Investigate the deal. I have not seen this, and its kind of amazing. In looking at these conflicts, its always good to follow the money. Firestone and the warlord frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org. The wyncote foundation. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. Narrator this is a story about business and war. Its a story about a small group of americans and the choices they made many years ago. A story about the cost of operating in a volatile and remote country. Its setting is a rubber plantation in africa, owned and operated by the tire giant firestone. I am Charles Bradford pettit, and go by brad. I worked 31 years at firestone. I really kind of felt that we were above this war somehow, and that both sides wanted us there, so that theyre gonna leave us alone. We were one of the largest, if not the largest, employer in liberia, certainly paying taxes to the government, certainly providing a lot of employment for locals. And we would hope that they would honor that and just leave us alone and let us continue to do what we were doing. Unfortunately, that didnt occur. Wed been through several coups and nothing changed very much. We just expected to go right back to having our good life. Narrator they helped run the largest rubber plantation in the world a multimilliondollar investment stretching over 220 square miles. I dont think you ever realized how big it was, but yeah, my First Impression was, hey, this is a beautiful forest. Its a beautiful country. Oh, very pretty. The trees are all planted in a row and so forth. And a lot of humidity, a lot of rainfall, about 140 inches or more a year. And you can actually smell the what i would call must or decaying materials in the country, and its something you get used to. Narrator the two dozen expat managers who lived there along with their families were in their own world. Here is our houseboy. Hi, mom. What are you drinking . This is pure, filtered, boiled water from africa. Thats rick, our other yard boy. Where did mom go . I dont know. Shes over there. You really didnt feel any danger other than a few of the rogues who would either break into your house or try and steal your money when youre in town, shopping. Nothing seemed unsettled to me. I loved it. It was very, very enjoyable. Narrator but outside the plantations perimeter, a rebellion was brewing. people shouting it was 1989. Liberias president , samuel doe, was losing his grip. Doe had cracked down, jailing opponents, eliminating rivals. It all came to a head on christmas eve. Christmas eve, 1989, when a man called Charles Taylor emerged in the northern jungle, declaring a revolution against does regime. chanting this is not a military coup. This is a pure civilian uprising. If doe opened pandoras box just a little bit, taylor, you know, ripped off the lid. chanting narrator the man behind the revolt was a littleknown, americaneducated, smooth talking charmer Charles Taylor. I have to honor these men, that we must be able to make a difference. We must be able to bring back what weve, you know, what weve all wanted. He was very slick, you know, kind of used car salesman slick, and not particularly threatening or overbearing, but not the kind of person youd buy a used car from. All i want to do is to bring back some sanity, some fair play in the country. An evil, venal sociopath who was charming and glib. I knew he was a criminal, that hed absconded with almost a Million Dollars, that hed mysteriously escaped from jail in massachusetts. He was a very unsavory character. Narrator at the time of the uprising, taylor was running from the law, accused of embezzling nearly one Million Dollars from the liberian government. To pull together his guerrilla force, he had cozied up to several dictators in africa, including muammar qaddafi. Libya we knew at the time was a very prorevolutionary country under qaddafi. And they were training africans to be guerrilla fighters, and we had all sorts of intelligence informing us about that. And so taylor and other liberians whom he could recruit went into training there. Narrator newly trained, taylor launched his offensive from the north with a small, ragtag army with little to no combat experience. gunfire you would have rebels advancing with their aks held above their heads, just firing randomly down the road. There wasnt a lot of marksmanship. There was a lot of firing in the air. There was a lot of running away. They were not in army uniforms. They were in, like, casual clothes, you know, wearing wigs on their head, having some white chalks on their body, claiming it was some protection against bullets. They were weird looking, really. But they were mostly kids. These young fighters wearing fright wigs and, you know, shower caps and womens dresses and bathrobes and shooting wildly and wearing juju, you know, the talismans of liberian witchcraft. Narrator as taylors army in masquerade wound its way towards the plantation, elizabeth blunt, the bbcs correspondent for west africa, made a trip to firestone to find out if the managers were concerned. We were invited to sunday lunch. A couple of other journalists and myself, we went off to firestone, and it was beautiful. It was green, it was peaceful. We had lunch in the clubhouse. I think our hosts were working very, very hard to persuade us that everything was normal. I dont think it was as normal as they made it look. And i think they were hoping that if the rebels did come, that they might be able to carry on. Narrator and for a while, at least, they did carry on. It really didnt affect us much, until we knew that they were getting closer to monrovia, and therefore, obviously, closer to us. I was hoping that, actually, the rebels would go around the plantation, not come onto the plantation, and we would be able to continue to operate. There was a lot of political turmoil, but conditions were