Did PR's "Pit Bull" Go After Greenpeace?

Greenpeace got IRS’s green light for continued nonprofit tax status last month after an audit, but the whodunit continues, especially in the business press. Did the Exxon Mobil-funded Public Interest Watch (PIW) draw in IRS? Does the trail lead to secretive spinmasters Dezenhall Resources, which, reports Eamon Javers, helped create PIW in 2002 with the express purpose of challenging Greenpeace’s tax status? Before Business Week, the Wall Street Journal ran a front page piece pointing the finger at PIW, and noting that $120,000 of PIW’s 2003-2004 budget came from Exxon Mobil, historically Greenpeace’s biggest target. Business Week now answers the mystery of PIW’s braintrust: “two of PIW’s three founding board members are former Dezenhall employees: James McCarthy and Christopher Meyers.” Whoever done it, IRS concluded in its March, 2006 letter that Greenpeace did suffer from nine deficiencies in its activites, including unspecified illegal acts. According to the Journal, IRS allowed Greenpeace to maintain its tax exempt status because the illegal activities “weren’t Greenpeace’s primary purpose.”