
00:56:35The Board of Directors sat down to discuss its options.
00:56:40We assumed they were making their own arrangements.
00:56:42They wanted to stay in business, and they would do whatever is necessary to stay in business.
00:56:48They were prepared to do Taylor's bidding. If Taylor says, I'm president, I'm at least de facto president.
00:56:58Then they said, well, we see the de facto president, and we do business with that president.
00:57:06The easy answer for Firestone, in my opinion, would have been to just say, we're out of here.
00:57:14It's risky. It's scary. Economically, it doesn't make any sense.
00:57:19So we're just going to shut it down and walk away.
00:57:22But if you felt a sense of responsibility to Liberia, and most importantly, to the workers,
00:57:29people you'd work with for years, it had no other choice. The decision was to stay.
00:57:37They had a choice. They had a choice.
00:57:41I don't understand this notion of not having choice over the corpses of Liberians.
00:57:47What is that supposed to mean?
00:57:49A choice to become a lunch pad? To reign war on Liberians? I don't accept it.
00:57:58It's about making money. It's not about the people who helped to create the wealth.
00:58:06It's not about the country. It's profit, profit, and profit.
00:58:15On December 17, 1991, the board agreed to make a deal with Taylor.
00:58:22It was a pivotal moment for the company. In exchange for being able to return to operations,
00:58:30Firestone would make a significant capital investment to restore the plantation.
00:58:36The company would agree to use a shipping port under Taylor's command.
00:58:41Taylor would reciprocate by offering security for the managers at the plantation.
00:58:48The documents also show that the deal would ultimately include, quote, tax payments.
00:58:56In careful columns and rows, internal company records show a schedule of tax payments,
00:59:02including income taxes, Social Security payments, and rent, equipment, and rice valued at $2.3 million.
00:59:11I had not seen this, and it's kind of amazing that it is so broken down by columns.
00:59:22And who the hell are the pension beneficiaries? It's amazing, isn't it?
00:59:29You know, until now I hadn't seen this. But with this I can say very clearly that Firestone was in
00:59:40complicity.
00:59:44And I wish our government today would raise this issue with Firestone.
00:59:50I think the Liberian people deserve some explanation to these types of transactions. I think so.
00:59:59We presented the documents to the current president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
01:00:06This is one document that has not been brought to my attention,
01:00:09although you do hear rumors that Firestone paid taxes, you know, to the Taylor government and whatnot.
01:00:18But at this stage, quite frankly, we don't know, and sometimes we don't even want to know.
01:00:25We just want to proceed.
01:00:28The deal between Taylor and Firestone was sealed and made official in a memorandum of understanding.
01:00:36It was a significant victory for Taylor.
01:00:39I suspect he felt this would be a feather in his cap in the eyes of Liberians.
01:00:45So I would think that that was something he wanted.
01:00:48We wanted Firestone on the ground because it gave credibility. One, for every employee at Firestone, as little as they
01:00:55get, they have about a secondary and tertiary family of eight people.
01:01:00So for a thousand people, you're affecting their lives and providing sustenance for eight thousand people. We needed Firestone to
01:01:10keep people busy.
01:01:14The agreement was neatly laid out on Taylor's stationary with its telltale scorpion emblem.
01:01:21I was not party to it, so I can't really comment. Basically, I refused to sign any paper with Charles
01:01:28Taylor's name on it.
01:01:29But I believe they did do that in order to open back up.
01:01:34In our investigation, we found a letter on microfiche from the Firestone executive John Schrampp to the interim government.
01:01:42He insisted the company was not taking sides with Taylor's government, the NPRAG, and he expected hostilities would soon end.
01:01:52He wrote,
01:01:53In the end, we had no viable choice but to accede to the preconditions set by the NPRAG for our
01:01:59return to the plantation.
01:02:03Our choices were stark. Either generate some income or abandon our employees and mothball the plantation.
01:02:11For Firestone, it was either you don't go back or you have to acquiesce and pay taxes to the government
01:02:20in control of that area.
01:02:22They did the right thing. They did not exploit the country. They did not seek to extract resources on some
01:02:29special deal.
01:02:30They did not pay off warlords or give money under the table. Didn't do any of those things. They did
01:02:36the right thing.
01:02:38Firestone agreed to pay its Liberian workers in American dollars.
01:02:42And it would study the possibility of providing power and safe drinking water to workers' homes.
01:02:50Firestone would also make all arrangements necessary for settlement of present and future financial obligations to Taylor's government.
01:03:00The MOU was executed in the city of Bangor on the 17th day of January 1992.
01:03:08I don't think that Firestone thought about it in moral terms. I think Firestone thought about it in purely utilitarian
01:03:20terms.
01:03:20And Taylor can provide us the security that is necessary in order for us to continue our operations.