pretty good then even under the circumstances, so we expected that if a civil war did get to liberia or monrovia that it would be very quick and things would return to normal. Narrator for the expats, life on the plantation was enjoyable. We actually had a ninehole golf course. The greens were oiled sand. Certainly, during the rainy season, the fairways were nicer than they were in the dry season. You would have at least the length of your club to find some grass in which to put your ball. But it was nice. We would stay at each others houses so all the golf teams didnt have anything to worry about. Clubs would be open for the evening for the ones that really liked to party. There also was a fishing club there that nearly everybody had a boat for. And wed go deepsea fishing, have fishing tournaments, etcetera. Youd have a boat boy that took care of your boat and all that good stuff. And it was fantastic because off the west coast of africa, some of the best fishing in the world wahoo, marlin, tuna, sail fish, everything is there. It was fantastic. Narrator for taylor, it also had the makings of a perfect base. The plantations center was in harbel, named after the companys founder, Harvey Firestone, and his wife idabelle. It was strategically located only 45 minutes away from the capital, monrovia, and right next to a key regional airport, Roberts International. They were just such tempting targets. They had everything that a rebel army would want. They had fuel supplies, they had generators, they had communications, they had food, and they had nice facilities. They had clinics and they had really nice houses, so it was a very, very good base to operate from. I would say whoever was going to run liberia needed firestone, and i think taylor felt that he was going to be that man, so yes, he needed firestone. Lets say we were very influential on what happened in the country and what went on in the country. music playing narrator the story of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company of akron, ohio, begins in 1900. By the roaring 20s, the company was a household name, and Harvey Firestone had become one of the top industrialists of that gilded age. There are few people who realize the importance of rubber and what it means to our commerce and welfare. Narrator with its Auto Industry booming, the United States was consuming around 70 of the worlds rubber, most of it imported from british colonies in the far east. Harvey firestone was determined to find his very own source of rubber. And i urge upon the United States to get relief by investing in a country under their own control. This can be accomplished in liberia. Narrator liberia was ideal. The country was an ally of the United States. It had a large, untapped labor pool and miles and miles of land for planting rubber trees. The 90,000 acres was divided into 45 divisions, each division having hundreds of trees about 12 feet apart by 15 feet apart. So you had eightandahalf million rubber trees all in rows. Narrator in 1926, liberia offered firestone a chance to develop up to a million acres of land at six cents an acre. The liberian negotiators were not knowledgeable about these things. So firestone got the deal that said they would rent huge acres of land for small amounts, for a long period of time. But i dont think that original deal was in the very best interest of the country. Narrator the deal was controversial from the start. But for the liberian government, it marked the beginning of a convenient business partnership. Firestone was huge in every way, and the revenues were absolutely crucial. So what would happen would be that the government, when it ran out of money, would anticipate the revenues. They would get firestone to pay future revenues up front. So the government was always in hock to firestone. Narrator it was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I put a spell on you because youre mine. Narrator firestone eagerly courted liberias elites, holding parties like this one, where management invited nina simone to sing. Thats Harvey Firestones son, harvey jr. , on the right, next to the guest of honor, liberias longruling president , william tubman. The country had been ruled since the 1930s by a man called William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman jr. , who smoked cigars, wore homburgs, and appeared at official functions in tails. Narrator president tubman was an americoliberian, a member of liberias ruling class, many of whom were descendants of the freed american slaves who founded the country in 1847. Liberia was one of the very few parts of africa that had not been colonized by a european power. It was settled in its more or less modern configuration by freed american slaves, and this group became known as the americoliberians. Narrator the americos had established their own brand of servitude, which excluded from power local ethnic tribes, like the kpelle, the bassa, the kru. The americoliberians, to some extent, replicated the society that they had left in the United States, but they became the plantation owners and the liberians became the workers. drumming not surprisingly, the workers resented this status. Narrator life in much of liberia mirrored the plantations of the american south. Some saw echoes of that at firestone. The entire structure of the work on the plantation was like in the south. That means you had laborers, and you had head men. You got gang leaders. You have overseers, you know, the same thing that used to operate in the south to control the work force. The people at firestone imported here a lifestyle, and it was a lifestyle that was designed for the americans who came from the United States to work for firestone. Officers on the plantation lived very nicely in attractive, comfortable, wellfurnished homes. You know, their lifestyle was obviously on a plane greatly superior to