The Missing State Department Report on West Papua

The investigation, conducted during 1995–96, followed reports of killings near the Grasberg mine. Despite over a decade of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation, the final reports have never surfaced. Wilson, a former Wall Street mining analyst, argues that the missing documents are not merely a bureaucratic failure but a window into the systemic lack of transparency surrounding extractive industries. The book details the movement of officials between government roles and corporate boardrooms, notably citing former Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, who moved to the Freeport-McMoRan board after characterizing the Grasberg project’s surrounding conflicts as a mix of greed and high principle.

Beyond the West Papua case, the book examines thirty comparative projects across five continents, including operations involving Shell, Chevron, and Rio Tinto. These studies illustrate that allegations of environmental harm and human rights abuses frequently outlive the projects themselves, leading to long-term litigation or exclusion by sovereign wealth funds. As FOIA attorney C. Peter Sorenson notes in the book’s foreword, while the framework of the investigation is well-documented in declassified cables, the central picture remains hidden. Wilson posits that the core issue is not whether the investigation happened, but why the U.S. government continues to withhold the results from the public record.