01:03:26We gave him a little bit. He gave us some slack here. And we do business.
01:03:34A month after the signing of the MOU, a small group of expats was finally allowed to restart operations at
01:03:41the plantation.
01:03:44For the managers, it was a huge letdown.
01:03:47The factory was just a mess. So when I went back, I managed to get to my house.
01:03:55And it was torn apart. Nothing in it.
01:04:03Our homes had been destroyed. In essence, ransacked. None of our furniture was left anymore.
01:04:09Everything else that they could carry away was carried away.
01:04:13So we lived in Monrovia and then would travel out to the plantation once in a while,
01:04:18check on things, just look around a little bit, see if there had been any progress made.
01:04:25The managers were not allowed near Ensminger's old house.
01:04:29They understood that the plantation effectively had a new boss.
01:04:33Taylor's the mayor. Okay.
01:04:36We actually called him Mr. President on the plantation.
01:04:40That was his title.
01:04:43I was impressed with the man. He was articulate. He spoke well.
01:04:47He talked about his plans for Liberia.
01:04:51I felt that this gentleman was, and I call him a gentleman because he acted like one when I saw
01:04:57him.
01:04:58He was going to definitely be the future president of Liberia.
01:05:07Throughout the summer of 1992, the Firestone managers worked hard to get along with Taylor.
01:05:13The change was brought about by Donald Ensminger's replacement, Don Wehi.
01:05:19Wehi was a genial, hands-on manager with experience.
01:05:24He had run the plantation in the 80s and had close connections with Liberia's ruling elites.
01:05:30He passed away in 2010.
01:05:33I think Don understood. He communicated a lot better.
01:05:37But I think that's who Don was.
01:05:40I didn't sense any racism in him.
01:05:42He didn't have that plantation mentality in the course of normal conversation.
01:05:49And so he built up a lot of confidence with Taylor.
01:05:55I thought he was a good administrator, a good diplomat, let's put it that way.
01:05:59He's trying to keep, let's say, Taylor's people happy, Firestone happy, and kind of balance it all together.
01:06:09Under Wehi, Firestone brought in food, hired back workers, and began rebuilding the plantation.
01:06:18Despite the improving conditions, the workers were still wary of management.
01:06:23They gave us a hard time because we ran away.
01:06:27That's the term that they used.
01:06:30And that was from the regular worker in the factory up to people that were considered the top families of
01:06:40the country.
01:06:42We'd get into a discussion and we'd turn to that.
01:06:47Their looks would change and say, but you ran away.
01:06:52The expat managers were determined to win the workers back.
01:06:57We were bringing in rice again, so food, allocation of rice.
01:07:02And we were trying to get medical supplies to the hospital so that you could treat some basic illnesses.
01:07:11By doing that, hopefully that got some of the trust back.
01:07:16Court documents show that Firestone spent $35.3 million on the plantation and its employees between June 1990 and February
01:07:271993.
01:07:29It's a cash economy, so I didn't have the opportunity to even write a check.
01:07:34Where would they cash it?
01:07:36It was in a closet.
01:07:37That's where we kept the money.
01:07:39Absolutely, literally a closet.
01:07:41And it was $5 Librarian dollars stacked from floor to ceiling in this closet.
01:07:50After six months, the operation was back up and running.
01:07:55Ambassador DeVos' replacement, William Twedell, asked Wehi if he could get a tour of the new facilities.
01:08:03It looked pretty good.
01:08:06But he didn't, on Wehi, nor did anyone else say, we are overrun or fear being overrun by NPFL.
01:08:16I think they were living with the NPFL among them.
01:08:19We can't take the plantation and say, well, let's pretend it's over here and he's not there.
01:08:24He's there and he's in charge and he's got the guns.
01:08:27Should we have waited?
01:08:28Probably.
01:08:29Yes, I will agree that that's a probable better answer.
01:08:34But we decided that it was doable and we decided to try.
01:08:41Taylor later acknowledged that the deal with Firestone had been particularly important during the early years of his revolt.
01:08:51Was Firestone startup capital in some way for Taylor's government?
01:08:58I can't answer that because I just don't know the answer to that.
01:09:02I would say no.
01:09:03In the grand scheme of things, these all would have been relatively small amounts.
01:09:07And did Taylor use the farm to store weapons and ammunition?
01:09:12Not to the best of my knowledge.
01:09:14He certainly, if he did that, it would not have been with the knowledge or acquiescence of the Firestone management.
01:09:20There's no way the company management would say they're not aware of it.
01:09:24They were aware.
01:09:25How will the management not be aware?
01:09:27The Firestone facilities, they are providing the fuel.
01:09:29They have the fuel stations.
01:09:31You know, they have the supplies.
01:09:33I think Firestone was giving them most of what they needed.
01:09:35Firestone gave them rice.