that of the liberians who were working with them. Narrator the plantation had over 8,000 workers, most of them tappers. I had never seen Something Like this in my life before, this scene of the tappers with the buckets slinging on their shoulders, moving around, emptying the cups of latex, one after the other, and going to the truck and emptying it there and so forth. Narrator collecting sap was grueling work, sometimes done by entire families for a few dollars a day. Its hard work, its demeaning, and the pay is very small. If someone tries to complain, even though we were little, but we hear them say, well, if you try to complain, you know, people will tell you, arent you counting yourself lucky that you have a job . You gotta stop complaining. so people just live with it like that. Narrator liberian middle managers had it a little better. Im justin knuckles. I was hired in firestone in the year 1973. And i worked for firestone in various positions up to 1990. The first house i have what i can say were terrible, because you had to get out and go and use the bathroom outside. You had to do everything outside. And a lot of flies. It were terrible. The houses have now changed. But up to 2002, that was the type of housing they had. I mean, no running water. And about 90 of the people live in that condition. Narrator but in one of the poorest countries in the world, firestone offered its workers generous benefits. I got a scholarship coming from junior high school, because i was the second in my class. And then i got a scholarship again to go to college. So they paid my tuition in college. I can say you consider yourself blessed if you were in liberia working for firestone because firestone had a good educational program. They get you food. They get you water. You didnt make much money, but for man to live, you gotta have certain, certain things, and firestone provided those things. Narrator but the firestone workers were not immune to the resentment that was building across liberia. After 133 years of americoliberian rule, a young enlisted man from the krahn tribe changed the course of liberias history on april 12, 1980. Liberias president , william tolbert, a descendant of american slaves and a good friend of the u. S. , was assassinated today in a coup lead by an Army Enlisted man who said that theyre fed up with government corruption. The new head of the government is the 28yearold sergeant named samuel doe. Master Sergeant Samuel doe eviscerated tolbert in bed. Disemboweled him. Doe then invited the worlds press to come to liberia to witness the execution of all the cabinet ministers that he could lay his hands on. It was very shocking, really, because of the way they executed the cabinet, who were old men, who were civilians. I think people would expect them to be locked up after a coup. They wouldnt expect them to be tied on the beach outside town and shot. The execution of the tolbert cabinet on the beach, broadcast live on liberian television, sent a pretty clear message that this was his country to control. gunfire for the First Time Since its birth, liberia was no longer run by these mulatto, lighter skinned liberoamericans, but from someone from the interior. Narrator doe gradually filled government posts with members of his krahn tribe, many who were uneducated and illprepared to run a country. One of the notable exceptions was Charles Taylor, who had recently returned from boston, where he had received a degree in economics from bentley college. He worked his connections and became the head of the General Services agency. Doe, who was a pretty uncultured man at the time, had the good sense to put taylor in charge of the office, which appropriates funds for government purchases. Narrator taylor used the position to gain influence with does staff. He bought new cars for the cabinet and surprised doe with a stretch limousine. But as head of procurement, there were other opportunities. As you can imagine, that was a very lucrative job, and he made a lot of money. And nobody really minded until the money he made was president does money, and then he fell out with the president and fled to the United States. Narrator doe accused taylor of embezzlement, demanding his extradition. Taylor was arrested and locked up, but not for long. Charles taylor makes a rather dramatic prison break from a jail in massachusetts, along with several other inmates. All of those inmates are eventually captured. Taylor is not, and regales in the afterwards that it was the cia who helped break him out of that prison, because he was destined to lead the rebellion to bring down samuel doe. Theres all kinds of legend around it, but it seems he had a kind of underground network of people who helped him. He literally disappeared. Nobody knew where he was. Wed heard all the rumors that he had been to the states and escaped from jail and was making his way back to liberia. Narrator four years after the jailbreak, taylors forces began their assault, heading towards the Firestone Plantation. loud gunfire chanting narrator day one tuesday, june 5, 1990. Last evening, 8 00 p. M. , reported rebels crossing river towards factory area. Donald ensminger was the head of the Firestone Plantation when taylors rebels stormed in and seized control. Much of what we know about what happened comes from ensmingers diary and a phone interview. He declined to apear on camera. I found him to be very genuine, a very nice man. He genuinely cared for us as expats and for the rest of the people who worked for liberia. We found ensminger to be very rude, very uncooperative and a very arrogant son of whatever. Narrator ensminger notes that eight to ten rebels burst into the golf club, demanding vehicles. Later, they also took fuel, bags of rice, handheld radios and petty cash, including 40 to the rebel leader, peter, a hothead and drunk. Ken gerhart was stationed down th