TigerSwan

The stories are based on WhatsApp chats, emails.

You know, in one case, the propaganda guy is chatting with someone who was, someone working for TigerSwan who's going undercover into the protest spaces, pretending to be a friend, and they're really explicitly talking about how to divide people, how to break relationships, really, or potential relationships.

Yeah.

Um, you know, I think it, I think this stuff really helps explain the polarization that we see today, and the tearing of the social fabric that we see in-

[upbeat music] I'm Amy Westervelt, and this is Drilled.

Over the past couple episodes, you've heard in detail how TigerSwan, the private security firm hired by Energy Transfer to deal with the Standing Rock protests, mounted a propaganda campaign aimed at fanning the flames of division in the community and turning people against the protesters as much as possible.

Today, we're gonna do something a little bit different.

We're gonna hear from Aline about her work reporting on the Standing Rock movement and the backlash to it over the past 10 years.

I had visited Standing Rock.

I had written a couple stories, and I, I had come home, you know? While I was at The Intercept, the outlet received basically this massive trove of internal records from the private security company that was hired to, I guess, like, protect the pipeline.

That company was called TigerSwan, and these records were daily situation reports.

So they described what the security company was seeing on the ground, or what they claimed to be seeing, what they were seeing on social media as well.

Trust us

usA couple months earlier, after a video went viral of security dogs attacking pipeline opponents, Energy Transfer had hired the private security company TigerSwan.

TigerSwan was founded by an ex-commander of the Army Special Missions unit, Delta Force.

Its contractors were mostly veterans.