01:09:38Firestone gave them gasoline.
01:09:39They needed gasoline for all of the cars they ran.
01:09:41And they had taken some Firestone vehicles and they were using them.
01:09:46Despite accounts of Taylor's forces being out in the open on the plantation, Firestone managers say they had no way
01:09:53of knowing what he was planning next.
01:09:55You got to realize that you couldn't see very far in the plantation because everything is trees and tall trees
01:10:02to boot.
01:10:03So your vision was very restricted.
01:10:07Vaguely, I think we saw a convoy of vehicles go through.
01:10:11But then again, we were concentrating on getting the factory running.
01:10:16While the managers focused on the plantation, Taylor was arming for the next phase in the war.
01:10:23People in Monrovia know that Charles Taylor is exporting raw materials.
01:10:28They know he's making money on timber.
01:10:30They know he's making money on diamonds.
01:10:32What is he making?
01:10:33What is he spending that money on?
01:10:34Weapons.
01:10:36Firestone's money was one source of revenue.
01:10:39Taylor had branched into other lucrative businesses, trafficking in iron ore, gold, timber and diamonds.
01:10:47In looking at these conflicts, it's always good to follow the money.
01:10:54And Taylor was able to generate significant amounts of money.
01:10:59He was able to buy seemingly unlimited arms and ammunition from Eastern Europe.
01:11:05He was able to have them flown in to Roberts International Airfield and other covert locations.
01:11:13And he was able to arm a very large group of fighters.
01:11:17So it appeared to us that Firestone, among others, was financing at least a part of Taylor's insurrection.
01:11:30Then, one night in mid-October 1992, Taylor made his move.
01:11:36An all-out assault on Monrovia.
01:11:40Operation Octopus.
01:11:43The sound of shelling startled the ambassador at the U.S. Embassy.
01:11:47Well, the day began in the dark hours.
01:11:50I don't know if it was three or four, but it was, there were some booms and a pretty continuous
01:11:56barrage.
01:11:57And that went on three or four or five days.
01:12:05It was pretty wild.
01:12:14The first few days were very, very touch-and-go.
01:12:20Taylor forces got quite close.
01:12:28The perimeter shrunk to probably two miles or so.
01:12:34And you always had a flak jacket hanging up in your office.
01:12:43The siege of Monrovia was brutal.
01:12:46Scores of Taylor's young boys died crossing the swamps leading into the city.
01:12:53After a week of heavy fighting, Taylor's offensive stalled in Monrovia's suburbs.
01:13:01ECHOMOG decided to take the upper hand.
01:13:04The plantation had been turned into a major military installation.
01:13:08Firestone provided the backdrop for this.
01:13:11Provided the rare base, the rare guard base.
01:13:14Provided the ammunition depot from which ambushes could be set.
01:13:19And all of this could, could, could happen.
01:13:21That, that operation needed to be dismantled.
01:13:26ECHOMOG set out to destroy Taylor's stronghold on the plantation.
01:13:34We're watching the planes dive and dropping the bombs and pulling up.
01:13:38And it was just, oh, that's cool.
01:13:41Look at that.
01:13:42Hey, it's a show.
01:13:44It's not going to bother us.
01:13:46We're safe.
01:13:49Reminded me of the Second World War, looking for doodlebugs in the sky.
01:13:53And we would look to see where they were, to see possibly where the bombs would land.
01:14:00But you never, you never had an idea of that.
01:14:02You didn't know where they were going to land.
01:14:06And then, just as a group of workers and children had gathered to play a game of soccer,
01:14:12ECHOMOG jets appeared in the sky.
01:14:17There were guys on the football field playing.
01:14:20And then the next thing we saw, they started releasing bombs.
01:14:24And people started running.
01:14:26And the direction people were running in, that's where they were going.
01:14:28They were releasing bombs.
01:14:29People's limbs got caught and stuff like that.
01:14:33And then, you know, they were running to the hospital here and there.
01:14:37You know, I mean, it was, it was just terrible.
01:14:41Around 40 people were killed.
01:14:44We got word of it and Don Wahey immediately jumped in his car with the logistics man, we'll call from
01:14:53Taylor.
01:14:54And they went down there to try to assess the damage and see what happened and settle things down.
01:15:01After witnessing the scene, Wahey agreed to a televised interview.
01:15:07It's a devastating experience to witness something like this.
01:15:13I would find it hard to think that what we are engaged in here would have any value other than
01:15:20something that would be to the well-being of the world.
01:15:30Akron sent a message.
01:15:32It was time to go, yet again.
01:15:36But as he prepared to leave, Wahey wrote a final letter to Taylor.
01:15:42I wish to personally thank you for your kind understanding.
01:15:45I look forward to being able to quickly return to restart our operations.
