Chevron is piling on the lobbyists and PR firms in an extraordinary effort to evade responsibility for its massive toxic contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon. -- But in a recent article for Politico, Kenneth Vogel, who tracks the confluence of money, politics and influence for the influential Washington news outlet, writes that the oil company's increasingly combative approach is backfiring, "drawing fire from environmentalists, media ethicists, state pension funds, New York's attorney general, members of Congress and even Barack Obama when he was a senator." -- Facing the possibility of a $27 billion judgment in an Ecuadorean court, Chevron is employing an increasingly aggressive kitchen sink strategy, with a major lobbying effort in Washington, and a multifaceted PR campaign in the U.S. and Ecuador that produced a phony news report and promoted a contrived bribery scandal to smear the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. -- In DC, Chevron has been lobbying Congress and the U.S. Trade Representative to threaten Ecuador's trade preferences under the Andean Trade Preferences Act in order to pressure Ecuador into intervening in the private lawsuit. In a shocking admission, Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson explained, "If we were able to call a timeout and make the lawsuit disappear, then this entire issue disappears." -- Chevron is piling on the lobbyists and PR firms in an extraordinary effort to evade responsibility for its massive toxic contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon. -- But in a recent article for Politico, Kenneth Vogel, who tracks the confluence of money, politics and influence for the influential Washington news outlet, writes that the oil company's increasingly combative approach is backfiring, "drawing fire from environmentalists, media ethicists, state pension funds, New York's attorney general, members of Congress and even Barack Obama when he was a senator." -- Facing the possibility of a $27 billion judgment in an Ecuadorean court, Chevron is employing an increasingly aggressive kitchen sink strategy, with a major lobbying effort in Washington, and a multifaceted PR campaign in the U.S. and Ecuador that produced a phony news report and promoted a contrived bribery scandal to smear the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. -- In DC, Chevron has been lobbying Congress and the U.S. Trade Representative to threaten Ecuador's trade preferences under the Andean Trade Preferences Act in order to pressure Ecuador into intervening in the private lawsuit. In a shocking admission, Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson explained, "If we were able to call a timeout and make the lawsuit disappear, then this entire issue disappears." -- Among Chevron's cabal of high-powered lobbyists are Mickey Kantor and Carla Hills, former U.S. Trade Representatives who are lobbying their former agency, Wayne Berman, Managing Director of Government Relations for Ogilvy Worldwide and former National Finance Co-Chair of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, former Senators Trent Lott and John Breaux, former U.S. ambassador to Ecuador Peter Romero, Mac McLarty, President Clinton's former Chief of staff, and Brian Pomper, former staff director for Senator Max Baucus.