01:15:54The next day, an official at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia cabled to Washington describing Wahey's last meeting with
01:16:02the warlord.
01:16:04Taylor said that he was sorry to see Wahey go, that the plantation had been the lifeblood of Greater Liberia.
01:16:19As it turned out, Taylor would never manage to capture Monrovia.
01:16:24But after four more bloody years of war, Taylor would run for president and win.
01:16:31The mantra was, at the time, he killed my ma, he killed my pa, I will still fought for him.
01:16:40They had the perception that if he didn't win, he would start fighting again.
01:16:45And what they wanted was the war to stop.
01:16:48So, they were pretty sure that he wouldn't stop in any other way than by becoming president, so they let
01:16:55him be president.
01:17:00But under Taylor, Liberia descended back into civil war.
01:17:04He had an opportunity, once he was in power, to try to build a political coalition that would be able
01:17:14to govern the country.
01:17:16But he chose to be dictatorial, and I think that was his undoing.
01:17:25Taylor's ambitions to establish a greater Liberia expanded to neighboring countries.
01:17:32He crossed into Guinea, and in Sierra Leone continued to finance and arm rebels known for raping and dismembering civilians.
01:17:43His pursuit of timber and diamonds fueled the conflict.
01:17:47300,000 died.
01:17:49This was a regime that was unlike anything I'd seen anywhere.
01:17:53It was like if you gave a country to a serial killer, that's what it felt like.
01:18:01Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission took three years to interview thousands of victims.
01:18:07But no one was prosecuted.
01:18:09There are people who have been responsible for atrocities, for murders.
01:18:16Many of those people are not only walking the streets, but are actively engaged in government in Liberia today.
01:18:25John T. Richardson lives outside Monrovia.
01:18:29He has never been charged with any crimes related to the war.
01:18:35This was a civil uprising.
01:18:38Everybody's in it.
01:18:39Does it make it right?
01:18:40Does it make it wrong?
01:18:41As he said, to the spoils go the victim.
01:18:46Investigators estimate that during his presidency, Taylor siphoned off anywhere from $280 million to $3 billion.
01:19:01Eventually, he would be arrested and tried at The Hague, but not for crimes committed in Liberia, but for his
01:19:08role in the war in Sierra Leone.
01:19:11Though at his trial, he was questioned about Firestone.
01:19:15Now, Harbell is the location for what economic activity?
01:19:25Harbell is the location of the Firestone rubber plantation.
01:19:33And what was the significance of capturing that?
01:19:36Oh, you had immediately a means that would provide the needed financial assistance that we needed for the revolution.
01:19:51How?
01:19:52Taylor said that Firestone gave him economic and political capital at a critical juncture in the war.
01:19:58So, once we captured Harbell, we then made it very clear to the Firestone plantation company that they could no
01:20:09longer be permitted to exercise allegiance to the government in Morovia.
01:20:14So, it became, at that particular time, our most significant principal source of foreign exchange.
01:20:24Firestone says it was powerless to prevent Taylor from occupying the plantation, and that at no time did the company
01:20:31have a collaborative relationship with him.
01:20:34The accused has been found responsible for acts of terrorism, murder, rape, sexual slavery, cruel treatment, recruitment of child soldiers,
01:20:47enslavement, and pillage.
01:20:48Taylor is currently serving a 50-year sentence at Franklin Prison in the north of England.
01:20:58As for Firestone, they resumed operations at the plantation in 1996.
01:21:06In the years since, the company has invested more than $146 million to improve the conditions on the plantation.
01:21:15The company remains the largest private employer in Liberia.
01:21:20Do I think they have blood on their hands?
01:21:23Yes.
01:21:24I believe they facilitated a warlord in his insurrection and in the atrocities that he created.
01:21:38Sometimes people make decisions they regret.
01:21:41I don't know if Firestone regrets the decisions they made in Liberia during the insurrection.
01:21:49Might want to ask them that question.
01:21:52Does Firestone regret any of the decisions that it made in Liberia during his insurrection?
01:21:59Anyone who dealt with Liberia in the period from 1980 to 2003 must have regrets that, what could I have
01:22:11done differently?
01:22:12Might I have prevented something?
01:22:14I think the decisions they made, in my opinion, were completely justifiable.
01:22:19And to be very frank, I believe they were the right decisions.
01:22:25Had they not taken those decisions, I think Liberia would be much the worse for it today.
01:22:32Last month, Firestone and its parent company, Bridgestone, sent Frontline and ProPublica a response to our questions, saying,
01:22:42Firestone's decision to remain in Liberia was very costly for the company.
01:22:47Firestone was able to preserve an important economic asset for Liberia.
01:22:52And we are proud of that.
01:23:11Go to pbs.org slash frontline for more of Frontline and ProPublica's reporting on Firestone and the Warlord.
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